He had been painted, according to the conceit of the time, in a classical wasteland, with a broken pillar wedged beneath one elbow and vague suggestions of a decaying Roman temple in the background. It was an evening scene, in which the rich black brocade of his coat would have blended with the deep indigo of the night sky if not for the silver threads that ran through the weave like condensed moonlight. The entire ensemble had a supernatural shimmer reminiscent of old-fashioned ghost stories featuring family phantoms.

Even with all the shimmer and silver, it wasn't the eerie glow of his attire that first caught my eye, but his face. I would be lying if I said it was a handsome face. The nose was too long — the better for looking down at you, I suppose — and the lips were too thin. There were interesting hollows beneath his sharp cheekbones and paunches beneath his eyes, not unlike those one sees in pictures of the Duke of Windsor, the last word in aristocratic dissipation. His thin lips were curved in a cynical half-smile, and the sideways slant of the eyes suggested that he had just noticed something that both appalled and amused him — or amused him because it appalled him. Either way, I wanted to be let in on the joke.

The artist had chosen to color his eyes nearly the same shade as the silver that ran through his coat. The effect was unusual and arresting. Those silver eyes glinted with a sardonic amusement that even two centuries of hanging on a wall couldn't dim. He looked as though he had seen it all before, including the undergarments. He probably had. Those slender hands, elegantly poised on the head of an ebony walking stick, seemed more than capable of unlacing a pair of stays in about three minutes flat.

I didn't need to read the swirly script on the brass plaque affixed to the frame to know who he was.

Sebastian, Lord Vaughn, eighth Earl Vaughn, Baron Vaughn of Vaughn-on-Tweed, and a host of lesser titles, all of which nicely filled up the space of half a page in Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage. A grand Whig aristocrat of the old school, member of organizations as diverse as the Royal Society and the Naughty Hellfire Club, intellectual and wastrel — and quite possibly a French spy.