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‘Why, about uniting our fortunes. I’ve told Mama and she’s very relieved.’

Panic rose in Madeleine’s chest. ‘But Edwin, I’ve never actually said I’d marry you. You’ve taken a good deal for granted.’

‘Don’t be a contrary miss, Maddie. It doesn’t increase your appeal.’

The discussion was brought to a halt by a knock on the door and Moss entered with a letter upon a silver salver. This he offered to Madeleine, who recognised the writing. It was an urgent note from Mr Shilton, requesting her presence at his house as soon as possible.

Madeleine stood up and made her apologies, not stopping for any interrogation. She collected her pelisse and bonnet with the new coquelicot feather and poked her head round the kitchen door to enquire if Mrs Porton could spare Dot for half an hour.

Within ten minutes of receiving the summons, the two young women had set off on foot for the Shilton mansion on Brook Street, one of them with a gay red feather bobbing on the crown of her bonnet.

* * *

After the convivial dinner with friends at the Wolfes’ house, Ferdy Shilton returned home tired and in a mildly foxed state. Gordon, his amiable valet, had whisked his clothes off to brush, polish, wash or put away. Mrs Moffat had left a small tray with pastries and a glass of ale in case he should awake hungry in the night. Everything was as comfortable and predictable as ever, but as Ferdy fell into his luxurious feather bed, he found he could not sleep.

It troubled him that his dearest friends in the world did not seem to approve of the reasons for his choice of bride. Nothing was said, but he knew them well enough to understand that they wished him to make a marriage of the heart, as they had done. But a further, much more insistent curl of unease kept him from longed-for sleep.

As his brain became more desperate for oblivion, images of Miss Rose began to torment him. Mr Shilton liked to think of her as a dear dormouse, but she was much more dangerous than that shy creature. Clever, funny and brave, whenever she turned her mesmerising gaze on him, the sensible world seemed to fragment around him; he found himself powerless to resist her beautiful eyes, whose mysterious depths promised a different life, a more tantalising future. She offered a passionate, all-consuming love he had never before known he needed. And now, he did not know how he could live without it.

At last overwhelmed with nervous exhaustion, he lay quiet among his tangled sheets. Madeleine Rose was soft in his arms. For a few moments, he allowed himself the intoxicating pleasure of the dream, then leapt out of bed and strode to the window to stare into the brilliant moonlit night.

Ferdinand Shilton feared his self-restraint had fled and he did not know how to get it back. He knew his life would never be the same again, it had become even emptier and he, lonelier than ever. He had chosen Miss Payton as a consort to protect himself from these ungovernable emotions, but an excess of passion, never before known, broke over him like a storm. He tried to conjure up Hester Payton’s fair face, her trim figure and exquisite taste in clothes, but no images came to mind to banish the seductions of Miss Rose. Ferdy threw back his head and let out a mighty roar.

Gordon, sleeping in the next-door dressing room, was alarmed. ‘What is it, Sir?’

‘Nothing. Only a nightmare. I’m sorry to have woken you.’

But Gordon had padded through to his master’s room and straightened the sheets, fluffed up the quilt and turned back the bedclothes so the troubled young man could climb back to bed and sleep at last.

* * *

For Ferdy, breakfast was a lonely affair. Raven Purfoy was staying with Alick and Corinna, then leaving early to drive back to Eliza, waiting to give birth at Hartfield. Max Flambard had returned to his borrowed set at Albany in Piccadilly, then most likely spent a clandestine night in his mistress’s arms in the Payton house in South Audley Street, a convenient half-mile or so’s walk away. Unbeknownst to her, Miss Payton had slept many nights under the same roof as Lord Flambard – or Lord Whiley, as she knew him – and Ferdy shuddered at how inextricably he was linked to that shameful deception.

His mood became even more melancholic with the thought that Madeleine Rose was asleep just two streets away, but under the protection of that most spoilt and profligate young whippersnapper, Lord Lockhart, whom he feared Miss Rose would be persuaded to marry. He was shocked by the hypocrisy of his position; this kind of reasonable, dynastic alliance was just what he advocated for himself, and yet when applied to someone as precious to him as that young woman, the thought was so abhorrent, his imagination so lurid with jealousy, that his gorge rose unbidden. In involuntary disgust, he cried out ‘No!’

Embarrassed by his loss of control, Ferdy sipped his coffee with a distracted air. His heart roiled with unfamiliar emotions: jealousy, desire, possessiveness and anger, and his natural optimism was fractured with gloom. The sight of Maltby’s lugubrious face did nothing to leaven his low spirits.

‘Good morning, Sir. There’s a lady to see you.’ His butler’s intonation on the word ‘lady’ conveyed disapproval; Maltby was a man with a high regard for social hierarchy and pride in the propriety of his master’s conduct. His voice implied the arrival of a person who risked both these conceits.

‘What’s her name?’ Mr Shilton asked him, looking up.

‘She won’t say until she sees you, Sir.’

‘Well, show her into the library then.’

He wondered what awaited him as he walked through his grand hallway and opened the mahogany door. Standing uncertainly by the fire was a young woman of medium height with flaxen hair and rosy cheeks. She had a face made for merriment but wearing a grave expression. He came forwards with his hand out. ‘How do you do, I’m Mr Shilton. What can I do for you?’

As she met his gaze, he was struck by the blueness of her eyes and knew immediately that this was Billy’s mother. This gratifying thought was quickly followed by a more controversial and troubling one: had they met before? Could this be Edith, the maid at the inn during that cold and wet journey to Brighton? ‘How do you do, Sir? My name is Mrs Blythe. I’ve come for Billy.’ Tears were bright in her eyes.

Ferdy Shilton grasped both her hands. ‘I am very pleased to meet you. Billy is an excellent child, a credit to you, Mrs Blythe.’

To identify her right to claim her son, she held out a piece of ribbon, the other end of which she had pinned to her son’s coat when she had left him on the Shilton doorstep. ‘Can I see him?’ Her voice was urgent.

‘Certainly you can. He’s with my good friends, just up the road, who have a well-established nursery for their two children. But first I want you to meet the young woman who found him, who is very attached to him.’ Mr Shilton went to the desk and wrote rapidly, then, folding the paper, asked Maltby to deliver it to the Lockhart establishment on Grosvenor Street. Returning to Mrs Blythe, he could no longer suppress his curiosity and asked, ‘What made you choose me as Billy’s guardian? Did you know me?’

The young woman immediately understood the anxiety behind his tentative question and blushed. ‘Good gracious no, Mr Shilton. We don’t know each other, but I know of you and had seen you a few times at Nonsuch.’

Relief flooded through his mind. Billy had got his remarkable colouring from his mother, and not from him. ‘So are you connected to my estate there in any way?’