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iers would be playing Benjamin, in public and for stakes, at White’s. So I knew why Vil iers did it. Because of me.”
    “Perhaps…”
    “I can’t imagine why I flirted with him,” Harriet said. “You’d think I would have had enough of men who prefer to caress pieces of ivory rather than me. It was so paltry of me. And how—how terribly wrong it al went.”

    “Life can be like that,” Jemma said quietly.
    “And now,” Harriet said, hearing the rank desperation in her own voice, “I just want Vil iers humiliated somehow. It’s al I can think of. I have to make it right for Benjamin. I have to clear my slate. I have to, Jemma!”
    Jemma reached out and took her hand. “Benjamin is gone, Harriet. There’s no slate.”
    “ Please .”
    Jemma sat stil for a moment. Then: “I wouldn’t do this because of the chess match. I can understand Benjamin’s mortification at losing that match. I could never take my life, but I can understand the horror of losing. Benjamin’s reaction wouldn’t be Vil iers’s fault. Truly, Harriet. It’s the chess.”
    “I hate chess.” She said it flatly, but with utter conviction.
    “I’l do it because he was an utter bastard to leave you in the road, and to say those things, Harriet. No one says something like that to a friend of mine and gets away with it scot-free. The only problem is that I shal have to be rather subtle.”
    “Why? I would prefer that he be shamed in front of al London.”
    “Because,” Jemma said, “I told you that Roberta is desperately in love with Vil iers. She’s determined to marry him, and I promised I would help her.”
    “How on earth are you going to humiliate him at the same time as you push him into marriage?” Harriet began to wring her hands.
    But Jemma was grinning again. “The two things are by no means mutual y exclusive, you know. And I love a chal enge.
    The first thing I’l do is invite him to my bal .”
    “He and Beaumont never speak; he won’t come.”
    “He wil ,” Jemma said. “Leave that to me. Now, are you coming?”
    Harriet gulped. “Would you mind very much if I didn’t, Jemma? I can’t tel you how horrible it has been since Benjamin died. Everyone looks at me with sympathy except for people who believe I drove him to it. Lady Lacock always tel s me that Benjamin was a cheerful baby, until I feel as if I could scream.”
    “We have to solve that too,” Jemma said.
    “My life? Some other night,” Harriet said.
    “Of course. But you must come for a council of war tomorrow morning.”
    “Please, Jemma…may I decline? I promised I would return to the country as soon as possible.”
    “Who did you promise? You should be here for the season, Harriet, thinking about marrying again. You can’t stay a dour widow forever.”
    “I know,” Harriet said, and then, desperate to change the subject, “I stil don’t think you’l be able to get Vil iers to enter this house.”
    Jemma just smiled.

Chapter 5
    R oberta would be the first to admit that life with her father had not been designed to turn a young lady into a leader in fashion. It wasn’t that her father had no money; she rather suspected that he had quite a lot. But his priorities were directed in precisely the opposite direction than everything about which Roberta dreamed: London, bal s, love, marriage…
    “But Papa,” she would argue with him at supper, “you don’t wish me to live with you my whole life, do you?”
    “I would love that!” he would say, beaming at her. “Who else wil catalog my poetry, if not you, my dear? And your criticism, though occasional y harsh, has done much to improve my art. Much! Much! The future wil preserve a warm place for you as the muse of the Marquess of Wharton and Malmesbury.”
    “Papa,” she would say (for variations on this theme had recurred for years), “I don’t want to appear in history books as your muse, and I dislike cataloging poetry.” Sometimes she would add that she didn’t like