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Greville left the salon and loped along the corridor at a brisk pace, not stopping until he reached a servants’ door set into the wainscoting.

Waiting briefly to allow a harried-looking footman to emerge, he ran up three flights of narrow stairs lit only by plain windows set at intervals into the whitewashed walls.

Stepping out at last into family quarters on the third floor, Greville found himself in familiar territory.

A wide corridor carpeted in old-fashioned buckram led to the nursery and schoolroom still inhabited by his youngest siblings.

A warm golden light shone around the schoolroom door; he heard muffled hysteria, and what sounded very like a large piece of furniture being moved apace across waxed floorboards.

He smiled briefly, but this was no time to reacquaint himself with children who would scarcely remember his face.

Bloody Chas , in every possible sense of the word.

Greville’s long stride took him quickly away from the children’s quarters at the back of the third floor to the second-best family bedchambers overlooking the square.

Above the wainscoting, the walls here were still hung with once-bright flowered silk, a pattern of blowsy roses liberally spattered with faded ink beside the linen-press door.

He still remembered his father watching him from across the desk in his library: a thoughtful, intelligent man whose bewildered disappointment was more painful to endure than any physical punishment.

Greville, we must use the reason and judgement God gave us. What has happened to yours?

Sometimes it was a relief the old man was dead.

Greville strode with unerring instinct towards his former bedchamber, favoured in his youth because of a window providing easy egress to the stable mews.

At this hour of the day, one might reasonably expect to hear his young sisters and cousin calling to one another as they dressed for a rout party, or Chas and Jamie arguing over some finer point of backgammon, even as he remembered with a jolt that years had passed.

Estella and Charis were married and gone, and Jane avoided routs wherever possible, according to Kitty’s worried correspondence.

Likely those boys had long since swapped backgammon in the schoolroom for hazard at Watier’s.

Greville knew this kind of thick, hushed silence and he increased his pace. Finally reaching his old bedchamber, he came upon the same maidservant he’d seen bearing armfuls of bloodied linen through the formal quarters of the house.

The maid froze as he approached and dropped into a curtsey; the faded linen apron pinned to the front of her gown was streaked with dark blood, too. Her throat fluttered as she swallowed hard.

‘Milord, Mr Somers said I should not allow anyone in.’ She spoke with the steady nerve Greville favoured in young recruits, but here she was sweeping grates and emptying chamber-pots for his family. Was there any wonder, really, that some craved revolution just as much as others feared it?

‘Never mind, Susan.’ Greville never forgot a face, even if she had just been a twelve-year-old scullery maid the last time he’d seen her. Dropping into another curtsey, she stepped out of the way, her shoulders sagging a little with relief.

Greville walked into chaos: the air was thick with fresh sweat and the dirty reek of a butcher’s shop or a battlefield; he registered familiar faded wall-hangings, the same old battered velvet bed-curtains.

A bloodstained fine lawn shirt lay discarded on the rug.

Somers had taken off his jacket, and stood bent over the four-poster with his sleeves rolled up.

A tall, rangy young man with untidy fair hair stood at the other side of the bed, staring down at the occupant with undisguised irritation, arms folded across his chest.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Jamie spoke with bored distaste. ‘Just cut off his breeches, Somers. If you don’t want to do it, I suppose I must— Christ. ’ He broke off, staring across the room at Greville.

‘Bloody nonsense.’ The bed’s occupant spoke up in a breathless rush. ‘It’s a scratch, nothing more.’

‘Shut up, Chas,’ Jamie said, never taking his eyes off Greville. ‘Shit.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that, shall I?’ Greville spoke into an immense silence, with a nod at Somers. ‘Thank you. I suppose we have you to thank for the fact that the whole household has not been set about its ears?’

Somers cleared his throat. ‘It seemed undesirable, my lord. Lord Charles has sustained an injury, I’m afraid.’

Jamie’s face was a picture of uncharacteristic uncertainty and overwhelming guilt. ‘Greville—’

‘Keep it to yourself for now, why don’t you?

’ Greville braced himself for the inevitable confession later and reached the bedside where he found his younger brother white-faced, great pearls of sweat standing on his forehead as dark blood seeped from a wound on his thigh and into a pile of folded linen placed beneath his leg; Chas was fair like Jamie, but he shared the handsome, patrician features of Crauford and their father.

Now, his hair was dank with sweat. Vivid red spots stained Chas’s cheekbones, his lips white with the effort of pressing them together.

‘Hurts like the very devil, doesn’t it?’ Greville went on, sounding a lot more casual than he felt.

Chas had been shot in the leg, the ball resting too near the femoral artery for either Somers or Greville himself to attempt the extraction alone.

Greville was fairly certain that Somers would have had the thing out by now if he’d thought it worth the risk.

‘ Grev. What are you doing here?’ Chas spoke in an explosive burst of false enthusiasm before falling into the wide-eyed silence of a man enduring considerable pain.

‘Furlough, not that you need allow it to concern you.’ Greville rested a hand on his brother’s hot forehead and turned to Somers, filing away for later the certainty that if Chas lived, he was going to spin him a tale worthy of a gothic novel.

‘We need Smythe, I think, don’t you?’ Which was his way of saying he couldn’t get the ball out without likely killing his own brother in a spray of arterial blood any more than Somers could.

‘The girl can be relied upon,’ Somers said. ‘I believe Dr Smythe’s home is not more than a quarter-hour away.’

Greville’s gaze rested on Jamie. ‘Go with her,’ he said. ‘We can’t risk her not being taken seriously by Smythe’s staff. Be quick. As soon as you get back, you and I are going down to dine.’

‘Going down to what?’ Jamie demanded, incredulous. Chas was still bleeding into the folded pile of sheets even as he lapsed deeper into fever, turning his hot head from side to side on the creased pillow.

Greville smiled, with a patient glance at the brass carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Crauford and Marianne have gathered the most fashionable people in the entire haut ton in the blue salon downstairs, including the most famous man in England. They all know you and I are at home. It’s going to look a little odd if we eschew supper, isn’t it?

Or would you prefer news of this interesting scenario to spread right across Mayfair before morning? ’

Greville didn’t miss the flash of shielded defiance in Jamie’s expression.