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‘Making a habit of what?’ Lord Lockhart asked sulkily as he turned the curricle to head home.

‘Oh, just being in the right place at the right time and taking precipitate action. Do you recall, Edwin, Mr Shilton saved me from the Vauxhall Gardens robber?’ Unspoken among all three was the knowledge that Mr Shilton’s intervention had once again been needed as a result of Lord Lockhart’s negligence and lack of care.

‘Ah yes, with a blade hidden in his boot. Flashy devil!’ Lord Lockhart’s mood was not improving.

‘Oh, not at all flashy, just prescient.’ Mr Shilton was unruffled, if not slightly smug. Miss Rose looked up at him and an unmistakeable pulse of sympathetic feeling flowed between them. They understood each other in a way that needed no words or explanation.

Ferdy Shilton’s beautiful coat was now a deeper blue, his blond hair too was darkened with the rain, his face splashed with water and mud after his galloping ride. He replaced his hat on his head, wheeled Sabre round and bade his farewell.

Lord Lockhart was still smarting. ‘You didn’t have to worry about us, Mr Shilton.’

With a wave of his hand, their rescuer called back over his shoulder, ‘It was more Miss Rose’s safety I was concerned with.’ And with that, he cantered back to the trees where Hester Payton awaited him, his heart once more unreasonable, his blood beating in his veins.

‘Ferdinand! Why hare off into the storm like that? You look totally disreputable.’

‘That was a racing curricle and especially unstable, at the mercy of two bolting horses. I could not stand by as it overturned and broke its driver’s neck.’

‘Who was the driver?’

‘Lord Lockhart.’

‘Oh, the foolish gamester and profligate. Isn’t he cousin to the sad, mousy little creature who seems to hang about that foundling child?’

Mr Shilton was alarmed to find his gorge rise in his chest with a mixture of anger, outrage and a powerful sense of protectiveness. ‘Lockhart’s cousin is indeed Miss Rose,’ he managed to say in a neutral voice. ‘But I would not recognise her by your disobliging description, my dear.’

The storm had passed as quickly as it had come and the sun returned even more brilliant than before. While engaged in this tense exchange, they were riding through the crowds congregated at Grosvenor Gate and friends and acquaintances of the popular Ferdinand Shilton were surprised to see him looking so tempest-tossed. His famously sunny temperament appeared to have deserted him.

Miss Payton was not one to admit herself wrong and pursued her point. ‘But Ferdinand, you must concur that Miss Rose has very little to commend her. Neither looks nor fortune. And she seems inordinately fond of that child. Don’t you think that a trifle peculiar?’

He controlled himself, intent on making the best of things. ‘Hester, we will have to agree to disagree on this.’

She cast him a suspicious look but did not appear to recognise the unfamiliarly stony expression on his face. The frosty silence between them was still tingling when Miss Payton launched into another contentious topic that had long troubled her. ‘I hope we don’t disagree about the unsuitability of your friend, Lord Whiley, as a cavalier-servant to my mother. She appears quite taken with him, almost beyond reason, and he seems utterly untrustworthy to me. I wonder who his people are? You must know, dear Ferdinand. You were at school with him, were you not?’

Before he could answer this trickiest of questions and risk revealing his own complicity with his friend’s deception, Ferdinand Shilton saw with relief that they were outside the Payton house in South Audley Street. He leapt to the ground as her groom took Miss Payton’s horse’s reins and he walked round to help her dismount. ‘I’m much relieved you were saved from the worst of the storm, my dear. I shall be pleased to change out of my own muddied clothes.’ He escorted her to the front door which was immediately opened by the Payton butler. Bowing, he kissed her hand in farewell. ‘Thank you, dear Hester, for an enjoyable ride. I was very pleased to be able to exercise Sabre, too.’

* * *

Madeleine and Lord Lockhart had also set out for the Park in brilliant sunshine, his lordship driving his racing curricle through the streets too fast, as usual, and with reckless abandon. As they rushed headlong through Grosvenor Square, a young boy chased a hoop that had escaped from the paths of the central gardens where his friends were still at play. A cry went up from the boy’s nurse and Madeleine leaned out of the vehicle, desperate to try to protect the child’s head as he reeled towards them. Luckily, Lord Lockhart’s spinning wheels missed him by inches.

‘Edwin! Slow down,’ Madeleine called, finding herself precariously unbalanced by his evasive swerve. She shuddered at the thought of crushing the child or indeed of herself tumbling out at speed onto the cobbles. ‘Cousin, a racing curricle is hardly the vehicle to take me in for a sedate drive in the Park!’ Madeleine expostulated.

‘Apologies, Maddie. Didn’t know you were such a marplot. Thought you would be up for every lark.’ He laughed as they swept through Grosvenor Gate, scattering a few nervous strollers brought out by the sun. They headed away from the crowd as Edwin Lockhart set out to explain their current dilemma. ‘I know my dragonish mama can be terrifying, but she has taken as her role Lady Protectress of the Family. Her fanaticism goes back to your mother who broke the code by marrying a lowly musician, of all things. This so fractured the family, Mama determined no one again would put personal feeling ahead of duty. To her and her kind, loyalty to family and class is everything.’

‘Is that why she is so against your sister marrying Mr Paget, despite his wealth and pleasant manner?’

‘I’m afraid she is of the Ancien Régime who believe in the purity of noble blood.’

‘By that measure, my noble blood has been diluted so much I’m surprised she countenances me.’ Madeleine laughed. ‘I’m even more surprised she thinks me good enough to marry you, Edwin!’

‘Ah, but money tends to blur most distinctions of age, beauty or status. Why else would lovely young maidens be sacrificed to drooling, depraved old men who offer a fortune in return?’

Madeleine gasped and thumped his arm. ‘I don’t care for that analogy, Cousin. Are you then the young and beautiful innocent being traded for my fortune, plain and despised crone that I am?’

‘Oh, Maddie! You’re too clever for me! Don’t take anything I say seriously.’ The curricle was bowling towards Tyburn and Lord Lockhart was concentrating on navigating through a throng of other carriages and horsemen. ‘Of course, Grandmama has turned it all on its head. You have the Lockhart fortune now and that, to Mama’s primitive, reptile mind, is more important than anything.’

Madeleine turned to face his handsome, petulant profile. ‘But don’t you hope for something more than commerce in your marriage, some sort of romantic attachment?’

He cast her a fleeting grimace. ‘No. I’ve been brought up to know that marriage is a duty and financial alliance. Love is just for romance novels and girlish dreams, not for the reality of life in a family like ours.’ With this matter-of-fact statement, he gazed up at the sky, where the picturesque castles of white cumuli were rimmed with grey. ‘As you know, Maddie, my pockets are to let and I need to marry an heiress; I’d rather marry you than any of the hoity-toity hussies brought up to believe they’re all the crack.’