“I know you are intelligent, Katherine,” he said. She winced as he used that name, but her eyes did not leave him. “So I will tell you this only once.”

“I understand . . . Pierre.”

He smiled coldly. “Good. It was necessary that we should fashion a new life for ourselves here. For obvious reasons, that includes a new identity.”

She nodded.

“Pyotr and Aud Vladekovitch, if anybody ever traces them to Paris, were burnt to a crisp in an illegal basement apartment.”

“I see.”

“I have been paying visits to my aunt and uncle, Giles and Mathilde Massot. They own a jewellers shop near place Vendôme.”

She nodded, intently.

“It is a small place and poorly run, but they have some stock, some money, which they store in the house, and no close living relatives.” A shrug. “Except us. I am the son of Giles’s brother, Henri Massot, who moved to Morocco years ago and disappeared. You are his wife. He died of malaria before he could write to Giles about us.”

He’s brilliant, Natasha thought. But the story stuck in her craw.

“How can I play your mother ... Pierre ... when we are lovers? People will notice . . .”

She laid her hand on his arm. Angrily, he brushed it away.

“Listen.” It was a hiss; she recoiled. “Katherine . . . you and I will not be lovers. You cannot be my wife. You are too old. I want another kind of woman to bear my heirs.”

“What?” she asked. Tears prickled in her eyes. “What are you saying?”

His eyes held hers, with that unearthly calm.

“You were the first woman I singled out,” he said. “And you have been loyal. I prize loyalty above other qualities. Beauty is never enough; it’s only a start. Katherine, any other female I would have cast aside.”

Through her tears, she shuddered. She thought of her niece, screaming. She knew what that meant.

“I have a destiny,” he said. “And you can be at my side. I will found a dynasty, and I offer you a position other women cannot have.” A shrug. “I have appetites. I will satisfy them. There will be many, many girls.”

She flinched; his words stabbed at her chest.

“But they will not mean anything to me. I am offering you a place in my house, forever; as my mother, as grandmother to my children. I will be rich; I will have the kind of wealth your husband never dreamed of. And you will be a great lady, and you will stay close to me.”

“Yes,” she said, weeping. “Never leave me, my darling. . . .”

“My wife, the mother of my heir, must be young, and virginal,” he said. “Pure ...” A cruel smile. “Which you, my dear, are not.”

“But I love you,” she said, in a small voice.