Her laughter, husky and rich, was unexpected. “How very English of you,” she said. “The English are masters of understatement, are they not?” Then she added as if it mattered to her, “It’s become Simon’s life. I hope it is what he wants to do and not what he feels he ought to do.”

“In what sense?”

“The Wyatts have always gone into politics. For generations. It was expected—before the war, you understand—that he would stand for Parliament as well. From childhood he was prepared for nothing else. And by nature it suited him. Handsome, able, a genuinely charming man who commanded respect. He never speaks of it now. Only of this museum, about which he knows so little.” There was a wryness in her eyes. “But we are none of us the same after four years of war. And he married me, which was not very wise in a politician. An English wife would have been safer. More—comme il faut?”

He said nothing, but had a sudden mental picture of Aurore Wyatt among the male and female voters of a quiet Dorset constituency. The cat among the pigeons … “I understand his other grandfather was an explorer of sorts.”

“Yes, in the Pacific and Indian oceans. He left Simon his collections—I think, in the hope that he might display them and make his grandfather as famous as Darwin or Cook. Simon had said nothing of this to me in France. It wasn’t until I arrived in England that he seemed to remember anything at all about his grandfather’s boxes. They were stored in London, had been for ages. And suddenly he would not hear of anything but this museum.” She shrugged in that way that only Frenchwomen have, lifting her shoulders with her head to one side, as if denying any understanding of the matter. “That is why I wonder, sometimes, if he feels an obligation to satisfy one ancestor if not the other. If not Westminster, then this museum. It would be very sad, would it not?”

“What does Simon Wyatt himself want in life?”

“Ah!” Aurore answered ruefully. “If I knew that, I would be a very fortunate woman.”

Edith came out with a tray of glasses and a bottle of wine. “The coffee’s not done,” she said apologetically.

“Wine will do very well, for me,” Aurore said, and offered a glass to Rutledge before pouring her own. He accepted, and found the wine very good indeed, dry and perfect for a warm afternoon. She watched him savor it, her eyes observing without judging. “You were in the war, I think?”

“How do you know?”

She tilted her head and thought for a moment before answering him. “You speak French very well. And you know a good wine when you taste it.” But he knew that it wasn’t what she might have said, if she’d been honest.