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bookseller, and she and Nora made their exits.
    “That was neatly done,” Nora whispered, as they made their way back to the Winters’ drawing room, where several card tables had been laid out in anticipation of a night of genteelly deep play.
    “It’s the truth.” Phillippa shrugged.
    “But what are you going to do about Lady Jane and Broughton?” Nora asked right before they chose their table for a rubber of whist, playing four with Phillippa’s friend and companion Mrs. Tottendale, who cornered Mrs. Winter and a bottle of sherry to be her partners that evening.
    “Its simple, Nora,” Phillippa replied. “I’m going to win.”

Three
    W HEN Phillippa Benning entered a room, it was an event. People stopped their conversations midsentence, craned their necks to see. The favored rushed forward to greet her, usher her to the best spot in the room, the one with the most advantageous views, to see and be seen. The unfavored—well, they wouldn’t be invited in the first place. And the admiring throng would part like Moses’s sea as she swept past. It was always the best moment of hers or anyone’s evening.
    Yes, Phillippa Benning knew how to make an entrance. It was an incredible show. That was why, upon entering Almack’s, it was so terribly disconcerting to discover that the Marquis of Broughton had yet to arrive.
    “But they close the doors in twenty minutes!” she whispered to Nora through a deceptively placid smile.
    “How definite was his intention of coming?” Nora whispered back, while nodding to an acquaintance.
    “Wholly certain!” Phillippa shot back. Then, musing, she added, “Well, he never did say definitely if he’d show up; he just wondered whether he might see me here.”
    “That is difficult to ascertain,” Nora agreed.
    “Well, I refuse to be put out by his not seeing my entrance.”
    “Bravo!”
    “This . . . delay gives me time to greet the patronesses and fix my gown.”
    “Is your gown amiss?” Nora worriedly scanned Phillippa’s rather demure gown, a higher-than-normal silk bodice and a chiffon and lace skirt that skimmed her body as it flowed to the floor, all of it the color of a blushing rose, setting off Phillippa’s skin tone delightfully. “I see nothing wrong. Do you want me to send for my mother?”
    Phillippa rolled her eyes. “No, Nora, your mother can’t sew worth three shillings, and I don’t require any stitching in any case.”
    “Then why did you say your dress required repair?”
    “I said I was going to fix it,” Phillippa said with a mock-innocent stare. “Who said anything about repair? Ah, Countess Leivin, how wonderful to see you . . .”

    “I should have known. You always have something up your sleeve.” Nora said with an admiring smile as she passed Phillippa in the turn of the quadrille.
    Within ten minutes of their arrival, Phillippa was already on the dance floor, causing a stir.
    It must be some sort of record, she thought. Delicious.
    In fact, she was causing such a stir that she and Nora both grinned deeply when they saw (and heard) Mrs. Hurston, in her offensive purple-plumed turban, say to Mrs. Markham, in similarly nauseating yellow feathers, “I cannot believe what Mrs. Benning is wearing; it is so incredibly over the top, and beyond calculation, that I can not countenance . . .”
    But there Mrs. Hurston’s rant ended, as the wild gesticulations that accompanied her speech caused her cup of orangeat to pour down the front of poor Mr. Worth’s shirt, who’s only offense had been that he had been there, he had been overly tall, and he had been in the orangeat’s way.
    Nasty stuff, that orangeat.
    Phillippa momentarily felt sorry for Mr. Worth as she watched him leave the ballroom, hunched and coated in orange liquid. Then she recalled he was the man who had been so rude as to pick up Nora’s glove at the parade, and decided orangeat was just punishment for it. Then, just as quickly as the notion had entered her head, she let