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to nothing more than high spirits. How dare Greville insist that if she couldn’t learn to contain herself he would never take her out again!
    As ever, when he was working, Romney’s grey hair stood on his head, giving him the appearance of an elderly monkey, the impression heightened by his large, dark brown eyes. The old man was kindness itself, and Greville’s black mood of this morning was no fault of his, so Emma worked to put the mad stare back in place. Romney nodded and went back to his frenzied sketching.
    She should be angry with her lover about this too, being soldlike a carcass. Greville had an arrangement with the artist: he provided the model, Romney provided the oils and the talent; the money from the sale of the resulting portrait was split between them, Greville’s portion to set off the cost of keeping her. Romney had painted her a dozen times now; every picture had found an eager buyer.
    Romney’s eyes darted back and forth, boring into her. Did he, with his artist’s insight, see how she felt? She loved Charles with a passion that had grown deeper through three years of attachment, and enjoyed their domestic harmony. Yet certain losses rankled, like the social life she had enjoyed on first arriving at Edgware Road, which had been slowly choked off. Her life now seemed sober and confined. After a year, Greville had moved into Edgware Road permanently, imposing his fussy bachelor habits on what had been an easy-going household; he had let the townhouse he had built in Portman Square to ease his debts. However, it had obviously not eased them enough: only the week before he had scolded her for giving a halfpenny to a beggar.
    Excursions from the house had been rare of late. She could never be brought to the notion that her own natural vivacity was in part responsible for this. Was it her fault that when they went to a ball or a rout nearly every man in the room sought to engage her attention? Was she to blame if powerful and well-connected men cared not a whit if their outrageous gallantries offended her lover? It was not her fault that Greville was so jealous and insecure, unable to accept her repeated assurances that he had no cause for concern.
    He had insisted that she had made an exhibition of herself the previous night. To Emma, singing and dancing were the stuff of life, and a glass or two of champagne encouraged her. She knew that Greville had cause to celebrate. As a collector he acquired only to sell, and was careful in the way he built up collections to make sure that the whole was always vastly superior to the sum of its parts. Many a time quick disposal had saved him from ruin. He had been corresponding with his uncle in Naples, using his good offices to amass a set of Roman and Etruscan artefacts that he had alreadysold at a substantial profit. The news that his virtu, in the company of his uncle, had arrived in England had sent him into raptures of delight, and loosened his normally tight purse strings to such a degree that he had insisted on taking Emma to the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens.
    Could Greville not see the joy she felt in wearing a fine dress, having her hair tended for a night of entertainment, and crossing the portal for pleasure not duty? This was the first time in an age that Greville had offered to take her out to somewhere fashionable.
    “Rumour has it,” Romney said, “that you were the belle amuse ment at last night’s rout.”
    “I greatly enjoyed myself, I admit,” she replied defiantly, wondering how he knew.
    “More than you have on previous visits?”
    “Who said I have visited the Ranelagh before?” Emma demanded.
    Her mother had told her she had a duty to deny her previous existence, even to those who must know it well. She was the semi-respectable Mrs Hart now, not the wild, promiscuous person of her former incarnation.
    The old man grinned, laid aside his pad and ran a hand though his spiky grey hair. “The two different faces of the gardens have always