The only others present aside from Lady Osbaldestone and Lord Netherfield, beside whom Portia sat, were Oswald Glossup, James’s younger brother, and Swanston Archer, Kitty’s younger brother. Both were of similar age and attitude; with ridiculously tight, striped waistcoats and coats with long tails, they considered themselves cocks of the walk and strutted accordingly while holding aloof from the rest of the company.

Simon acknowledged them with a curt nod and a look that hinted at disapproval.

And then he and James were approaching the sofa where Lady Osbaldestone and Lord Netherfield had stationed themselves, a little apart from the rest the better to observe and comment without restriction.

Portia rose as the two men neared-not from any sense of proper behavior but simply because she disliked being towered over, especially by two of them at once.

Lady Osbaldestone acknowledged Simon’s greeting and bow with a gleeful thump of her cane, and promptly put him in his place by inquiring, “Well, then-how’s your mother?”

Inured by long experience, likewise aware there would be no escape, he replied with commendable evenness. Lady O demanded an accounting of his younger sisters and his father; while he satisfied her rapacious curiosity, Portia exchanged a smile with James, and engaged him and his grandfather in a discussion of the prettiest walks in the locality.

Lady O eventually released Simon. He turned to Lord Netherfield with a smile and a few words, renewing their previous acquaintance. That done, Simon, now standing beside Portia, turned back to Lady O-and froze.

Portia sensed it, glanced Lady O’s way-and did the same. The basilisk gaze that had terrorized the ton for over fifty years was fixed on them.