“No. But I want to make sure she’s all right. Doges or no.”

“Adam, they have dinner. A drink. Chat. Nobody’s posted the banns. You know what I think? I can say this because I’ve known you all your life. Before your life. I remember when Grace was pregnant with you.” He lifted his glass, pointing a finger. “You’ve got a little too much time on your hands. You’re making trouble where there’s no trouble to be made-for yourself, really. My advice-I know, who ever listens? — is be happy for your mother and mind your own business. Of course, maybe that’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“Not enough business of your own.”

I glanced at his thin, almost elfin face, eyes bright and interested behind the half-moon glasses.

“I don’t want to be introduced. To anybody. Fix up someone else.”

“I don’t fix people up,” he said, almost sniffing at the phrase but enjoying himself. “What’s that, army slang?”

“Yes, you do. Those cozy lunch parties and you sitting there watching, like a turtle.”

“A turtle. Listen to him.” He reached to a box on the coffee table for a cigarette, thinking.

“I mean it, Bertie. I can make my own friends.”

“People never do, though, you know. Have you noticed?”

“You seem to do all right.”

He lit the cigarette, looking over the flame with an arched eyebrow. “Well, I hire them. Oh, don’t be vulgar, I don’t mean like that.”

But I grinned anyway, thinking of the long line of research assistants, young men known to be in the house but rarely seen, like upstairs maids.

“One would think you were still twelve years old. Ten.”

“Almost,” I said, still grinning. “Anyway, too young for your black book.”

“Oh, there’s bound to be someone. People have sisters, don’t they?”

And cousins, as it happened. Or, rather, the cousin’s friend, a connection so tenuous that by the time it had been explained we were already introduced.