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Chapter One

BRITISH INSTITUTION—ANCIENT MASTERS This annual Exhibition is the best set-off to the illiberality hich our grand signors shut up their pictures frohs of their collections

—The Athenaeum, 30 May 1835

British Institution, Pall Mall, London

Wednesday 8 July

He lay naked but for a cloth draped over his manly parts Head fallen back, eyes closed, mouth partly open, he slept too deeply to notice the i through a shell into his ear The wo on a red cushion Unlike hiold-trimmed linen, and fully awake She watched him with an unreadable expression Did her lips hint at a smile or a frown, or was her mind elsewhere entirely?

Leonie Noirot’s mind offered sixteen different answers, none satisfactory What wasn’t in doubt hat this pair had been doing before the —fell asleep

If anything else was in Leonie’shere this day, for instance, or where “here” was or who she was—it had by now drifted to a distant corner of her skull Nothing but the painting mattered or even existed

She stood before the Botticelli work titled Venus and Mars, andon another planet or in another time, so completely did it absorb her She stood and stared, and could have counted every brushstroke, trying to get to the bottom of it What she couldn’t do was escape it

If anybody had stood in her way, she h, nobody did The British Institution’s Annual Summer Exhibition continued to attract visitors It dreell nualleries, in order to copy the work of oldobstacles of theht be their only opportunity to copy works from private collections

Nobody stood in Leonie’s way Nobody pontificated over her shoulder She didn’t notice this, let alone wonder why She hadn’t come for the art but for one specific reason

A otten the instant her gaze landed on the painting

She ht have stood transfixed until Doomsday, or until one of the caretakers pitched her out But—

A crash, sudden as a thunderclap, broke the room’s peace

She jumped, and stumbled backward

And hit a wall that oughtn’t to have been there

No, not a wall

It was big, warm, and alive

It s soap and starch and wool Two rasped her shoulders and sht position, confirmed the impression

She turned quickly and looked up—a good ways up—at him

Ye gods

Or, od Mars

Perhaps he wasn’t precisely like the i man was fully clothed, and most expensively, too But the nose and forehead and mouth were so like And the shape of the eyes especially His, unlike the war god’s, were open

They were green, with gold flecks, like the gold streaks in his dark blond hair And that was curly like Mars’s, and appealingly unruly So less easily definable in the eyes and mouth hinted at other kinds of unruliness: the ree too wide and innocent Or was that stupidity?

“In all the excitement, I see your pardon”

Not stupid

More i too close, and she hadn’t noticed Leonie never allowed anybody to sneak up on her In Paris that could have been fatal Even in London it was risky

She kept all her o

“I hope I did you no peraze drift doard His boots were immaculate His valet had polished them to such a fearsoer away, blinded

His green gaze slid doard, too, to her footwear “A small foot wrapped in a bit of satin and a sliver of leather doing daainst, don’t you think?”

“The bits of satin and leather are half-boots called brodequins,” she said “And allant of you to say so”

“In the circuht as well to produce a clever reason for creeping up on you Or a chivalrous reason, like intent to shield you fro easels But then you’d only decide I was an idiot As anybody can see, the offending object is some yards away”

She are of sos to her left From the same direction ca of a heavy fabric She didn’t look that way Girls who didn’t keep their wits about theot into trouble Ask Daphne or Leda or Danaë

Today’s fitful sun had decided to streaht at this old-streaked head

“Perhaps you were captivated by the painting,” she said “And lost track of your surroundings”

“That’s a fine excuse,” he said “But as it’s , it won’t do”

“Yours,” she said She hadn’t looked up the lender’s na She’d assu or one of the royal dukes

“That is to say, I’ dead some centuries I’m Lisburne”

Leonie collected her wits, brought business to the front of her er, wherein she kept her private compendium of Great Britain’s aristocracy as well as iossipy cu

stomers

She found the entry easily, because she’d updated it not o: Lisburne e seven and twenty, he constituted the sole issue of the greatly lamented third Marquess of Lisburne, whose very recently remarriedresided in Italy

Lord Lisburne, who’d lived abroad, too, for these last five or six years, had arrived froo with his first cousin and close friend Lord Swanton

The Viscount Swanton was Leonie’s reason for being in a Pall Mall gallery on a workday

She looked back at the painting Then she looked about her, for the first time, really It dawned on her, then, why nobody else had stood in her way Elsewhere on the gallery walls hung landscapes, ical and historical deaths and battles and such, and ious subjects The Botticelli had nothing to do with any of the, no violence, and definitely no bucolic innocence

“Interesting choice,” she said

“It stands out, rather, now you mention it,” he said “No one seeed me to put in a battle scene”

“Instead you chose the aftermath,” she said

His green gaze shifted briefly to the painting, then back to her “I could have sworn they’d beenlove”

“And I could swear she’s vanquished him”