Professor Malcolm Marr waited with some trepidation while the elegant lady in front of him unpacked the box he had brought with him.

He was merely carrying out a commission, he reminded himself, and had followed his client’s instructions to the letter, so whether she liked the result or not, it was not his responsibility.

Still, he found himself anxious not to disappoint the Duchess of Winshire. She was a good and kind person, as well as a powerful one, and he knew the present was for her new husband. A love token. He might not have experienced romantic love himself, but he had seen it in others. He respected the notion.

She had moved aside the wood shavings and the strips of paper, and was lifting out the first item. “Oh! It is beautiful!”

“Chinese, Your Grace,” he explained. “From the Tang dynasty. More than a thousand years old. ” It stood four square on a small marble stand, its neck arched and its bobbed tail proud. The colours were still as bright as the day it was fired.

“How magnificent,” said Her Grace.

The second piece bore signs that it, too, had once been brightly painted, but now—except in the cracks, it was the white of the marble from which it had been carved. Another horse, this one caught forever in a trot, its mane and tail flowing in the wind of its silent passage. “Greek, ma’am, in the Hellenistic style, so just of two thousand years old.”

“Beautiful,” the duchess breathed. “Professor Marr, these are perfect.”

Her smile took years off her age and reminded Mal that she had once been the reigning beauty of her time. “Nothing from Egypt? I know that is your specialist area.”

“Nothing on the market at the moment, Your Grace.”

“You have done very well, my dear. Now drink your tea and I shall drink mine while gloating over these two wonderful statuettes. My husband will be as thrilled as I am.”

She turned the full force of her smile onto the two pieces, and Mal let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He had not made a mistake. He hated seeing the lovely remnants of the past in the hands of people who would not appreciate them, but that didn’t apply here.

He felt obliged to point out, however, that such horses were not rare, as such things go. “There are many such items available if one knows where to look, Your Grace.”

“As you do. You are not going to tell me that they are turned out in great quantity by a little workshop in East Wapping, I hope.”

He laughed at that. “No, Your Grace. They are genuine. They are also unique, in that every piece that is found is a little different from every other.”

“They are perfect,” she repeated. “You must not fret, Professor.” She changed the subject. “Now. I understand you are off to York. A public lecture, is it?”

“One for the York Antiquarian Society, Ma’am. I am taking in their full schedule of lectures while I am there.”

“You have a relative in York, I believe.”

“A godmother. Rose St Aubyn. I’ll be staying with her while I’m in York.”

“Oh!” The duchess sounded surprised, but she changed the subject, asking him about recent work, and they passed another thirty minutes in pleasant conversation before he took his leave.

Eleanor looked at the door as it closed behind the esteemed scholar. Perhaps she should have told him that Rose St Aubyn was away, and that the house was soon to be occupied by the daughters of the deceased Earl of Seahaven. But Eleanor remembered the eldest from her brief London season. Fiercely intelligent. Deeply interested in ancient civilisations. That had been years ago, of course, but Lady Elizabeth had not ‘taken’, and nor had she married since.

Perhaps the professor and the bluestocking might suit? Stranger things had happened. And if the young man thought to stay in the house the young lady occupied, they would certainly meet.

Malcolm Kentigern Marr is the hero of Rue Allyn’s “The Butler and the Bluestocking”, a story in Desperate Daughters. And he certainly does meet the lovely Lady Elizabeth.  Now published by still only 99 cents. Price goes up to $5.99 after 23 May.