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“And you had not yet started thinking about young men? I thought most husband hunters began early.”

She shrugged. “I had my father and my lessons. He had so much to teach me. I suppose I had his undivided attention for those lessons, and I could please him by doing well. How was a young man to compare?”

“Was there not some manly figure in fiction that stole your heart?”

She looked up from the tea. “You mean like Achilles or Odysseus? There was Hector. I suppose I did love him. Paris and Telemachus were simply annoying.”

He laughed. “My schoolmates found all of them tedious and annoying. I meant was there not a Henry or an Edmund perhaps?”

“From a novel you mean? I didn’t read novels.”

“A flaw in your education, I think. What do you know of your feelings? How will you recognize an inclination for one of your dance partners?”

“I think I will know whether I like someone or not.”

“Will you?” His voice dropped into its lowest register. “You’ll be warm from the crowd or the dancing, and your companion will offer you refreshment, and the night air will be so pleasant, and the dark such a relief from the over brightness of the rooms.”

“And?”

“In such a moment, some fellows are apt to lose their heads.” He busied himself with a second cup of tea.

“Perhaps I should make it a rule never to leave a ballroom with a gentleman.”

He nodded. “A wise precaution. But will you remain wise when you have dozens of suitors?”

“Dozens? No one imagines that I will have dozens of suitors.”

“They underestimate you, I think.” He put his tea down on a nearby table.

The distance between them had shrunk without her notice. He was standing within arm’s reach, and she had the oddest feeling that he might seize her by the waist and whirl her around the open courtyard, pillows and all. Moments earlier he had just been a voice explaining the turn of the left wrist required to manage her skirts, while with her right hand she took hold of the rail of the kneeler and descended in a smooth move neither lowering nor raising her chin, but keeping her eyes respectfully downcast in the king’s august presence. He had warned her that it might be difficult, that anyone, seeing the king in all his corpulent majesty for the first time, was apt stare.

He swallowed. “You see the challenge, I think, and we need a better practice space, one where you need not labor so hard to imagine the palace. This room doesn’t do it justice.”

She regarded him a taut moment longer. “Are we done then?”

“For today. Do you wish to sit?”

“If I may.” She set her tea aside and reached for the ties around her waist, and he reached to help her. Their hands met. His fingers, warm and relaxed, tangled with hers, stiff, and unfamiliar with the knots. The moment caught and held them arrested, standing close in the dim light and fragrant air. His words of a minute before came back to her, but he was not a man to lose his head over some awkward girl standing with a pair of pillows strapped to her waist.

“Let me,” he said. She held her arms away from her sides while he untied the ribbon holding the pillows and sheet in place. He tossed the pillows on a chair and concentrated on rolling the loose sheet into a ball.

She sat in one of the chairs, taking up her tea and looking into the cup.

A moment later he cleared his throat and asked, “Have I been too harsh an instructor today?”

“Were your own instructors so harsh?”

“Worse, for they were free to beat me or any boys in their charge for dullness or error.”

“Did they? Beat you?” she wanted to know. Of course that was just the sort of question he would not answer.

“Come, let’s return to the hotel. You will need to look your best for the duchess’s party tonight. I’ll drive you past St. James’s Palace on the way, and you can contemplate the honor soon to be bestowed on your father.”

* * * *

The inescapable topic of conversation at the Duchess of Huntingdon’s supper party was London—its unusual icy weather, its superior shops, and its latest scandals. Jane listened and looked on, at a little remove from her fellow guests. In her white gown she looked like the other young women around her, but she could not quite catch their knowing way of speaking about London. Their conversation followed a pattern of allusions and jokes that, as an outsider, she could only guess at.

The duchess had stepped in more than once to remove Jane from the edge of one circle of friends and introduce her to another. From time to time she caught the duchess watching and smiling encouragement.