They’d found a larger flat together, one with two additional bedrooms. The smaller one they decorated as a nursery. Iris had thought Sasha would be dismayed by her pregnancy, but really you couldn’t have found a more eagerly expectant father. After the fifth month or so, he took to measuring her waist with a tape every evening when he got home, so he could tally the progress of their child, millimeter by millimeter. When he drank, he drank with Iris, and then not very much because the doctor said she should only have a glass or two of red wine or possibly beer, which promoted good lactation.

On weekends he would take her out of Rome, usually to the little villa in Tivoli, so she could breathe plenty of fresh air. He never said anything about marriage, and neither did she. Not until Christmas, when Iris was too huge to do much more than lie on the sofa like some sort of beached humpback, did Harry finally—and somewhat sheepishly—suggest some official recognition of their union. Iris had looked at Sasha and Sasha had looked at Iris. “I’m game if you are,” he told her, gallant as he always was in those days.

After Harry left, Iris told Sasha they didn’t have to get married if he didn’t want to. Wasn’t he against marriage on principle, after all?

“On principle, yes. But as a personal matter, I can’t think of anything I want more.”

Iris couldn’t speak. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Besides,” he murmured, “it’s better for the child. Children want their parents properly married.”

So they were married the next week by the ambassador himself, Harry as witness, and held a little champagne reception afterward for a very few friends. The next morning Iris went into labor and Kip was born twenty-six harrowing hours later—almost ten pounds of him—eight minutes before the end of 1940. Iris didn’t learn until later that the doctor had taken Sasha aside at one point and asked him if Iris’s affairs were all in order, and that Sasha was so drunk by the time the baby was born, he registered the birth as female—not by accident, but because he didn’t actually remember.

IRIS FOUND HER HUSBAND in the foyer on the balcony with Burgess and the blonde in the turtleneck, smoking cigarettes and drinking gin. “I’m going to get my coat,” she told him. “Meet you outside in ten minutes?”

She turned and walked away before he could react. Before she could see the expressions on the faces of Burgess and the blonde—those expressions she knew so well. Oh, the old battle-ax. Wives spoil all the fun, don’t they?