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Bea smiled understandingly. ‘She’s over at her cottage, but she’ll be back for dinner.’

‘How kind and tactful of her to let us meet alone for a while. I hope she didn’t mind.’

‘Of course not. She knew we would want to talk in private at first; she is acutely sensitive to that sort of thing. But she goes there often, in any case, as she pleases. She finds it agreeable to have a little space of her own, which I can easily understand – you know, like us, she never had such a thing before in her life. It is not so much that we need time away from each other – though that can sometimes be welcome in any relationship, I think – but more that it is good for her not to feel entirely dependent on me. This house will inevitably always be yours, and Cecilia’s, and mine, before ever she can consider it hers, even if neither of you spends much time here at present. That’s just a fact.’

Bianca nodded. It seemed to her to be a good way of carrying on. Vivienne Pallant had had a deeply unpleasant home life for many, many years, under the iron control of her elder brother, who was now happily deceased in circumstances which it did no good to dwell on, particularly in this house. He had been a violent bully, along with much else, and the neighbourhood was better off without him, as was his sister.

But Bea was still explaining. ‘She is just learning who she is, now that she no longer needs live in fear of his ill-treatment. She says it may take a lifetime to emerge from that shadow, and I can well believe it. Of course she has her own room here, for the sake of propriety – she sleeps, or is supposed to sleep, where Miss Macintyre once did, if you recall. But it is important to her also to have somewhere that is entirely her own to go back to. Somewhere Oliver Pallant never set foot. And all the more, I think, for the sake of her quite natural pride, because people in the area – at any rate, the sadly imperceptive ones – are disposed to think that I have taken her in as an act of Christian charity, since her horrible older brother and her father, and indeed all the men in her family going back years, wasted all their inheritance and left her and her younger brother with very little to live on. I have been congratulated on opening my home to her, not quite out of her hearing, and have been obliged to smile, and grit my teeth, and make some bland response.’

Bianca winced. ‘Poor Vivienne and poor you, to be so egregiously misunderstood, and yet completely unable to do anything about it. For my part, I can very easily see why she should wish to have a place that is entirely her own at last. But I must admit that your situation and hers – or at least some aspects of it, that of independence most of all – is rather to the point, as far as I am concerned, and gives me food for serious reflection.’

Bea would not try to persuade her in one direction or another, as she had promised, but there must be some subtle or not-so-subtle influence here, in a house where two women had created a manner of life that suited them and them alone, without any particular concern for what the wider world thought of them. It was not that they would be censured for choosing to make their lives together. Many women who did not marry – and many fortunate or unfortunate widows too – lived in domestic harmony with one particular friend, as Xan had said his Aunt Alice did – and society did not enquire too closely, nor in general did it judge; a pair of gentlemen in such a situation might well be regarded rather differently. But Bianca imagined that Vivienne maintaining her own cottage across the bay, when she need not and when her means were known to be straitened, was what might seem odd to everybody and occasion a certain amount of critical comment. But clearly the pair did not care a button. Vivienne was not the only one who had changed and grown over the last couple of years.

‘I am smiling at the thought of the beautiful and glamorous Miss Pallant being considered your poor, unfortunate lady companion, running here and there on your errands, subject to your every whim, and being grateful for a roof over her head. One cannot help picturing her in mittens, and a sad little lace cap. I would very much like to see the face of anyone who had heard her described in such terms only, and then afterwards met her.’

Bea was grinning now. ‘Indeed. You have just missed the spring assembly in Debenbridge – how inconsolable you must have been not to have been here – where exactly such a thing occurred. Lady Synett had guests from Town, as she often does, and had clearly been discussing our situation with them beforehand, in a manner one can only imagine. I thought one old gentleman was going to fall down dead of an apoplexy on the spot when he was introduced to Vivienne. “A lady companion? Eh, no, what, what? Something wrong there!” he kept saying. “Face of an angel, by Jove, face of an angel!” And then he impulsively asked her to marry him as they danced the quadrille. I wish you might have seen it. It became a little awkward, when she rejected his suit in no uncertain terms, though, as Cecilia was the first to point out, something scandalous always does occur at such events, and people have almost come to expect it by now.’

‘I have missed you, Bea!’ Bianca said expansively. ‘I’m so glad I came.’

Their tea arrived, and they began to speak of family matters, then more particularly of Mama, and how she did in Italy, and from thence to Bianca’s own particular version of the Grand Tour, and her impressions of all she had seen. Bea, who expressed a strong desire to travel widely herself one day with Vivienne, did not utter the name of Lord Fairmount, nor allude to him in any way, and her sister was grateful for her forbearance. Sabrina, for one, would not have been able to refrain from teasing on the topic, and as for Mama, it did not bear thinking of.

After consuming a satisfying quantity of cake, Bianca went up to her room, and stood looking idly out of the window at the wide but placid scene of land and sea and sky displayed there. There were no snowy mountains, no foaming cataracts, no dark, ancient forests to be seen, and very little of the works of man, save the crumbling ruins of a castle over beyond the village, which from this distance most resembled a shapeless lump rather than anything Gothic or sublime. Since she had left here, she had seen dozens of places, if not hundreds, that were far grander and much more widely admired.

But it was good to be reminded that, whatever else happened and whatever choices she made, however far she travelled, this old house would always be her home. She might have others that came to feel as comfortable, or she might not, but this quiet, unspectacular refuge would always be waiting for her; like Vivienne, there would always be at least one place in all the world that she could unhesitatingly call her own.

Well – it was only somewhat unspectacular, this house and this room, until one looked a little closer and saw more. There was, after all, a modestly sized Rembrandt hanging beside her bed in a casual manner. Miss Constantine turned from the window and moved to stand before the painting, a respectful little distance away. There was the reassurance of quiet beauty here too, of a very different kind.

She’d known shamefully little of art and artists three years ago; she’d had a vague ambition to paint, she’d bought the Carriera miniature to encourage her, but she’d been young and heedless, and until she’d travelled abroad, she’d seen little to fire her imagination. After all, that was in great part why she’d gone: to learn, and be changed by what she learned.

The Constantines were not, it must be admitted, a particularly artistic family, try as had their two excellent governesses, Miss Naismith and Miss Macintyre, to instil some appreciation into them. This fine and significant work she was gazing at so intently now had been hanging in Bea’s private sitting room just down the hall, and not one of them had so much as noticed it until it had been rather forcibly drawn to their attention. And it wasn’t just them. Cecilia’s mother-in-law Janet Bartrum owned another Dutch masterpiece, which she liked chiefly because it matched the cheerful colours of her cushions. But Bianca knew different now. She had standards of comparison, and fully understood that she might have seen many things as great as this unassuming little picture on the walls of palaces and churches across Europe, but none greater.

She met the long-dead painter’s weary, wise gaze. What would he tell her to do, if he could speak and she could understand him, not being blessed with competence in the Dutch language? She did not know much of his life, except that it had not been a particularly happy one. And just because he had been a genius did not mean that he might not also have been an unpleasant sort of person. Very probably it would be folly to imagine that the Dutch master would have told her to follow her art, because he might easily have felt that women, by very definition, could never be artists. (No doubt Rosalba would have had something to say about that.) She had a vague idea that she had heard he hadn’t treated the women in his life well, with the licence geniuses were so often granted when they happened to be male.

But certainly one thing Rembrandt taught her, even though he could not speak to her: painters need not live short lives, like Watteau or Caravaggio. They might still be working and creating when they were old and tired and grey. She was still young, she had time, and it was entirely up to her what she would do with it.

Bianca suddenly remembered Xan’s fulsome praise of her quick little sketch of Adrian’s sickbed, and felt herself blushing furiously even though she was alone. But that should not be allowed to influence her either, flattering as it was. Lord Fairmount was many things, but he was no art critic.

Miss Constantine turned resolutely aside and took up her bonnet and pelisse. She would go for a long walk, alone, as she had not been able to do during her weeks in London. She was restless, and Bea would not mind in the least as long as she returned in time for dinner. She had the germ of an exciting idea forming in her brain, and wanted to work it out with a long stride across the sands. She had been right to come back to Suffolk; she’d barely been here for two hours and already she felt she could see things much more clearly.

She blew Mijnheer van Rijn a kiss, and left the room. She was humming to herself, a tune from the Italian opera, as she descended the stairs and stepped lightly out into the garden.

57

VENICE, AUTUMN 1818 – FIVE MONTHS LATER

Miss Constantine had set up her easel in a spot that was quite familiar to her, looking along and across the Canale della Giudecca towards the imposing shape of the Redentore. Though it was October now, the light was strong and bright, the white marble frontage of the church almost blinding in its radiance, and the canal was that peculiar, elusive shade between blue and green. She’d painted this view before – a version of it had hung in this year’s summer exhibition at the Royal Academy in London and been sold to a stranger for a decent price – but it didn’t matter, because there was always something new to see here. There were nameless weeds at her feet, seagulls whirling above, and a ragged ginger cat watching her with profound suspicion from a nearby windowsill. The light fell differently every time she looked up. She was very happy, and felt a warm conviction deep inside that soon she would be happier still. She’d given herself time to consider her decision, had done nothing rashly, and was by now entirely sure it was the right one.

Bianca had had a wonderfully leisurely tour across Europe with Beatrice and Vivienne, with Venice as their object all along, and a set time to arrive. They were excellent travelling companions, since they left her alone a good deal, busy with their own pursuits, but were entertaining when they were all together. She had sketched and painted furiously, scenes from nature and from her own memory and imagination, a strong sense of pleasurable anticipation growing in her all the while.

This sheltered little spot she’d found so long ago remained as convenient as ever. The house still appeared to be empty, though she’d heard a rumour only yesterday that it had been sold to some foolish Venice-bewitched foreigner, no doubt for an exorbitant price; at any rate, she could still work here for now without disturbing anybody, and nothing seemed to have altered save a new layer of posters growing faded and tattered upon the old door.

She did not have Alvise with her today, though she had met him by arrangement more than once in the last week or so. He had grown alarmingly grand in the year that had passed since she had last seen him, and no longer lowered himself to carry a young artist’s baggage for a few pennies; the money she had left for his education and support – not in his pocket; she was not such a fool as that, but in the safe hands of her former landlady Signora Trevisan – had apparently made a great change in him, and he was now talking airily of joining the priesthood when he was a little older, and seeing the world. Bianca supposed that the Catholic Church had survived wars, plagues, famine and the Protestant Reformation; it might just manage to survive Alvise, though probably not entirely unscathed. Perhaps he would one day be Pope, or at least a nice fat cardinal.

She was alone, then, for now, and deeply absorbed in the problem of colour, and the related one of capturing and making solid impressions that could by their very nature only be fleeting, and so was somewhat annoyed when she became conscious of an interruption. This time, her vision was not obscured by a large, bewildered, darkly handsome English gentleman who insisted on standing before her and entirely preventing her from seeing any of the glorious things – the other glorious things – that she was supposed to be painting. Such a sight on this day might not have been entirely unexpected, in truth, and certainly not unwelcome. But no – this time, the disturbance came from behind her. The door, which still looked as though it hadn’t been touched in fifty years, was opening with a hideously drawn-out creak; the cat jumped down indignantly and fled along the edge of the canal.

She whirled round, her body tensing, ready to apologise profusely in whatever language might be required for trespassing so outrageously upon someone’s doorstep, and then realised that no such apology would be necessary.

It was Xan.