“I promise not to tell her. Oh, come on, Lily, darling, do.” She squeezes my arm, her eyes beseeching. “I know you are officially still in mourning, but it’s doing you no good, stuck in that big empty house all the time. You are beginning to look quite peaked, if you’ll forgive my saying so. You will feel so much better for letting your hair down, just a teeny, weeny bit. Besides, there’s no one here remotely connected, I promise. These are artists, writers, poets. Young people who are making their own way in a dazzling new world. Ooh, here, a glass of this will oil the wheels,” she says, passing me a bubbling flute from a tray held perilously aloft by a nearby footman. She is immediately engaged in conversation, at some volume to rise above the noise, with a bright-eyed couple beside her.

I know I ought to leave now, turn my back on all this gaiety, and go home. And yet, I confess there is something very appealing about staying and allowing myself to be part of such freedom. I do not see a single familiar face among the partygoers, which means it is unlikely they will know my identity. Such anonymity is seductive. I find myself tapping my foot to the syncopated ragtime beat and a smile, unbidden and unexpected, visits my face. The atmosphere is quite intoxicating. I notice a portly young man doing his level best to master some frenzied new dance. I can’t tell if he is executing the steps correctly, but he does look wonderfully silly, so that I cannot suppress a giggle. As I take a sip of champagne my elbow is jogged by a passing dancer, so that the bubbles fizz up my nose making me sneeze. I attempt to fish a handkerchief from my sleeve, but one miraculously appears in front of me. I am so busy sneezing it is a moment before I can properly open my eyes to see who holds it. Bram stands before me, grinning broadly.

“It’s not called bubbly for nothing,” he points out as I take the proffered square of cotton. “Though I would have thought you’d have had plenty of opportunity to master drinking the stuff.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Naturally. All aristocrats are weaned from mother’s milk directly to Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”

“That’s what I’d heard.”

“Being born in Yorkshire, I expect you went straight on to brown ale.”

“Stout, actually,” he corrects me, still smiling.

I hand him back his handkerchief, but he shakes his head.

“Keep it,” he says. “That way I will have an excuse to call on you again to request its return.”

“Is it a family heirloom, perhaps?”

He laughs openly at this. “It is good to see you out enjoying yourself. I don’t think I have ever seen you so…” he searches for the right words, “… at ease.”