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He stands there before the largest display cabinet, this handsome man in his perfectly tailored dark suit, with his silk cravat and his even silkier voice and his neat and perfectly waxed moustache. He smiles and gives his little speech with a humorous anecdote here and there, and he hands out his praise and compliments to others in all the right places. Several women cast him admiring glances while people of both sexes laugh at his jokes and express admiration for his knowledge. Of course he would be a special guest at the opening of a new ceramics exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, this good-looking aristocrat with his expertise in Chinese pottery in particular.
Why the young woman with the red hair and wearing the blue silk and velvet dress is in attendance is not so obvious. Though her companion – a tall and well-dressed man perhaps still with something of a military bearing – appears to be admiring the different displays, she does not look at the exquisite eggshell-thin cups or saucers, she seems not to care at all how gorgeously painted the vases are, or about the craftsmanship involved in making the delicate clay baskets, almost as fragile-looking as lace, or an array of beautiful but also somewhat unsettling ceramic masks. Her attention is fixed on that particular Chinese pottery expert, and for a moment the look in her eyes burns hotter than the kilns in which his beloved pieces are fired.
Another man steps forward to give a small talk about another portion of the exhibit, his voice carrying across the gathered crowd. “These are based on the creations of the old mascherari, the mask-makers, from Venice,” he is saying, gesturing at the display of white porcelain faces, with their empty eye sockets and carefully painted patterns.
“That's him then,” says the young woman's companion without looking at her, his expression giving nothing away, not even when the woman's fingers dig almost painfully into his arm as the expert in Chinese ceramics favours another pretty young woman with a smile. To anyone else he would appear interested only in what is being said about Venetian carnival masks.
“That's him all right,” she says, her voice low. She is standing still and a tad stiffly, holding her other arm very slightly awkwardly, her face revealing nothing however of the physical discomfort she is in at present.
Baron Adelbert Gruner, from Austria originally, lately of Kingston upon Thames, takes so many people in, charming them with his intelligence and culture and wit and wrapping them around his little finger like a man reeling in an endless succession of pretty little fish.
But Miss Kitty Winter, most recently of Westminster but before that from London's poorest parts, wearing her fancy new dress and trying to ignore the pain and the itching of her scars beneath the fabric, looks through his mask. She takes in the cold dead look in his beautiful dark eyes, notices the spectres which cling to him, and she sees the blood on his hands.
“I could do it,” her companion says, also in a low voice. “Easy as breathing.” He would and all, Kitty's certain. Seb Moran, formerly of the Indian Army, now still living with his paramour in Mayfair (despite the best efforts of a certain consulting detective). Once suspected and then acquitted of a man's murder, but she knows for sure he's still a killer, and she knows that he sees through Gruner's mask too; that he also sees that second or two when Gruner, while talking to a lady, happens to glance over and meets Kitty's gaze and falters mid-word.
“No.” She turns to look at Moran. “Not yet.” She smiles at him now, that blazing fury tempered when her eyes meet his, smiling at him only with warmth. “You leave this one to me.”