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“You are so wrong. Is there no guide for young men? Eversley apparently has no idea about how to…”

“Talk with a woman? Flirt a little?”

“None. I like him the better for it.”

“It won’t win him Allegra’s heart, that is, if she has a heart to be won.” Hazelwood spoke directly in her ear, so that his breath disturbed a loose strand of her hair. She could not help a slight shiver at the sensation.

“He’s already won a heart I think.” She was thinking of poor besotted Annabel.

Her words were almost lost in the applause for Allegra’s first piece, but Hazelwood gave a start as if he’d seen some danger. Jane glanced around but could see no threat as Allegra immediately moved to her next selection.

“Shouldn’t you slip out while Allegra is playing?”

“Are you so eager to return to Eversley?”

“Merely hinting that great stealth is the proper protocol for an uninvited guest’s leave-taking.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll manage.”

“It—”

“Jane!” At the sound of her name, she turned and saw Clive.

“What are you doing so far in the shadows? Didn’t mother have a seat for you in the front?” As he caught sight of Hazelwood, his smile vanished. “How in the deuce did you get in here, sir? My mother will have an apoplexy if she sees you.”

Hazelwood stepped from behind Jane. “Lady Strayde’s house, is it? I must have mistaken the place for a more entertaining establishment. I’ll take my leave.”

“Just a minute.” Clive’s face flushed an angry red. “I don’t know what permits you to claim an acquaintance with my cousin, but you can’t go pulling her into corners in this shabby way.”

“Worried that my presence will cost your mother an invitation to the famous Vange ball?”

Clive caught the eye of a footman and gave the man a curt order.

Hazelwood bowed to Jane, his eyes alight with unholy satisfaction, and turned toward the salon doors, his movement unhurried.

Clive pulled Jane’s arm through his and patted her hand. “That fellow has no sense of how unwelcome he is here and elsewhere. He takes advantage of your ignorance.”

“My ignorance?” Jane could not help asking. She made a note that if she were ever to write a guide to husband hunting if would include a list of those condescending gestures gentlemen made that really should disqualify them as potential husbands. Hand patting would be on her list.

“He’s debauched, hopelessly in debt, and utterly cast off by his family. You don’t know the story, of course, but his outrageous behavior nearly ruined my mother’s sister.”

“Can you tell me?”

Clive momentarily checked his tongue, his gaze on Bolton approaching with two footmen. He nodded to the butler and cocked his head toward Hazelwood’s back. “Perhaps you should know.” Clive hesitated. “Hazelwood interrupted my youngest aunt’s wedding, stormed in really, sword drawn, and hauled her out. He claimed that they had an understanding and that she was being forced to marry Stafford. Of course, nothing could have been farther from the truth.”

“When was that?” Jane asked. Across the room she could see Bolton and two footmen move purposely around the seated guests, who turned to stare after them, in spite of Allegra’s cascading notes.

“Years ago. I was just a boy, younger than Percy. It must have been ought five or six.” Clive, too, watched Bolton rather than his sister.

When Hazelwood was twenty. “And your aunt, did she ever marry?”

“Oh yes, Stafford, of course. She’s quite the happy matron.”

“I’m glad to hear it. It would be sad if one day’s folly by an ill-judging young man had cast a shadow over a woman’s whole life.”

Clive laughed. “You’re a sly one, Jane, getting me to admit that my aunt recovered.”

Once, Jane and her father had broken a journey in the month of Moharren, to attend a mystery play that lasted ten days in which the slaughter of Imam Hoossein at the battle of Karbala was reenacted. Apart from her father among the women, Jane had been surprised when the audience reacted with a grief as keen and unrestrained as if the death had happened only that week and not centuries earlier. When she had asked her father about it, he told her that families were great keepers of grievances. Trust me, he’d said, families have libraries and chests full of them. She remembered the incident because her father had been uncharacteristically serious. No laugh or playful wink had accompanied the words. They had been spoken instead as a solemn truth.