Liana turns the page slowly

Gentle is not the same as quiet, and Liana proves it within minutes. 167 cm, slim, with the long lines that daily pilates leaves behind. Straight chestnut brown hair, worn long. Brown eyes, soft but observant. Evening clothes chosen with care and worn without fuss: a silk slip dress under fine wool, small pearls, a scarf tied without a glance in the mirror. She is graceful in the plainest sense of the word, and it shows most in how she enters a room, unhurried, as if she had been expected.

In her late twenties, intuitive and warm, she has a talent for sensing what someone needs before they say it: another cushion, a slower pace, a new subject. English is the language she speaks; French literature, read in good translation, is the one she lives in. Her margins are full of pencilled arguments with Flaubert. Gardening is the counterweight, a small London plot with more roses than room and a notebook recording every failure.

Her favourite prelude to an evening in this quarter is an hour at Hatchards on Piccadilly, the old bookshop with creaking stairs and the reassuring sense that nobody will hurry you. She will choose a book for you, ask the counter to wrap it, and hand it over across a drink before supper. If you would rather not carry it, she will keep it safe for your next evening.

Liana lives in Marylebone and meets guests near Albemarle Street more often than anywhere else. The hour is £600. Further arrangements are on rates, and requests go to Octavia by way of booking.