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‘I saw a friend I needed to greet. Maddie just had to wait for a minute of two.’

Miss Rose gasped with indignation. ‘I waited for you for ever. Then when everyone had gone away, a gentleman offered to show me the way back.’

Ferdy Shilton was still enraged by this young buck’s attempt to evade responsibility and said in the coldest terms, ‘There is no excuse. Even if the Queen of Sheba should pass by, you do not leave your young female companion alone in a dangerous place.’

Lady Lockhart thought the situation called for her authority and said, ‘We are most grateful to you, Mr Shilton. Both my son and niece will have much to ponder on.’

Madeleine Rose thought that her rescuer’s courage needed greater commendation and protested, ‘Mr Shilton need not have put his own life in danger to come to my aid. The man had a knife and was unafraid to use it. He abused Mr Shilton, who then whisked his own long blade from his boot and cut the man’s jacket and it chased him away. He was the most courageous of men.’ Her voice faltered as the enormity of what she had been through struck her. ‘A true hero.’

Ferdinand Shilton was surprised by the simple pleasure of being appreciated for his martial and manly qualities, a feeling he had first enjoyed aged four when he had seen off an aggressive gander on the Nonsuch lake, and then been reminded of again by Miss Rose’s manner to him at the Barnsley Ball.

Edwin Lockhart’s interest was piqued. ‘Do you always carry a blade, Sir?’

‘No. Only when I’m escorting ladies to a raucous venue such as this. It’s my father’s dirk, given to him by a Highland chief whose life he had saved.’

‘Well, thank you, Mr Shilton. We are all in your debt.’ Lord Lockhart’s face had the sulky expression of the spoiled young man he was, as he bowed in polite acknowledgement.

Miss Rose handed back the borrowed coat, saying quietly, ‘I’m sorry it’s not your sky-blue superfine, Mr Shilton.’ And she looked into his face in her unaffected way that seemed to display just for him the intensity of her character and feminine grace. She then turned away, wrapping Henrietta’s shawl round her shoulders to hide her torn bodice and, overwhelmed with fatigue, sat down on one of the chairs, her cheek and injured lip dully throbbing.

Mr Shilton walked back to his own supper box, where nobody had missed him but Miss Payton. ‘My apologies for my absence. I have had the most extraordinary adventure. I will regale you over the champagne.’ His spirits were unaccountably lifted and he felt the thrill of righteous action. But he had once again been reminded of the danger of raw, untrammelled emotion. It shocked him to acknowledge how close he had come to killing that pathetic ex-soldier, so overwhelmed was he with fury and protective zeal.

He truly believed in the necessity of reason ruling everything if one was to live a civilised life. School had tempered his courage but had also introduced him to his lifelong values. A favourite teacher had made a great play with his oft-quoted maxim: ‘the temperate, unrash and dispassionate man, by being unmoved himself, reaps all advantages while he gives away none.’ Since boyhood, Ferdinand Shilton had strived to be just that man.

Tonight, he had made his mind up. He would no longer haver about marrying. He would take advantage of this new decisive self and ask Miss Payton tomorrow to become his wife.

3

AN INFANT UPSETS THE APPLE CART

Within less than a quarter of a mile from one another, three people lay in their beds in three of the most expensive houses in London, unable to sleep. Ferdinand Shilton was exhilarated. Lying awake in his grand ducal bedchamber in Brook Street, he was no longer melancholic and vacillating; he had made his mind up to marry Miss Payton and settle the next stage of his life. Ferdinand and Hester Shilton – their names even sounded euphonious, he thought with satisfaction. With her, he felt sure, he would enjoy a contented marriage that would, God willing, produce at least one heir for his much-loved estate at Nonsuch House and his extensive family fortune. Miss Payton was admirable, intelligent and pretty and completely trustworthy in her cool competence. With her excellent qualities and dutiful nature, she would be an ornament to any family, and her tendency to priggishness would be transmuted into conscientious care for the education of their children.

Ferdy had always thought the most blame for the family’s loss of reputation had lain with Mrs Payton, a woman of experience after all, a wife and mother, and a full decade older than Max, the wildest and most unstable of youths. Certainly, the men in the affair had paid the highest price. But Ferdy Shilton was gratified to think that Miss Payton’s moral fibre was stiffened with sterner stuff; no such dishonour would cloud his door.

It struck him as strange, however, that this welcome feeling of decisiveness and confidence had not been engendered in him by Miss Payton, but by his rescue of Miss Rose and that young woman’s evident belief that he was not only as brave as Ulysses but a hero too. To be thought so was a heady emotion; he enjoyed being the knight of old, the rescuer of maidens, the righter of wrongs, and it was this odd girl, who had entered his consciousness unbidden, he had to thank for that.

His mind dwelt on her unusual response to what was a most alarming attack by an indigent stranger; Miss Rose had seemed little concerned for her own safety but most exercised by her desire to save her mother’s pearls and grief at the damage done to her dress. Ferdy understood the power of clothes and the sorrow at the despoiling of something beautiful. He recalled his reckless offer to buy her a new gown and had a sudden thought of how to effect this without impropriety; he would ask Miss Payton to take Miss Rose, with him in attendance, to his favourite mantua makers. It was a while since he had employed his taste and innate style to help a woman with her wardrobe. With this happy solution, he drifted off into welcome sleep.

* * *

Across Grosvenor Square in South Audley Street, Miss Payton lay in her shell-pink bedroom thinking about the evening she had spent at Vauxhall Gardens. She knew it was a momentous meeting with Mr Shilton, for she was certain he was close to asking for her hand in marriage. She had been pleased to see him so soberly dressed; it was gratifying when people took one’s advice when offered sincerely. But she was disconcerted at the unexpected appearance of Lord Whiley, whose arrogance and predatory male energy made her recoil.

Her mother’s surprisingly indelicate behaviour had disappointed her. She found it hard to voice, even to herself, such harsh criticism, but she was afraid the way Mrs Payton had flirted with his lordship displayed – could she admit it? – a vulgarity of manners and a too commonplace sensibility.

Hester Payton excused her mother’s improper flirtatiousness with the fact that she had been lonely and a widow for so long, but she hoped they would not be seeing Lord Whiley again.

She wriggled down under her feather quilt, warm with the triumphant thought of the grand match she would make with Mr Shilton, the richest man of the Season and charming and attractive in person too. They would have such pretty children was her last pleasurable thought as she blew out her candle, turned over and closed her eyes.

* * *

In her small room at the back of the Lockhart mansion in Grosvenor Street, Madeleine Rose had been writing until her candle was almost extinguished. The night had filled her imagination with such riches, so many fantastic sights, so many strange thoughts, she had to scratch them as fast as she could into her notebook to capture their zest and significance before sleep replaced reality with dreams. The attack on her person had outraged her more than it had frightened her. She had trusted Mr Flyte’s offer to help her and felt a fool when he proved to be no better than a common footpad.

In thinking about it, Madeleine realised she should not have accompanied a stranger anywhere, but she had waited so long for her cousin, she had been afraid that something had happened to him and that she would have to rely on her own resources. It was clear, however, that Lord Lockhart had been wrong to leave her alone to pursue his own interests.

This dereliction of his gentlemanly duty had so enraged Mr Shilton on her behalf, it was rather exciting; no one had ever considered her feelings or safety important before. But what had thrilled her most was the way Mr Shilton had sprung out of the shadows just in time, as if in answer to a prayer, and produced his flashing blade to the astonishment of all. In that moment, he had seemed like a heroic swordsman of old and it was her he had come to rescue, and her mother’s pearls that he had saved.

The only thing no one could save was her beautiful dress and Madeleine determined to see what restoration she might manage in the morning. She was too excited to sleep, but sleep rose like the tide to carry her into oblivion.

However, Mr Shilton and Miss Payton would not have slept so soundly in their respective beds if they had known that elsewhere in the Payton house, Lord Flambard had climbed up the convenient wisteria ladder to the flat roof beneath the window to Mrs Payton’s bedchamber. His lordship and the woman he had made a widow ten years before were currently reacquainting themselves with each other’s charms, and far from wishing for sleep.