Charlotte looked back numbly. Her mother must be insane. What did she mean, it didn’t happen? She could feel the imprint of the man’s body on her own at this very moment. She gave a little shudder.

“But, Mama,” she said uncomfortably. They had never discussed things like this before. “There was, at least, I, there was some blood, and …”

“Virginity,” her mother said astoundingly, “is a state of the body and mind. And believe me, child, I stayed a virgin for a good two weeks. You’ll see: When you find yourself in this situation again—married this time—it will hurt just as much the second time, and the third. There really isn’t any magical formula. You may not bleed on your wedding night, but actually many women never do bleed at all.

“You are going to this ball. You are going to have a good time, because you are my daughter, and I didn’t raise you to be a whiner. You made a mistake, and luckily you got away with it. You must never think about it again, ever.”

In the back of her mind, Adelaide reminded herself to send someone down to Kent to investigate that ball (better talk to Campion; he was so discreet). And she must remember to check, casually, that her daughter’s monthly flux appeared on time.

“You are beautiful and young, and a lovely person, Charlotte,” Adelaide said seriously, stroking her daughter’s hair. “When you fall in love and get married, it will be just as if it were the first time. Because in reality it will be the first time. You must forget this.”

You must forget this, Charlotte told herself dutifully that night in bed, on the morning of the ball, in the later afternoon as Marie delicately arranged the folds of her white ball gown, adorned with white-on-white embroidery and the faintest of pale green love knots.

The whole house hummed with noise. All the furniture in the reception rooms had been removed and stored. Every bit of space was needed for the five hundred gentlefolk expected. Cartloads of soft blue and deeper blue velvety delphiniums had arrived that morning and been arranged in huge vases. Huge swags of delphiniums adorned the staircase leading up from the drawing rooms to the ballroom, and the temporary staircase from the marquee in the garden to the house was lined in them.

“It’s quite blue,” Charlotte said rather faintly to her mother as they stood surveying the ballroom in the late afternoon. The parquet floor had been polished so brightly that the blue flowers doubled themselves on the floor. The whole room looked like an indigo ocean.