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At Fife House, Cressida climbed out of the window, finding ledges and hand-holds with silk-slippered toes and scrabbling fingertips, praying for the embrace of London’s streets, alleys and waterways.

She fell the last four or five feet and landed on the wide paved walkway of Whitehall itself in a rolling motion, winded and tangled in the ruined satin skirts of her gown.

She’d feel it later. There was still a crowd even at this small hour of the night, laid-off servants and rag-clad weavers with nothing left to lose, all followed by children with the sunken eyes and swollen bellies that signalled slow starvation.

Cressida got to her feet on a ragged exhalation, half expecting to hear the hue and cry for a house-breaker, but no one along the broad sweep of Whitehall seemed to notice or care that a woman in a satin gown had just tumbled from the first-floor window of Lord Liverpool’s house.

The mob seethed and swarmed down the wide street in a rising wave, away from Westminster Palace.

Even a child could tell that the murder of a much-hated prime minister less than a mile away had already given birth to the sort of riot that would rage for days.

Cressida dived in, elbowing past shouting women in filthy aprons and young bucks on the town struggling to hold on to their hats.

Satin slippers were a bitch to run in, worse even than hobnailed boots.

At last, she reached the remnants of the Privy Gardens, where ornamental cherry trees in full blossom still encircled a moonlit oval of scythed grass.

Sprinting for the cover of the trees, cold fear slicked down Cressida’s back as one of the soldiers in pursuit called out her name, mocking, as if certain she could never get away.

Damn, she hadn’t lost them, not for a moment.

With her draughtswoman’s eye, Cressida recalled that the gardens ended in a red-brick wall covered in rose trellises.

Again, not an option: instead, she tore across raked gravel and fallen cherry blossom, escaping through a latched gate into a quiet alleyway that backed onto the grim bulk of Scotland Yard.

Darting past the chapel, running across the cobbles, Cressida sprinted down the alleyway; here, she breathed in the heavy green reek of the Thames.

Gathering up her skirts, Cressida ran towards the river.

As she reached the Whitehall Steps that led down to the water, a curvaceous, dark-haired young girl of about seventeen stepped out from behind a heap of crates and barrels, respectably clad in clean pressed linen like the lady’s maid she sometimes actually was.

‘Mistress, come quickly – there’s a boat!’ Ines spoke in rapid Portuguese and Cressida followed her maid down the steps towards the river, casting a single look over her shoulder to confirm her suspicion: the three soldiers were now even closer.

Cressida grabbed Ines’s arm, steadying her.

A small skiff was indeed waiting, roped to an iron ring set into the bottom step.

A lithe, weather-beaten riverman in the upper reaches of his forties climbed swiftly out as they approached and Cressida swallowed an astonished curse.

Her father’s groom wore the same old greasy jacket of boiled wool, a neckerchief of yellowed linen, and a watchful expression of exasperated patience.

O’Neill had fled Dublin years before with Cressida’s father, both of them lucky to escape the gallows in the ruins of the rebellion.

Now, O’Neill was smoking a clay pipe that he tossed into the heaving Thames tide.

Ines pressed both hands to her mouth in a silent scream.

Cressida spun around to face a fourth soldier, smirking as he lounged in the shadowed wharf-edge.

The soldier turned on her, quick as an eel, forcing her up against the warehouse, cold stone at her back.

‘Might just have my fun with you before they stretch your neck, darling.’

O’Neill had always moved silently; he said the horses preferred it.

He cut the soldier’s throat from behind and lowered the corpse into the pooling tidewaters of the Thames with all the tenderness of a lover.

There was a brief silence in which O’Neill wiped his hands on his breeches before handing Ines and then Cressida down into the boat with a blank expression that fooled no one.

Cressida took one of the long oars, pushing them out into the Thames; she felt the pull of the tide and O’Neill took the oar from her without a word, now rowing hard.

‘They’ll shoot us!’ Ines hissed, her gaze fixed on the gaggle of soldiers, who abruptly stopped running at the top of the steps with what would have been comical timing in any other circumstances.

‘They won’t,’ Cressida said. Her mind raced: there was no other riverman within hailing distance, but the Thames teemed with skiffs and other small craft and it wouldn’t be long before the soldiers managed to secure passage and pursue them, before or after they realised their comrade was now well on his way to an ignominious resting place on a Deptford Creek mudflat.

The back of Cressida’s neck tingled but no one opened fire.

Lascelles had quietly shipped her home from Spain under his own personal guard.

Why? Facing Cressida and Ines, O’Neill gripped the oars with his sun-browned hands, steering the skiff with expert ease.

For a moment she was eight years old again, O’Neill tossing her up into the saddle in the crumbling stable-yard at Rosmoney as he held the mare.

Gently does it now. He wasn’t smiling now.

‘I’m only going to ask this once,’ Cressida said, in the Irish she’d learned from O’Neill and the other servants, long ago. ‘What in the devil’s name are you doing here?’

He didn’t grace that with a reply. In reality, there was only one person who could or would have ordered this.

Ines stared in thoughtful disgust at Cressida’s gown as O’Neill worked the oars in a silence that spoke volumes. ‘Look at that mud. It will never come out. I don’t know why you had to ruin the best of the gowns before we’ve even been in England for five minutes. Milady.’

Cressida gave Ines a look that quelled her impertinence.

Her own thoughts would not quieten. It had been a long day and before that the crossing from the walled Atlantic city of Lisbon had not been pleasant under full guard.

She and Lascelles had dined together every night on board the Sophie : it was the only time she was ever allowed to leave a locked cabin shared with Ines.

Over supper and white burgundy their conversation had ranged with the familiarity of long friendship from the dark passion in Goya’s paintings to how much Lascelles’ young sister Georgiana loved sailing.

They’d both been at war long enough that it felt natural never to touch on topics best left alone.

Not once had Lascelles hinted at what would happen to her once they docked: he ought to have known she intended never to find out.

London flew past in darkness: wharves, torchlit palaces, medieval gardens leading down to the river.

Even at this hour of the night, the waterway was crowded with skiffs and luggers and rivermen rowing gangs of workmen, clerks in cheap jackets and working girls in bonnets that had been fashionable two years before.

Ines gave her a quick look from beneath thick dark lashes, but her fingers were twined hard together, white with pressure.

Cressida was no liar, or never to Ines at least: there was no reassurance to give.