"Madame Sèvres."
She turned at the sound. Father Grégoire was striding quickly toward her.
Her feelings were exceedingly complicated, because she could guess why he had followed her out.
He was somewhat out of breath from running, but once his breathing had settled a little, he said, "I find this auction highly improper."
There, just as she had expected.
"You think this place is like the courts of the old era, a source of corruption and a factory of sin?" Georgiana asked.
"Do you truly understand what you are doing?" Father Grégoire asked.
She did not answer at once.
"Would you like to talk?" the priest asked.
"Like in the admonition booth?" She smiled mockingly, then turned and continued toward the backstage area.
Talleyrand had said that women always told men, "Please be honest," but he was not falling for that.
A woman's age was a secret. If the person introducing that painting onstage had not said Isabella had painted it at sixty, people might have thought it was merely a rather serious young woman in her twenties—like Titian's "Flora," eternally young and beautiful.
Men focused on different things from women. When viewing paintings at the Louvre Museum, they were always guessing the identity of the women in them, judging by the height of the models' necklines.
But why would a woman wear a sweetheart neckline instead of a round one? Like that pope's illegitimate daughter walking among the clouds, she had a marvelous chest-to-neck ratio, and she wore high heels to make her legs appear longer as well.
When Georgiana voiced that guess, they had all been startled.
Women naturally knew about the golden ratio too, though they had suffered plenty for that damned proportion.
It was very rude to discuss a woman's age in public, but Georgiana had