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“Not at all.”

“Then perhaps it is the heat of the room that brings that pink color into your cheeks.”

“Am I so obvious?” she asked. “A governess, you know, is obliged to remain invisible. I’m afraid appearing with you, even in your sister’s company, smacks of putting myself forward.”

“Surely, your friends know you better,” he suggested gently.

“It is Lady Luxborough’s friends in whose eyes I have trespassed.”

It was not quite a rebuke, but it checked him briefly, and before he offered a rejoinder, Perry came bounding up the aisle.

Perry gave Harriet the briefest of nods. Octavia still refused to look her brother’s way.

“Quick, man,” Perry said to Wynford. “The marchioness is here. I’ve brought a waistcoat. No time to lose.” He waved a garment in a startling shade of purple.

“Pardon me,” Wynford said to Harriet, and followed Perry to the upper reaches of the theater.

“Hah,” Octavia said, turning to Harriet.

“I gather that you and your brother have had a falling-out.”

“He makes no sense. One evening he can wear a waistcoat striped like a tiger, and the next day he tells me I can’t go near stripes.”

“Baffling, I agree,” said Harriet. “What explains it, do you think?” She had not missed Perry’s reference to a marchioness, though she could not imagine why a man of Wynford’s usual restrained dress should don the peacock hues of the previous century for a woman.

“It’s downright provoking if you ask me, Miss Swanley. If you don’t have a brother, you can have mine.”

There were still a few minutes before the hour, and Anne and Camille engaged Octavia in a discussion of the merits of the young gentlemen from the previous evening.

“There were some quite handsome,” Octavia acknowledged, “and your brother Ned is the best dancer, far better than...anyone else.” Octavia grew quiet. “I suppose he didn’t ask me to dance again because... Oh well, I daresay, I will learn to dance in the London way.”

“Oh no,” Camille hastened to reassure her. “That’s just Ned’s way. He is scrupulously polite. He dances with each girl once.”

As Octavia weighed this alternate interpretation of the evening, John Jowers appeared at the end of their row and bowed.

“You,” said Octavia.

“I’m glad you came for another lecture, Miss Davenham. Today Wallis is going to talk about the movement of the planets.”

“I thought astronomy was about stars,” Octavia said with an obvious sense of grievance.

Mr. Jowers obliged the ladies to stand and shift their positions, and took a seat beside Octavia. “Stars are fine to look at,” he said, “but it’s the planets that explain everything.”

“I really prefer stars,” Octavia insisted. “Planets are what—lumps of dirt and rock?”

Undeterred by Octavia’s apparent distaste for the topic, Mr. Jowers launched into an explanation of the Newtonian modification of Kepler’s third law of motion. He was deep into mathematical details of mass and gravity and the semimajor axes of elliptical orbits when Lord Wynford, wearing the shocking purple waistcoat, slipped back into place beside Harriet.

He had no sooner seated himself than a woman entered the hall, drawing all eyes. There was no denying the elegance of her satin pelisse in a rich myrtle-green trimmed with fur. Her face was striking under the brim of a bronze silk bonnet, and her bold gaze went at once to Wynford.

Beside Harriet, Octavia gave a small start of surprise. “Oh,” she said, “that’s how one is supposed to dress.”

The striking marchioness obviously had a sense of style, but it was just the sort to mislead the novice into fatal imitation. Before Harriet could correct Octavia’s notion that the dress appropriate to a woman well past thirty should be her model, the woman reached them and stopped.

Wynford stood. “Marchioness.”

“Cousin.” She withdrew a gloved hand from a rich chinchilla muff and extended it to Wynford. “I did not know you had scientific interests.” Her amused glance flickered over the outrageous waistcoat.

“Hardly,” he said with curt civility. “I merely accompany my...sister and her...companion.”