Gave me the most frightful headache, I can tell you.” He paused while pouring himself a glass of wine, then sipped and rolled it round his mouth with satisfaction. His mother’s Mersault was excellent, almost as good, in fact, as the store All Saints’ set aside for its Senior Fellows. “If I’d had my way, she’d never have been given a Faculty position, but Iris absolutely dotes on her. What can you do with all these bloody-” With his tongue loosened by several glasses of his mother’s equally excellent sherry before their ritual Sunday lunch, he’d been about to say, “With all these bloody women about the place,” but a look at his mother’s raised eyebrow brought him to a full stop. “Never mind,” he amended hastily, burying his nose in his wine again.

“Darcy, darling,” said Dame Margery Lester as she ladled out the soup Grace had left in a tureen on the table, “I’ve met Victoria McClellan on several occasions and I thought her quite enchanting.” Margery Lester’s voice was as silvery as the hair she swept back in a classic chignon, and although she was well into her seventies, it sometimes seemed to her son that she had condensed rather than aged. The qualities that made Margery uniquely herself-her keen intelligence, her self-assurance, her dedication to her craft-all these seemed to have become more solid as her body inevitably diminished.

Today she looked even more elemental than usual. The pearls she wore against her pale gray cashmere twinset seemed to give a shimmery luster to her skin, and it occurred to Darcy to wonder if one would find quicksilver in her veins rather than blood.

“Just what is it exactly that you find objectionable about her?” Margery asked as she served Darcy his soup, adding, “Grace made cream of artichoke in your honor.”

Darcy took his time tasting the soup, then eased a surreptitious finger into his collar.