If my face was red, it was on account of the champagne. That’s what I told myself. Or the warmth of the room. Or because Orsini watched from the landing above.

“You shouldn’t be too angry with your husband, though. He’s taken up this strategy on my advice.”

“What strategy is that?”

“You notice he hasn’t been hanging by your side.”

“We had words.”

“I reassured him. And made a few suggestions.”

“You’ve been tutoring him.”

“Sometimes men need reminding. It’s in the nature of women to want what they can’t have.”

“Not just women.”

“No. Senators, too.”

“And yourself?” I asked. “What do you want?”

My brother made no answer, but I knew him well enough. When we were younger he had arranged dates for me with his friends, boys several years older than me. I liked the attention. For Johnny, it was a way of moving in circles wealthier than our own and receiving small favors in return. A car for the evening. A jacket. A weekend house on Galveston Island. I rarely found these boys amusing for long, and to be honest my brother took pleasure in that. In stringing the boys along after I had broken it off, watching them become more and more morose, entangled in their obsession, until finally he, too, would walk away, leaving them with no avenue back. It had been something similar with that boy in Dallas.

“I told Frank he should stay here tonight. Play late at cards.”

“And me?”

My brother leaned close.

“The senator . . .”

“Yes?”

“Come with me.”

He winked at me again—and smiled in a way I remembered from when we were young and alone together in our house, and my mother was out with one of her men. Frank saw us get up. We went down the hall, away from him—and away from Orsini, too. My brother took me by the arm in his confidential way, speaking in half whispers and innuendos, saying that the senator could only play cards for so long. When he was done, he’d leave the guests to continue without him. And the senator himself . . .

“The palazzo is full of rooms. Guest rooms, of course. Also rooms for lingering. Rooms with velvet couches. It’s easy enough to find privacy, even with a house full of guests.”

“And Isabella?”

“She’s gone for the evening.”

Something about that didn’t seem right to me—vanishing from your own party. Then Frank appeared at the other end of the hall. It was a long hall, not very well lit. I let my brother pull me along the corridor, around the corner and into a parlor. He took me by the shoulders. He had an expression I’d seen before—boyish, insistent. His eyes glowed.

“What is it?” I asked. “What are you trying to say?”

We heard Frank, closer now.