Pas de Deux

“I hear that they’re starting to call her the Hatfield Venus.”
The words were offered as an observation only, with no hint of accusation, and the voice that offered them was as unexceptional as the tone. There was nothing in it, surely, to account for the moment’s frozen tension in the girl who had settled hours earlier on the bench that faced the gallery’s newly acquired Venus Anadyomene. It was indeed beginning to become known as the Hatfield Venus, though that was not the title on the card mounted at its side. She had studied the painting gravely, and she had listened, idly, to the conversations that flowed around her, but she had appeared mainly to be waiting. If she had been waiting, and waiting for the slight, fair man now standing at her shoulder, she gave no sign of it as she turned towards him. Her smile was warm and natural and her greeting full of pleased surprised.
“Pavel Yakovych! I had no idea you were in town.”
He was almost certain that the words were a direct lie, but that was only a useful reminder to him that he was travelling on business, and he answered with equal warmth, and a touch of regret
“Whereas I knew that I would find you here, Katrya Petrivna.”

Catch up with Kathryn Blake and Pavel Tomeckova as they take their places once more in a familiar dance of delicately balanced deceit.