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Half an hour later, Greville took Kitty’s elbow and walked her into the candlelit dining room to face the Craufords’ idea of a light repast; in the time he’d been upstairs, Kitty’s demeanour had altered, tension now thrumming through her slender form.

‘I see you’re still master of the art of dressing to dine in under ten minutes,’ she said, with asperity. ‘What on earth have you done to Jamie? What’s going on? ’

Ignoring Jamie’s mutinous presence at the far end of the dining room, Greville shrugged as he steered Kitty towards a seat furthest from the fire; anyone sitting near it would be sweating before the soup was even despatched.

‘It only took me five minutes to dress this evening, as a matter of fact. Dr Smythe is with Charles now, or soon will be. I don’t suppose you have the smallest notion of why or how he managed to get himself shot in the thigh on a Thursday night? ’

Kitty’s eyes widened as they approached the long, damask-covered table, but she held her nerve.

‘I wonder you don’t worry about being overheard.

And all I know is they came in through the kitchen, and of course then Mrs Green went off into hysterics.

I’ve no idea how it happened. What did he tell you? ’

‘Nothing, of course.’ Greville cast a look down the table.

Jamie had already taken his seat beside the slender and fragile Annabella Milbanke, who was the daughter of one of his mother’s oldest friends.

Greville had been to many a schoolroom dance with Annabella, who was gifted at mathematics and devoutly religious.

Now, she looked furious and overcome to have Byron on her other side, the poor bloody lamb.

Byron spoke across her to address Jamie, leaning on the table, using his fork to make a point.

‘Jamie ought to remember his manners,’ Greville said.

‘He’s no better than Byron: they’re both treating Annabella like a piece of furniture. ’

‘Jamie ought to remember a particle of common sense—’ Kitty broke off, turning with prescient instinct to face Lady Melbourne, who, despite her rheumatism, approached them both like a ship under full sail, tall and statuesque in beaded silk, even as she leaned on a jet-inlaid stick.

Kitty pinched Greville’s elbow. ‘If she cuts me, I’ll never forgive you, Grev.’

Instead, Lady Melbourne smiled and nodded at them both, before turning away to speak to Crauford, who was leading her into supper; Kitty visibly sagged with relief.

‘It seems your scandalous presence is to be tolerated, then.’ Kitty turned back to Greville with a humourless smile. ‘Never mind Chas, you’re fortunate that my reputation survives you, brother dear, otherwise you’d stand in need of Dr Smythe’s services yourself.’

‘Forgive me,’ Greville said. ‘So where Lady Melbourne leads, everyone else still follows?’

‘For leadership of the ton, it’s neck and neck between her, Sally Jersey and Annis Bute.

’ Kitty placed her empty glass on the table with suppressed anger.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing. Why did you not consult with Mama at least before coming home?

With you turning up here I almost feel sorry for Marianne, which is saying something. ’

‘I did consult with my mother,’ he said, holding out his sister’s seat, ‘and you know quite well what a strategist she is. Where is she, in fact?’

Kitty frowned. ‘I don’t know, in all honesty.’

Greville closed his eyes. Oh, shit.

‘Mama not being here is another oddity about this evening,’ Kitty went on, with sotto voce understatement.

‘We all expected her, and then at about four o’clock she sent Jamie home to say she might be delayed and we weren’t to wait for her.

She sent another note for Marianne saying she’d be so obliged if an extra place might be laid at table. ’

‘What a termagant she is.’ Greville cast a swift glance down the table at his satin-clad sister-in-law Marianne, who paid no heed to the two empty Queen Anne dining chairs that yawned like the gaps left by diseased teeth.

‘At any rate, my mother knows I’m in town, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d summoned the Melbournes here tonight to lend me countenance.

Listen, Chas seems to think the shooting was a case of mistaken identity. Do you believe him?’

‘I could believe anything of this spring.’ Kitty sat back in her chair, allowing a footman to fill her glass with champagne.

‘I don’t know what you hear from Spain, but London feels like a powder-keg ready to blow at any minute.

Our dear brother Crauford is always telling anyone who will listen that the man who shot poor Lord Perceval had his own private vendetta, but he was the prime minister.

And even I hear of unrest and unhappiness everywhere from the Lake District to London.

One can sense it, too – the way the poor people beg, and stare and call out to one.

Can you not, Greville?’ Kitty shook her head, fretting with the damascened ring that had hung around her neck on a delicate gold chain for as long as Greville could remember, slipping the ring on and off her thumb, before finally setting down her fork.

‘Things have changed. I can’t rid myself of a hag-ridden sensation, as if we’ve all woken up in a nightmare. ’

Greville smiled at her. ‘You used to light candles for me at the hearth when I had nightmares.’ There was more to say, only Lord Melbourne had turned to them both, seated at Kitty’s other side.

Melbourne smiled at Kitty as if to a child of below par intelligence, even as his gaze rested on her décolletage.

‘What an exotic ring you have there, my dear. I believe it is a Mughal custom for ladies to wear such ornaments upon their thumbs? There’s something so compelling about oriental beauty.’

‘I’m sure you think so,’ Greville said, amiably.

Lord Melbourne swallowed hard: there was something damned reptilian about the man.

Kitty pinched Greville’s hand beneath the table.

He knew quite well that the ring was all she had left of her grandmother, save stories and poems. With weary expertise, she directed Lord Melbourne into a conversation about imported silk, before ruthlessly despatching him to the attentions of the lady sitting at his other side, one of Marianne’s particular friends.

‘Greville, you must stop looking at people in such a murderous fashion,’ Kitty said.

‘Anyway, I’ll stop being so maudlin. I think you could safely read nothing at all into what’s happened to Chas.

If the prime minister can be killed in cold blood by some merchant with an obsessive grudge, goodness only knows what could happen to any one of us by some foolish accident.

Everything feels so febrile—’ She broke off, her attention called away by Lord Melbourne once more, who drew her into an off-colour conversation about the merits of sea-bathing that sent a frisson of rage down Greville’s spine.

But Kitty was no debutante and more than experienced enough to laughingly redirect lascivious table-talk.

Greville allowed his gaze to wander down the long table, resting at last on Jamie and Byron, a fair head and a dark head close together, Annabella Milbanke still angrily blushing between them.

She had every right: both Jamie and the poet were ignoring her in a manner likely to attract vicious comment.

Byron leaned closer with a hungry look, speaking to Jamie in a low voice.

And then, as if sensing an undercurrent in the room, he smiled at Jamie and turned away from him, reaching out with one fingertip to brush one of Annabella’s shining ringlets away from her forehead.

Her blush deepened, spreading down her pale throat; she was liquefied and Byron observed it with unconcealed hunger, which at least explained why he hadn’t tired of Marianne’s party and left before supper – an insult he was more than capable of.

The man was exhausting. Greville didn’t miss the briefest flash of chagrin in Jamie’s expression, suppressed as he drained his wine glass.

Jamie gave him a quick, wolfish smile, and Greville looked away, crushing the urge to haul his young cousin unceremoniously out of the room.

To Jamie’s left, Lady Melbourne had turned to watch, her lips parted.

Marianne, too, sat still as Byron whispered in Annabella’s ear so that her blush deepened even further, fork raised halfway to her mouth, her eyes darkening.

They were like moths drawn to a candle-flame, every last one.

At that moment, the double doors swung open, and Greville’s brother’s butler, Eames, stepped into the room, with a sense of alarm that Greville could not help but taste on the air like the sort of bad miasma bringing sickness into London with the rolling Thames mist. A quick glance confirmed Jamie and also Byron had noticed it, both shifting infinitesimally in their seats.

With the exception of Jamie, they’d served on the battlefield or had got close enough to smell it.

Greville had a knife on him but wished it was a pistol.

He quietly digested the fact that Jamie had honed his instinct for self-preservation somewhere other than the theatre of war, and most likely in the molly-houses of Vere Street.

‘The Dowager Lady Crauford,’ Eames said. ‘And Lady Greville Nightingale.’

Greville’s mother walked into the dining room, fascinating in midnight-blue satin trimmed with black velvet and black lace gloves up past her elbows, arm in arm with her daughter-in-law.

Cressida was draped in peacock-blue, auburn curls arranged to fall over one pale shoulder.

She looked straight at him across the room, with that dark, direct gaze he had never forgotten, despite his best efforts.

At Greville’s side Kitty sucked in a ragged breath, snatching at his hand beneath the table.

Greville gave his sister’s fingers a brief squeeze and signalled to the footman to fill his glass once more, knowing full well all eyes were on him.

‘Well goodness, I’m sorry to be late,’ Sylvia said, addressing the entire room with all the confiding charm that had smoothed over her quiet little scandals for more than thirty Seasons.

‘Cressy and I have just made the most enormous exhibition of ourselves – would you believe the barouche threw a wheel on Pall Mall, of all places? We had an audience of social mushrooms, grubby little boys, and a dandy with shirt points so high he couldn’t see to assist us.

’ Pausing for breath, she turned to the footman and took a glass of champagne from the tray.

‘I’ve never been nearer to a state of complete hysterical collapse. ’

‘Lady Crauford does herself a disservice, as usual.’ Cressida spoke into the fragile silence as if the Duke of Cleveland had never been interrupted pleasuring her in a quiet corner at a ball.

Cressida smiled at the twenty-six members of high society waiting for her to fall again.

‘My mama-in-law was redoubtable,’ Cressida went on.

‘We had an incompetent wheelwright and I thought she was going to kick him out of the way and mend it herself.’

‘He was drunk, dear,’ Sylvia said. ‘We must sit – I’m so sorry, Marianne!

You’re waiting for the second remove to come in, aren’t you?

Don’t worry, Cressida and I won’t keep you all waiting while we gobble fried oysters.

Let’s go straight on to the goose and all the rest of it and Mrs Green’s chocolate pie, which is gorgeous, although I ought not to say so. ’

Only then did Sylvia allow her gaze to fix on Greville.

Even she had the grace to look alarmed. Cressida faced them all with a cool self-possession that he’d soon shake.

Jamie shot Greville a look of concern along with a flicker of another emotion that he couldn’t quite identify.

Byron glanced from Greville to Cressida and back again, and rolled his eyes.

To the devil with them all. Greville turned now to his wife: escorted by a footman, she crossed the room towards her seat at the table with her usual mannish stride, the silk skirts of her gown clinging about her waist and hips, dear God.

Greville addressed the table with the edge of dissolution that they’d all be expecting.

‘I propose a toast to Cressida, who has honoured us all by returning from her travels and coming home to England.’ He raised his glass to her, enjoying the brief flare of indignation in her eyes.

‘You chose a fine time to return to these shores, my lady, but how glad we all are that you did.’