Margaret barely recognised the carefully packaged young woman staring back at her from the mirror, no doubt indistinguishable from the bevy of other debutantes to be presented that day. Even her hair managed to appear colourless. Panic made her heart beat faster, making her breathless. The whole point of this absurd, antiquated ceremony was to establish her as a member of an elite club she didn’t want to join. After her presentation she would be officially, inescapably up for auction in the matrimonial mart. This wasn’t the beginning of her life as an eligible young lady—it marked the end of her freedom.

“Mama . . .”

“Excellent. You look quite the part,” the duchess said, unaware that this was exactly what Margaret wanted to avoid. “Now, let us go downstairs and have your likeness taken before you manage to spoil it.”

She was to be captured for posterity by Mr. Jabez Hughes, as recommended by Louise. With a growing sense of unreality, Margaret watched the photographer fussing over his camera and all its associated paraphernalia on the orchestra dais of the ballroom. The spot where she was to pose was marked by a huge chalked cross, and the man had measured the distance between this and the camera equipment obsessively, several times making the most minuscule of adjustments. The backdrop consisted of several screens depicting what looked like rather tasteless dark-green curtains, and the obligatory cardboard pillar to support her supposedly fragile feminine form.

Ha! She’d like to see a man spending the day carting about a ton of crinolines and petticoats, squashed into a corset that barely let him breathe, never mind eat. Unable to rest his legs properly for fear of exposing his delicate ankles, and being forced to glide rather than totter, while keeping his head up and shoulders back at all times, he would need more than a flimsy paper pillar to lean on. One hour, never mind a day, of this would force any man to reconsider his use of the epithet the weaker sex!