“Who’s Effie?” Cordelia whispered, while Risa, Cortana in hand, led the coachman upstairs with the bags.

“New maid. Risa hired her. Apparently she used to work for the Pouncebys,” said James, as Cordelia followed him into a large dining room with a thick carpet, a marble fireplace, and tall windows overlooking Curzon Street. Her eye was immediately drawn to a set of four illuminated drawings arranged on the wall. James watched her nervously, the fingers of his right hand tapping against his leg, as she approached them.

They were Persian miniatures done in richly pigmented shades of scarlet and cobalt and gold. She spun to look at James in astonishment. “Where did you find these?”

“An antiquities shop in Soho,” James said. She still couldn’t quite read his expression. “They were selling off the estate of a Persian merchant living abroad.”

Cordelia leaned close to examine the beautiful nasta’līq calligraphy above the images of prophets and acolytes and musicians, birds and horses and rivers. “This is by Rumi,” she whispered, recognizing a verse: The wound is the place where the Light enters you. It had always been one of her favorites.

Her heart beating quickly, she turned to take in the rest of the room, with its silk-covered walls, its elaborately filigreed chandelier and rosewood table and chairs with carved details.

“The table expands to seat sixteen,” James said. “Though I’m not sure I know that many people I’d want to have dinner with. Come see the rest of the house.”

Cordelia followed him into the corridor, her full skirts barely fitting through the doorway. There was a beautiful drawing room, papered in blue and white, with a massive piano; skipping the study, they headed downstairs to a kitchen full of warm yellow light. A small door in the wall led out to a patch of garden—snow-covered now, but there were rose trellises whose flowers would bloom in summer.

A maid in a black dress—Effie, Cordelia assumed—marched into the kitchen, an empty tray in her hand. She eyed James and Cordelia speculatively, as if sizing them up for sale. She had steel-gray hair swept up in a pompadour, and a gimlet eye. “I’ve laid on some food for you in the study,” she said, without bothering to introduce herself. “It won’t be nearly so good when it’s cold.”

The corner of James’s mouth twitched. “Then I suppose we’d better eat it now,” he said to Cordelia, with an expression of great seriousness, and led her upstairs.

She had expected the study to be a small room, perhaps with a desk in it, but like everything else in this house, it surprised her. It was a big and graceful space lined almost entirely with bookshelves and stuffed with comfortable furniture, including a cozy Knole sofa. Its damask upholstery matched the curtains of the street-facing windows. A writing desk Cordelia recognized from the Institute anchored one corner of the room, and a beautiful table took pride of place in the center, its surface inlaid with a chessboard of polished ebony and mother-of-pearl. On it, a chess set had been arranged for a game, the pieces intricately carved of ivory, half of them stained black, the other rich red.

“You told me you love chess,” James said. “Remember? At the Townsends’ party?”

She did remember. It was one of the many events he’d squired her to, a forgettable ball during a damp October. She recalled chatting to him as they danced, but could not have imagined that he would have remembered what she said.

She found herself wandering the room in a sort of daze, reading the titles on the spines of books, picking up a brass mantel clock and setting it down. Over the hearth hung a gorgeously flowing painting of the Lady of Shalott, adrift in her boat, her long hair tumbling around her in a curtain of scarlet. On a wooden stand near the window was a massive leather-bound volume.

“This can’t really be the New English Dictionary?” she exclaimed.

“Only through the letter K, I’m afraid,” James said. “I ordered it as soon as they released the latest bit. We can only hope it isn’t another twenty years before they release the rest. For now let’s hope you don’t need to look up words starting with L or M.”

“It’s wonderful, James. Lucie will be desperately jealous.”

“Lucie can come over and consult it whenever she likes,” James said. “But don’t let her start bringing her books over here or she’ll fill up the shelves I’ve left for you.”

Cordelia hadn’t noticed the empty shelves below James’s enormous collection of books, many of which she had seen him carrying around at one time or another. There seemed to be no subject James wasn’t interested in, and she spied volumes on topics ranging from naturalism to seafaring to The Wonders of Britain and a handful of Baedekers.

But he had left space for her. And the things he had picked out—the dictionary, the miniatures, the chess set—were thoughtful, beautiful. No wonder she had hardly seen James for the past few months. It must have taken him an incredible amount of time to create such a lovely space. It was perfect, everything she would have dreamed of and chosen for herself.

Though there were still the parts of the house she had not seen. The most intimate part, in fact. The bedroom.

She imagined a massive room, and smack in the center, a bed big enough for two people. Her blood seemed to fizz in her veins. How would she ever sleep, lying next to James in her nightgown? What if she were to reach for him in her sleep, unable to stop herself? Would James be horrified? Would he push her away?

Or … what if he expected a real wedding night? Cordelia had heard things whispered among other girls, had pored over a much-thumbed copy of The Lustful Turk she had filched from her parents’ study, but she still had little idea what happened in the marriage bed. Lucie seemed to know no more than she did: when she reached the parts of The Beautiful Cordelia where such things might credibly happen, she inevitably invoked the weather—curtains billowing in strong winds, storms raging, lightning splitting the sky. Maybe Cordelia should hope for rain?

“Do you like it?” James had wandered over to a low table by the sofa where Effie had laid on the food: tea, butter, bread, and hot game pies. “The house, I mean.”

“So far it’s perfect,” she said. “Is there a horrible secret I don’t know about? A lunatic in the attic? Demons in the cellar?”

James chuckled. His cheeks were flushed, probably from the warmth of the room. The firelight brought out glints in his black hair, and sparked off his silver bracelet.

It was the first time that day she’d noticed he was still wearing it. She bit down on the pain. She had no right to demand he remove it. Few people knew it was a sign of the bond between himself and Grace. She had the right to demand not to be humiliated by an unfaithful husband, but no right to claims on his thoughts, or his heart. Still, the bracelet was a reminder of the way his emotions were parceled out on the scales of friendship and love and longing.

That’s right, she thought. Don’t let yourself forget. She cleared her throat. “We could play a game. Of chess.”

James looked intrigued. “The lady of the house requests a game?”

“She demands one.” Cordelia settled herself carefully on the sofa. Her dress really was vast.

“The first move goes to the lady of the house,” he said, sinking onto the sofa beside Cordelia.