Colin’s stepfather nodded, as though I had given the correct answer in an oral exam. I could see myself being moved from one mental category to another. “Do you know — ,” he said, and began listing names.

I didn’t. But I let him go on anyway, while I made my own mental categorizations. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s prodigal grandson was definitely what Pammy would call a “smootharse.” Too smooth. He was all polish with no contrast, all gloss with no texture. His clothes were perfectly chosen and perfectly maintained, not a stray thread or old stain showing anywhere. His hair was as glossy as Serena’s and what lines there were on his face looked like they’d been mapped out by a designer, the modern male equivalent of the beauty patches once worn by eighteenth-century lovelies to draw attention to their charms. Even his speech had been perfected down to the last little nuance. Not too posh, since that would be a social solecism of its own, but just posh enough. Posh enough to sound like he was deliberately trying not to be posh, which is its own sort of bizarre status symbol.

Wishing I had paid more attention, I remembered Colin’s father as I had seen him in those pictures in Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s album. For all that they were cousins, you really couldn’t get more of a contrast. Colin’s father had had a craggy sort of face. Not craggy in terms of irregularity of feature, but craggy as in lived-in. Broken in. Comfortable. Like an old Barbour jacket.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head as he named a famous gallery about ten blocks from my parents’ apartment. “I’ve walked past it, but I’ve never been inside. My family aren’t really art collectors.”

“Next time you’re in New York, let me know, and I can arrange a private viewing for you,” Jeremy offered magnanimously.

The “we aren’t art collectors” clearly hadn’t registered. I suppose, in a field like art sales, you had to be impervious to rejection. If you battered away long enough, odds were that you could talk someone into buying.

But it wasn’t just that. He struck me as the sort who likes to make a splash, who likes to be in a position to offer favors — even if, in my case, the recipient had no interest in the favor whatsoever. Jeremy still got to make a point of showing that he could. It was another one of those pecking-order games.

Despite the fact that I had been roped into the game as his straight man, Mutt to his Jeff, Elvis to his Costello, I didn’t think the performance was aimed at me. Nor was it being staged on Serena’s behalf. For all that Jeremy oozed charm in her direction, there was something offhanded about it, more habit than design. Serena wasn’t the target either. Colin was.

And Colin wasn’t playing.

Having exhausted my limited knowledge of New York galleries, Jeremy transferred his attention to Serena. “Will I see you in March?” he asked.

Visibly uncomfortable, Serena shrugged her shoulders slightly in lieu of an answer. I could see the sharp bones of her clavicle through the soft fabric of her dress.

“March is a busy season for us,” she offered, in what was clearly the first stage of a long and elaborate attempt at evasion. A simple no would have been far more effective.

“I’ll have a word with Adam,” said Jeremy kindly. “I’m sure we can get it sorted.”

I presumed Adam must be Serena’s boss. It also seemed very obvious that she didn’t want whatever it was sorted, but she managed a sickly smile. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Your mother would be very sorry not to see you.”

Oh, boy. More family drama. I couldn’t blame Serena for looking slightly green. I would be green, too, if someone nearer in age to me than my mother presumed to speak to me on her behalf.

Jeremy turned back to me. “Will we see you, too, Eloise?”

He was probably trying to be nice. But that “we” pissed me off on Colin’s behalf. It wasn’t his place to be inviting me to whatever this March thing was if Colin hadn’t. And Colin hadn’t. I chose not to dwell on that bit. It was far simpler and easier to be irked at his stepfather instead.

I twinkled sweetly up at Colin’s mother’s husband. “Will you speak to my boss, too?”

That had not been in the script. Jeremy mustered an uncomfortable laugh. “I’ll have to leave that to Colin,” he said a little too heartily, before adding, with an admonitory nod to Colin, “Make sure he tells you all the details.”

“Don’t worry, Jeremy,” said Colin dryly. “I will.”

Showing more gumption than I had given her credit for, Serena seized her moment. “Will you excuse me?” she said. There were two bright spots of color high on her cheeks. “I have to coordinate with the caterers.”

“I have to be off, too,” said her stepfather. I had a feeling that if she had said that she had an emergency operation, he would have had a bigger one. “I promised Adam I’d give him my assessment of those new bronzes.”

“Don’t let us keep you, then,” said Colin pleasantly.

“Colin.” In reverse of their greeting, like a tape unwinding backwards, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s grandson nodded to his stepson before sending a practiced smile my way. “A pleasure, Eloise.”

“Likewise!” I chimed.

As he turned away, his smiled seemed to hover behind him, like the Cheshire cat’s. His teeth were very, very white. That, I have learned, is not normally the case across the Pond. He must have gotten them capped. I wondered if Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had paid for it.

As I watched, Jeremy hailed Serena’s boss. At least, I assumed that was who the other man must be. Unlike Jeremy’s perfect dental apparatus, he was bucktoothed, and his jacket was tweed over a black turtleneck, rather than an Italian tailored suit, but there was a certain similarity of expression, nonetheless. They were happily smarming away for all they were worth. That should keep him occupied for a while. Serena had gone to ground, not with the caterers, but with Nick and Pammy. I was pleased to see that Nick had slung an arm around Serena’s shoulders. Not a particularly demonstrative arm, but an arm nonetheless. Of course, he had been squeezing Pammy’s waist earlier in the evening, so it was hard to read too much into it. The main point was that she had a buffer zone.

We hadn’t said hi to either Nick or Pammy yet, or to Joan Plowden-Plugge, who was still roaming about like a wicked witch in search of a flying monkey. But I had had enough. I wanted to go home. I had a million questions to ask, none of which could effectively be dealt with in a room full of people. Especially when some of those people were the very people I wanted to talk about.

“So what’s this March thing?” I asked in a falsely casual tone.

“My mother’s birthday.” Colin traded his empty glass for a full one. He offered it to me first. I shook my head. I felt befuddled enough without muddling myself further with a third glass of bubbly. “She’s invited us to Paris for a long weekend. Jeremy wants us all to play one big happy family.”

“Oh,” I said. It was my word of the night. And then, because I couldn’t help myself, “How did — ?”

I didn’t have to finish the sentence. “My mother wind up with him?” he finished for me.

I nodded. “Pretty much.”

Colin let out a gusty exhalation, that was probably meant to convey something to me, but didn’t. He stared for a very long time at the bronze on its own square stand in front of us. If one didn’t know better, the concerned squint could have been taken as the concentration of a serious connoisseur. I had a feeling it wasn’t the bronze he was seeing, though.

After a prolonged scrutiny, he finally said, “I suppose it was natural. My father was ill. My mother was much younger. Jeremy was there.”

That wasn’t exactly what I would call natural, but if it made Colin feel better, I wasn’t going to argue.

“Your parents married pretty young, didn’t they?” I said by means of encouragement. What I really wanted to know was how he felt about all this. But as stupid as I can be about boys, I did know one thing; direct questions about emotions are the fastest way to the end of a conversation.

“My mother was young,” Colin corrected.

“How big an age difference was there between them?” I asked, reassuring myself that, yes, Colin and I were only three years apart and that couldn’t really be accounted much of anything as far as age differences go.

He had to pause for a minute to do the mental math. “Fifteen — no. Sixteen years.”

“Eeeek,” I said before adding, inconsequentially, “My parents are six months apart. They went to college together.”

“My father had already been through university and the army when he met my mother,” said Colin. “She was sixteen.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say other than another eek, so I didn’t say anything at all.

Colin rubbed a tired hand over his forehead. Fortunately, it wasn’t the hand holding the champagne, or that could have gotten very messy. I’ve done that sort of thing before. “I think she thought he was . . . oh, a sort of James Bond. When all he really wanted to do was settle down and be a farmer. So it was something of a disaster.”

I felt a slight chill go through me at that James Bond bit, in spite of the heat generated by the press of too many bodies in too small a space. Not so very long ago, I had gotten myself in trouble with my suspicions about Colin’s own . . . well, shall we call them extracurricular activities? He claimed to be writing spy novels, but I still had my suspicions.

But I would have dated him anyway, I told myself. It wasn’t just the James Bond thing.

Okay, maybe it had been, just a little bit, in the beginning. It had been his ancestors, his Englishness, all those external aspects that had initially attracted my interest. Well, and a certain amount of very evident physical chemistry. But it had been long enough now that those weren’t the reasons I stayed. If it were just the accent, or just the titillation of dating a descendant of one of my favorite spies, it would have been easy to call it quits. When it came down to it, I just plain liked him. I couldn’t even quite say why.