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Stuart shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it.

“Sir, please!” said Michael. “Please, I beg you.”

Stuart turned his face away. “It was a story told to me by a woman I met many years ago. She took her infant son to the zoo and later gave him up for adoption.”

“That was Madame Durant?”

“She did not give me her name.”

“Would you recognize her if you saw her, sir?”

Stuart did not reply.

“That’s her.”

Stuart looked down to see an open locket thrust his way. A sudden, overwhelming reluctance seized him. He wanted to push the locket back. He’d built a Taj Mahal of a shrine around the memories of his Cinderella, and he liked it just fine. And so much time had passed. And sometimes truth did no one any good at all. And—

He looked; he couldn’t help it. There were two photographs in the locket. One was of Michael and his parents. The other photograph was of Michael, four or five years younger than he was now, and a woman in her late twenties who wore a jaunty straw boater trimmed with a pair of Mercury wings.

He didn’t recognize her immediately. Perhaps because her cheeks were no longer hollow, her chin less pointed. Perhaps because the image was in sepia and his memories of her were saturated in color—her eyes, blue as the shallow water surrounding a Maldives atoll; her lips, a rose in full bloom; her hair, the gold of the Incas. Perhaps because he’d always thought of her as infinitely vulnerable, whereas the woman in the photograph brimmed with confidence, her gaze direct and strong.

It was her eyes that broke the last of his resistance. He did not want to recognize her. He did not want to find out, at this too-late juncture, that Cinderella and Madame Durant were one and the same. But it was no use. He knew those eyes, knew them and loved them too well.

He handed the locket back to Michael. A perspiring porter, shoulders strained, pushed a cart of steamer trunks past them. A weary-looking young matron hurried two beribboned little girls along, promising puddings and new dollies at the end of the journey. An elegant older couple strolled by, the wife’s hand on the husband’s arm.

Stuart slowly realized that Michael was watching him, waiting for him to say something. What could he say? That for half of his adult life he’d been in love with a figment of his own imagination? That she could have found him and told him the truth at any point during the past ten years but chose not to? That once wasn’t enough, she had to break him one more time?

“That’s her,” he said.

“Here, Mademoiselle Porter, let me do it,” said Verity.

She hadn’t been able to sleep after the encounter with Michael and Marjorie. So she’d taken Marjorie’s hat from her room, opened the package of the ribbons she’d bought for her girls for Christmas, and retrimmed Marjorie’s tatty hat. And then, to be fair, she’d done the same for Becky.

She took the hat ribbons, tied them smartly under Becky’s chin, and turned Becky around to the mirror. Becky gave a delighted squeal. “Oh, thank you, Madame.”

Marjorie, on the other hand, stared at her altered hat in bewilderment. “Where’d my hat go?”

“That
is
your hat, Marjorie,” Becky said impatiently. They’d gone over the point a dozen times already. “Madame made it pretty for you.”

“It’s not my hat,” Marjorie said stubbornly.

Verity sighed. How could she have been so stupid? She should have known Marjorie would be distressed rather than pleased to find that a familiar belonging had mutated without warning. “You are right, Mademoiselle Flotty. It is a different hat. Your old one is at home. We are going home now; we’ll find it there. Now put on the new hat so we may leave.”

They’d already said their good-byes to the other servants earlier in the day, before the latter left to enjoy their Sunday off. Now they descended the service stairs and exited the empty house via the service entrance.

“Will we take the tube today, Madame?” asked Becky, as they climbed the steps that led up to Cambury Lane.

“The tube will have your dress and your hair smelling of motor grease, Mademoiselle Porter,” said Verity. “We are better off taking th—”

Stuart. He was crossing the street, coming toward the house. Verity turned on the step, but Marjorie and Becky crowded the way down. She glanced back at him. He looked directly at her.

The contact of their eyes was a shock that crackled all the way to the soles of her feet. But the paralysis was hers and hers alone. He continued his stroll, the motion of his walking stick fluid and unhurried. There was no surprise on his face. There was nothing whatsoever.

Perhaps he hadn’t recognized her. But even so, he should have inferred her identity—how many middle-aged women were likely to emerge from the service entrance to his house?

“Madame?” came Becky’s hesitant voice.

Verity was blocking their way. She moved, on feet that felt like wet plaster, and reached the curb at the same time he did. Behind her, Becky curtsied, hissing at Marjorie to do the same.

“Madame, a minute of your time, if you would,” he said without stopping.

In the next moment he had the door open and was waiting for her. She had no choice but to turn to her subordinates. “Wait here.”

The last thing she saw was Becky’s wide-open mouth as she entered the house through the door reserved for the master and his guests.

Chapter Nineteen

W
ait here,” he said, the exact same words in the exact same tone as she’d used with Becky and Marjorie.

He climbed up the stairs and left her alone in the main hall. She set down her valise and took off her gloves—her palms perspired, she didn’t want to ruin her best pair.

The longcase clock was still there, as was the Constable painting, which had been joined by a small, unsigned watercolor. Next to the Chippendale console table, there was now an upholstered Hepplewhite chair. She sat down on it. She shouldn’t, of course, but her limbs didn’t seem to want to continue to support her weight.

Time ticked away on the longcase clock, an otherwise pleasant, homey sound that made her heart palpitate. She wiped her palms on her skirt and thirsted after a good, stiff drink.

Would you like some whiskey?
She wished he would offer her some.

She jumped to her feet when she heard him coming down the stairs. He arrived carrying a large, ornate box, the kind in which bespoke boots were delivered to the homes of prized patrons.

“This belongs to you,” he said, in English.

“To me?” she replied uncertainly, in the same language.

She thought he clenched his teeth at the sound of her speech. He pushed the box toward her. “You may leave now.”

The box was practically shoved into her chest. She took it and stumbled a step back. “Sir, what is it?”

“Something of yours,” he said. “Good day, Madame.”

She watched in disbelief as he turned and left the main hall. Somewhere beyond her view, the door to his study closed softly. Only scant days ago, he’d said he was in love with her. He’d once wanted to marry her. Did any of it count? Did their history not merit a few more words at their final farewell?

She set the box down on the console table and lifted the lid. Beneath a great undulation of gray tissue paper, she found not handsome bespoke boots, but a pair of rubber galoshes. They were not new—she could see places where the rubber had hardened and cracked in fine lines—but they were clean, the last speck of mud eradicated through laborious brushing. Though why anyone in his right mind would want a spotless pair of galoshes when come the next downpour they’d only—

She emitted a shriek, then clamped her hand over her mouth. The galoshes were hers! Well, not really hers, since she’d borrowed them from Mr. Simmons, the head gardener—who had been then a new arrival at Fairleigh Park and not as disdainful toward her as many of the other servants had been after she stopped sharing Bertie’s bed—and she’d had to buy him another pair when she’d forgotten his at Sumner House Inn.

But to Stuart the galoshes had been hers.

There were sachets of dried lemon peel and lavender inside them. Mr. Simmons would die laughing if he knew that his nasty old overboots had been so ardently venerated. She, too, had the urge to giggle—even as a drop of abrupt tear fell on the back of her hand.

She replaced the box lid, bent down, and kissed the box. Then she went to look for Stuart in his study.

She didn’t knock. One minute he was staring at the whiskey decanter, wondering if he had enough to render him comatose. The next minute she was there beside him, the hem of her skirt nearly brushing the side of his shoe.

“May I have some whiskey?” she asked.

The weight of her angular, sculptural English syllables made him shiver, as if a ghost had passed through him. He poured. He was a well-mannered man and it was not in him to refuse a politely worded request. His knuckles around the neck of the decanter, however, were quite white. He wondered if she noticed.

She didn’t. She had stars in her eyes, eyes like the sky in paradise. He could scarcely look at her—she was exactly as he remembered and nothing as he remembered. Her eyes and her lips were every bit as extraordinary as his memories had insisted. But she was neither delicate nor frangible—a woman made not of porcelain but of steel.

“Thank you,” she said. She took a sip. “It’s the same whiskey, isn’t it?”

He said nothing. He was caught between the two versions of the same woman, trying to reconcile the distant perfection of Cinderella to the robust reality of his cook. He couldn’t.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured.

“Have you?”

“Every day. Every night.”

He’d never thought of her eyes as seductive, but they were, God, they were. And she was far more sexually ripe than he was prepared to think of her. He turned his gaze away, and poured some whiskey for himself.

“You could have found me anytime.”

“I didn’t know how I would be received.”

“That is a lie and you know it.”

She shook her head. “How was I to know that you really loved me? That you didn’t wake up in the morning and regret everything?”

He raised a full glass to his lips and finished half of it in one long swallow. The whiskey spilled down his chin. He wiped his jaw on his sleeve—a vulgar gesture that he never would even contemplate otherwise, but he was beyond caring. “That is not what I’m talking about. You deliberately withheld your identity from me. And you never came to me because you knew precisely how you would be received were you to tell the truth.”