Free A Fatal Likeness by Lynn Shepherd Page A

ever sounded like this. A voice the colour of honey—a rich music of a voice that seems to bubble with suppressed amusement, and when Charles turns round the woman before him is a conflagration of all his preconceptions. Shorter and slighter than he is, with smooth olive skin, and glossy black hair that shows no grey, though he guesses she must be—what—fifty? Even fifty-five? But it’s the eyes that have him. So drowning dark the iris and the pupil melt together, and so brilliantly intense he can only meet her gaze a moment before he wants to look away. Only he can’t. Something about those eyes holds him and will not let him free, and all he can do in the end is nod and look gauche, and be all too uncomfortably aware of it. The woman, meanwhile, seems to be perfectly accustomed to the effect she is having; she looks at him briefly, her head on one side and that little ripple of amusement playing about her mouth, then offers him, with some panache, her hand.
    “It is such a beautiful country, is it not? Claire Clairmont. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”
    It is a name that may well be familiar to you, but it means nothing whatsoever to Charles. And he will not be alone, not in 1850, when the circumstances of Shelley’s private life are still largely unknown, and will remain so in some respects, even into the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, and for one absurd moment, Charles is considering kissing those proffered fingers—and wondering immediately how many other men have thought or done the same.
    “You will think me hopelessly frivolous,” she continues, shaking his hand. He can feel the barest pressure of her fingers through the bandage, but while she, for her part, cannot fail to notice it, she chooses to say nothing. “But I omitted to ask your sister your name.”
    “Charles,” he says with a smile, completely disarmed and ripe to be wrong-footed, “Charles Ma—”
    He stops, his cheeks blazing—how could he have been so stupid?
    “Mab,” he finishes lamely, knowing even as he says it that he’s merely compounded his mistake. “Charles Mab.”
    “Really?” She eyes him quizzically. “How very unusual. I’m not sure I have ever encountered a Mab before. At least not in everyday life.” She smiles again and motions him to a chair. “And you are a painter, Mr Mab?”
    Charles is by now so red about the face that there is little to do but flounder on and hope to retrieve himself. He nods.
    “And what sort of painter would you say you are?”
    He swallows; his throat is suddenly very dry. He can see the Bay of Naples behind her left shoulder.
    “Seascapes,” he says, in desperation. “Storms. Shipwrecks. That sort of thing.”
    Her face darkens. “I’m afraid I have no great love for the sea. And especially not in that character.”
    Another blunder, he thinks, cursing. Shipwrecks—for God’s sake! When anything even vaguely reminiscent of Shelley is the very last thing he should be broaching, and certainly not now, barely half an hour into the house.
    “But are you not now in a most difficult position?”
    He stares at her; has she really found him out so soon?
    “Well—” he begins.
    “I mean,” Claire Clairmont says gaily, “London is hardly the best place to pursue such subject-matter, surely? I cannot recall much in the way of shipwrecks on the Thames. Though admittedly, I have not lived here for many years.”
    “You have spent time in Italy, Miss Clairmont?”
    He has to be careful now, having snared himself into choosing somewhere for his fictitious foreign escapade that he’s never actually visited, but with luck and some sleight of hand he will have read enough over the years to weave a credible yarn. And a choice born of pure instinct may serve him well in one useful respect: From what he’s gathered so far, it’s a more-than-reasonable bet that this woman came across the Shelleys in Italy, probably in one of those loose-living bohemian communities of English