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hair about my shoulders in a shimmering cloak of gold and copper, winding a strand round her finger to form a ringlet. ‘Don’t even need rags to curl it. There’s been interest already.’
    ‘In me?’ I didn’t know whether to be flattered, or alarmed. ‘From whom?’
    ‘Never you mind.’ She commenced brushing again.
    ‘I can’t see how there could be. I don’t go out in society. I mean, who’s seen me?’
    ‘You’d be surprised.’ Susan gave me one of her knowing looks. ‘I seen the way some of the gentlemen calling here look at you.’
    ‘You mean friends of Father’s? But they’re all ancient!’ I covered my face with my hands. I’d end up like Elspeth Cooper. I couldn’t bear that.
    ‘’T’ain’t just the beauty,’ Susan went on, as if such a consideration were irrelevant. ‘You’ll bring a pretty penny when you marry. Someone’ll get a rare prize in you, Miss Nancy, and that’s a fact.’
    *
    Bath was a town wholly given over to pleasure. Mornings were spent at the bath and pump rooms, or else shopping for ribbons and trinkets, browsing in bookshops, or drinking in coffee houses. The afternoons were spent at Harrison’s Assembly Rooms at the gaming tables, or drinking tea and perambulating about.
    Susan was right. Young men did not go to Bath for the cure, that was for sure. They went there to hunt fortunes. My father was rich. That made me a fair prospect.
    I found it all unutterably tedious.
    The most important social event of every week was the ball held each Tuesday. Whatever the occasion, my brother Joseph went straight to the gaming tables. He would soon be returning to Jamaica to take over the plantation and he was behaving like a man under sentence. He was keen to enjoy every civilised pleasure, and what place was more civilised than Bath? His chief enjoyment was playing piquet or faro. He was very bad at both. My father’s money flowed through his hands like sugar ground to sand.
    Mrs Wilkes was not averse to a turn at the tables either, but her play was slow and deliberate, each card considered. Money stuck to her fingers like molasses. It was not what she was there for, however, and after a hand or two she would give up her place at the tables and accompany me into the ballroom. She had a deeper game to play.
    The marriage game had its own rules and etiquette, winners and losers, like any other game of chance. The opening bid was an invitation to dance.
    Mrs Wilkes had taken care to drop hints as to my wealth among her fellow card players, so I did not lack for partners. First one young man presented himself, then another. Mrs Wilkes watched, assessing each prospect, tallying them on a dance card of her own devising, rejecting those who were too old, too poor, too common, the fine lines about her mouth working like the drawstrings of a purse. If she thought one was right, off she went to secure an introduction to his mother. She would reel off to me their family history, going through their pedigree as if they were thoroughbred horses. Mr Amhurst, Barstow, Denton, Fitzherbert, Fitzgibbon; younger son, nephew, cousin; related, though distantly, to the Earl of somewhere or other. I could hardly tell them apart. Bowing figures in powdered wigs presented themselves in seemingly endless succession: sweating faces looking up at me, mouthing meaningless compliments; limp fingers in damp gloves leading me into the dance. All the time Mrs Wilkes watching everything, her fan fluttering faster than a dragonfly’s wing.
    I went through my paces, as expected, although all I wanted to do was to get out of there as soon as possible. The year was turning towards summer, the rooms wanted ventilation and were abominably crowded, filled with a continually milling press and throng of people. As the night wore on the exertions of the dancers added to the warmth given off by the candelabras and chandeliers. The musky stench of overheated heavily-perfumed bodies made the atmosphere close to