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war had further increased their wealth fortyfold. He was indisputably a success. Her father seemed content with his side of the transaction too. As far as Ava was aware, he’d never complained that there was only one live child; a girl at that. He had no doubt calculated that as his title wasn’t one that could be passed on, and his daughter was ravishing, forever appearing in the society pages, he could be sanguine. A boy might have been lost in the carnage in any case. Besides, all his friends’ wives were plain-looking now. They were at the age when everything sank south and beauty no longer counted; when they had counted, Lady Pondson-Callow had allowed Sir Peter to freely pursue pretty faces, shapely legs and full breasts outside their marriage and had never so much as raised an eyebrow.
    Ava had been brought up to believe that affairs were the only genuine excitement the rich experienced during the Edwardian period. Restricted as they were by protracted and inflexible formality and an intricate, if hypocritical, code of etiquette and values, sexual intrigue added impetus to an otherwise leisurely but dull life. The aristocracy protected their high social positions by adhering to a phoney social code where husbands, and sometimes even wives, took lovers. The majority were willing to ignore extramarital affairs so long as an outward appearance of domestic bliss endured. It was an extremely functional, although entirely depressing, modus operandi. Ava understood that the rules had been manufactured to warrant that family life was not ruined by sexual feats and adventures. Public exposure, which led to unharnessed gossip, resulted in names being cut from guest lists; the indiscreet were summarily and promptly made socially extinct.
    Ava had often thought that if ever she was to settle on a man, he would have to be a thoroughly admirable one. By this she did not mean admirable in that hopelessly sloppy way Sarah or Beatrice might define the term. She was not looking for a knight in shining armour who would flatter and fawn, arrive at her door laden with acres of land and the neurosis of inheriting a title he couldn’t carry; for one thing, those sorts of men invariably had such weak chins. Ava’s definition of an admirable man was one who would (needless to say) be obscenely rich, because even though she had her own enormous wealth, she didn’t want to be one of those women who was known for buying a title; he would challenge her, amuse her, perhaps even attempt to control her (no doubt he’d fail, but it would be exciting to see him try). Finally he would be horribly good-looking, completely breathtaking, the sort of man whose fidelity couldn’t be taken for granted. It was a meeting of equals that she longed for.
    Ava had not met such a man. She doubted he even existed. If he once had, the chances were he was buried in mud in France, face down in an unmarked grave. She reasoned that as the man she wanted did not exist, she might as well have lots of fun with those who did.
    She had a thing for ex-soldiers, which was convenient, because there was hardly any other sort of chap around, Kitchener’s propaganda had been so thorough and successful. There was something about their raw hedonism, their fragility, the fact that they were angry or damaged, that she found fascinatingly attractive, but they weren’t the sort that she’d want in her life in any sort of permanent way; that would become quite a drain.
    They’d found their way to the library, a group who were unwilling to go to bed, the ones who were planning to roar through the twenties, hoping to drown out the echo of the artillery, although they said that the reason they were still up was that someone wanted to find a particular book of poetry to check up on the exact wording of a poem. There was a bet running between two posturing chaps: two pounds was at stake. The discussion had become rather heated. Ava wondered if they secretly missed the war and now