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“Try the oysters,” Marcus told Anne. “They’re famous here.”

Anne eyed the platter. “I’m accustomed to a different method of serving.”

Letty nabbed an oyster off its thin bed of ice, gleaming and quivering in its iridescent shell. She sucked it out, tasting its sweetness with a tang of salt and a squeeze of lemon. “Is it so different from how you are served at the best of dinner parties that London has to offer?”

“I use rather more cutlery,” she said with a hint of a smile.

“I see. My fine lady doesn’t wish to put forth any effort.” Letty selected an oyster and brought it to Anne’s lips. “Here you are. Just bring your lips together, and suck.”

The look that Anne gave her was sharp enough to cut, but Letty was having too much fun. She pressed the shell gently against her bottom lip. “Go on,” she urged her.

Anne lowered her lashes and sucked the oyster into her mouth, then swallowed. Her tongue swept across her bottom lip to catch a drip of lemon and brine, and Letty ached to be underneath that mouth.

“I could grow accustomed to this,” Anne said, fluttering her lashes at Letty, and allowed herself to be fed another oyster.

“We’re still here, darlings,” Marcus said, refilling Letty’s wineglass. “My word, Letty. After all your ribbing about our flirtations, you’re no better. I am blushing to see it.”

“I never claimed to be better,” she said. “Though my lover certainly is in a category all of her own, leagues above me.”

It gave her pleasure to say the word, to claim Anne as her own in front of her friends. To pretend that all of this meant more than it did. To indulge in the illusion that it could last, and that Anne would be part of more dinners like this, or that she would sit with them buying oranges in the cheapest seats of the theater, or that they would someday walk hand in hand as they laughed their way home together after a night out with too much wine.

But that wasn’t Anne’s life. Her life involved tea with the Queen, and fine dinners with princes.

Letty knew it was greedy, but she wanted it all. No matter what it was. As long as Anne was involved, she wanted in.

Anne laughed. “I am cut from the same cloth as you all,” she said, a little smile on her lips, and Letty wanted to believe it.

“We want to know that our lass Letty has someone who values her,” Fraser said, tapping his gin glass on the table for emphasis. “She’s been burned by the fires of love before.”

Letty snorted. “That’s poetic of you.” She turned to Anne. “And categorically untrue, I might add.”

“What’s more poetic than watching you mourn and sigh after love lost? You’re like a sad puppy every time.” Fraser wagged a finger at Anne, who likely had never been scolded in such a manner before, though she bore it with equanimity. “We don’t want that for her.”

“We certainly don’t.” Marcus snagged an oyster and gulped it down.

Anne leaned forward, settled her elbows on the table, and propped her chin on her hand. “Do tell me more about these contentious lovers Letty has had.”

Letty groaned. “Please don’t.”

Fraser stroked his goatee. “I think the worst was the artist who did those dreadful oil paintings and thought she was above us all.”

Marcus roared. “Oh yes. Miss Priss, is what we called her.”

“You did not!” Letty gasped.

“We certainly did. She was terrible. Prim and proper. Can’t imagine what she was like in the bedroom.”

Letty swatted his shoulder. “That isnotfor you to imagine.”

“Are you not looking for bedroom sport?” he asked. “Miss Anne here is dressed up like one of us. There are rooms upstairs if you want to both pretend to be other than what you are, for a quick jaunt. It can add spice to the occasion.”

Anne might be pretending not to be one of the Quality tonight, but Letty knew with every fiber that she was quality. Real quality. Genuine, passionate, determined.

“We shall pass on that charming offer,” Anne said with a little sniff.

Amid the laughter, and the drinking, and the stories from her friends, Letty and Anne continued to flirt with each other with their tongues and lips devouring piles of glistening oysters.

Letty brushed her lips near to Anne’s ear. “Among all these oysters here tonight, you’re the only pearl,” she breathed.