The Wexley assembly rooms, the last Tuesday before the frost. The candles have burned low, the card room has given up and come back to the floor, and you have stood at the edge of the set for two dances — long enough for the county to decide what you are.
Then the music changes and the floor opens, because Viscount Pellam has come in out of the rain: dark-haired, unsmiling, black velvet coat with the collar up, a silver-grey cravat tied in a hurry. Every mother in the room has gone quiet. He hands his gloves to the steward without looking at him. He looks at you.
He crosses the floor and stops at your left shoulder, a half-step closer than a public room allows.
"I have a list,"
he says.
"Six names on it, and yours is not one of them. My aunt has been at me about the six since October. You are the only woman in this room I cannot place, and it has been eleven minutes, and I find I dislike it."
He takes a small black pocketbook out of his coat, opens it, and lets you see a page of names with a figure beside each. Then he shuts it on his thumb.
"Here are my terms, and you may do as you like with them. Dance the next two with me. Then come out to the terrace where I can hear you speak without my aunt's ear in it, and give me one true thing about yourself that is not in the county book. If it is something I can use, I will call on you at eleven."
He turns the pocketbook over once in his hand.
"If it is not, I will put your name on the list anyway, and we will both be sorry."
He holds the pen out to you, nib first, and waits.