When the evening was over, and James and Grey Albion walked home together, Grey was full of amusement.

“Isn’t Hughes a character? He always has an opinion on everything. Some people think he’s a little mad, but I relish him.”

James nodded silently. He didn’t think Hughes was mad in the least. But what the legal clerk had said made him uneasy, and he wanted to think about it further.

It was the next evening that he met Vanessa for the first time. It was at Lord Riverdale’s house and he was wearing a splendid new blue coat in which he knew he looked handsome. Since Vanessa was introduced as Lady Rockbourne, he assumed that she was married. They talked for some time, and he certainly noticed that she was very beautiful. She was fair, and slim, with pale blue eyes that seemed to be focused in the middle distance. But he thought no more about his encounter until toward the end of the evening, when one of the other ladies of the party declared to him that Vanessa had been much impressed with him. James remarked that he had not met her husband.

“You didn’t know? She is a widow.” The lady gave him a meaningful look. “And quite unattached.”

A few days later, he received an embossed invitation to a reception at Lady Rockbourne’s house in Mayfair.

It took a month for them to become lovers. During that time, he was aware that she was both arranging for them to meet frequently, and taking stock of him. He was certain, quite soon, that she was physically attracted to him; but obviously that was not enough. When the signal was finally given, therefore, he felt rather complimented. Not that he was sure, even then, why she had chosen him. And when he asked, she gave him only a lighthearted and evasive answer.

James had never had an intimate relationship with an aristocrat before. Indeed, he admitted to himself, part of Vanessa’s attraction for him was her class. Not because he was a social snob, but because he was curious. There was, in her attitude to the world, a bland assumption of superiority that, had it been turned against him, he would have found shocking, but, because he was in her favor, he found amusing. He observed the elegant way she did things, the amazing lightness with which she moved, the subtle inflection by which she could alter the meaning of a single word, or indicate an irony; and by contrast, the astounding frankness she could sometimes employ when lesser mortals might prefer to be less direct. All these were new to James, and fascinating. And yet at the same time, he sensed in her an inner nervousness, a dark place of the soul, and his sense of this vulnerability made him feel protective toward her. Perhaps, he thought, it was his strong yet tender arm that she secretly craved.