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The coachman’s boy opened the carriage door with a smile of suppressed scorn.

He arranged the step so that Cressida and Ines could alight outside Bute House, the Mayfair home of Cressida’s former and extremely reluctant guardian, her cousin Annis, Countess of Bute.

With a jolt of familiarity, Cressida breathed in the scent of honeysuckle drifting from the iron railings surrounding the garden in the middle of the square, mingling with the more noisome aroma of London at the end of a hot spring.

‘My lady.’ The coachman’s lad took her gloved hand, helping her down onto the wide flagstones.

She didn’t miss the sarcasm laced through his voice at the sight of Ines travelling in the same carriage.

With the scanty coins at her disposal, arranging another hackney for her maid was out of reach.

It wasn’t high society she must fool or die trying, but the staff.

On the doorstep, Annis’s butler Twisden swallowed like a landed fish. ‘Lady Bute is not at home, ma’am.’

Cressida smiled in such a way that his eyes bulged a little. ‘Come now, Twisden. She will be at home to me. Be a darling and tell her that I await her pleasure.’

‘Of course, milady.’ Twisden bowed, and she remembered how he’d once made a grape appear from behind her left ear when she was a young girl: the untouchable Irish traitor’s child no one wanted, too English in Ireland, too Irish here. And everywhere she went, too much a Rosmoney.

Annis and Bute had redecorated again and the wall-hangings in the hallway were new: pale green watered silk.

It was Bute who had the eye for refurbishment, unlike his plain, practical wife.

The newest portraits were by Rowlandson and framed in elaborate gilt, all children with dimpled arms and glossy ringlets.

The Bute girls had reached the pretty age, which suited Cressida’s purposes nicely.

With daughters to be fired off within the next few years, Lady Bute was vulnerable to persuasion.

It was odd how the smell of the place hadn’t changed: the marble-tiled hallway was still rich with lily of the valley and nicotiana arranged in pewter vases with curling acid-green ferns.

This was the scent of late spring, all the blooms gathered by Annis’s lower footmen in the flower market at Covent Garden.

Soon there would be no need for flowers and the Butes would join that great annual exodus of the haut ton and flee London, leaving most of their servants to weather out the stink of high summer.

When the Butes went, Cressida would go with them whether they liked it or not.

Cressida followed Twisden upstairs, pinning on a smile as he opened a pair of gilded double doors into the morning salon.

To Twisden’s credit, there was not a quiver in his voice, even when her name was met with silence.

Every last one of Annis’s chintz-upholstered chairs was occupied by a woman from the first circles: everyone who was anyone was here.

Christ, had she aged as much as they all had?

Annis alone was unchanged, elegant as a Vigée Le Brun and fresh-faced in green linen adorned with a wide band of crisp ruffles at the hem, her grey-streaked curls arranged à la Grecque.

Her eyes were hard, like chips of golden-green peridot, her shrewd gaze calculating the full cost of Cressida’s outfit in under half a minute, down to the nearest sixpence.

There was an audible gasp from somewhere near the window.

Cressida’s skin prickled as Twisden closed the double doors; one of the large windows was slightly ajar, but there was now no way out other than through a servants’ door set into the blue-painted wainscoting.

It would have helped had Annis not been entertaining Greville’s mother.

The Dowager Marchioness of Crauford sat by the window.

Cressida saw why Sylvia still wore mourning so many years after the death of Greville’s father: the black velvet set off her colouring to an advantage, even if the lustre of those golden curls owed less to nature than the skill of her apothecary.

Lady Crauford alone was not staring at Cressida; instead, she studied the polished fingernails of her right hand, wearing a smile of grim amusement.

Cressida’s gaze flickered around the room.

Even Annis’s rival Sally Jersey was here, leading light of society, all watered silk and trailing coral beads.

A handful of young people congregated in the window-seat, but they would all have been drilled against staring, the girls’ behaviour especially governed with parade-ground rigour.

Cressida didn’t immediately know any of them: likely they had all been in the schoolroom when she’d left.

This was a dangerous age and stage of life, when a tender reputation might wither on the vine just by being in the same room as Cressida.

And yet Twisden had been given orders to let her in.

Standing among the girls like a deerhound among kittens, a tall, louche young man leaned on the window frame, looking out at the square, his long legs encased in well-cut black kerseymere and his honey-fair hair dishevelled.

He had a very comely arse like all the Nightingale men, even that prosy fossil Crauford.

He turned around, and Cressida wasn’t at all surprised to recognise Jamie Nightingale.

At just shy of twenty, Jamie was breathtaking.

Tall and lean, with brilliant dark eyes, he was the image of Greville’s uncle Tristan, his long-dead adopted father.

Surely no one was still bothering to deny that he was a Nightingale bastard?

Jamie grinned at her in recognition. Sylvia was never reliable in the sickroom, and Cressida had once nursed Jamie through a particularly nasty bout of scarlet fever with the aid of a lurid novel entitled Necromancer of the Black Forest , some highly colourful stories of her own, and more ginger wine than was strictly advisable.

Trouble, complete and utter trouble , Cressida thought, idly considering that it took one to know one.

‘My dearest girl.’ Annis broke the silence at last, raising a languid finger at one of her footmen to signal for more tea things.

‘Goodness. How wonderful that you’re here.

’ She was livid: her voice always became quieter and more musical the angrier she got.

Jamie would have to wait. Cressida ignored a queer rushing noise in her head.

‘And how awful of me to have intruded.’ Cressida smiled, noticing vivid details from the corner of her eye: a spray of freesias in a bronze pot on the side table, the collection of Sèvres china bowls in a row on the mantelpiece of green marble.

The air thickened; it was like trying to breathe turtle soup.

Annis smiled. ‘Nonsense; if you’d come to London without visiting me after all these years, I should have been very cross indeed. Won’t you sit down? Most of my friends are familiar faces, but perhaps I might make some others known to you? Mary Sidgwick you know, of course.’

Mary Sidgwick got to her feet with an expression of frozen scorn, ringlets held immobile with quince-seed gum.

Cressida recognised her now: they’d debuted in the same year.

Marriage obviously agreed with Mary like a bad oyster and who could blame her.

She got up, curtseyed to the room and went out, leaving another ringing silence behind her.

Jamie frowned a little, but the girls watched in undisguised horror.

Reputation, reputation, reputation. Well, here she was, a living example of what happened when you lost it.

God, it was airless in here. Cressida’s gaze shifted towards the open sash window.

Would she ever walk into a room again without bloodlessly assessing every possible way out of it?

Annis turned to the girls Jamie Nightingale was busy ignoring, bidding them to the music room with an expression of smiling amiability that brooked no argument.

Jamie yawned. ‘Come on, we’re under orders.’

Whispering and giggling, taught from the cradle never to entertain a serious thought in their heads, the girls got up and departed with him, a flurry of flounces, dimpled arms and impractical satin slippers, leaving behind yet another silence.

Sylvia smiled as she watched Jamie escort them out with all that easy grace, in just the same way that she had always smiled at Greville’s faults.

Sylvia assessed Cressida with a swift nod of approval: the gossips had always said the only common ground they shared was an enviable eye for a gown and a fatal ability to look past the shortcomings of Lady Crauford’s second oldest son.

‘Well, Mary has the sense of a recalcitrant child,’ Sylvia said, with a social smile.

‘There could be nothing more likely to stir up gossip, which is the last thing we need now you’ve decided to grace us with your presence, madam.

’ The expression in her eyes was unforgiving; it was said that her fondness for Greville had been the ruin of him, as she made excuses for her wickedest and most favourite child, time after time.

Annis smiled again, passing Cressida a cup of tea with thin-lipped venom. ‘Mary Sidgwick is indeed a foolish woman – she’ll miss out on all your news. You must tell us all about your time in the Levant. How exciting to travel.’

Cressida sipped her tea, silently cursing her.

Why couldn’t Annis have told everyone she’d gone to ground somewhere easier to lie about?

Thanks to Napoleon’s efforts in Portugal and Spain, the entire Levant teemed with rich young Englishmen from Damascus to Aleppo who could easily give the lie to any story.

‘I’m afraid I swore I’d never become a travel bore,’ she said. ‘No doubt you have no more desire to look at my sketchbook than I wish to catch up with years of criminal conversation.’

‘I’ll grant you that.’ Lady Crauford raised both eyebrows, settling back into her chair as if to watch the opera.

Sally Jersey laughed, watching them all from the Queen Anne chair in the corner. ‘We ought to be grateful you plan to spare us the sketchbooks, at least.’

‘Indeed, we have enough of that sort of thing from the wretched poet,’ Sylvia said, with a level gaze at Annis.

Sally smiled. ‘It’s much worse than sketchbooks with Lord Byron,’ she said. ‘You’ve condemned yourself to an entire summer of poetry recitals, Annis. But I grant you it’s a stunning victory, all the same. Everyone’s spitting pins that you’ve snared him for Drochcala.’

‘The Byrons are not a good family, and he looks the sort to upset the housemaids, if you ask me,’ Sylvia said.

‘He’s not showing much circumspection with his affairs.

This carry-on with Caro Lamb is a little too obvious, to put it mildly.

But I can see that it will at least put an end to all that distressing gossip about you and Bute not having a feather to fly with, Annis. Honestly, people can be so crass.’

Annis sipped her tea, ignoring the barb. ‘Oh, indeed, and poor Caro will be sorry for it before long. I would usually have asked her to Drochcala, but one simply can’t – not with the way she’s behaving – a married woman! But when is it ever the man who really suffers when an affair’s too public?’

For a moment, they all stared unguardedly at Cressida, even Annis.

‘Yes, well,’ Sylvia said, ‘such is the way of the world, and Caroline Lamb is a little fool to forget it, as is every other woman who allows passion to get the better of her. Men cannot help their appetites, but we of the fair sex know we must have more sense than they do. I wish you all the very best of luck with George Byron, my dear.’

Cressida smiled at her estranged mother-in-law. ‘Oh, never fear, ma’am. My cousin is more than capable of managing a fashionable poet. I must say, I’m rather looking forward to seeing Lord Byron at Drochcala.’

Annis showed no sign of being outflanked, drinking her tea without so much as a sideways glance, as though there were nothing extraordinary in a disgraced cousin joining her house party.

Cressida turned to her. ‘It’s quite exciting, isn’t it, Annis?

We might even find ourselves immortalised in verse!

I don’t doubt George will be waxing lyrical.

Loch Iffrin is impossibly romantic in summer.

I for one shan’t let a rude poet spoil my enjoyment of Scotland, and if any of you think Annis will allow him to ruin it for anyone else, I daresay you’re wrong.

My cousin is far too experienced a hostess for that. ’

Cressida smiled into another shattering silence, watching sunlight play across the blue-and-white Delft tiles surrounding the fireplace.

She’d deal with the aftermath later. She always did: she would not, however, deal with Lord Greville Nightingale.

Lady Crauford and Sally Jersey exchanged a single slow and pregnant glance.

Annis stirred her tea, not betraying by word or gesture that a disgraced, unwanted cousin had just fabricated an invitation to the house party of the Season.