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‘It’s a masquerade?’ her mother enquired, an excited expression on her face. When Angelica nodded, she continued, ‘I have just the thing. An exquisite Venetian mask I bought from this special modiste in the Rue Saint-Honoré.’ She dashed upstairs again and came down with a navy-blue silk mask embellished with paste jewels on the temples and cheekbones and a cockade of silver feathers on one eyebrow.

‘Oh Mama! That just sets the look perfectly.’ Angelica kissed her mother’s cheek and took Mr Breville’s hand. ‘Thank you both for such lovely presents. My friend, Miss Fitzjames, and I will be leaving with our maids tomorrow afternoon. I hope you are happy, Mr Breville, that I’ve asked Robert if he will harness your team of four to the fast chaise. We will return the following day.’

‘Of course, my dear. What is mine is yours.’ He bowed with a benign smile.

Angelica looked down again at the evening gown she still had clasped to her bosom. She knew she would draw all eyes in this sparkling dress and it would be all the more imperative to protect her identity. This elegant mask would do much to disguise her face.

There was a knock and Martin entered with a letter on his silver salver. He bowed elaborately and proffered it to Angelica. It was written in a childish hand and she smiled. Martin straightened up and said, ‘The Asprey footman is waiting in the hall, Miss Angelica. Is there a reply?’

She opened it and read a letter written in various coloured inks, her name surrounded by a drawing of a bower of forget-me-nots.

Dear Miss Leigh,

I miss you So Much. The house is Awful Dull without you and Papa is back to Silence and Work with his Breakfast. Miss Stafford has some errands to run in Bond Street and said, if You agreed, I could visit for an Hour tomorrow afternoon. So hopeful I can see you.

Your Friend, Elinor

Angelica smiled and said, ‘Martin, thank you. Please tell the messenger that one hour after noon would suit me well.’

‘Who is this, dearest?’ Her mother’s face was full of curiosity.

‘It’s Lord Latimer’s cousin. A clever charming girl I’ve grown to know and like.’ This was gratifying news to her mother. The more her daughter was courted and embraced by Lord Latimer’s family the better. Angelica turned for the door. ‘Mary and I must get my clothes ready for the party and prepare our packing.’

She walked up the stairs, suddenly weary and with a sense of foreboding she could not quite place. As she entered her room and lay down on the bed she heard the clock in the hall chime three times, and her hand clutched her throat. This was the hour Lord Rackham expected her. This was the hour when she would have chosen her father’s safety over her own happiness. Her visceral recoil from such a bargain did not quieten the sense of guilt that had she been a true daughter, then filial love and duty would have propelled her into Lord Rackham’s arms. Angelica thought of the new production planned for the theatre, in which her part as the heroine, Amanthis, was held up as the model of female virtue. But that moral probity depended on self-sacrifice, something Angelica was not prepared to do.

She lay on her bed thinking of how her contempt for Lord Rackham’s offer would rouse a vengeful rage in his breast; gripped with sudden fear, she was desperate to know if her father had managed to escape these shores. She recalled the despairing words in the script she had just learnt and would have to utter on stage as the young heroine realised the personal cost of her bargain:

Terrible – what have I done? What promised? – Oh, Heaven! I am sinking under a weight of misery – a chilliness seizes me – my strength is nearly gone.

Yet shame had meant she had not confided to anyone, except Mr Asprey, the humiliating bargain she had been offered. Nothing could have made her feel more keenly how far she was from being accepted by the highest society in which Lord Latimer, his mother, Dante Locke and Mr Asprey belonged. Lord Rackham’s offer would never even have been whispered to a woman of their class and the fact he was so brazen underlined the degraded status in which her profession was held, in which she was held. This thought filled her with a sense of hopelessness.

But for what did she hope? Angelica clasped her hands together and sent an unspoken prayer that her father had evaded the excise men and was already at sea. She added a prayer for love and acceptance for herself, but it was Mr Asprey’s dark austere face rather than Lord Latimer’s handsome, mischievous one, that arrived in her mind’s eye. Like young Elinor, Angelica prided herself on knowing what was best for others, but was quite confounded by the powerful emotions at play in her own heart.

She drifted off to sleep and was woken by Mary, shaking her shoulder and saying with some urgency, ‘Miss Angelica, Lord Latimer and Mr Locke are downstairs, in the library. Will you see them?’ Angelica rose from her bed in a hurry, tidied her hair as best she could, and ran down the stairs. She entered the library to be confronted by a tableau of bored young blades, leaning on either side of the mantlepiece in elegant disarray. Martin hurried Mary in as chaperone behind her.

‘Ah, Miss Leigh, our apologies for dropping by uninvited.’ Charles Latimer took her proffered hand and bowed.

Dante Locke said with a rueful expression, ‘I told Charlie this was not the thing to do. Spring ourselves on you uninvited. More than a trifle infra dig, I thought.’

‘Dammit, Dante, ’tis not like you to be so stuffy. I wanted a few words with Miss Leigh before we meet again at the ball tomorrow.’

‘May I call for some refreshments?’

‘Thank you, but this whisky will do well enough.’ Lord Latimer gestured to the decanter and glasses on the console table. With a nod from Angelica he poured out a glass for himself and his friend. ‘My formidable mama is snuffling the air like a bloodhound, I’m afraid. She’s suspicious that I’ll smuggle you, or any number of unsuitable inamoratas, into the ball so Dante is going to pay you more court than I may.’ He took a gulp of liquor. ‘I hope, Miss Leigh, you’ll appreciate this is just a politic design. I’ll manage to snatch at least two dances with you without alerting the old termagant.’ He gave a mirthless laugh.

Angelica was rather taken aback at being lumped together in his speech with other ‘unsuitable inamoratas’ but she knew Lord Latimer spoke sometimes with little thought. She smiled equably. ‘Well, Miss Fitzjames and I are travelling together tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll see you both there. I shall be delighted to dance with Mr Locke, if he can bear to be monopolised by me.’

Mr Locke bowed low. ‘I shall be honoured to partner you. You will know me as the Pierrot in blue. My tailor has excelled himself.’

Angelica laughed. ‘I’ll be the Fairy Queen. With Lord Latimer as Harlequin and Miss Fitzjames as Columbine, we’ll be a veritable commedia dell’arte; perhaps we can entertain the company?’ She then grasped his lordship’s hand. ‘I trust no one will recognise me, Lord Latimer. I could not bear to be shamed by your mama or bring trouble down on your head.’

‘Oh, Mama is already wont to ring a peal over me for every transgression. You are not to fear. Dante and I and Miss Fitzjames will be there to protect you.’ He was light-hearted. ‘After all, it’s my party tomorrow and for once I can insist on having my way.’ He led Angelica to the window, away from the corner where Mary sat with some darning, and in a low voice enquired, ‘I suppose no news of your father?’

Angelica turned anxious eyes to meet his face. ‘No. I wouldn’t expect to hear until tomorrow. But I am concerned.’

‘What kind of heinous crime, I wonder, could Mr Crowe have committed that the shades of Newgate threaten after all these years?’

Angelica found his bluntness distressing but could only agree this was an underlying fear of hers too. ‘Perhaps his debt was to some noble personage who is disinclined to mercy?’