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Charles nodded. He kept an eye on the marchioness in conversation with two gentlemen—one of them, Edenhorn, a singularly dull MP with a post at the Exchequer and endless knowledge of the recent bullion crisis.

The duke’s footmen passed among the crowd, filling glasses, while the duke and duchess made their way to a small dais next to the painting, concealed behind a red velvet curtain. Charles stepped forward, until he stood at the marchioness’s elbow.

Someone tapped a glass, and the talk died down as all turned to the duke.

“As many of you know, England lost a great treasure some years ago when Walpole sold his collection to the Russians. At the time, I and others proposed in Parliament the establishment of a national gallery.” The stately, white-haired duke paused. He was known for the quizzing glass dangling from a pale blue ribbon around his neck as well as his withering condescension. “However, it was not to be, and until the nation demands such an institution, the people of England must rely on the private collector to preserve its treasures. My dear?” He turned to the duchess, who pulled a golden cord.

The velvet curtains parted on a painting by the French artist Poussin, a striking image of an angel descending to address a maiden in a vivid blue robe.

Charles watched the marchioness. She did not show the least sign of recognition of the painting, though Charles knew it had once hung in the Musee Napoleon in Paris, where most Parisians could have seen it.

He turned to his companion.

“It is a great shame, is it not,” he observed, “when nations cannot keep their own art.”

His comment drew a dry smile and an amused glance from the marchioness. “Have we met, monsieur?” she asked.

“I am Wynford,” he said. “Are we not family?”

Her expression changed. A quick calculation passed in her eyes. Whatever she had heard of him, she had not expected the vulgar excess of his waistcoat. “Ah, you are my cousin, are you not? The son of Charlotte.”

She knew his pedigree, and he heard no obvious flaws in her accent, which sounded pure Parisian.

“What draws you to London when you could be in Paris?” he asked.

“Alas, I must look after some documents my late father-in-law sent to your country for safekeeping. It is tedious but necessary to establish one’s claims to lost property in France.”

“Which of Delatour lands do you hope to recover?” Charles thought it a mild challenge, a test to see whether she remembered those vineyards.

She did not blink. “The Saumur vineyards. Saumur was not so revolutionary-minded a place as some. Its people are practical where there is a profit to be made, and I hope the property will soon be restored to the Delatours.” She took a sip of wine.

“Ah,” he said, trying to check his suspicions and keep his head clear.

Her bare shoulders rose and fell in a quintessentially Gallic shrug. “Do you know the Saumur vineyards?”

“Only from summers as a boy.” He had been in Saumur for the harvest during a brief peace before the fatal trip with his mother and Octavia. He remembered a steep cobbled street of gabled houses below a great castle, grapes in deep purple clusters, and the sure rapidity of the pickers with their straw hats and gloved hands and small, curved knives.

“It is not perhaps the best time to be in London, as my new friends tell me that the town empties soon for you English to have your Christmas in the country. It is the custom, is it not? Are you not obliged to go home to your own lands to be with your sister?”

It was an easy lie and quite credible except for the mention of his sister. Octavia was unknown in London to all but Charles’s closest friends, like Perry, and Perry had not been talking to the marchioness. “Ah,” he said, “I’m an idle town fellow, and rarely feel obliged to do anything.” He swirled the wine in his glass. “Which of your vintages would you recommend?”

Before she could answer, there was a little stir in the room as Wellington entered and the crowd parted, everyone following his progress to the duke and duchess’s side. Ten years after Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon, eager hostesses considered his appearance at a gathering a social triumph. When the great man neared Charles and the marchioness, she turned away abruptly, extending her empty wine glass to a passing footman.

No one noticed except Charles. It was a small thing, perhaps unintended, meant to look spontaneous and flustered, but Charles doubted the marchioness ever gave way to impulse.

“Have you been introduced to our national hero?” Charles asked.

“Oh one meets him everywhere,” she said, turning back to Charles with an abstracted air, her face still averted from Wellington’s gaze. “What were we speaking of before?” She moved her fan gently in front of her face.

“It was nothing,” he said. “Perhaps another time you will tell me more about your wine.”

“Let it be soon.” She smiled a dismissive smile. “Pardon me.”

He bowed and stepped aside. He watched her stroll down the long gallery, unhurried, pausing to look at the art and speak with other guests. He could not say who had won this first skirmish. He had perhaps betrayed a weakness in his response to the mention of his sister. He had observed no flaw in the woman’s disguise, if it was a disguise, except perhaps her strange reaction to Wellington. The great duke, a notorious flirt, was known to be susceptible to handsome women, and of all the gentlemen in London, he possessed the influence to help a woman in need of recovering property in France. How interesting that the marchioness chose to avoid rather than seek the great duke.

* * * *

From a chair against the wall, Harriet watched as the full disaster of Octavia’s first London evening unfolded. Lady Luxborough, an accommodating parent, had arranged for the rugs in her drawing room to be rolled up and provided a piano player and a dancing master to instruct her children in preparation for a Twelfth Night ball when the family returned from the country.