“You are looking most lovely this evening, Lady Juliette. Putting the other ladies here to shame.” Heinrich took her hands, his eyes warm as he bent over her knuckles. “I am to have the pleasure of your company for the next, yes?” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and put his hand over her fingers there. Very proprietary.

A group of women to their right clustered together talking, and when another joined them, her voice carried to those around.

“You won’t believe it, girls. I tell you, it reminds me of the night that soldier Evan Eldridge paraded in here like he belonged. I don’t care if he was made an earl. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now. That man doesn’t even have an ill-gotten peerage behind him. He’s”—the woman lowered her voice—“a detective. A policeman. At Almack’s.”

“I’m surprised the doorman allowed him entrance. Or that the patronesses allowed him to stay.”

“He must have had a voucher to be admitted.”

“Oh, he did. Signed by whom, I don’t know, but there it is. I was here when he arrived, and believe me, the doorman scrutinized that card, trying to find a flaw. In the end, he had no choice.”

“Who is that he’s with?”

“That’s Anne Victon, the daughter of Thomas Victon, from Yorkshire, who owns all those textile mills. She had her debut a month ago, and I heard hardly anyone attended. And she’s received almost no invitations to anything else, all because of her father. His money is so new it’s practically shiny, and he’s splashing it all around and making a rodomont of himself.”

The woman leaned in closer. “He’s hired that Lady Cathcart to chaperone his daughter, and we all know she’ll take on anyone with enough blunt to pay for her services. Word is she’s supposed to find a titled gentleman to marry his daughter. Who would want him for a relative when he’s so crass? Do you suppose he had to pay for someone to dance with her? Is that why the Bow Street runner is here? Because he’s poor and needs the money? He’s handsome, I’ll give you that, but he has absolutely nothing else to recommend him.”

“Perhaps it’s the Prince Regent at work again. He’s the one who got the Eldridge man admitted. He is a man of odd whims.”

“It would take an act of the prince himself to get a common policeman a voucher to Almack’s. I don’t know who is more addlebrained, the King or his son.”

“Shh, that’s scandalous talk. And it isn’t any worse having a policeman admitted as having the daughter of a tradesman. I don’t care how rich her father is.”