Page 42 of Vengeance in Venice
“It was many years ago,” he added, with a hint of anxiety. “I hope she is well?”
He was afraid she was dead… “Actually, she is very well, better than she has been for years.” Having given up whoring in favor of fencing stolen goods, Juliet had now given up both, and, with Solomon’s help, was running a rather charming shop of antiquities and curiosities in Covent Garden. She had even—almost—given up the gin. Did Kellar know all this?
“Might I ask you a personal question?” he asked.
“Why not?” she said, just a little wildly.
“How old are you?”
This time, her fingers tightened on the glass. They were shaking as she raised it to her lips. “I am twenty-seven years old.”
Something changed in his face. She could not tell if it was relief or disappointment, but it was profound.
“It has been thirty years since I last saw your mother,” he said, his voice casual, although his eyes were not.
His eyes told her it mattered, and she knew why. Ever since she could remember, she had wondered who her father was. She had even tried to find out, tracing some of her mother’s old clients of the right time and place. In fact, it was on one such foolish errand that she had got to know Solomon. But that was irrelevant here. She hadn’t wanted her father to be some drunken ne’er-do-well, some vice-ridden brute who visited whores on a Saturday night and beat his wife on Sundays. She had fantasized that her father was a gentleman, and not even because she had wanted a share of his money—she hadn’t. She had wanted to belong to something, someone, who was not squalid or sordid.
Foolish. Gentlemen visited whores too. And beat their wives. Vice and corruption were not the preserve of the lower orders.
Somewhere in the last year, she had lost that secret dream. She belonged to Solomon and he to her. And Juliet, she had finally recognized, had always done her best for her. She hadtaught her to read and write and to survive. The rest didn’t matter. Everyone had frailties.
Yet now, when she didn’t care, here was a man she might have liked to be her father.Might. He spoke of Juliet without contempt, remembered her name and, whatever else, had been prepared to acknowledge Constance as his daughter.
Only she could not be.
She laughed. “Is that what scared you? That I might have been thirty-one years old?”
“It scared me that I might have behaved so badly in youth and was not even aware of the consequences. Did your mother ever speak of me?”
She stared at him. “No. She never spoke of men to me, except in warning.”
He closed his eyes, hiding.
And then someone touched her elbow. She did not have to look to know it was Solomon. Everything was suddenly bearable again.
“This is my husband, Solomon Grey. Solomon, meet Mr. Kellar, apparently a friend of my mother’s.”
If Solomon was surprised by the connection to Juliet—and he must have been—he gave no sign of it, merely shook hands with Kellar, who, apparently overcoming whatever emotion his past had aroused, was once more urbane and smiling.
“Mr. Grey. A pleasure to meet you at last. What do you think of Venice?”
They made small talk for a little, and then, as Constance had expected, Kellar excused himself.
Quiteunexpectedly, however, he caught her gaze. “I believe you are staying at the Palazzo Zulian in Cannaregio. Perhaps I may call on you there?”
“We would be delighted,” Constance said at once, although she wondered if it were true.
As Kellar smiled and moved away, she turned impulsively to Solomon, ready to pour everything out—whatever everything was. But Solomon had changed his position, and instead she almost bumped into Giusti, who appeared to be in something of a rush. He paused and smiled at them both, while Solomon rescued Constance’s again precarious wine glass and placed it on the table beside Kellar’s untouched plate.
“We meet again,” Giusti said amiably. “How go your inquiries?”
“In circles,” Solomon said. “Though everyone appears to have an opinion.”
“How many people told you it was me?”
“A few.”
Giusti sighed. “At least the British still invite me.”
