When at last I freed the landlord's maid from our awkward embrace by the hearth, her heavily rouged cheeks blushed pinker still. It was only then that I realised the absurdity of my reaction, and I apologised repeatedly and profusely without further explanation as to the root of so foolishly kissing her.

I did not wish to alarm the girl further than I already had done, spilling fantastic tales of wraiths and phantom cab drivers. Instead I rubbed my cheek as I so often did when I grew nervous, and, as if to diffuse the situation even marginally, I accepted her pot of tea with gratitude.

For a long, solemn hour I stood before the hearth in my sodden shirt and trousers, sipping several cups of unsweetened tea. I flipped over the watch inside the pocket of my waistcoat; the one with my name so beautifully engraved on its rear. It was an acceptance gift courtesy of Nina's father after I had nervously approached him for his daughter's hand in matrimony. As I mentioned prior, our marriage had long been arranged by people I did not know of, so to humbly ask for his blessing was a formality that was not mine to submit.

As I so often did when I felt agitated, I endlessly flipped the catch on the side of it. I thought of Nina, of how much I needed to talk to her, to confide my fears in her, and of how she should have been the recipient of my impulsive bout of affection, not Rawlings' housemaid. I wanted Nina by my side so fiercely that the feeling was altogether alarming, as if I had come to rely on her for comfort without realising it. Was that love? It hardly mattered; if she had had concern for my fidelity before ... well, Heavens forbid she ever found out about the housemaid, or I may never win my lover back.

Dutifully, the young servant did not retire home until she was certain I'd avoided hypothermia and calmed down enough to stop shivering. She stoked the fire and left me with a final tray on the table between the two settees at my back. After she headed out through the hallway, letting in a blast of frigid air, I was once again alone.

For once I did not like the thought of it.

Upon turning to refill my cup I saw that she'd left me no pot on the tray at all, but a single crystal glass and the finest of Mr Rawlings' London gin with the stopper undone. Though knowing I risked us both trouble with the landlord should I choose to indulge myself, I did so regardless, and tipped back two mouthfuls of burning spirits without abandon. It warmed me on the inside in a way no hearth could, and God knows, after a night of such horrifying ordeals, that I needed it.

Much to my regret, I did not receive an invite to the de Veyra's soirée in celebration of Nina's birthday. For the past month I had hoped I would find an envelope through Mr Rawlings' front door; one spelling out my name in the fine, gold lettering of my sweetheart's hand.

Each day my heart shrank a little more with every flyer, every postcard, every invoice that was not addressed to me, but as I left them on the arm of the settee for Mr and Mrs Rawlings to claim, I could not find it in myself to give up hope of tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the day...

Yet still, by the 14th of October, a little over a week before her birthday, I saw no familiar handwriting in amongst our other daily articles. It is with a heavy heart that I resigned myself to the fact she did not wish for me to be there, perhaps even preferring the company of another gentleman, as if to altogether replace me so soon.

The housemaid, having never again mentioned the night I arrived home soaked through and terror-stricken, would catch my eye whenever she saw me dejected this way. She would smile over her shoulder in attempt to coax my lips to do the same, and it brings me equal amounts of shame and puzzlement that, almost of their own accord, they consented.

Though my heart was breaking it had also beset a path to recklessness, as though to catch the housemaid's covert glances worked on it much like a drug to the senses, sending it aflutter. I deny myself, of course. I had long forsaken the hedonistic tendencies of my yesteryears. Not once as Joseph Redding had I taken notice of the housemaid, whose name I feel it past time to ask, (Clarice, or Caroline, perhaps...) before that fateful night. I knew that if I had not reacted so impulsively she would not be sneaking any signals my way at all.

It was not only my tormented heart that had become hasty; as the week of Nina's birthday approached, I too did something rash. I took myself to a favoured gentlemen's emporium at 36 Tunney Row; one I had not known the pleasures of for some time. I acquainted with a young dandy minding the shop door who said, "Pleased to meet you. Emerson Clynes, and before you ask – no, I am not related."

I shook his outstretched hand in earnest, but did not partake in the joke that was so utterly lost on me. He guided me towards a range of dowdy fabrics he presumed were within my price range. Mildly insulted, I raised my chin at him and he bowed his head in humble apology, leading me through a curtain at the rear to the where he kept only the finest material.

"Do take your time, sir," he said with a smile befit for his handsome face.

On the eve of the 22nd, poised before a mirror, I modelled a fitted tailcoat of the deepest, elegant navy, embellished with double breasted silver buttons down the front; black trousers and silk gloves; a white dress shirt with a high, stiff collar; and a white ascot to adorn it. I examined myself from every angle thrice, and then thrice over. The seams were flawless. The lining was exquisite. I was truly a masterpiece, as if crafted by the hand of Lionel Fantoni himself.

The young man mimicking me in my reflection positively charmed me. I smiled at him in likeness to the way the housemaid now did, and he returned it with a glimmer in his burnished eyes. The clothes skimmed his frame so perfectly it was as if he existed for them, and I found it astonishing that that man was me, half-suspecting I had glanced upon the devil in disguise and fallen for his beauty.

Everything about the quality of the attire put no regrets in my mind as I wrote out the cheque. Every stitch was worth its farthing. Satisfied, I finished Joseph Redding's signature with a flourish.

Vanity amongst the rich and respected elite was as much a sin as it was a necessity. It was a part of a life I now enjoyed as much as the next man of supposed honourable birth. But I was not yet finished. A stop at the barber's was a long overdue luxury, and I had Horace administer his finest lather as he shaved my face and neck bare as the day I was born. He offered to trim my hair a little, but I did not permit him. I'd grown fond of it this way – a little tousled, a little untamed, like the man hidden beneath my façade. Joseph Redding would have never grown his hair past his ears, but it was the only expression I had left of myself.

My extravagant and irresponsible spending was not all for nought. I arrived at the de Veyra estate at 7pm on the 23rd dressed with no expense spared, and Rolland welcomed me into the foyer with his usual warm expression obscured behind his thick brown moustache. I gave him a cosy smile and he disappeared somewhere with my hat and gloves.

The cheery hum of a string quartet sailed over the murmurs of the throng. Everywhere I gazed were red-faced men squeezed into their finest tailcoats and their wives in their exorbitant, if not somewhat gaudy frocks. They prattled and chortled amongst themselves with small talk, unabashed in their over-complimenting while the evening was still young.

"Oh! How darling you look, Lillian!"

"Please, my dear Harriet! Pretty as a painting in May!"

They drank white wine from crystal flutes and most paid me no mind, though there transpires that same peculiar phenomenon when one walks amidst a crowded room of acquaintances. I became acutely aware the others' presence not in the sounds of their voices, or even the chaotic thrumming of their unified hearts, but in the tiniest fragment of time that their eyes lingered on my form from every corner of the room.

A hundred orbs of every hue flickered in my direction as I sauntered the breadth of the foyer, full aware they knew of my significance. Alas, they did not directly grant me their attention, but Nina's guests privately acknowledged that I was with them in the room, and I revelled in this rare moment of latent limelight.

I must express that by nature I am not one to harvest pleasure from the fawning of his company. But something about my heartache infused with the secret of that kiss had established something strange inside me; a newfound apex of vanity that thrilled me and disturbed me in parallel.

Towards the far end of the room sat Alphonse de Veyra, with one hand nursing a half empty flute and the other resting on Lady Tolliver's shoulder. By the looks of the flush present in his cheeks he was prematurely far gone, though this did nought to soften the severe features on his Mediterranean face.

No sooner had Nina's father picked me out of the crowd did his gaiety dry up. He paused, stood from the settee and encroached on my path with a look in his eyes that spelt disaster.