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Angelica pulled Miss Stafford’s note from her pocket and smoothed it. Looking at Dan Pellini she said with serious intent, ‘This is a most sensitive matter and I really wish you to guarantee confidentiality with everything I say, as well as any action you may agree to do.’

‘Well, that depends, miss.’ He was wary.

Angelica lifted the portmanteau onto the table between them and opened it up. She removed a handful of gold coins. ‘I am very anxious to pay the Bow Street officers properly for their professional efforts, especially to support the Horse Patrol.’

Dan Pellini’s manner became more focussed and grave. ‘Tell me the problem and I will abide by your strictures on privacy and confidentiality.’

Angelica pushed the piece of paper with the place and time of the duel across the table to him. ‘Two eminent lawmakers are determined on a matter of honour, the field of combat, as you see, is Chalk Farm.’

‘We don’t care to interfere with gentlemen and their private business, miss. Nobs and bigwigs are a law unto themselves.’ He shifted uneasily in his seat.

‘That may well be, but as you know it is against the law to conduct such business. I am merely asking you to fulfil your duty and disperse the combatants before any lethal action takes place.’ She let the coins slip through her fingers, a glistening, clinking stream of gold. His eyes were irresistibly drawn to the sight. ‘But you must assure me that there will be no reporting of this either officially or to the scribblers of Grub Street. Nor mention of the names of the principals involved.’

Mr Pellini ruminated for a second of two, his wide good-humoured face wrinkled with the puzzle of how best to proceed. Seeming to have made a decision, he met Angelica’s piercing gaze. ‘I could take three officers with me and log it in the duty roster as investigating an armed affray. That way no names need be mentioned.’

Angelica leapt up and grasped his hand. ‘I am so grateful to you, Mr Pellini. Have you a container into which I can put the fifty spankers I have for your trouble?’

He pulled a cloth bag out of the drawer in the desk, as if ready for just such a transaction, and Angelica counted out the fifty Louis she had agreed as recompense enough. She looked into his face, her eyes searching his. ‘I can trust you, Mr Pellini, to conduct this with discretion. No names. No arrests. Just disruption through your presence?’

Mary grasped her cousin’s arm and said with fervour, ‘Thank you, Dan, I know we can trust you. I always could.’ And they clutched at each other’s hands with the memory of their shared street life as children and how they had protected each other in the feral back alleys of Covent Garden.

‘Come and see me again, Mary,’ he said, his eyes crinkling into a smile.

The women left the building in a hurry, just as two raggedy ruffians were being manhandled through the door, stinking of ale and with blood pouring from the head of one. Angelica took her maid’s arm. ‘Mary, I’m exhausted. Let’s hail a Hackney cab to take us home.’

‘You look worn thin. With another rehearsal tomorrow afternoon, you must rest.’ They heard the sound of horses’ hooves as a cab drew up to deliver a couple to the theatre and Mary stepped forward to catch the coachman’s eye. They climbed into the evil-smelling interior, the straw dirty on the floor, the seats greasy with years of grime. They were grateful to be back in Berkeley Square within fifteen minutes.

‘Thank you, Mary. It was a stroke of luck that your cousin Dan was there and able to help. All I can do now is pray.’

* * *

Angelica slept deeply and without dreams. At dawn she awoke with a start and lay there wondering why her heart was racing. She felt weighed down with nameless dread. The birdsong seemed louder than usual, with a note of alarm in the sweet notes that carolled from the throats of robins, thrushes and blackbirds hopping in the bushes in the Square. She sat up, suddenly aware of what the hour meant. Was her agitation and the heaviness of spirit a portent of what was to come, or had already been? She crept from her bed, not wishing to wake the household, and stood at the window holding back the curtain so she could look out on the gardens below. The new rising sun could just be seen through an early mist which wreathed through the trees. Chalk Farm was on higher land; would it be even more obscured by gauzy ribbons of cloud, she wondered, or had the sun burnt through to brighten the fields?

Cold and tired, Angelica knew she could no longer sleep but crawled back into bed to warm her toes and shoulders. Despite the knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach, her mind was in flight with the astounding knowledge – the man I love loves me, and whatever happens that will always be, for how can love so elemental turn to hatred, or indifference, and die? But did Fate hear her happy cry, she wondered, and place a warning band across her heart? She was not yet safe in his arms but there could never be another man for her. She knew this now and the certainty gave her strength; nothing could deprive her of this joy, not even death. She held this truth close while she waited for news.

Despite the early hour, Angelica decided to get dressed and slipped into her everyday blue calico with a pale-yellow braided spencer over the bodice for warmth. She went down to breakfast before her mother had risen from bed. Restless, she picked up the script that was growing onerous to her as increasingly she jibbed at the play’s assumption that complete innocence could exist while in real life she was dealing with momentous matters of life and death. She paced to the front window and back, not certain what news she expected and from whom. Would Miss Stafford send her a note that Mr Asprey was at breakfast, as cool as a cucumber, as if nothing had transpired?

Her emotions were growing increasingly frayed when close to eleven o’clock she heard a sharp rap on the door. Martin opened it to a man so forbidding and austere in manner that his natural ebullience deserted him. A crestfallen face peered round the door of the morning room where Angelica stood tensely by the fireplace, her script tossed aside. ‘A gentleman to see you, Miss Angelica.’

She sprang forward, her face suffused with joy. It could only be him. She swept into the hall. ‘Mr Asprey, you are well?’ Her joyful words died on her lips as she saw how white and grim he looked.

He met her bright face with a frosty hauteur and bowed stiffly. ‘Would you do me the honour, Miss Leigh, of accompanying me to Hyde Park for a drive?’

‘Yes, of course.’ With a sinking heart Angelica climbed the stairs to her rooms to collect her pelisse and bonnet, which she crammed on her head with little concern for the effect. Martin opened the front door for them; even his demeanour was subdued.

Without saying a word, Mr Asprey handed Angelica into his curricle. Noticing he was without his groom, Angelica enquired, ‘No Rocky?’

‘No. I don’t care to catechise your character in front of the servants,’ was the cold response. He had not turned to meet her gaze and drove his horses off towards Grosvenor Street. Angelica glanced at his profile, so distinguished, so beloved to her, but set now so adamantine that not even a muscle twitched on his jaw. Eventually he pulled his horses up under a distant copse near the Tyburn turnpike. Angelica felt she was heading to as uncompromising a demise as all the criminals who had been brought to Tyburn gallows before her.

At last Ivor Asprey spoke, his voice quiet but compressed with fury. ‘Miss Leigh, Lord Rackham and I were threatened with arrest this morning. The Bow Street officers said an unknown young woman had tipped them off. Pray tell me, if that was you?’

Angelica was confronted with the humiliation her actions had brought down on a proud man’s head. She could only look away, her own face ashen.

‘What makes you think you have the right to interfere in matters of my honour when I had expressly warned you to leave my business to me?’ He was almost hissing in self-righteous affront.

Angelica looked down at her hands which were clasped tight together in her lap. ‘I just could not contemplate losing you.’

‘This is not about you and what you cannot bear. This is my life and my honour – and so, forgive me if I’m wrong – my business! How can I ever trust you again?’