Elizabeth was just the tiniest bit bored when Brandon Lewis came in through the French Windows, shook off his companion, and made a bee-line towards her. Yes, this cocktail party had certainly gone flat. She looked across at Lady Radcliffe, but then an obstacle blotted the hostess out. It was a regular darkening of the sun. A brutal eclipse, let us say.

“I hear you’re a tough nut – I’m thinking walnuts here – to crack in the love stakes,” Brandon rather unceremoniously began.

“What are you going on about?” Liz said, rather taken aback.

“They tell me one needs a permit before one can even think about falling in love with you.”

“What arrant nonsense!”

“You mean they’ve been lying to me?”

“Who exactly?”

“Why, your paramours, of course. The men feebly holding out their broken hearts to you, begging you – in most pitiful fashion – to fix ’em up.”

“Excuse me, but do I even know you?”

“No, we’ve never met. I came with Rob. The heir to the Flicksmania fortune.”

“Oh, Robert, is he here?”

Liz looked around. But the blot took up most of the space.

“Brandon’s the name. Bit brash, maybe, but I don’t mean no harm. It’s the name what does it.”

Brandon extended his hand. Liz a little finger. 

“Lizzie,” she said. 

They shook. A docile shake. The kind of shake a couple of butterflies might make.

“They tell me you’re quite the croquet champ around these parts,” Brandon said.

“Who does?”

“Oh, the country-club set, some of whom also have a b-job as your broken-hearted paramours.”

“Can’t we just drop this element of the conversation, please.”

“What element?”

“The love element.”

“Give me a permit and I’ll change the subject pronto!”

“But I don’t have a permit to give!”

Brandon whipped three pink pieces of paper out of his jacket pocket. 

“If you’ll just sign here, here and here.”

She signed, but she put a sigh into the signing.

“And here’s your copy,” Brandon said. “Now, what would you like to talk about? I’m not much of an equestrian but I’m rather knowledgeable about the differences between easels, donkeys, burros, mules and asses.”

“Any other topics of conversation?”

“I’m pretty good on the differences between the Pre or Proto-Impressionists, the Impressionists themselves, and their followers, the post-Impressionists.”

“Yes, much better. That subject will suit me fine.”

“Now, what to call them Pre or Proto-Impressionists, huh? I think, looking at Manet, then Proto fits rather better than Pre. Take his huge canvas, that beast, roughly fifty inches times seventy-five. Olympia. Did you know …”

Liz wasn’t too sure about this one. At least he was more or less her own age. And now that she had given him a permit, she supposed she was obliged to listen to him every now and again. And then, there was the fact that he was a friend of Robert’s, the heir to the Flicksmania fortune. And then, she had to admit that the cocktail party, it did seem to have jerked back into life somehow.