“You enjoy photography?”
    Lily started at the accented voice, though she was quick to cover it with a smile. It appeared her sister had commandeered Lieutenant Clarke’s attention, which must have left Mr. Marin to wander her way. “I do, yes. My mother taught me how to take good photos, develop them, and retouch them, but she’s never latched onto the medium like I did.”
    Marin’s returning smile seemed to reach only half brightness, if that. It had need of a flash pistol—something to provide that extra charge of light when circumstances didn’t supply it naturally. “The photographs on the walls inside are perhaps yours?”
    “They are.” Lily motioned toward the table where the pudding was being set out, though she led them there at a slow pace. From across the table at dinner, she hadn’t really been able to tell the color of his eyes behind his spectacles. But they were a deep brown, like the chocolate drops she hadn’t tasted in four years.
    How very strange that chocolate-drop eyes and a curl to his hair that was defying its pomade—characteristics that should have made him appear boyish—somehow made him seem all the more somber.
    “They are stunning. I particularly am fond of the one with sun glinting off an onion dome. It reminds me of home.”
    And that, she had to think, was where the sorrow had its roots in him. “It’s the Royal Pavilion in Brighton—it does look rather Russian, doesn’t it? We went there on holiday just a few weeks before the war began.” She felt her smile go crooked. “Ivy’s favorite hat blew off into the sea one day, and Daddy plunged in after it, claiming no navy man would let a few waves steal from his little girl.” Her gaze flicked to her father, who was whispering something to Mama. “I haven’t seen him so lighthearted since.”
    “Memories. They are like matryoshka dolls, yes?”
    She looked at Mr. Marin again, brows knit. “What kind of dolls?”
    He cupped his hands, then brought them closer together. “They . . . nest. Nesting dolls? You know them by this name, perhaps?”
    “Oh! Yes, of course.” They’d been wildly popular before the war, when people could still afford to spend ridiculous amounts of money on toys. “Memories are like that, to be sure. As soon as you peek at one, another reveals itself, and then another.”
    He nodded. And his eyes churned. And the rest of him stayed so very still, even as he walked beside her.
    She had a feeling he was like a matryoshka doll too—a placid exterior that hid layers of secrets and mysteries. And she couldn’t help but wonder what lay beneath this carefully crafted shell.