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‘This is why I said it was not suitable for you to see yet. But you are a determined miss and I am just your weak-minded pater whose opinion you ignore.’

Elinor giggled. ‘You don’t mean that Papa. Nicholas says your amour propre is proof against all.’

Her father looked seriously into her merry eyes and murmured, ‘Do you discuss my failings with all my staff? Perhaps Aunt Edwina is right, you need a new mama.’

Elinor Asprey looked horrified. ‘No, no! I don’t want a new mama. I have you, that is enough. And Miss Stafford is like a mother to me. I am happy as we are.’

‘Well, I’m not about to offer for Miss Stafford’s hand.’ He chuckled.

Elinor’s face grew serious. ‘I wish it was just you and me, Papa, going to the theatre tonight.’

He frowned as he looked at her. ‘I hope you won’t forget your manners, my dear. Lady Linus is an admirable woman with your interests at heart. Please be more welcoming to her than last time you met.’ Elinor’s spirits were cast down at the mention of the sorry occasion she had been overheard telling Miss Stafford she thought Lady Linus’s character was a cold collation, borrowing the description of the villain in a novel she was reading.

Looking across at his daughter’s meek face, Ivor Asprey rose to his feet, took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. ‘I’ll go and get dressed. The chaise will be ready in three quarters of an hour.’

When the carriage eventually set out, Elinor sat beside her father, full of excited anticipation for the evening ahead. The coachman, resplendent in his distinctive Asprey livery, turned the horses’ heads north-west to Bruton Street and Lady Linus’s house. The streets were filling with the evening’s revellers, carriages-and-four, smart curricles for two, the occasional sedan chair, its chairmen squelching through the malodorous mud, and the pavements thronged with the less genteel on their way to the taverns, cockpit, theatres and gambling hells.

Elinor slipped her arm in her father’s and shivered. ‘Papa, this is so diverting. To see everyone dressed up and merry.’

Ivor looked down at her and smiled. ‘Everyone is relieved the war with France is over.’ Their carriage clattered to a halt outside a handsome house with a portico. The coachman opened the chaise door and Ivor Asprey strolled up the front steps as the great door was opened and Lady Linus emerged, elegant in a pelisse of lilac silk with a matching toque and curling feather. Elinor Asprey watched her father offer his arm and felt a trickle of unease as he bent his face towards hers, the better to hear her words of greeting.

They entered the carriage and sat together on the seat Elinor had shared with him. She now settled herself on the opposite side with her back to the horses, watching with a polite smile on her lips.

‘Good evening, Elinor.’ Portia Linus’s cool grey eyes settled on the young girl’s face as she extended a gloved hand. ‘You look very charming tonight.’ She had a glacial kind of beauty that attracted admiration rather than desire.

‘Good evening, Lady Linus.’ Elinor took her hand and fleetingly bowed her head.

‘I hope your governess has prepared you for the play tonight. When I saw it first I was shocked by some aspects. I don’t approve of the production. I fear it plays to the baser instincts in man.’ She had turned her gaze to Mr Asprey’s face and Elinor relaxed into the seat. Her attention was caught by the excitement of the evening crowds outside, and she shared in their exuberance. She only heard occasional snatches of conversation in the carriage above the clatter of the wheels and horses’ hooves.

Elinor, however, could not curb her curiosity about Lady Linus completely. Her attention was piqued by her low confiding voice saying to her father, ‘Mr Asprey, have you considered a more sophisticated companion than your current governess to prepare Elinor for her entry into Society? I can help you interview suitable candidates if you so choose.’ A sense of foreboding made the girl shiver. She did not wish to appear uncivil by listening in but could not quell her inquisitive nature.

Her father’s voice was low but she was relieved when she heard him answer in his usual languid way, ‘My dear Lady Linus, I am grateful for your concern but I think Miss Stafford will be more than adequate. There is help too from my sister – the Duchess of Arlington is an unquenchable fount of advice.’ Elinor shared her father’s sense of humour, and in the darkening interior of the family coach, without even catching his eye, knew in that moment that he and she had that private understanding.

When they arrived at the theatre, Ivor Asprey shepherded his daughter quickly through the pillared portico where thronged the usual egalitarian mix of persons of quality, befuddled beefy men and wanton women in full plumage, chattering like parakeets. Her eyes were wide with excitement. As they settled into their seats in their box she deftly manoeuvred herself between her father and Lady Linus and perched forward in her seat as she gazed out at the carnivalesque sight before her.

The horseshoe auditorium was ornately decorated in cream and gold, the audience’s boxes set in ascending serried ranks facing the stage, on which a heavy red velvet curtain remained tantalisingly closed. Elinor Asprey peered into the pit below them, filled with a colourful roistering crowd of men and women who were standing or strolling about greeting friends, ignoring the lines of benches meant to encourage them to sit. She laughed as she watched a young man juggling with two apples and a pear, before catching one of the apples in his mouth. Food and alcohol was being consumed everywhere. The atmosphere was more festive than usual, the air febrile with excitement.

Elinor felt Lady Linus’s hand on hers and she turned to see the woman’s earnest face, a small frown creasing her forehead, as she quietly said, ‘Elinor, my dear, don’t look up into the higher boxes. I know they’re called the gods but more surely they’re the Infernals.’ This immediately made the curious girl wish to see what could be so alarming and when Lady Linus had turned away to greet a passing acquaintance she stole a glance into the regions from where apple cores and pie crusts were lobbed into the pit, accompanied by shouts of laughter. Her eyes opened wide at the sight of an even more profligate crowd of revellers where half-dressed women could be openly seen in the arms of leering drunken men. She was reminded of an engraving of a Bacchanal in one of Miss Stafford’s books, considered unsuitable for a girl her age, but she had peeked anyway.

There was a sudden stir as the stage curtain rose and although the hubbub of talk and laughter did not cease completely, people’s faces turned, intent. Elinor shivered in anticipation. The lights were low and a gothic castle loomed out of the dim recesses of the stage. A soldier stood sentinel dressed in a hussar’s uniform. He challenged a servant of the King. It was hard to hear their conversation above the audience’s revelry, but the characters seemed to be exercised about an apparition seen on the ramparts.

Suddenly the air was rent with a great groan and the sound of clanking metal. Elinor grabbed her father’s arm and for a moment hid her face. Even the rowdiest in the audience were silenced. Pale faces strained to see through the low light a ghostly figure in full armour enter slowly from the left.

‘Is this the King’s ghost?’ Elinor whispered urgently to her father, remembering her reading with Miss Stafford.

‘Yes, don’t fear. It’s only an actor.’

‘I’m not afeared. But where’s Mr Kean?’

Her father pointed as Hamlet entered in a royal group with lords and attendants. The actor dominated the stage. The crowd fell silent again to properly hear Kean’s rich voice speak the words, known so well by many in the audience.

She felt herself drawn into the drama and leaned into her father, asking in an urgent whisper, ‘When will we see Ophelia, Papa?’

‘Don’t be so impatient, child.’

Her curiosity was soon answered when Ophelia, in full eighteenth-century dress and a powdered wig, walked onto the stage arm in arm with her brother. The audience was roused again to interaction with the play as catcalls and friendly jokes were hurled at her when she spoke. The girl watched Angelica’s face closely and found her large eyes mesmerising as they swept over the auditorium commanding silence with her words of despair at the change in Hamlet.

Ophelia ended with the sob, ‘O woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see.’ And Elinor’s heart was wrenched. ‘Papa. It’s so sad.’ She buried her face in her hands.