He thumbed slowly through the book, pausing to read here and there. The verses were actually quite competent, he thought—even good, in spots. Though the material…

“Yes,” he said, closing the book and clearing his throat. “I see why you might hesitate to present this personally—he isa Frenchman, though I believe he’s said to be quite faithful to his present mistress. I suppose you hadn’t looked at the contents before coming here?”

She shook her head, making the pheasant’s feathers she wore in her powdered hair sweep across her shoulder.

“No. He—the relation I spoke of—had brought it to me early in the week, but I’d had no chance to look at it. I read it in the carriage on the way—and then, of course, was at a loss what to do, until most fortunately I saw you.” She looked over her shoulder at the group by the window, then back at Grey. “I did promise to deliver it. Will you? Please?”

“I don’t know why your husband does not beat you regularly,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Or at least keep you locked up safely at home. Has he the slightest idea…?”

“Sir Richard is a most accomplished diplomat,” she replied with complacence. “He has a great facility for not knowing things that it is expedient not to know.”

“I daresay,” Grey replied dryly. “Speaking of knowing—do I know your relation?”

“Why, I am sure I could not say, I have so many,” she answered blandly. “But speaking of relations—I hear that you are to acquire a new brother? I am told that he is amazing handsome to look at.”

Hearing Percival Wainwright referred to as his brother gave him a slightly odd feeling, as though he might in fact be contemplating incest. He ignored this, though, and nodded toward the table.

“You may judge of that for yourself; there he stands.”

Wainwright had moved away from the throng around the philosopher, and was now surrounded, Grey was pleased to see, by a small group of his own, both men and women, all seeming much amused by his conversation—particularly Lady Beverley, who hung upon both his words and his arm. Wainwright was telling some story, his face alight, and even across the room, Grey felt the warmth of his presence. As though he sensed their scrutiny, Percy glanced suddenly in their direction, and shot Grey a smile of such delight in his surroundings that Grey smiled back, delighted in turn to see him manage so well.

Lucinda Joffrey emitted a hum of approval.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “And quite good style, too. Did you dress him?” she inquired.

No, but I should like very much to undress him. He cleared his throat.

“No, he has excellent taste of his own.”

“And the money to support it?”

He was not offended. A man’s means were generally of more interest than his face, and everyone would be wondering the same thing of a newcomer—though not everyone would ask so bluntly. Lucinda, though, didhave a great many relations, of whom at least half were female, and felt it her moral duty to help her sisters and cousins to good marriages.

“Unfortunately not. His father—you collect he is the general’s stepson?—was a minister of some kind. Family poor as church mice, I gather. The general has settled a small sum upon him, but he has no property.”

Lucinda hummed again, but with less approval.

“Looking for a rich wife, then, is he?” she said, with a degree of resignation. She came from an old and estimable family, but one without wealth.

“Early days for that, surely.” Grey thought he had spoken lightly, but she gave him a sharp look.

“Ho,” she said. “Does he fancy himself in love with someone unsuitable?”

Grey felt as though she had pushed him suddenly in the chest. He had forgotten just how acute she was. Sir Richard Joffrey was indeed a good diplomat—but no little degree of his success was the result of his wife’s social connexions and her ability to ferret out things that it wasexpedient to know.

“If so, he has not told me,” Grey said, achieving, he thought, a good simulation of indifference. “Have you met the great man yourself? Will I present you?”

“Oh, Monsieur Diderot?” Lucinda turned to eye the guest of honor speculatively. “I did meet him, some years ago in Paris. A very witty man, though I think I should not care to be married to him.”

“Because he keeps a mistress?”

She looked surprised, then waved her fan in dismissal.

“Oh, no. The difficulty with witty people is that they feel compelled to exhibit their wit all the time—which is most tedious over the breakfast table. Sir Richard,” she said with satisfaction, “is not witty at all.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t do in a diplomat,” Grey agreed. “Will I fetch you some refreshment?”

Lady Joffrey assenting, he made his way through the crowd, the book she had given him still in hand. The room buzzed with conversation and the excitement of a successful salon, but a freak of sound brought him Diderot’s voice clearly—nasal, like all Frenchmen, but rich and pleasant. He seemed to be speaking of his wife.

“She has conceived the idea, you see, that all novels are vulgar trash, and desires me to read to her only material of a spiritually uplifting sort—commentaries upon the Bible, the works of— haha!—Burke and the like.”

A number of his listeners laughed with him, though Edmund Burke was popular.

“So,” the warm voice went on, audibly amused, “I have taken to reading her the most ribald stories I can obtain. The value of the lesson is thereby doubled, as she not only hears the stories, but then reports every detail again in horror to her friends!”

A gust of laughter resulted from that, obliging Grey to signal his desire to the servant at the refreshment table, who nodded understanding and gave him a silver cup of punch and a small plate of savories. Balancing these with the book of poetry, he made his way back across the room, only to find Lucinda Joffrey already supplied with refreshment by a new escort, whom he recognized as an influential Member of Parliament.

Lucinda flicked a glance at him over the MP’s shoulder, and made a slight gesture with her fan, which he interpreted as a signal that she was engaged in confidential transaction. He nodded understanding and retreated to a convenient window ledge, where he sat in the shelter of the damask draperies and consumed the savories himself with enjoyment, meanwhile observing the ebb and flow of society.

He had not been in the London tide for some time, and found it pleasant to sit and hear the grossest trivialities mingled with the loftiest of philosophical ideas, and to watch the social commerce being conducted under his nose—matches made and unmade, business connexions forged and uncoupled, favors given, acknowledged, and traded. And politics, of course—always politics—talked to death amidst expressions of outrage or approbation, depending upon the company.

And yet he knew there was real power here, could feel the pulse of it throbbing beneath the chatter and clothes. For most of those present, such salons were what they seemed: a source of entertainment at worst, at best a chance to be seen, perhaps to be taken up and made the vogue of the moment. But in the quiet corners, things were said that had the potential to alter lives—perhaps to affect the course of history.

Was it in such places that his own parents’ fates had been sealed? It was at an evening musicale that his mother, a young widow, had been introduced to his father, he knew. Why had he been there? Gerard Grey had no ear for music. Had he come for the sake of politics and met love unaware? Or had his mother been part of it, even then?

He’d heard the story of his parents’ meeting often as a child; it had been at her brother’s house. His mother had three brothers, and a great quantity of ill-defined cousins, half cousins, and persons who were no blood relation but held the status of brothers, having been fostered by the family in that peculiar custom of the Scottish aristocracy.