“Charles, they deliver,” said Lady Jane, an exasperated look on her face. “We’ll send someone around, and they’ll send the wine to Lady Nevin’s.”

“But I like to go,” was his stubborn reply.

“Then go, and come pick me up on your way back.”

Lenox was not, as many of his friends were, much addicted to the charms of wine, but nobody could enter Berry Brothers and Rudd Wine Merchants for more than a few minutes without wanting immediately to lay down a few cases of Medoc or to rush off and lecture the barman at his club about the importance of grape variety.

The shop, its front painted a dark, rich green, and its vaulted Gothic windows bearing its name in yellow stencil, was dusty, old, and wonderful, located a few paces off of Pall Mall on St. James’s Street. The darkened floorboards creaked over a cellar as valuable as any in private hands; at one end of the room was a scale as tall as a man, and beside it an old table crowded with a dozen quarter-full glasses of red wine, which customers had been tasting. Berry’s had existed since 1698 and looked as if it would go on forever.

The place was largely deserted. One stooped old man-an oenophile, judging from the excited quiver of his nose over every bottle he smelled-was rooting through a case in the back, but the proprietor didn’t pay him any mind, standing instead at the desk in front of his ledger.

Now, this ledger was famous. It was magnificently large, bound in the same hunter green that the shop was painted, and recorded the preferences and history of every client who visited the shop more than once. As soon as Lenox’s face had appeared in the doorway, the man behind the ledger was riffling through it to find the L section.

“Hullo, Mr. Berry,” said Lenox.

“Mr. Lenox, sir,” said Mr. Berry, with a slight nod of his head. “How may I be of service to you?”

Lenox put his hands in his pockets and frowned, looking around the glass cases that held the sample bottles. “What do I like?” he said.