“We’re toward the end of the month, and her copy will be due soon,” Louise replied. “Her prose are greatly in demand, you know. She writes most of the copy in La Belle Assemblée each month, which is difficult because Emily doesn’t go into society herself. She has to read long reports of what such-and-such person wore the night before and then distill them. We have subscriptions to around fourteen newspapers, I think. And every time a really pivotal engagement approaches, Emily gets more and more nervous. At the moment I believe she’s fretting over Lady Fester’s ball. The ball is important as it is generally the first of the Little Season. And Lady Fester maintains a very select list.”

“I don’t understand,” Lucien said. “Why is Mrs. Ewing fretting?”

“She has to proclaim who was the best-dressed woman at any given ball,” Louise explained. “But it is not easy to obtain accurate information. She always worries that one of her regulars won’t get invited to a particularly select occasion.”

“She has spies?”

“They aren’t spies,” Louise said indignantly. “They are older women who love fashion and are grateful for a small payment. They tell her how everyone is dressed, so that she can report it. You know—” Louise waved her hand in the air again. “‘A most noble lady wore a petticoat with festooned draperies, blah, blah, blah.’ Everyone knows who the ‘noble lady’ is.”

“Why doesn’t Mrs. Ewing simply attend the ball herself?”

Louise gave him a look that was the mirror of the suspicious ones Emily had thrown him. “How on earth would she do that? We are not invited to balls.”

Lucien threw caution to the winds. “And why is that, Miss Thorpe? You must forgive the impertinence of a stranger, but it is obvious that you are from a distinguished family.”

“My father is an irascible man,” Louise said, with a quick glance at little Phoebe. “He threw me out of the house when I was fifteen years old. Emily, bless her heart, defended me and got herself thrown out as well. And that, as they say, was that.”

Lucien almost persisted in his inquiries, but held his tongue. Then, “I have an invitation to Lady Fester’s ball,” he said. “Do you think your sister would do me the honor of accompanying me?”

Louise had Emily’s blue-gray eyes, but for some reason they didn’t move Lucien at all, not even when she looked him over as minutely as a man selecting a new horse. “I have no idea how Emily would feel,” she finally murmured.

“I think she should go with you, Mr. Boch,” Phoebe piped up unexpectedly. “It would be much nicer than listening to Mr. Hislop.”

“What do you know about Mr. Hislop?” Louise asked, clearly startled.