It’s just like I’m a princess, Jess thought, and she even managed to get a bit breathless. OK, she’d been shocked into a stupor where she’d hardly noticed her surroundings these last few weeks, but there were certain things that could pierce the thickest stupor.

Raoul Louis d’Apergenet was certainly one of them.

Her outfit was too simple for this setting, she thought fleetingly, with a tiny niggle of dismay, but Raoul was smiling at her as if she was indeed a princess and Louise was gazing at her skirt with admiration and saying,

‘Snap.’

‘Snap?’ Jess sat down-absurdly aware of Raoul’s hands adjusting her chair-and gazed at the array of silver and crystal before her. Snap? Card games was the last thing she was thinking about.

The table must be one of the palace’s smallest. It was only meant for eight or ten-but it was magnificent. The array of crystal and silverware made her blink in astonishment.

‘I think the word is wow,’ she said softly. ‘Snap has nothing to do with it.’

‘I meant your skirt.’ Louise was still smiling. ‘If I’m not mistaken that’s a Waves original. The same as mine.’

Jess focused-which was really hard when there was so much to take in. And when Raoul was smiling with that gentle, half-sad smile, the smile that said he knew…

She was being ridiculous.

Louise’s skirt. Concentrate.

Her hostess was indeed wearing a Waves skirt. It was one of Jess’s early designs, much more flamboyant than the one she was wearing, a calf-length circle of soft spun silk, aqua and white, the colours mingling in the shimmering waves that were Jess’s trademark-the colours of the sea.

‘I love the Waves work,’ Louise was saying. ‘And you must, too. But then you’re Australian. Waves is by an Australian designer, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Jess said and then because she couldn’t think of anything else to say she added, ‘Um, she’s me. Waves, that is. It’s what I do.’