I laughed. “Sorry. Downstairs. Come on, I’ll show you.”

But before we could move out of the room, Mimi came over, martini glass in hand.

“Adam, there you are.” A cheek kiss. “Are you making a speech too?”

“I’m saving it for the wedding.”

“Thank god for that,” she said, then looked expectantly at Claudia.

They nodded to each other as I introduced them.

“Where has Adam been hiding you? I hope he’s bringing you to my ball. If he doesn’t, I’ll ask you myself,” she said to Claudia.

“Thank you,” Claudia said, not sure how to respond.

“Oh, purely selfish. Try finding anyone under forty these days. Though I must say,” she said, turning to me, “Grace looks ten years younger. Ten years. I suppose that’s love?” Her voice arched up.

“I suppose.”

“Maybe we should all try it. Except I have. Much good it did me.” She glanced again at Claudia. “But how long have you—?”

“We met at Signor Howard’s,” Claudia said, placing us.

“Bertie, the old cicerone. Lucky he didn’t match you up with a priest,” she said to me. “What can it mean, all the padres? In and out, all day long. What do they talk about?”

“What’s new on the Rialto.”

“Just like—chums. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? To me they still seem—I don’t know, something you see on the bus, not anyone you’d ever meet. Of course, Marian says in Rome it’s nothing but. Priests everywhere. But that’s Rome. I’m sorry,” she said to Claudia, “I hope I’m not—”

“No, no.”

“Thank god. I’m forever getting myself into trouble. You say the first thing that comes into your mind and then you see the faces. Not like you, darling. Always so careful.”

“Am I?”

“Grace says you’re thrilled. I thought, really? Or is he just being his usual diplomatic self? Our own little nuncio.”

“Why shouldn’t I be thrilled?”

“No reason in the world,” she said, a quick return. We looked at each other for a minute.

She turned to Claudia. “You will come, won’t you? To my ball? It’s going to be very special, like the ones before the war. Modern dress—I hate period. Carnival’s the worst. Those wigs, all itchy and hot. You wonder how they stood it. Oh, here she comes. Clever Grace.” A smile for my mother, making her way toward us.

“Excuse me,” Claudia said. “A moment.” She slid away from us and darted down the stairs.

“Adam,” Mimi said, her voice low, no longer chirping, “what’s all this?”

“Ladies’ room. She’ll be back.”

“No, this.” She wagged her finger between me and the spot where Claudia had stood. “The way she looks at you.”

“Does she?” I said, grinning.

“Don’t gloat.” She looked at me and laughed.

Then my mother was there and Claudia was put aside. There was someone she wanted me to meet. Mimi wanted to know about the caviar, which you couldn’t get in London now for love or money. Gianni knew a man who got it from Russia somehow. I smiled, thinking about the old Venetian trading routes, evidently still going strong. We had more champagne. My mother was happy. Where was Claudia?

I started down the stairs to check and stopped halfway, spotting her over the rail. There was no one else in the hall, and in the quiet she was standing at the water entrance, brooding, looking across the moldy landing stage to the canal. My mother had had the arched doorway opened and the steps lined with torches, in case anyone wanted to arrive by water, but no one had. Instead the lights flickered on the lonely utility boat we kept there and a jumble of paving stones covered with a tarp, once intended to repair the landing steps but abandoned by the marchesa until some money was found. In the cold, Claudia’s breath steamed.

“Get lost?” I said, coming up to her.

“It’s like a dungeon. So damp.”

“I know. Even at low tide the steps get covered now. Come on, you’ll catch cold.”

“What did she say about me?”

“Mimi? She likes the way you look at me.”

“Oh yes? Well, it’s the suit.” She reached out, smoothing my lapel.

“Ah,” I said, leaning over to kiss her.

“Wait. They’ll see,” she said, glancing into the hall.

I reached over and closed the door. “Better?”

We kissed for a few minutes, her hand at the back of my neck. Through the door we could hear the party going on, making it all somehow like sneaking kisses in a closet. Then after a while the sounds receded, as if we had left the house, and all we could hear was the slap of water against the landing stairs and our own breathing, loud in our ears, almost panting. The torches sputtered, making shadows.

“We don’t have to stay.”

“No, how can we leave? They saw me.”

“We can take the boat.”

“Oh, yes. On the lagoon. In the night.”

“Just follow the channel markers,” I said, still kissing her.

She stopped, pushing me away and breathing deeply, then smiled. “You’re the one who wanted me to come.”

I leaned my face into her neck. “I don’t know what I was thinking. We’ll stay here until the torches go. Look what they do to your skin,” I said, taking her chin and tilting her head so that her neck was caught in the light, golden. “Bertie says you’re complicated.”

“No, you,” she said, arching her neck as I kissed it. “You make it complicated. I was happy in the hotel. Everything was simple. Now look.” She pulled away, smiling. “We have to see Mama. Am I all right?” she said, touching her face. “Smeared?”

I took out a handkerchief. “Here, blot. Then you’re perfect.”

“See if there’s anyone out there. Think how it looks, coming out of the boat room.”

I laughed but peeked first, then motioned her forward to the stairs.

Either we had become accustomed to the torchlight or the electricity had finally come back at full strength, but the piano nobile seemed brighter than before, the big chandeliers blazing. My mother saw us over Gianni’s shoulder and smiled, breaking away from the group.

“Darling, at last. I was wondering where—”

“Claudia, you know my mother. And this is Dr. Maglione,” I said, but I saw that she knew him too. Her eyes went suddenly wide in recognition, then closed down, her whole face twisting. She glared at me, accusing, as if I had set a trap, then turned back to Gianni, breathing heavily, someone recovering from being kicked. The moment was one-sided. Gianni, smiling broadly, didn’t know who she was.

“How nice you could come,” my mother said, playing hostess, but Claudia ignored her, moving closer to Gianni and speaking Italian, her voice low, her mouth still twisted in a kind of sneer.

Gianni stepped back, as if the words were a physical assault, and answered her in Italian, quick and sharp.

“Assassino!” she said, louder, and then “Assassino!” almost yelling.

People nearby turned. My mother, pale, looked at me frantically. But Gianni had started to talk again, so fast that the words went by me in a blur.

“You thought we were dead,” Claudia said in English. “All of us dead. Who would know? But not all. Not all. Assassino!” she said again, this time quieter, with contempt.

I looked at her face—someone else, unrecognizable. Now it was Gianni who raised his voice, upset, caught somewhere between scolding and fighting back. The people around us had begun to look uneasy, the foreigners, not understanding, thinking they’d blundered into a scene of volatile Italians, the Italians embarrassed, shocked by what they were hearing. I tried to follow, helpless.

“Assassino,” Claudia said again, then “Murderer,” and for an odd second, hearing both words, I thought of Gianni’s speech, two languages.

Gianni answered, then stepped forward to grab her elbow, clearly intending to take her out of the room. The touch, just a graze, triggered something in her. She wrenched herself away from his hand and reached up to his face, clawing at it, shouting at him again. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her away, leaving scratch marks on his face. I heard a gasp. He held her for a moment like that, hands up in the air, away from his face, letting her body wriggle but holding her hands still, until finally she spat at him and, shocked, he dropped her hands.