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“Such as those waistcoats of yours, which shock even your sister. Octavia cannot imagine why you let Perry dress you in the most appalling articles of male fashion, which she knows very well you never used to wear.”

He stiffened almost imperceptibly. “Did she share her theory of my fashion choices with the marchioness?” he asked.

There was a note of caution in his voice when he spoke. Whatever the true cause of his unease, he held it back from her. It was a reminder to Harriet that the sense of intimacy she felt only went so far.

Harriet made a light answer. “Only that she, like others of your acquaintance, fears that you’ve lost some bet and she hopes you will not drive away her prospective suitors with your eccentricity.”

He laughed then. “Ah, so flowered silk waistcoats are a danger to her husband hunting scheme. Shall I tell her I will wear Perry’s choices only...until Twelfth Night?”

“Unfair, my lord. If you tell her that, you’ll make her despair of finding a husband.”

“Hah, any fellow who can be driven away by my bad taste in waistcoats is a paltry fellow indeed.”

He teased, as an older brother might, but Harriet thought he had come near to the thing that bothered Octavia. “Is there a suitor who has turned away from Octavia? You mentioned her childhood friend. It seems unlikely that she cast him over to look for a London husband.”

The interval was coming to an end. The musicians tuned their instruments, and people settled back into their seats in anticipation of the farce. Harriet expected Wynford to take his place between his sister and his guest, but he stepped closer though there was no danger of anyone overhearing them in the noise of the crowd.

“You are too shrewd, Miss Swanley. You think rather the reverse, don’t you? That Gresham has turned away from my sister. I hadn’t thought it possible, but you may be right.”

“If her former beau has deserted her, it would explain why she wants to change her appearance so completely.”

“Does she?”

“Oh yes. She wants to change everything about herself.”

He looked grave at that.

“But don’t worry, Octavia’s notion of everything is quite superficial. I doubt she will change her true self except in those ways we all change as we grow a bit older and wiser.”

“You are not claiming to be old, are you?”

“Merely older than I was, which, you have to admit, is the natural course of affairs.”

“Has she confided in you?”

“Not directly, but she does fall into a bit of melancholy whenever Christmas is mentioned. And the Luxboroughs are quite keen on Christmas, I’m afraid.”

“We have never been a family to rejoice much at Christmas,” he said. “And you? Are you of the Luxborough persuasion?”

“No. More like you, I suppose. Christmas passes like a happy scene in a lighted window.”

“And you don’t see yourself there?”

She shook her head. It was lowering to reflect that she, Harriet, had shut down that font of generous, trusting impulses that Octavia plainly possessed in abundance and had instead cultivated the detached status of an observer. “I’m glad such happiness exists. Remote it might be, like the North Pole or the great Saharan Desert where the stars are numerous as grains of sand overhead.” She stopped herself with a short laugh. “I may never go there, but it is pleasing now and then to contemplate such places. The mind shrinks, you know, without attention to such things.”

He gave her a searching look. “Is that why you go to the Christmas lectures?”

She tried for a careless answer. “To keep my mind from shrinking? Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Charles!” cried Octavia. “Listen to this scheme. The marchioness is willing to take me to Lady Hardwicke’s solstice ball, where all the most eligible gentlemen will be, if I have a proper dress.”

“How kind.” He shot Harriet a glance, his expression carefully blank, as if he saw nothing amiss in the marchioness inviting his young sister to a ball given by one of London’s most unconventional of hostesses. “It just so happens that Miss Swanley has agreed to take you to the dressmaker’s...tomorrow.”

Harriet had an instant to compose her face before Octavia turned her way looking stubborn. “But I must be truly fashionable to be noticed, and I must be noticed. I can’t have some fusty old seamstress put me in outmoded attire.”

“You’d prefer my tailor?” Wynford teased. “He has an eye for color.”

“Charles!” Octavia shuddered.