Rue was not, as many of her age and station might have been, overset by the presence of a great number of men. She had been raised by a great number of men – some of them the type to confine themselves to card rooms at private balls, some of them the type to be in the thick of the dancing, plying eyelashes and gossip in measures to match the ladies. The men of the card room were, in Rue’s experience, much easier to handle. She dropped her mother’s personality – no help from that here – and reached for someone different. She went for Aunt Ivy mixed with Aunt Evelyn. Slightly silly, but perceptive, flirtatious, unthreatening. Her posture shifted, tail-bone relaxing back and down into the hips, giving her walk more sway, shoulders back, jutting the cleavage forward, eyelids slightly lowered. She gave the collective gentlemen before her an engaging good-humoured grin.

“Oh dear, I do beg your pardon. You mean this isn’t the ladies’ embroidery circle?”

“As you see, quite not.”

“Oh, how foolish of me.” Rue compared each visible snuff box against the sketch she’d been shown, and dismissed each in turn. She wiggled further into the room as though drawn by pure love of masculinity, eyelashes fluttering.

Then Lord Fenchurch, unsure of how to cope with a young lady lodged in sacred man-space, desperately removed a snuff box from his waistcoat pocket and took a pinch.

There was her target. She swanned over to the lord in question, champagne sloshing. She tripped slightly and giggled at her own clumsiness, careful not to spill a drop, ending with all four glasses in front of Lord Fenchurch.

“For our gracious host – I do apologise for disturbing your game.”

Lord Fenchurch set the snuff box down and picked up one of the glasses of champagne with a smile. “How thoughtful, Lady Prudence.”

Rue leaned in towards him conspiratorially. “Now, don’t tell my father I was in here, will you? He might take it amiss. Never know who he’d blame.”

Lord Fenchurch looked alarmed.

Rue lurched forward as if under the influence of too much bubbly herself, and snaked the snuff box off the table and into a hidden pocket of her fluffy pink ball gown. All her ball gowns had hidden pockets no matter how fluffy – or how pink, for that matter.

As Rue made her way out of the room, she heard Lord Fenchurch say, worried, to his card partner, “Which father do you think she means?”

The other gentleman, an elderly sort who knew his way around London politics, answered with, “Bad either way, old man.”

With which the door behind her closed and Rue was back in the cheer of the ballroom and its frolicking occupants – snuff box successfully poached. She dropped the silly persona as if shedding shape, although with considerably less pain and cost to her apparel. Across the room she met Prim’s gaze and signalled autocratically.