‘Then please be seated, and enjoy the atmosphere. It is certainly not a chamber frequented by the female members of my family. Do you miss your papa very dreadfully, Henrietta?’ Lord Elstead was no longer teasing.

‘Not all the time, and sometimes that in itself makes me feel guilty, but yes, very much, and at odd times, just like now, it is quite overpowering.’

‘You are close, since there is but the pair of you. That is natural.’

‘We do get on very well, very comfortably, and I think that although I miss Mama, both her and her advice, I am privileged to have such a bond with my father.’ Henrietta’s voice had a slight waver, and she sniffed. To steady herself she brought the reason for her presence to the front of her thoughts. She looked at the picture in the alcove by the fireplace. ‘Is that you, sir?’

‘Yes, it is, though more “was” than “is”. My own mama thought it a fair likeness, and mothers are very critical of portraits.’

‘You were rather dashing,’ Henrietta offered hesitantly. He laughed.

‘Unlike now. Ah yes, the impetuosity of youth. I was not accounted a bad-looking fellow, I suppose.’ He too looked at the painting, and his smile became lopsided as he recalled posing for it, one elbow resting negligently upon a marble pillar, before an imaginary background of general classical style, designed to show that he had benefitted from the Grand Tour.

Henrietta, for her part, was trying to look beyond the old-fashioned clothes and the clubbed hair, and look at him as she looked at Lord Martley or Lord Netheravon or … She stopped the list there. He had a good face, strong, but not belligerent, and his figure was trim. There was an appeal, of sorts, she thought, and it was far more likely that he, and not Lord Pirbright, had been the man over whom the two ladies had squabbled.

‘You must have had lots of ladies flirting with you over the sticks of their fans, sir.’

‘Oh, I am not sure it was lots, but I do not think I was unpopular.’ He could not help but preen himself very slightly at the memory.

She wondered if he knew about the reason for the hatred, or whether it was a secret between females. She rather fancied he was in blissful ignorance.

‘You are taller than Papa.’ Henrietta did not say that she thought the miniature of her sire was the nicer portrait. She sighed. ‘I like this room, sir.’

‘It is not out of bounds, my dear. Please feel free to come and sit here when you need to escape from the madness of the Season and be quiet and yourself and think of your home.’

‘Thank you, I will. Now, I must return to that “madness”, for I believe my aunt wishes to take us to see some classical statuary.’

‘She does? I confess I had not thought her fascinated by antiquities.’