When Tom came to remember the evening he recalled Oliver at the dinner table, at his most charming and insistent that they should try another pudding and at least a bottle of Château Nairac to go with it. Afterwards he had led the way to Vincent’s, and been comically appalled to find it full of drunken revellers whose exams were already over.

‘Bad taste to flaunt it,’ he had muttered, and retreated to a darker and more exclusive club where he ordered port, plummy and satisfying and absurdly expensive, and then leaned back smiling behind a veil of cigar smoke.

For the first time in months, Tom found him easy company. He remembered why he liked him so much. Even with the second bottle of port, when his eyes began to glaze and beads of sweat to show on his forehead, Oliver was still the witty aristocrat who had introduced Tom as a wary New Yorker to mysterious inner Oxford.

Tom drank glass for glass with him, but he couldn’t achieve Oliver’s practised slide into abandonment. Recollection nagged at him, and the alcohol simply accumulated into a knotted headache. The port bottle was almost empty when Tom half reluctantly unfolded a newspaper cutting from his wallet. Suddenly he felt the need to talk to Oliver, but he felt as embarrassed as a teenager. Irritation throbbed with the headache and he pushed his glass aside.

‘Have you seen this?’

Oliver glanced at it and saw the crest of The Times Court and Social page. He snorted with derision.

‘Of course not. Hardly required reading, is it?’

‘Look, damn you.’

Oliver squinted past Tom’s finger at the first announcement in the list of Forthcoming Marriages.

‘Oh, I see. Well, it isn’t news. What’s the matter, for God’s sake?’ He looked across at Tom’s dark face and surprised comprehension slowly dawned. ‘Ah. Aha. How very un-Hart-like. How difficult for you, but you must admit, how funny too.’ Oliver leaned back against the velvet banquette and laughed aloud. Tom cut impatiently through the merriment.

‘Why now? Why announce it today? I thought they were waiting. I thought I still had time.’

‘Why? Oh, because of Mama, I suppose. She’s all agin’ it, you know. Darcy must think he’ll force her hand.’

When Oliver’s laughter had evaporated, Tom leaned intently over the table. ‘Listen. I’m asking you, as my friend. And as his brother, and … Helen’s friend, too. Should I just wish them God speed and make a gentlemanly exit? Or should I do as every instinct suggests, and try to take her away from him?’

Oliver narrowed his eyes and chewed thoughtfully on his cigar. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken,’ he said smoothly, ‘that rather depends on Helen. Doesn’t it?’

Through the smoke Tom looked back at him. ‘I think I know what Helen wants,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘And it isn’t Darcy.’