Rose was wearing a white chiffon gown decorated at the front with two long panels of French lace. She wore white silk stockings and white kid shoes. The only colour was provided by her little gold tiara of topaz and sapphires.

As they made their way out to the earl’s carriage, a thin fog was shrouding the street lamps. The earl, small and fussy and wrapped in an enormous sealskin coat, hoped loudly that it wouldn’t get worse.

From under the shadow of his top hat, the earl surveyed his daughter as she sat in the carriage opposite him, flanked by her mother and Daisy. Her face was smooth and expressionless. That’s what puts the fellows off, he thought. Cold as ice. No wonder she’s got herself the nickname of the Ice Queen.

Another hot and crowded ballroom resounding with the latest slang that the uppers cultivated to exclude the lowers. A man-man was a royal personage. Expensive was expie. A teagown was a teagie, so of course it followed that a nightgown became a nightie. Deevie meant delightful, and if you admired the cut of a friend’s gown, you cried, ‘Fittums!’. Diskie meant disgusting, and if you were one of the many fashionable ladies who borrowed money and had no intention of paying it back, you talked about lootin’. In fact, Gs were dropped all around and words such as saw were pronounced sawr. Although the Season was still a good way off, these early returns to London were anxious to be first in the marriage market.

Rose felt uncomfortable that voices were whispering behind fans as they looked at her saying, ‘She’s here without her fiancé again!’

Her dance card was only half full. Although she had a large dowry, the adventurers had given up trying: the eligible young men of good family were not interested because she was engaged, and a good number of the dances had been booked by friends of her parents.

Jimmy was a good dancer, but her parents’ friends were often clumsy and boring. Resentment against the absent Harry began to build up in her and reached boiling point, when, sitting out one dance with Daisy, her companion said, ‘I’ve found out all about Miss Duval. She’s a famous Parisian courtesan. It’s said that one man was killed in a duel over her and she left for England because she was so upset. All the men are crazy about her.’

‘And who is her current protector?’

‘Nobody knows,’ said Daisy. ‘Becket might know.’ Becket was Harry’s gentleman’s gentleman and Daisy hoped to marry him. ‘Has the captain said any more about letting Becket and me marry?’

‘No. You should ask him.’

‘I did. But he keeps saying, ‘In a little while”. I thought I might see a bit of Becket now that we’re working for the captain, but Becket drives him to work and then just drives off.’

Both fell silent. Rose was planning to confront Harry about Dolores the next day and Daisy was going to tackle him about her marriage prospects.