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“It was a recent decision.” He nodded at someone over her shoulder, and she looked to see Saye walk past in his unmistakable ivory velvet domino. His mask was preposterous, as was to be expected, but beneath it, she could clearly see his smirk.

“Why are you here? Is something amiss?”

Her father grunted in the way he always did when he was unhappy about something. “I suspect it is about to be.” He cleared his throat and in a louder voice said, “I shall come directly to the point. I have come to give you my consent—my consent and my blessing—for you to marry Mr Anderson.”

A rumble of gasps and whispers rippled through the gathering crowd of onlookers, but Georgette ignored it. Caught between elation and despair, she was scarcely able to keep from weeping again. “You cannot know what that means to me, Father. But I fear it is too late. Mr Anderson has gone.”

“Has he? Who is that bloody fool then?”

Georgette looked to where he pointed. The crowd had parted behind her to form a large circle around one man—unmistakably her favourite one—dressed in an exquisitely well-fitted matador’s outfit with a cape about his shoulders and wearing a leather half-mask in the shape of a bull’s head, complete with horns and nose ring.

Someone clapped their hands twice, and a harpist began to play.

Even to someone with Georgette’s fondness for exhibition, this was deliciously over the top, and she laughed with sheer delight.

She walked into the centre of the circle with him, her heart over-full and her smile over-wide. “ Mr Anderson, you seem to be making something of a spectacle of yourself.”

“Yes. You had better take pity on me and answer my question quickly, before I incur any lasting injury from the ordeal.” Without further ado, he sank down to one knee and asked her, in the uncomplicated, understated, sincere way she loved so dearly, whether she would do him the honour of becoming his wife.

She gave her laughing, joyful acceptance, and somewhere off to her left, she heard Lilly’s unmistakable cry of delight.

Her father announced he was off to play cards with Sir Phineas, then Saye declared loudly that Anderson had held the floor for too long and demanded that everybody join the first set.

“Thank God for that,” Anderson said quietly as the circle around them collapsed, and they were once more buffeted on all sides by the crowd. “I was not sure how much longer I could withstand all that staring. My skin was crawling so, I thought it might slither off me altogether.”

Georgette squeezed both his hands. “You came back!”

He tugged one of his hands free and pushed his mask away from his face. Georgette inhaled sharply. Never had she seen him so affected, nor so wholly without the faintest sliver of amusement in his gaze.

“Pray, forgive me, my love. I was an ass, but I swear I shall never run away again. I mean to spend the rest of my life running to you.”

“Then I shall make sure to always walk slowly to ensure you are able to keep up.”

“I shall keep up. You may count upon it.”

He lifted her hand to kiss her fingers. She recognised the glint in his eye and hoped he was about to suggest they sneak away to celebrate their engagement somewhere more private, but such was not to be.

A tall gentleman in a full face mask cut in, taking Georgette’s hand right out of Anderson’s and pulling her towards him.

“Do not forget our bargain, Mr Anderson. I said I would help you in exchange for the first set.”

To Georgette’s surprise, Anderson made no objection—he only smiled knowingly. She looked harder at the interloper, then gasped in astonishment. “Loppy! Whatever are you doing here?”

“Dance with me, and I shall tell you.”

The gratification of dancing with such a notoriously improper woman as Lady Penelope Frey, dressed convincingly as a gentleman of the first water, almost made up for being snatched away from Anderson so precipitately.

She had done an excellent job of disguising herself, but Georgette nevertheless suspected Lady Aurelia would be furious if she discovered such a disreputable personage amongst her guests.

It would not be Lady Penelope’s dancing that gave her away, however.

Her ladyship had learnt to lead faultlessly.

“I came with your young man,” she explained as they went through the first pattern. “He enlisted me to help get him an audience with your father.”

“How did you manage that? My father hates you!”

Lady Penelope only shrugged enigmatically as she wove in and out of the other dancers. “I do like Mr Anderson though, George,” she said when they joined hands to go down the line.

“And so you should. He is wonderful. What did he say to my father to change his mind?”

“Oh, he said some very charming things, all of which proved how well he loves you, but it was not his pretty words that persuaded your father.”

“Then what did?”

“Viscount Saye’s letter. He has invested in Mr Anderson’s institution and put himself forward as patron.

Your cousin is on a mission to make your future husband the very paragon of fashionable charity.

I think he might even have recommended him for the Corinthians based on his riding prowess, though that might have been a joke. Where are you going?”

Georgette did not hear the rest. She abandoned the dance and ran to clamber onto an empty chair, then urgently searched the room for the foot-tall mask she had seen Saye wearing before.

When she spotted him, she jumped down and dashed through the crowd, elbowing people out of her way until she reached him, whereupon she threw her arms around his neck and clung to him.

She felt him move them out of the dance and heard him tell everyone to carry on without him.

“Georgette, kindly unpeel yourself from my person, you are crushing my velvet!”

“No.” She shook her head, all the emotion of Anderson’s proposal apparently having seen fit to wait for this moment to bubble out onto her cousin instead.

“Georgette, what on earth are you doing?” asked Lilly from somewhere nearby.

Oh lord, I have interrupted their first dance together! There was nothing to be done about it now. “You are the very best of men, Saye.”

“Pray do not speak so,” he hissed, pushing her gently but firmly away and dusting his domino furiously. “You will ruin me. Now leave me to your friend.”

“You are wonderful, and you deserve to be hugged.”

“I do, but not by you. Besides, Darcy wrote to your father as well. Go and hug him and leave me alone.”

Georgette laughed at the prospect of how little the Great Standing Stone would like that.

“I most certainly shall thank him, from the bottom of my heart, but we both know it was your idea, and for that, I love you.” She kissed Saye on his cheek, and whispered, “But not nearly as much as Lilly loves you—and definitely not in the same way.”