“He touched you,” Anthony hisses in his sister’s ear, once she’s been returned to him by his (former) friend, her cheeks still flushed - just from the dancing, he tells himself, and surely not from any feeling stirred up in her by the brush of Simon’s fingers across the bare skin of her shoulder, just above the lacy edge of her gown where Anthony’s hands have always been too circumspect to approach, at least not in public.

“Jealous, brother?” Daphne asks over the edge of her lemonade glass, her eyes following Simon across the floor, her voice sounding a trifle too breathless for Anthony’s taste. “I do wonder,” she says, her gloved fingers brushing his, hidden by the folds of her skirt, “which one of us are you truly jealous of - don’t think I haven’t heard tales of what young men get up to at university, after all,” she chides, leaving him open-mouthed, speechless, and - as he meets Simon’s eyes in the crowd - not entirely certain of the answer.