My life has settled into a comfortable routine. I go to my classes, I have lunch with Henry or occasionally with Leo, I come home to find my flat warm and spotless with a meal waiting for me, thanks to the good Francesca. The weather has been bleak and gloomy with lashings of rain and several occasions of aqua alta, but this part of Dorsoduro does not flood easily, so I’ve been able to get around without wet feet. Imelda did not return after the break. I was not too surprised. Travelling through France may soon become dangerous or even impossible. And I haven’t seen anything of Franz either, which just leaves good old Henry and me. I have been out to see Contessa Fiorito, once to her January soirée and then once on my own to tell her my news. I felt it wasn’t right to keep her in the dark any longer.

“I have to admit I suspected this,” she said. “I could tell.” She looked at me, her head cocked to one side in the birdlike manner of hers. “And the young man—he won’t do the right thing?”

“He can’t. He’s married.”

“A happy marriage? One he does not want to leave for you? Divorce is becoming a little more accepted in our country, you know.”

“Not a happy marriage but one he can’t leave.”

“I see.” A long silence. “Is it possible that it is young Da Rossi?”

I flushed scarlet. “How did you know?”

“I remembered your face when I introduced you to his father. Your reaction was not that of a person being introduced to an unimportant stranger. At the time I thought that maybe you were overawed by meeting a handsome count.”

“It was a shock,” I said.

She toyed with her teaspoon. “Young Da Rossi. Not a happy marriage, so one understands, but not one that he can easily walk away from.”

“No.”

Again she stared out past me, to her lovely garden, where the palm tree was swaying in a stiff breeze. “Then you will go through this alone? And the child? You will try to raise a child alone? Your family will accept it?”

“No. I’m going to give it up. It’s all arranged. It is going to a good family,” I said.