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Lascelles sighed and poured them each a glass of cognac, which Greville ignored.

His head was pounding. ‘Listen,’ Lascelles said.

‘The issue is, Cressida, you were compromised: you were caught with the French and on my watch. I can’t let that go and you know it as well as I do.

And if Greville hadn’t found you when he did, you’d be buried in a pit somewhere outside Badajoz with every one else who died there.

You’ve nothing more than the clothes on your back and nowhere to go. ’

‘Am I to thank you for the reminder?’ Cressida’s tone was effortlessly louche.

At the window, Greville leaned on the sill in his shirtsleeves, too angry to look at either of them.

She’d brought this on herself. All of it.

‘Don’t be facetious,’ Lascelles said. ‘In actual fact, you’ve got too much blue blood to find yourself on the gallows, but Greville is right: the Committee of Secrecy is utterly ruthless and sooner or later you’ll find yourself with a knife between your ribs in some dark alley unless you make yourself indispensable like your father did.

Fortunately for you, the prime minister was murdered a few days ago, and no one knows if that gunshot was the start of something bigger. ’

‘What the bloody hell are you playing at, Arthur?’ Greville asked, turning around.

He picked up the sheaf of papers and let them fall onto the table, speaking with slow, dangerous precision.

‘It’s pretty damn clear in my briefing: Luddites raiding the homes of mill-owners for weapons, and the whole of London rioting.

What has Cressida got to do with murder, let alone revolution?

How in God’s name is that fortunate for her? Lord Perceval was shot in cold blood.’

Cressida accepted the brandy but didn’t drink it, her dark eyes glittering as she watched Greville over the rim of her glass.

‘I take it you’ve both heard about Byron’s grand passion?’ Lascelles went on, master of the art of non sequitur.

‘Other than Caroline Lamb? He was giving her one hell of a flyer in Lady Liverpool’s salon last time I saw him,’ Cressida replied, with unthinking vulgarity.

Lascelles gave her a very cool look. ‘What you may not know is that after Lord Perceval introduced the capital penalty for any weaver found guilty of destroying the machines, Byron spoke up in their defence in the House of Lords.’

Cressida smiled, her eyes alight with humour. ‘Good boy, George.’

‘He’s the only peer ever to have done so,’ Lascelles went on.

‘You saw the state of everything before we brought you in: those riots are the least of it. Suspicion and completely hysterical gossip about the motive of Perceval’s killer has been scorching through the entire country like wildfire.

Heaven only knows the man had enough enemies. ’

‘What the bloody hell are you trying to suggest?’ Greville demanded, finally losing the last of his patience. ‘Spouting public sympathy with starving weavers doesn’t indicate for a moment Byron would actually do something to achieve justice for them. He doesn’t get out of bed before twelve.’

Cressida smiled again. ‘George is far more careful than you give him credit for: he’ll go so far with Caroline Lamb but not far enough to damage his own reputation, even if hers ends up as smoking rubble. And he’s no rabble-rouser, either.’

‘Keep up, the two of you: George Byron’s actual personal stake in Perceval’s murder doesn’t have the slightest relevance to our current situation.

’ Lascelles spoke with cold precision. ‘He’s revered in a way that you’ll certainly have never seen before; I haven’t – no one has ,’ Lascelles went on.

‘The prime minister was shot down in the House of Commons and the country’s already on the brink of revolution: the last thing an enraged mob needs is a standard-bearer to gather behind, and especially not a figurehead like George Gordon Byron.

It’s mob rule the Cabinet fears now – luckily for you, Cressida. ’

‘I don’t even want to know what you have in mind, but he was in our set of friends,’ Greville said. ‘He was one of us. Does that mean nothing to you?’

Lascelles shrugged. ‘It means that he’s a sight more likely to trust you with his revolutionary urges, even if the chances of him ever acting upon them are slim to none.

Lord and Lady Greville Nightingale are to achieve a reconciliation at Lady Bute’s house party this summer, where Lord Byron is to be a guest. There you will do what you can to investigate his true political leanings, Cressida; I don’t care how.

And if you get close enough to him to stir up a bit of distracting gossip, all to the good.

Greville, you will ensure that your wife acts in the interests of His Majesty the King, and not against them.

God only knows you were the sole person who ever came close to handling her. ’

‘What a ridiculous notion.’ Greville spoke with the level self-possession that his men quailed at in Spain: hard and unforgiving soldiers, every last one.

Lascelles stared back at him with another small shrug.

‘If you want to know why Perceval was shot, why don’t you just ask the man who did it?

He’s been cooling his heels in Newgate ever since. ’

‘Because they hanged him this morning.’ Lascelles picked up a cloisonné snuff box from the mantelpiece and inhaled a dose of Macouba from the back of his hand.

Greville frowned, recalling what he’d read in that morning’s newspaper, his interest piqued despite himself.

‘Some trading dispute, wasn’t it? Bellingham believed he was owed redress from Whitehall after being thrown into prison in Russia over something to do with export duties.

How can he have been of sound mind in any way, shape or form?

He ought to be in Bedlam now, not on his way to the dissection table. ’

‘Even you must see that someone had to hang, and quickly,’ Lascelles said.

‘The prime minister is dead: he was murdered at the heart of government. John Bellingham might be dead now too, and clearly was insane, but he also trained as a clerk. Here.’ Lascelles laid a battered leather pocket-book on the table.

‘Bellingham kept meticulous personal accounts. And a man with an unshakeable obsession like his might easily become the pawn of those wishing to cover their own tracks.’ Lascelles opened the pocketbook with his gloved hands, and Greville took it, glancing at rows of neat figures penned by a man who had faced the gallows just hours ago.

‘Bellingham was on the brink of bankruptcy when he came to London to petition for compensation in February. And yet he lived here in London for months, paying his rent, purchasing the niceties. Men with no means of support can’t cough up to have their dressing-gowns laundered. Who paid his way?’

Cressida stood watching them both, her expression unreadable.

Greville extinguished a spurt of anger. It was the sheer incompetent stupidity of it all that he couldn’t bear.

‘Let me guess: Whitehall and the Committee of Secrecy now have every government spy trying to work out who was bankrolling a man now too dead to tell them anything. And if they can’t find out who it really was, a nice juicy distracting scandal will do just as well.

’ He’d heard enough. ‘Byron is insufferable but even he doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this.

I hate to say it but Cressida’s right: he’s far too lazy to be a real rabble-rouser, and even pretending that he would or starting rumours that amount to the same thing is bloody immoral.

My wife will be having nothing to do with it. ’

Cressida turned on him then, dark eyes alight with mockery.

‘So commanding, Greville. Whoever would think that we used to fantasise about the emancipation of womankind, all that time ago? Although perhaps I was the one doing the fantasising, and you were saying whatever you thought would beat the quickest path up my skirts.’

‘It didn’t take long,’ Greville said: she had been liquid with desire at his touch.

Cressida chose not to dignify that with a response, even though she could not disguise the faint betraying flush across her cheekbones. Those skirts had been of exceptionally fine muslin that crumpled to nothing.

‘I won’t work with Nightingale, Lascelles,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring you George Byron’s head on a plate if I must, but I’ll do this my way or not at all.’

Lascelles shrugged, with a glimmer of the Arthur who had waltzed with her in laughing splendour at Carlton House.

‘Apart from the fact I don’t trust you, without Greville to lend you countenance, you won’t gain entry into the right circles and your life depends on it.

And before you say you won’t fail, you failed at Badajoz: you were caught at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people, even if most of them were dead.

You won’t get out of the country with your maid if you fail me in this, Cressida.

You won’t even live out the summer: the Committee of Secrecy has a very long reach and Lord Liverpool can and will authorise your removal unless you make yourself visibly indispensable.

Poison, a knife – I won’t be able to stop them: come, you know better than anyone how it is. ’

Cressida watched him across the room. ‘Try me, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Or else do attempt to see if you can manage this affair without my help.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll find someone else with the requisite skills and experience.’

‘I’m sure Arthur knows dozens of women who are just as equally at home in a drawing room as they are on the battlefield,’ Greville said, and turned to address Lascelles in fluent Portuguese.

‘You truly are the limit of what a man can reasonably endure. If you were a woman, or I were the right sort of man, I really would take you home this minute and give you something else to think about other than dealing death and ruin.’

‘Lucky Arthur,’ Cressida said, in the same tongue, and Greville just about managed to quell his irritation. Of course she’d been just as quick to learn the language as they had: how the hell else had she survived in the baggage train?

Lascelles got up with a barely perceptible smile. ‘Greville, take a horse from your brother’s stables and gallop off all that spleen. Don’t fail me,’ he said. ‘Either of you.’