“There is a newish wine merchant, rather small, down in Fish Street. The neighborhood isn’t very nice, but they do have some quite extraordinary wines; things you can’t find elsewhere. I should ask there, if I were you. Fraser et Cie is the name.”

“Fraser?” It was a fairly common Scots name, after all. Still, the mere sound of it gave him a faint thrill. “I’ll ask there. Thank you, Mother.” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, taking in her characteristic perfume: lily of the valley, mixed with ink—the latter fragrance more intense than usual, owing to the newness of the book in her lap.

“What’s that you’re reading?” he asked, glancing at it.

“Oh, young Edmund’s latest bit of light entertainment,” she said, closing the cover to display the title: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, by Edmund Burke. “I don’t expect you’d like it—too frivolous by half.” Taking up her silver penknife, she neatly cut the next page. “I have a new printing of John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, though, if you find yourself in want of reading matter. You know, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure?”

“Very amusing, Mother,” he said tolerantly, scratching Eustace behind the ears. “Do you mean to read the Cleland thing, or do you intend merely to leave it artfully displayed in the salon, in order to drive off Lady Roswell in a state of shock?”

“Oh, what a good idea!” she said, giving him a look of approval. “I hadn’t thought of that. Unfortunately, it hasn’t got the title on the cover, and she’s much too stupidly incurious simply to pick up a book and open it.”

She reached over and rummaged through the stacked books on her secretary, pulling out a handsome calf-bound quarto volume, which she handed to him.

“It’s a special presentation edition,” she explained. “Blank spine, plain cover. So one can read it in dull company, I suppose, without arousing suspicion—as long as one doesn’t let the illustrations show, at least. Why don’t you take it, though? I read it when it first came out, and you’ll be needing some sort of present for Joseph’s bachelor party. That seems rather appropriate, if half what I hear of such parties is true.”

He had been about to rise, but stopped, holding the book.

“Mother,” he said carefully. “About Mr. Trevelyan. Do you think Livy is terribly in love with him?”

She looked at him with raised brows; then, very slowly, closed her book, took her feet off Eustace, and sat up straight.

“Why?” she asked, in a tone that managed to communicate all of the wariness and cynical suspicion regarding the male sex that was the natural endowment of a woman who had raised four sons and buried two husbands.