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Lilford glanced back at them.

“He heard you,” Cleo observed. “The word of the day is ‘high-blown.’”

“What does that mean?” Yasmin asked.

“Swelled with wind, prideful.”

Yasmin giggled. “How extraordinarily appropriate. A certain earl is high-blown due to being so highborn that he thinks he is high-flown as a king, but a high-minded fool will always—” She broke off as Lilford snapped around his head around and gave her a cold stare.

“We’re merely practicing the English language,” she called to him. “How do you choose your words?” she asked Cleo, after the earl looked away.

“I open a page of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, find an interesting word, and try to use it that day.”

“I should buy a copy to improve my English vocabulary. I forgot to use high-stomached . . . which means obstinate or lofty.”

“Your English is very good,” Cleo said.

Yasmin shrugged. “To be honest, there’s not much to do when one’s mother is entertaining an emperor. Not to mention I’ve found myself in many a drawing room, thrown into company with Englishmen waiting to talk to Napoleon. Better to talk to them than with ladies who have no fondness for my mother, due to their loyalty to the empress.”

Cleo squeezed her arm. “I’m sorry.” One of the reasons that their wagon never traveled with the theater company caravans was the inevitable animosity from leading men’s wives.

They left the main avenue and walked toward a grand rotunda, a structure fashioned from open pillars decorated with floral garlands, the roof hung with candelabras. Exquisitely dressed guests leaned against the marble pillars or sat at small tables and sipped champagne, while in the innermost circle couples whirled to a waltz performed by a small orchestra.

Cleo was inured to glamour by years of theater-going, but she had to admit to a touch of awe.

“Look!” Yasmin said, nodding.

A lady was advancing down the steps from the pavilion. She had a white satin train and a green wreath on her head that seemed to sparkle in the light.

“Princess Charlotte,” Yasmin whispered. “From what I hear, she is desperate to marry, but her father can’t settle on the right prince. She’s wearing a Vittoria Fête dress. All the gossip columns are saying that they should be worn as a gesture of support, to suggest that England will defeat Napoleon once again.”

Cleo knit her brow. “I don’t understand.”

“They were originally worn to celebrate the English victory at the Battle of Vittoria a couple of years ago,” Yasmin explained.

“I can only see the train,” Cleo said.

Yasmin flipped open her fan and pointed behind its shelter. “The Duchess of Trent is there, to the left, wearing a fête dress as well. See how the veil falls from the back and is worn over the arm as drapery?” They had reached the shallow steps leading up to the rotunda; Cleo’s grandfather was speaking to a majordomo flourishing a guest list.

Her Grace was a sweet-faced, exquisitely dressed beauty—who came up on her tiptoes to kiss Jake on the cheek as they watched. Cleo instinctively halted before the steps. “She is the Duchess of Trent?” she whispered.

Merry, Jake’s oldest friend. The lady put a gloved hand on his cheek, and he smiled down at her . . .

“Happily married,” Yasmin stated. “You need fear nothing from her.”

Cleo nodded.

“I heard that Addison planned to marry her when she debuted, you understand, but something happened, an accident or some such, and by the time he returned from the wildernesses of America, she was already betrothed. Or perhaps she had left for England, where she met the duke. I am not sure.”

“How on earth do you learn so much gossip?” Cleo asked.

“I find people interesting,” Yasmin said. “I forget how the story went. Some sort of Romeo and Juliet love affair, I believe, but when he didn’t return from the West, they thought he was dead, and she married another.”

Cleo swallowed. The Duchess of Trent was laughing at something Jake told her.

“As I said, it was years ago,” Yasmin said. “Do not think twice about it. For example, although he resides in the ducal townhouse in the absence of His Grace, no one has bothered to imagine that they are having an affaire.”

Jake wasn’t residing in the ducal townhouse, but there was no point in revealing the fact, which she definitely oughtn’t to know.