‘Oh! Horrid. Horrid, I tell you. I have never seen a man with less understanding of the nature of cloth than he displays. Why, did you know that I went in on the recommendation of a friend, whose advice I shall not favour henceforth, and M. Lecomte had the temerity to suggest superfine cloth? To me?’ He took out a perfumed handkerchief and patted his forehead. ‘I turned on my heel and left without another sign. It was clear he was not current.’

Smiling, the Prince Regent adjusted the sleeve of his coat, which was, Jane was startled to note, cut from superfine cloth. ‘So, you see, Mrs. Vincent, he does not always agree with me.’

Sir Lumley leaned back in his chair in a show of mock horror. ‘Now, Prinny, you do not mean to tell me that you have honoured M. Lecomte with your business?’

‘I was, I confess, curious to see how a man who claimed to have worked for Napoleon might measure against our good English tailors.’

Jane smiled in polite interest. When the silence seemed to indicate that it was her turn to speak, she ventured to ask, ‘How did you find him sir?’

The Prince considered for a moment and then offered a single word. ‘Foppish.’

‘And yet you wear the coat he made for you?’ Jane studied the coat. It was cut along French lines, but she had begun to grow used to that as the fashionable set raced to catch up with the other side of the Channel. ‘Might I inquire as to why?’

‘It amuses me.’

Jane was uncertain if that amusement stemmed from the tailor or from the near apoplexy he had brought on in Sir Lumley. Her attention was distracted from this question, for, in examining the Prince’s coat, she happened to spy the glamural beyond him. She could barely stifle an ‘Oh!’ at what she beheld and kept her countenance placid only with some difficulty.

Behind a window in the coral, they had placed a school of iridescent fish, swimming past at intervals. The effect had been achieved by measuring out a long spool of thin glamour, which contained no illusion save for occasional bubbles, and then looping it around to tie to the fish. Though Jane had used such threads of empty space before, she had worked with none so long as this. It had required her to stand in one place to control the thread for exactly as long as she had wanted the interval to be. Her husband had but recently showed her his technique of braiding seemingly similar threads together at somewhat different lengths to create the appearance of random intervals. Jane had created the fish thrice, one that came at three minutes, one at five, and one at eight. It created the illusion of but one school of fish, swimming past at random moments.

And yet, as she watched, two schools of fish went by hard on the tails of one another.