Extended engagements: a weekend, a week of evenings, or a few days away

An extended engagement takes one of two forms. The weekend is continuous: your companion arrives on the first evening and leaves on the last day, and the time between is shared. The series is not: during a long stay, the same companion joins you for dinner on several evenings, and your days remain your own. A weekend is quoted as a whole. A series is priced evening by evening from the ladder, with no premium for the repetition.

Consider three dinners across a working week: Monday at Wiltons, Wednesday somewhere livelier with a band, Friday a quiet table at the hotel before an early flight. Each is its own booking, and the same companion arrives on each occasion knowing how the last one went, which subjects landed and which wine you sent back.

Between one dinner and the next, nothing is expected of you: no messages to answer, no plans to keep up. To move an evening, send Octavia a line, and the ordinary terms apply to each evening on its own.

A London weekend centred on Albemarle Street might run like this. Friday: a late supper at Brown's, and nothing planned after it. Saturday: the Royal Academy at opening time, before the crowds, then lunch upstairs at Fortnum's, an afternoon in the arcades off Piccadilly and dinner at Wiltons. Sunday: breakfast without an alarm, a walk across both parks to the lake and its pelicans, and goodbye at the hotel door after lunch.

None of it is fixed. Your companion will have suggestions of her own, and some of the best weekends are the ones with a free afternoon left deliberately empty. English weather has views of its own as well: a walk becomes a gallery, a picnic becomes a long lunch, a matinee on the Haymarket fills a grey Saturday, and nothing about a change of plan alters the figure agreed.

Longer engagements travel well. A house party in Wiltshire, a few days by the sea in Cornwall, a long weekend in Paris or Venice. Journeys are planned with the companion herself, who decides whether a destination suits her. Her travel and her room are arranged by you as host, and the figure Octavia confirms is for her company across the whole engagement, whatever the days contain. Country weekends keep their own dress code, and she packs for it once she knows whether the house expects boots, black tie or both.

The notebook suggests itineraries in the weekend abroad, and travel arrangements in writing explains how engagements weeks ahead are held.

Several days in company call for someone who never needs entertaining. Violetta swims in cold water at dawn and reads one slim volume at a time, and she is Octavia's first name for a weekend out of town. Laura rides, skis and never lets her passport lapse. Nora, with a designer's eye and a pocket sketchbook, is lovely company on a day that drifts into evening. Thea cycles, maps walks in the Chilterns and has decided opinions on rice. Nora and Thea both appear among the blondes. Any companion may be asked, of course; these four simply travel and settle well.

A weekend is best raised a week or more ahead, which gives the widest choice of companion; in high summer and in December, when hotels and tables fill, two weeks is kinder. Octavia returns one figure in writing, and no room or ticket is booked until you have agreed it. After that, the terms on the rates page apply, as for any engagement, and booking explains how the thread is kept.