‘I know enough to be sure I want to spend the rest of my life with her if she’ll have me.’

‘Oh, she’ll have you, all right. She’s played you like a violin, you damn fool. Can’t you see what she’s about? A working-class wench with an eye to rising in the world and then you come along. Of course she wasn’t going to agree to becoming your mistress when there was a chance that if she kept you dangling long enough you’d be foolish enough to offer marriage. I can’t believe a son of mine could have been so damn gullible.’

‘And I can’t believe you are so narrow-minded and downright pretentious. You haven’t even met her and yet you’ve blackened her name and labelled her little more than a whore. Now if you had said all that about some of the supposed ladies Mother has had up for inspection by me I could have understood it. I know that more than one of them has been handed from one man to another and enjoyed it, but because they come from “good stock”, whatever that is, their whoring is brushed under the carpet. Every man in that room tonight has a mistress or two, apart from perhaps you, and the women are no better. It’s well known that Lady Rockingham slept with half the court in her heyday and at least two of their children bear a remarkable likeness to their biological fathers.’

‘That’s nothing to do with this.’

‘It’s everything to do with it!’

They were facing each other now over the distance separating them like animals preparing to fight, their bodies stiff and expressing rage and their faces blazing with anger.

Arabella’s voice cut sharply into the taut atmosphere. ‘Stop it, both of you. Sit down and let us discuss this like rational human beings. I agree with Alexander, William. You cannot make a judgement on the woman’s morals without having met her and without knowing the facts.’ As the men took their seats again, glowering at each other, she continued, ‘But even the facts as we know them so far are against any liaison with this person, Alexander, and I suspect you know this at heart. A mistress, kept discreetly, is one thing but a wife is quite another. Your life and hers would be untenable.’

‘I don’t agree.’

‘Agree or not, that is the truth in the society in which we exist.’

‘Then perhaps I shall remove myself from that society.’

William shot to his feet again. ‘What does that mean?’