“I know Jane has been fussing about having nothing suitable to wear for some months now. I know all over London the great and the ennobled are dusting off their finery, and licking their lips, no doubt, at the opportunity to display their wealth and good taste, or the lack of it, at what I am told will be the wedding of the year.”

“I’m sure it would be an occasion of unrivaled glamor,” Bram says.

“Would?” Mangan raises his eyebrows. “Is there any doubt that the marriage will go ahead?”

“I … hope so.”

“Ah-ha. So that’s how it is. Well, well. You’ve set yourself a challenge there, my friend.”

“Do you think me unworthy?”

“Indeed I do not.”

“Do you think me unwise?”

“Ha! When has wisdom had any say in affairs of the heart?”

“We are from different worlds, Lilith and I.”

“Nonsense, you both lived in London.”

“She is the daughter of a duke. My father is a man who made his own money.”

“The war changed everything, haven’t you heard? These things matter so much less now than they used to.”

“She is very rich. My father so disapproves of my painting he will likely leave me a pauper.”

“Then she’ll have money enough for both of you.”

There is a beat. Bram holds his nerve.

I must speak. I must.

“She is a witch, and I am not,” he says.

Mangan gasps loudly, then recovers himself. He stares hard at Bram and sees there is no point in denial. It is a moment before he asks quietly, “And does such a fact frighten you, Bram from Yorkshire?”

“It does not. No more than your being a witch frightens me.”

Mangan’s mouth opens and then closes again before a grin spreads slowly around his face, lifting his features, and erasing some of the hardship of recent years.

“My word, young man. You are every bit as remarkable as I knew you were. Knew from the very first moment we met, I did. That you were special. That you were destined for something … extraordinary.”

“I’ll second that!” Perry’s voice from the doorway startles them both. They turn to see him entering the studio carrying a tray of tea. Bram wonders how much of their conversation he has heard.

“Tea!” Mangan is horrified. “The man journeys from the north of our country, via Africa, if you please, he comes to see us, the returning hero and feted artist, and you offer him tea? Fetch a bottle of something, Peregrine, for pity’s sake. What will he think of us?”

“I will think that tea is perfectly acceptable, and that in any case there won’t be a thimbleful of brandy left in the house, as a bottle opened here is a bottle emptied, I seem to remember,” Bram tells him.