Jane swallowed, remembering how Vincent had come to propose to her. He had brought his family’s solicitor with him and had taken up his family name again. ‘You were ready to give up your art and return to that unfavourable circumstance to marry me?’

‘Yes.’ Vincent sat in the chair next to her and took her hands. ‘Jane, I had nothing, and was afraid your father would decline my offer for your hand. That was not a risk I could take.’

‘And yet your father took you back?’

‘Neither of my elder brothers have yet produced an heir.’ He placed a gentle hand on her middle. ‘That is why I have not written to him about our child. When you accepted me as I was, and we chose to continue working as glamourists, I had no reason to keep the Hamilton name. If – when – my father learns that there is another potential Hamilton in the world, he will exert pressure to have an influence in the child’s rearing.’

Jane shrank from the thought of letting such an unfeeling man into their lives in any fashion. ‘He will have none.’

‘No, he will not.’ Vincent pointed to the papers on the desk. ‘So, you understand now when I tell you that it would be fully possible and even probable for Yves Chastain to have been seduced by the Bonapartists. If he is at all estranged from his father, they would be able to play upon that and appeal to his vanity through his relationship to Napoleon.’

Jane grimaced with understanding. ‘He has run through his funds, and I believe that his father is not sympathetic to the situation.’

‘That alone could drive him to join the Bonapartists, and added with the rest . . . I hope that I am mistaken.’

They went over the remaining papers, Vincent leaning over her chair to point out details. Though she was still greatly shaken from the disclosures which her husband had shared with her, Jane could not help but rejoice, for here was the camaraderie of their marriage, which had been replaced of late by a stiff and awkward reserve. To ask questions and have them answered without dissembling made her inexpressibly happy. The answers themselves disturbed her, but the fact that the behaviours which she had attributed to a diminishing regard lay instead in Vincent’s secret duty gave her considerable relief. Jane reproached herself for the shallowness of her thought, and yet she returned to it again and again: Vincent loved her.

Though conspiracy was not the art to which they had pledged themselves, their thoughts fit together piece by piece over the course of the evening as they engaged in this new collaboration.

In the morning, all of Jane’s nausea had returned. She was hard-pressed to tell if it were a result of her health or her anxiety. Vincent was still in their apartments when she arose. ‘Are you still having trouble?’

‘I am quite well.’