“I hope so too, mademoiselle.”

“Asseyez-vous,” Genevieve ordered, waving her hand in the direction of two chairs. “Richard, procure a drink pour votre ami and both concentrate on me! I have to buy trois or perhaps quatre bonnets and I need your advice. I need it tout de suite!”

She turned back to the mirror as she spoke and stared at her reflection for a moment or two before she added,

“I not certain if in this I look très jolie. What you think?”

She looked into the mirror as she spoke, not at the gentlemen reflected in it, who had seated themselves on two rather uncomfortable chairs, the only ones in the room that were not cluttered with clothes or theatrical trophies of some sort or another, but at herself.

“Personally, mademoiselle, I prefer you in the green one. It is not so dramatic, but it does not detract from your features as this one does.”

The words were spoken in a soft musical voice that was so different from Genevieve’s and so unexpected from someone in her position that the Earl looked with curiosity at the speaker.

She was wearing a nondescript grey grown with a bonnet in the same colour and he thought that he would not have noticed if it had not been for her voice.

The sides of her bonnet made it difficult for him to see her face and yet he had the impression of a small straight nose, a firm chin and a curved mouth whose soft pink owed nothing to artifice.

“Peutêtre vous avez raison,” Genevieve said. “Put on again and I ask les gentilhommes what they think.”

The milliner produced the green bonnet and the moment it covered Genevieve’s dark hair the Earl was aware how right the woman with the musical voice was.

As she said, it was far more becoming than the black and red one.

“You think I am pretty, my Lord? Oui?” Genevieve enquired.

“Very lovely!” the Earl agreed automatically.

As he spoke, he was listening to hear the milliner speak again.

“Then I take this one,” Genevieve said, “and the other two we have already chosen. Put them on the bed.”

The milliner took the three bonnets and moved across the room to place them on the bed, which had a frilled cover decorated with large bows of velvet ribbon.

The Earl watched her and thought that she moved with a grace that he might have expected from an actress rather than a saleswoman.

It was still impossible to see her face because of the way the sides of her bonnet obscured it, but he was sure that she had not looked directly at him.

She walked back again to the dressing table to begin tying up the boxes in which the bonnets had been packed.

“You have the bill?” Genevieve asked.

“Yes, mademoiselle.”