“Me?” Zoë said. “What do you mean?” Her two sisters were smiling at her in a very knowing way.
“I was accosted in the street this morning,” Izzy said.
“Accosted? Who b— I mean, by whom?”
“By a very handsome gentleman.”
“Yes,” Clarissa added. “Very smartly dressed he was, too.”
Bewildered, Zoë looked from one to the other. “What has that to do with me?” She didn’t know any gentlemen in London, apart from her two brothers-in-law and Gerald and Lord Tarrant, Alice’s husband. And she couldn’t imagine her sisters being mysterious about any of them.
“He mistook me for someone else,” Izzy said and bit into a biscuit.
“Oh?” Zoë felt a small pang of misgiving.
“Oh, indeed. Very certain he was that I was someone else, until he got a proper look at me.”
“Really?” Zoë tried to look uninterested.
“He called Izzy Vita,” Clarissa said.
“Which we know, from our generally inadequateschooling, is Latin for ‘life,’ ” Izzy said. “Interesting, isn’t it, that your name also means ‘life,’ only it’s from the Greek?”
Oh lord, it had to be Reynard. “Quite a coincidence,” she said weakly.
Izzy chuckled. “Come clean, little sister, you’ve met a man, haven’t you?”
“A man?” she attempted. “In London, no, not at all.”
“In France, then. Look, Clarissa, she’s blushing. Isn’t that adorable?”
“Don’t tease her, Izzy.” Clarissa leaned across and put a comforting hand on Zoë’s arm. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to.”
“Yes, she does,” Izzy said. “Sisters tell each other everything.” Clarissa gave her a look and Izzy said, “Oh very well, you don’t have to tell us if it’s a secret. Is it a secret?”
Zoë thought for a moment and then gave in. “It’s not really a secret, but I don’t want anyone else to know.”
“We won’t tell a soul,” Clarissa assured her. “Not even our husbands.”
Zoë looked at Izzy. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
Zoë took a long sip of her tea. “I did meet a man in France—an Englishman.”
“Hah, I knew it!”
“Hush, Izzy. Let Zoë tell her story,” Clarissa said.
Zoë continued. “You said the man who accosted you was a gentleman, but the man I knew wasn’t a gentleman at all. He was unshaven, shabbily dressed and lived in a Romany caravan, though he said he wasn’t Romany. He was—or at least he told me he was—a vagabond artist, who traveled from place to place, painting pictures.”
Izzy and Clarissa exchanged glances. “How curious,” Izzy said. “The man I met was definitely a gentleman, very fashionably and elegantly dressed.”
“Yes, and afterward I saw him climb into a very smart curricle and drive away,” Clarissa said.
“What did he look like?” Zoë asked.
Izzy thought for a moment. “Tall, well built, with lovely broad shoulders. Stylish boots and doeskin breeches that fitted very nicely over—”
