Aurore turned to look at him, her fingers on the rim of her glass, her eyes a darker gray that he remembered. “My husband’s assistant will live here, in this house. Take meals with us. Share our lives. That will not be comfortable when I am strongly aware that this person does not approve of me.

He was surprised. “Why? Surely not because you’re French? She can’t know anything else about you in such a short time.”

“Yes, because I am French! I married Simon Wyatt in France, during the war. There are some who think—well, never mind. It is not your affair, you wish to speak of Miss Tarleton, not of me!”

After a moment he said, “They think you took advantage of Mr. Wyatt’s loneliness?”

She lifted her glass and drank, then set it down. “You didn’t know my husband before he left for France. Nor did I. But I’m told—very often I’m told!—that he was destined to be a famous cabinet member—a great prime minister—or God Himself, for all I know! They believe—his father’s friends and associates—that the change in him now is the result of his marriage. And so my doing. They blame me, because it is much easier than understanding why he prefers this ridiculous museum to what he was bred to do!”

“As long as Wyatt doesn’t blame you, what difference does it matter what other people think? Or say?”

“How like a man,” she said in gentle derision. “You do not live in a woman’s world, you don’t know the savagery there. It can be worse than the jungle—”

At that moment Simon Wyatt came storming through the french doors and out into the garden. “It’s my fault, he says! Idiot! I’d like very much to nail him to that wall with one of his own damned bolts!” Coming to the table, he pulled up the third chair. “What’s that? Wine! Good God, I hope you offered him gin or a scotch first!”

“Edith will bring you one, if you prefer it,” she told her husband. “But I think the inspector was leaving. I’ll see him to the door.”

Surprised, Rutledge finished his wine and set the glass on the table. “Thank you, Mrs. Wyatt.” He stood, offering his hand to Simon. “I hope the museum is a success,” he said.

Simon said, moodiness settling in on him like a cloak, “I don’t know that it will be. But the important thing is to try. It’s all I can do.” He shook Rutledge’s hand, and then Rutledge was following Aurore into the house.

At the front door she said, “I hope we’ve answered your questions.”

“There’s one other,” he told her reluctantly. “I’d like Miss Tarlton’s full name, and her direction if you have it.”