Theodore looked up from his musings with a start. A man was standing nearby, pointedly waiting for an invitation to take a seat. The man was in his forties, with thinning grey hair and small round spectacles, and one of those narrow triangular faces that made the chin into a point that would disappear into one’s neck when one smiled. There was an intensity about him that burned and made him compelling to look at, nevertheless. Behind his spectacles, his eyes were dark and piercing. If Lord Byron had gone into the financial business rather than poetry and licentiousness, no doubt he’d have looked like this.
The man was smiling now. Theodore sought for the man’s name in vain, but the man spotted his uncertainty, and thrust out his hand with no self-consciousness at all.
“Mr Digby Nettles. It’s Lord Calaway, is it not? I have heard much about you, sir. Forgive my intrusion. May I?”
“Please do. Be my guest. Ah, I have it. You are a connoisseur of art, I understand?” Theodore hoped he was correct.
He was. “Indeed, sir, I aspire to connoisseurship perhaps but I am content, in my own way, to be a mere jobbing art dealer.” Mr Nettles spoke with a cut-glass accent forged in the halls of the best schools in the land. Theodore thought it unlikely that Mr Nettles had ever been a “jobbing” anything.
“I see. You must know everyone who is anyone, I would wager.”
“I certainly do encounter many people from a wide range of backgrounds, yes,” Mr Nettles said smoothly. “One would like to think that those of a higher class would be easier to deal with but...” He laughed and shrugged.
Theodore smiled. “There are as many rogues in the aristocracy as anywhere else. More, perhaps. Parliament is simply stuffed with them.”
Mr Nettles smiled, hiding his teeth. “You and I understand one another, then.”
“Well,” said Theodore, “of course I am not suggesting that I am any kind of radical, you understand. The system is as the system is. We may grumble and we may complain but it brings me to where I am, and I would be the very worst kind of hypocrite if I were to take against it, do you see?”
“I do see,” said Mr Nettles, who was no longer smiling, as if Theodore had said something that displeased him very much. He opened his mouth to say something else but evidently thought better of it, and pressed his lips together in a bloodless line. If he took his spectacles off, he would have been the very definition of “brooding.”
Theodore took a sip of brandy, hoping that alcohol would bring him insight into whatever he had said that had annoyed Mr Nettles. He decided simply to move on. He need not apologise unless Mr Nettles complained directly, after all. He said, “You live in London, don’t you, I suppose?”
“I do. I have done so all my life.”
Theodore raised his eyebrows, hoping Mr Nettles would expand on his background, but the art dealer did not. It was annoying to not be able to place someone precisely in their proper place within the vast network of social ties and grand families. Clearly this chap wasn’t an aristocrat but he must have been linked to the edges of some family or another, or he wouldn’t have been at the gathering. Theodore said, eventually, “So how do you know Lady Purfleet?” He was glad Adelia wasn’t within earshot, as she would have kicked him for such an indelicate question. One never ought to imply any sort of relationship between a man and a woman in such a way.
It didn’t seem to bother Mr Nettles though it would have undoubtedly riled Lady Purfleet too if she’d overheard them. Mr Nettles said, in careful reply, “She is a patroness of many fresh new artists and has a keen eye for talent. She is also a wealthy patroness of a number of galleries in London. I understand that she is highly thought of.”
Theodore nodded. The conversation felt slow and painful. And what did he mean when he said that he understood she was highly thought of? That was a cautious way of praising someone. Theodore brought his glass to his lips, not to sip, but just to look as if he were engaged in something. Mr Nettles seemed content to settle more deeply into his chair, and he crossed his legs at the ankle, stretching them out. He looked around the room with a languid air, making himself perfectly at home. All he needed was a smoking jacket and a dog at his feet and he would look as if he were in front of his own hearth.
Suddenly Mr Nettles turned his head, almost wrenching his neck around so that he was staring off in the other direction, but it was too late. A woman was descending upon them and he could not hide from her. She craned her neck to try to see Mr Nettles’ face as if she were checking who it was. She smiled as she approached, but it did not reach her eyes; a tiny frown brought her narrow eyebrows together. Her hair was piled
