‘I agree, William.’ Lord Rockingham, a fat, balding man in his sixties, nodded so enthusiastically his multiple chins wobbled. ‘If the upper classes have to tighten the old belts it’ll be to the detriment of tradesmen and the working-class people we employ, what? Bad form of Lloyd George, bad form.’

Had his mother’s dinner parties always been as dire as this, or was he just noticing it more since being in the army, and especially since meeting Rose? The total belief in their superiority was staggering at times, like now.

‘Left in the hands of the Liberals the country would go to rack and ruin,’ a small man with a huge moustache piped up at the other end of the table. Alexander recognized him as the owner of umpteen coal mines in Northumberland and Durham, and he had never liked him. ‘Look at the strikes we’ve had recently. What’s wrong with miners working eight-hour shifts round the clock? It feeds the ridiculous number of brats these men father, doesn’t it? Breed like rats, the lot of them, and live like rats too. No sense of decency or morality.’

‘You’re very quiet, Alexander.’ Henrietta Conway, seated on his left, touched his arm lightly, smiling her cold, tight smile. She was still furious with him for snubbing her Gwendoline two years ago. She had done everything in her power to throw them together and she knew dear Arabella had too, and Gwendoline had been willing enough. If he had taken her on it would have saved all the unpleasantness that followed a few months later when the silly girl got herself entangled with a most unsuitable young man, an artist of all things. They’d had to buy the fellow off and whip Gwendoline abroad where she’d had the baby, and Godfrey had arranged for a farmer and his wife to bring the child up in some remote region or other of Greece. The whole thing had played havoc with her social engagements for a month or two and she had missed Charlotte Blenheim’s wedding to Lord Golding, which had been the wedding of the year.

‘I’ve been travelling all day.’ Alexander was well aware he was out of favour with the Conways but he hadn’t lost any sleep over it. When he had told his mother he would rather marry a dockside dolly than Gwendoline Conway because they at least were doing what they did to eat and keep a roof over their heads, she had thrown a blue fit, but he hadn’t heard another word from her on the matter after that. He rather thought his father had had a word with his mother and filled her in about Gwendoline’s less-than-discreet escapades.

‘Of course.’ Henrietta inclined her head. ‘Silly me. I thought it was because you might have different views to the ones being expressed.’