As she worked her way slowly around the room, one portrait in an older style quite took her. It depicted a young boy mounted on a pony. He held a sabre over his head and looked as if he would charge into battle at any moment, for all the roundness of his cheeks and the becoming smile on his lips. His face possessed such an open friendliness that she felt herself steadier, even if her company were only a painting.

After a few moments, Jane sensed that someone had joined her. At her side now stood the inimitable Lady Hertford, who also gazed at the painting. This celebrated beauty’s very presence lent the room an additional elegance. Her claret velvet dress might have been chosen as a deliberate complement to the blue walls. The line of her neck would have been a welcome subject for any artist. Without breaking her attention to the painting they both looked at, Lady Hertford said, ‘I think that Prinny still has the same smile, on his good days.’

‘Is it his highness?’

‘Painted by Ramsey, when Prinny was seven. He has told me how he hated sitting still for it, but he was promised he could keep the sword if he did. He still has it, you know.’

‘I did not. Have you known his highness long?’

‘We have been in the same set since our parents were children, but only became familiar these last few years.’ Lady Hertford took Jane’s arm and steered her down the long gallery of the Blue Room. With a contemptuous glance over her shoulder, she said, ‘Please do not let them bother you. They cannot cause any true harm, but most of them are too silly to know how to deal with anything of substance. Faced with a woman who can actually do things, such as yourself, they simply do not know what to talk about.’

At once relieved that she had not imagined being cut out of the conversation and disheartened that it had not been her imagination, Jane tried to brush off their rudeness. ‘But it is only natural that they should talk of acquaintances that they know. I shall be gone tomorrow.’

‘Ah, but I sought you out because you will be gone tomorrow. A pleasure that is fleeting must be seized when it is present. I am such an admirer of your work. I wish I could do glamour as you can.’

‘I am certain you could. It is only a matter of practice, as with any of the arts.’

Lady Hertford laughed, a silver, gay laugh that tinkled like bells and put Jane in mind of her sister, Melody. ‘That is lovely of you to say, my dear, but I rather suspect that glamour comes so easily for you that you do not recognise how difficult it is for others.’