‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said.

‘I believe she has a lot to offer that others don’t. We have Kew just across the park and I’ll lay any odds that half her pupils’ parents have never been to see the gardens, let alone the succession houses. She intends to teach them how to keep household accounts, and to plant a herb garden, and to cook with them.’

‘To cook? What on earth for?’

‘Seton dear, you’re so old-fashioned. What do you expect a wife to do these days? Stand around like a gateau and simper?’

‘Gateaux don’t simper, dear Amelie. And I think it sounds like an expensive exercise, since you ask.’

‘Ah, but Miss Boyce is no fool. She knows one cannot start such a venture on a shoestring, but don’t be supposing her fees are anything like the usual. Nothing but the best for Miss Boyce’s pupils. She had the house extended and refurbished before she moved in, and her pupils are from Richmond’s best families. Colonel and Mrs Lindell’s daughter is one, the vicar’s eldest daughter is another, and Sir Mortimer Derwent’s girl, too. Oh, and Sapphire Melborough from up on the Hill.’

‘Mm…’ said Rayne. ‘Interesting. Quite a handful.’

Whether he meant the entire package or Sapphire Melborough alone, Lady Elyot did not ask, though she might have been able to guess. ‘With her connections,’ she said, ‘she’s had no problem attracting the right kind of client. How do you find Lady Boyce these days? Has she tried to interfere with your friendship with the her twin daughters yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘She will.’

‘She’ll only try it once, Amelie.’

‘Oh, so you’re not so keen, then?’

‘There are plenty of other fish in the sea. Lady B. is a shark.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘but some will be harder to catch, I believe. Like the elder Miss Boyce.’

‘Hah!’ said Rayne, laughing off the suggestion. ‘I wouldn’t even know which bait to use to catch that one. I leave her to the literati, m’dear.’

Lady Elyot withdrew her arm, responding to her friend’s repeated beckoning. ‘Well, you do surprise me, Seton dear. I would not have thought you were too old for a challenge as lovely as that. Stay with the safe twins, then. You can hardly miss there, can you?’ She drifted away before he’d realised he’d forgotten to ask her who the Miss Austen was, talking so earnestly to Miss Lettie Boyce. But her taunt rang in his ears rather like a warning bell, overlapping the cheery male greeting behind his shoulder.

‘Seton, good to see you here. Having an evening off?’

He was aroused from his reverie just in time to catch the remains of a smile on Bart Waverley’s attractive face that had been directed, not at him, but at Miss Boyce, who had clearly been heading in his direction until she saw who he was about to address. Then she had smoothly stopped by the side of Baron Brougham, the Member of Parliament who was talking to Sir Joseph and Lady Banks, greeting all three with a kiss to both cheeks, turning her back upon the two who watched.

‘Oh, that looks rather like a cut to me,’ said Mr Waverley with a laugh. ‘I wonder what we’ve done to deserve that.’

‘I cannot imagine,’ said Rayne. ‘Who is the lady in the corner, Bart? Did I hear the name Austen correctly?’

‘Miss Jane Austen. She’s staying here with the two Misses Binney. Lives over at Chawton. Shall I introduce you?’

‘Yes, if you will. She looks like a homely sort, and I feel a bout of charity coming on.’

‘Then a word in your ear, old friend. A little less of the condescending manner. Miss Austen and most of the ladies here could give you an intellectual run for your money any day of the week, so if you start off in patronising mode, you’ll find yourself tied up like a bull in a pen. Just be warned.’

‘Thank you, Bart. What is Miss Austen’s forte?’

‘Writing,’ said Mr Waverley. ‘Even Prinny is one of her admirers.’

‘Good grief. Then I’d better tread carefully.’

‘The trouble with you, Seton, is that you’ve never fished in deep waters, have you? Come on, I’ll introduce you.’

With the metaphors becoming increasingly visual, Rayne and Mr Waverley waded through the company to reach Miss Austen, only to find that they had been beaten to it by both Lady Elyot and Mr Lawrence the court painter, both of whom had been waiting in line for the chance to speak with her.

Nor was it quite as easy as he had thought to capture a few moments of Miss Boyce’s time when she was surrounded by artists and poets, publishers and politicians, writers, actors and musicians and, in one case, a painted scent-drenched playwright who seemed desperate to hold centre stage until Miss Phoebe and Miss Esme, her sister, drew him kindly towards the supper table, still declaiming King Lear. Rayne eventually discovered her standing with her back to him, listening intently to Mr William Turner talking about his latest tour of the northern counties, a small untidy man whose strong Cockney accent was at odds with those who asked questions of him.

Among others, Miss Boyce wanted to know what his plans were for the Royal Academy Exhibition. ‘You only presented one painting last year, Mr Turner. Will there be more than one this year?’

He obviously knew her, fixing her with an impish glare down his beaked nose, rather like an outraged gnome. ‘Virgil,’ he said. ‘Begins with a D.’

‘Dido?’ said Miss Boyce, promptly. ‘Dido and Aeneas?’

The amusement and applause was as much for the master’s pretend-anger as for Miss Boyce’s sharpness, but he scowled and shook her hand, telling her she had no business to be guessing in one. Then, because there was some turning and teasing, she saw who stood behind her and allowed the ravishing smile to drain away, edging past her friends with a quick look of annoyance over her shoulder, which, Rayne suspected, may have been partly to do with the fact that a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles rested halfway down her nose.

Striding away towards the supper room, she attempted to outpace him, but was prevented by a group of chattering guests who hesitated, then parted to let her through, allowing Rayne to meet her on the other side of them. ‘Miss Boyce,’ he said, ‘may I help you to some supper?’

Rather than move her spectacles up, she tilted back her head to look down her nose, just as Mr Turner had done a moment earlier. ‘Help, Lord Rayne?’ she said, scanning his figure like the proverbial schoolma’am with a tardy child. ‘Help? Why, no, I thank you. Your assistance, I seem to remember, comes at the kind of price I’m not prepared to pay. Go back to your gaming tables and whatever Sunday-evening company you usually keep. You seem to be out of your depth here.’

‘You look even better with spectacles than you do without them,’ he replied, refusing to flinch under the lash of her tongue.

‘And you, my lord,’ she said, removing them with a haughty flourish, ‘look much better without them.’

‘You flatter me, ma’am.’

‘No, do I? I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to.’

‘Still way up in the boughs, I see. Isn’t it time you came down?’

‘To your level? Heaven forbid. I fear I should be trampled on.’ Tucking her folded glasses into her reticule, she turned away, heading once again for the supper room.

Rayne’s own brand of cynicism would, at times, have been hard to beat, but this woman’s meteoric put-downs would have silenced most hardened cynics. He followed on, more slowly, watching the swing of her hips under the charcoalgrey beaded half-dress over pale grey satin, the low-cut back and peach-skin shoulders, the long wisps of moonlight-blonde hair escaping from her chignon to curve into her graceful neck. Needled, curious, perplexed, he followed her to the array of food, not sumptuous, but plentiful. But it was not easy to identify the tiny pieces of something, the squares of something else, rolls and balls garnished with greenery, jellies and glasses, and a confusion of cakes.