‘Oh, no.’ Finding herself the sudden object of the girls’ curiosity did much to relieve Jane’s sensation of being left out. She had no wish to be thrust into the public view, only to have her work recognised, and even that was vanity speaking.

‘You did half the work.’ He pressed the pencil into her hand. Inclining his head to the Misses Cornell, he bowed slightly. ‘My wife is my creative partner, you see.’

‘But . . . what? That is . . . I mean . . . how? What did you do?’

‘Did you see the anemones?’ Jane asked.

This broke Miss Caroline’s questionable reserve. She darted around her sister to bounce in front of Jane for a bit. ‘Truly! I loved those! They exactly matched my dress, you know!’

‘I am glad to hear it.’ And glad too, that she had taken time to adjust their colour.

‘Where did you learn to glamour so beautifully?’ Miss Cornell managed to complete a question at last.

‘Well . . . I learned from tutors when I was a girl, and the subject interested me, so I read books and practised quite a bit.’

‘Oh! We have a tutor too, but he is ever so dull!’ Miss Caroline pouted. ‘I wish you could be my tutor!’

‘Would you show us how you made them?’

Jane turned her palms out helplessly. ‘I wish I could, but the boat is moving too fast.’ Seeing the confusion in both girls’ faces, Jane could not help but wonder what their tutor had taught them. ‘Glamour is attached between the ether and the earth. When we travel, the folds get pulled out of our hands too quickly to govern, so it is not possible to maintain a glamour and have it travel any distance without constant effort. At this speed, it would be too exhausting to be manageable or even safe.’ That inability to work glamour at sea was, in fact, one of the things which had kept Britain safe from Napoleon during the war. Any advantage the French might have had through their longer history with glamour was lost when approaching an island nation.

Miss Cornell tugged on her curls, thinking. ‘Is it like . . . I lost my pocket handkerchief to the wind. Is it like the wind?’

Jane hesitated, thinking the comparison through. ‘Somewhat. No metaphor is precise in describing glamour, any more than a metaphor can precisely describe light. We use a mixture of them to touch on the different aspects of glamour.’

Miss Caroline stood on her toes, clapping her hands. ‘Oh! I always thought it was more like marionettes than fabric!’

Schooling her expression to hide her laughter, Jane asked simply, ‘How so?’

‘Because! You move your hands here’ – she waved her hands in front of her in a pattern that could not have produced any sensible expression of glamour – ‘to create something over here!’ She hopped to the left, nearly toppling over with the movement of the ship.