With a word of excuse he left the duke and the salon and swiftly made his way along the Peers Corridor to Central Lobby. He could hear the clamor as he hastened down the corridor. Two parliamentary officers stood at the door leading to the lobby. They had the air of men prepared to defend entrance into a castle under siege.

“Let me by,” Guy ordered and one of them opened the door exposing the uproar within. At first Guy stood in the doorway, the officers at his back, trying to make sense of the scene. There were women everywhere, standing on chairs, on plinths with the various statues adorning the space, on the long benches along the walls. The slogan chanting was incessant, the posters now being wielded as weapons against the policemen struggling with the protesters.

Guy finally found his wife in the chaos and for a moment he had the absurd urge to laugh. Petra was standing on a chair, using her poster to fend off a broad-shouldered officer who was attempting to pull her down. She looked, he thought, like a diminutive gladiator fighting off a lion. Then he saw a man holding up a camera pointed at Petra on her chair and he lost all desire to laugh. Swearing under his breath he pushed his way through the seething horde looking for the photographer who seemed to have disappeared into the melee. A member of the gutter press, no doubt. They’d be all over this story and pictures of the protesters would be plastered across the front pages of the evening papers.

He reached Petra still on her chair and still fighting off the officer with her poster. “Excuse me.” He pushed the man aside without ceremony. He leaned forward, caught Petra around the knees and hoisted her over his shoulder.

She dropped the poster with her sudden change of position, and reared up against his shoulder, “Put me down, Guy.” Her demand fell on deaf ears as he shouldered his way back through the crowd. The two officers at the door to the Peers Corridor had remained in the open doorway, staring in dumb astonishment at the scene in front of them. Hastily they moved aside as Guy marched past them with his burden. “Shut the damn door,” he snarled, stalking halfway down the corridor before setting Petra roughly on her feet.

She spun round on him, hazel eyes flashing with outrage. “How dare you, Guy. You have no right to interfere.”

“No right,” he exclaimed. “No right to prevent my wife from making an appalling spectacle of herself, from dragging my name through the gutter press. How dare you expose yourself and my family in such a shameless display.”

“Oh, that’s all you care about,” she threw at him. “Your family, your name? This battle is so much more important than your trivial concerns, Lord Ashton.”