‘Oh!’ Mrs. Ellsworth pressed her serviette to her mouth. ‘Oh! Jane, I do wish you would reconsider. I cannot understand what you could be thinking, to go off to France like that. It is too, too dangerous, and full of immoral characters. Why, just the other day, we heard the most appalling thing about dancers in Vienna with skirts cut above their knees.’

‘Mama, Vienna is in Austria, not France. And, in any case, I have told you that we are going to Brussels, which is in Belgium.’

‘But you have to travel through France, and that is every bit as bad as if you were choosing to remain there. And what if something becomes of me while you are gone? It is all very well for you to be sweeping off to London, but in France, how shall we contact you? How shall you hear from us?’

‘I shall give our address to Mr. Ellsworth.’ Vincent inclined his head to Jane’s father.

‘There now, you see, Mama? We are staying with a colleague of Vincent’s. He has letters from M. Chastain regularly, so I am certain it will not be a difficulty for you to write to us.’

Melody tossed her head, honeyed ringlets swaying. ‘I think it is the most exciting thing. You must write to us and tell us all about the fashions. La! I am so enamoured of everything I see from the Continent, and simply beside myself that you are going abroad.’

‘Well . . . we will be in a village. I do not think fashions will be much the order of the day.’ Jane shook her head. ‘Besides, I imagine most of our time will be spent in the laboratory working glamour.’

‘Oh!’ Mrs Ellsworth threw up her hands in dismay. ‘You will not still be working glamour, will you?’

‘Well, yes, Mama.’ Jane stumbled in her recital. Her parents had just witnessed the glamural, so she could not take her mother’s meaning. As glamour was widely considered a womanly art, it was far more unusual that Vincent should pursue it than she. ‘That is what we have set out to do, after all. The commission from the Prince Regent has served us quite handsomely so we can take some time to study.’

‘I only meant, that I am surprised that you are still able to work glamour. To think of you continuing . . . It is beyond my understanding.’

Jane then saw the reason for her mother’s surprise. Vincent had very nearly died from an over exertion of glamour the previous summer, and Mrs. Ellsworth’s imagination had been overwrought since then imagining the same dire fate for Jane. ‘I am stronger than I was, in fact. Folds that once would have fatigued me seem quite easy. I attribute it to the consistency with which we were working.’