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  Her dear had never been one who enjoyed a press of people. Jane had thought she would have to convince him to accept for Melody’s sake. To voluntarily submit himself to an afternoon in the company of the peerage was a great sacrifice, which she doubted her sister fully understood.

  Melody threw her hands in the air with a cheer of delight that would have been more suited to a schoolgirl than a young lady. “I must write to Miss Baker and Miss Downing. Oh! What shall I wear? I have never skated. What if I fall? La! Where does one even get skates? Oh! This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.” Her exuberance overran her sense, and she embraced Vincent and then Jane in turn. “Thank you for bringing me to London. I must enter this in my appointment book. How grand that will look. Skating with the Prince Regent! Oh, and I must write to Mama and Aunt Genevieve. Oh. And Miss Marchand.” Clutching the letter, Melody hurried into the drawing room, still listing those whom she must apprise of the coming event.

  Vincent stood in the centre of the hall with his mouth a little agape. Jane slipped her arms around him and nodded to where her sister had vanished. “You have made her very happy.”

  “So it appears.” He hesitated. “It seemed necessary.”

  She leaned her head against his broad chest. “And that is but one example of why I love you.”

  * * *

  The day of the skating party dawned bright and clear. It had snowed all day on Easter Sunday and drifts were piled around the city. Melody and Jane were wrapped in their warmest dresses with extra petticoats and shawls to guard against the chill. They carried new skates, procured by the efficient Mrs. Brackett, as the carriage dropped them off in the broad circular drive of Carlton House.

  Jane could not help but notice the picture her sister made as they were escorted through the palace interior and to the grounds behind it. Over her dress, she wore her celestial-blue Hessian pelisse, which fastened with broad ornamental frogs up to her throat in the manner of an officer’s uniform. The regularity of the braids cast the swell of her bosom into graceful contrast. Her gold curls were piled onto her head and peeked becomingly from beneath a high-crowned hat that had been trimmed with blue and white ostrich feathers. She carried before her a muff as white as a cloud against the sky.

  The grounds at Carlton House had been transformed into a wonderland of winter, with nods to the vanished spring. Snow sculptures of deer and fawns shared the pristine white grounds with frozen swans and flowers made of frost. A shallow reflecting pond already featured gentlemen and ladies gliding over the ice. Their habits, in mulberry, pomona green, and primrose yellow, stood out against the severe landscape like flowers on a banquet table.

  The Prince Regent stood in a cluster of men by the pond. His figure, restrained by corsets, had yet another layer of bulk added to it by the heavy fur coat he wore. He noticed them come out of the house and motioned Vincent over.

  “Well, Melody,” Vincent sighed and waved back, “you had wanted to meet His Royal Highness.”

  Melody’s eyes got very round, but she kept her composure admirably. Jane had not seen the Prince Regent since they had removed to Long Parkmead. She recognised a few of his companions. The gentlemen from his set stood in various poses, as if a fashion plate illustrator might wander by and engrave their image at any moment.

  As they walked up, Sir Lumley waved an aromatic handkerchief and beamed with delight upon catching sight of her. His greatcoat hung open to show off his usual dark blue coat with gold buttons and a yellow waistcoat. The white ribbons of his breeches peeked out of his top boots as though he had puffs of snow clinging to his knees. “My dear Lady Vincent. Such a pleasure. You have kept too much away from us. How are you, my dear?”

  “Quite well, thank you.” Jane offered him a curtsy and turned to introduce her sister.

  Before she could begin, the Prince Regent clapped Vincent on the back. “Skiffy is quite right. Who has hired you away from me?”

  “I am always at your Royal Highness’s service.” Vincent bowed as though they did not have an entire ballroom to finish for Lord Stratton.

  “Good. You are lying, but I may hold you to it later in any event. My daughter is getting married in May, you know.”

  Vincent cleared his throat. “I am not in the habit of performing for weddings.”

  The Prince Regent laughed and beat Vincent’s back again. “Ah, you are always a treat. Meanwhile, I need a diversion. These gentlemen have come for an afternoon of pleasure and talk of nothing but uprisings.”

  “Oh, Prinny. You do exaggerate. We also discussed the high food prices.” Sir Lumley waved a handkerchief at him, briefly perfuming the air with lavender.

  “And soldiers,” another gentleman teased. “You must not forget those.”

  Lord Chesterford, who clearly did not understand a jest, shook his finger and his moustache quivered. “Our good men fought for our country and have returned to a thankless home. We serve them ill if they cannot find useful employment. Mark me! The Luddite riots in the north are just the beginning.”

  The Prince Regent held his hands out in mock despair. “Always, you return to riots.”

  “We saw a riot on our wa—” Melody broke off, face colouring with the realisation that she had spoken without being introduced to His Royal Highness.

  “Gracious me.” The Prince Regent peered around Vincent with an expression of some surprise. “Sir David! Ah … I see that you have brought your most worthy wife, and a vision of loveliness.”

  Once, such a comparison between them would have nettled Jane, who had long felt the shadow of her younger and more beautiful sister. The fact that she had found contentment with her situation and Melody was as yet unattached, if not a happy thought, at least relieved her of any symptoms of jealousy. So she was able to receive the Prince Regent’s words with a smile and say, “Your Royal Highness, may I present my sister, Miss Ellsworth.”

  She was less able to overlook the surprise on that gentleman’s countenance or the way his gaze darted from one face to the other, seeking a resemblance. They shared only the shape of their eyes, which they had from their mother.

  The Prince Regent, ever the gallant, took Melody’s hand and bent over it. “A pleasure, madam.”

  “The pleasure is entirely mine, I assure you, sir.” Melody lowered her eyes so she looked through her eyelashes at the Prince.

  “But of course you are required to say that.”

  “Not required, no.” Melody tilted her head toward him as though she were sharing a joke. “I am required to say that I am grateful to be invited—which I am—and that you are most kind to invite me—which would be true, had you known that I was coming—but I am not required to tell you that it is a pleasure to meet you. By that, you may know that I am sincere.”

  Throwing his head back, the Prince Regent laughed. Jane envied her sister the ease with which she made even the most excessive statements charming. She had the Prince Regent firmly in her grasp, along with the rest of his set.

  “Now then, my dear, you had begun to say something when overwhelmed by my Most August Presence. Would you be so kind as to repeat it?”

  “Only … it is about riots again, sir.” Melody dipped her head becomingly. “We saw a riot of Luddites upon our arrival in London, so it is not only in the north.”

  “Well, do not fret. We shall have no riots here.” He looked around at the other gentlemen and said more firmly, as though his word could cause it to be so. “No riots.”

  “My sister has come with us to experience the Season.” Jane pitched her voice so that the other men in their circle could hear, though not so loudly as to be indecorous. She wanted them to know that Melody was Out. “This is her first event in London.”

  “Then we shall direct our attention to pleasure, and leave these topics of unrest for another day. Sir David, Lady Vincent … would you be so kind as to offer us a diversion?”

  Vincent inclined his head coolly, as if a request from a member of the royal family were p
art of everyday life. His colour mounted, though. From the sudden warmth that Jane felt in her cheeks, she suspected that she had flushed at the attention rather more than her husband had. Offering his arm, Vincent led her a little away from the group.

  Jane lowered her voice to ask, “Would you really decline the royal wedding?”

  Vincent shuddered. “Any wedding. I do not do weddings, which His Royal Highness knows. He is merely teasing me.”

  “Ah.” Her mind drifted back to their own wedding, which had been a small affair, to her mother’s eternal regret. If Melody—when Melody was married, Mrs. Ellsworth would want more pomp than Jane and Vincent had obliged her with. Thinking of pomp … “Would a tableau vivant serve, do you think?” Jane pulled her gloves off and the wind found her newly bare skin, chilling it.

  “Admirably.” Vincent tucked in his chin and considered the lake. “Would you feel up to a Jack Frost?”

  “Of course, though it feels rather obvious.” More than that, she wanted some colour to relieve the ice and snow. “What about Persephone?”

  His eyes narrowed with thought. “Her return, or when Hades seizes her? Ah … her return, of course. The spring.”

  “My thoughts as well.”

  With a grunt of assent, Vincent cast a Sphère Obscurcie around them, making them vanish from view within the ball of glamour. Outside the Sphère, several of the Prince Regent’s guests gaped in astonishment. The technique that Vincent had developed was faster and more thorough a method for masking than any other Jane had seen. He took a single fold of glamour and twisted it to create a path for the sunlight to follow, guiding it around whatever lay in the Sphère’s midst. Other glamourists masked objects by creating a trompe-l’œil and deceiving the eye with a fully rendered illusion of the space without the object. That technique took scrupulous care and sometimes weeks to complete.

  The speed of Vincent’s technique had allowed the Duke of Wellington to defeat Napoleon the previous year at the Battle of Quatre Bras. Her husband employed it more regularly, as he did now, to create a private space in which to prepare a tableau vivant.

  With haste, Jane sketched a Persephone around herself, looking back at Vincent’s Hades. Working so quickly meant that their glamours were less completely rendered than the ones that they were creating for Lord Stratton. Jane likened it to creating a watercolour instead of an oil painting. Still, it took effort. By the time they had drawn the rugged cave from which Persephone was emerging, Jane’s heart beat rapidly. A crowd had gathered around the Prince Regent in anticipation of their display.

  “Ready?” Vincent’s breath puffed in white plumes from Hades’s mouth, as though the lord of the underworld were breathing fire.

  Jane marked her hold on the slipknot she had ready. If Vincent’s forte was his strength and speed, Jane’s was her cleverness with knots. “Yes.”

  With a simple twist, Vincent dropped the Sphère Obscurcie that masked them. An audible gasp went up from a number of those assembled as the tableau appeared. Using his formidable stamina, Vincent managed all of the threads and folds surrounding him to make Hades’s arm reach for Jane’s Persephone. Jane answered by having Persephone step away from him. She would not have been able to do this before she had begun to work with Vincent. Her constitution had improved since then, though her heart raced as she held the threads, and her breath came rapidly. She had been cold before, but the exertion vanquished that.

  Jane released the threads she had bound into a slipknot and the ground around her seemed to bloom into a patch of green dotted with purple crocuses. For this brief moment, spring had come. Led by the Prince Regent, the crowd burst into applause.

  Jane and Vincent held the tableau for a moment longer, then released the folds masking themselves. They could, if the situation had warranted it, tie off the threads and step out of the illusion, but part of the charm of a tableau vivant was its transient nature. If their audiences were allowed close scrutiny, they would see the broad strokes and coarse stitches that went into creating so fast a glamour.

  As they reappeared, the audience granted them another polite burst of applause, then went back to mingling, talking about what they had seen and what the weather was likely to be on the morrow.

  Vincent wiped the sweat from his brow. “I fear that the time spent resting at your parents’ house, for all that it was comfortable, has left me without the endurance I once had.”

  “I know.” Jane was all too aware of her breath as each exhalation hung steaming in the air. “A week back at work is not enough, it seems.”

  “We should have practised more at your…” Vincent raised his head, looking out at the lake. “Is that Mr. O’Brien with your sister?”

  So involved had she been in creating the tableau vivant that Jane had not seen Melody depart from the Prince Regent’s set, but now Melody hung on the arm of a young gentleman, not far from the edge of the lake. Both wore skates, and, though Mr. O’Brien seemed uncertain on the ice, he supported Melody as they skated. His red hair flamed like a torch in the light. “It is.”

  Jane could not feel sanguine about seeing Mr. O’Brien in such intimacy with her sister. It was impossible to disregard the way that his interest had faded upon understanding that Melody was the sister of artisans. Entirely separate from his heritage, she wondered if his interest were sincere. Had the Prince Regent not so recently condescended to notice Melody, Jane would feel fewer doubts about the attention Mr. O’Brien paid her now.

  “Muse … what is wrong?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  Vincent tilted his head and regarded her with incredulity. “Perhaps I am misled, then. I thought I heard you snort.”

  “That would not be ladylike.”

  “Hm.” Vincent offered his arm. “And yet…”

  Sighing, Jane walked with him along the edge of the pond. “If you will press me, then yes. I am disturbed that Mr. O’Brien is attending Melody.”

  “And?”

  “He did not consider her so worth his while before the Prince Regent noticed her. I worry that he thinks to use her for her perceived consequence.”

  Vincent peered past her to where the pair glided laughing across the ice. “This seems unlikely.”

  “No? Did you not see the way he cut short his visit when he realized who her relations were?”

  “I thought he was simply being polite. We had finished work and were ready to depart. He, very properly, did not detain us.”

  Jane opened her mouth to object, breath steaming out, and closed it again to think. When had Mr. O’Brien made his excuses? “Perhaps…”

  A gust of wind caught laughter from the pond and carried it to them. Melody held Mr. O’Brien’s hands as he guided her across the ice. Even at a distance, the delight on her countenance was plain.

  “She is happy. Is that not why we brought her to London? Where is the—” Vincent went rigid beside Jane, coming to a halt in the path. He turned and almost let go of her hand. Catching himself, Vincent made a studied effort to regain his composure.

  Alarmed, Jane put a hand on his chest. “Vincent?”

  He caught her hand and bent down to whisper in her ear. “My father. With his back to us.”

  His father. Here? On the path ahead of them stood a tall well-built older gentleman with an elegantly cut coat. His hair had once been a dark brown, but was now brushed with silver where it fell over his collar. He rested one hand on a walking stick in a posture of casual disregard.

  Facing him was an older gentleman with hair that matched the snow. His cheeks were reddened, though it was difficult to say if it was from the cold or anger. “Sir. I may promise you that the extreme cold of the season is in no way caused by coldmongers. You may have my assurance on that.”

  “Of a certainty, Lord Eldon. Your assurance is worthy of much consideration. I can think of no reason why you should have any partiality to the coldmongers.”

  That Lord Verbury was here should cause no great wonder. He was, after all, an Earl, a
nd as a peer he was likely to be in town for the Season. And yet it was beyond anything she had looked for to come upon him unawares in this manner. At Almack’s Assembly, or in a salon, perhaps that might have been expected; but outside in the snow seemed an ill-fitted place for such an encounter.

  In spite of her deep astonishment, Jane could not help but study Lord Verbury, seeing Vincent in his height and the lines of his back. Jane had met none of Vincent’s family in the time since their marriage, and, until Lady Penelope called, had assumed that she would not. Frederick Hamilton, the Earl of Verbury, had cast Vincent off when he decided to pursue a career in glamour. Jane’s one attempt to contact the man, when Vincent’s life had been in danger, had met with silence. She had had no desire to meet him since.

  Lord Eldon’s nostrils widened. “Do you insinuate something, sir?”

  “Should I?” Lord Verbury’s inquiry chilled in the air.

  “You seem to. I would rather you said it than hide behind a façade of seeming politeness.”

  With a shrug, Lord Verbury drew his walking stick across the snow, marking a line between them. “I have no need to insinuate anything. If you tell me that the coldmongers are not creating this unnatural cold, why would any right-thinking man dispute you? Your heritage is a matter of common knowledge. ‘Common’ is perhaps the best word for a man who was born a coldmonger’s son.”

  With that, Lord Verbury gave Lord Eldon his shoulder and turned on his heel. He was now facing Jane and Vincent, though his countenance betrayed nothing.

  Vincent’s arm tightened under her hand. He murmured, “In all likelihood, he will not even condescend to notice us.”

  “There you are.” Lord Verbury crossed the snow and stopped in front of them, planting his walking stick. “I was told you would be here.”

  “I did not have the same intelligence, alas.” Vincent’s voice was steady and easy, but his hand pressed Jane’s so firmly against his arm that her bones ached.