It was dark by the time they reached the outskirts of Mayfair. Here and there the life of the city continued, in a muted tone; ale-houses spilt warmth and the smell of fresh beer onto the dirty cobbles, and firelight gleamed from behind the closed shutters of those who had not fled the city, whether from unwillingness or from inability. In the fashionable section, Laurence took the lead from Tharkay. These streets he knew well, going past his father's house and those of his friends and political acquaintances, some of them men Laurence had known in the Navy, all of them shuttered and dark. Laurence did not hesitate: he had expected silence, abandoned houses, and perhaps even wreckage and looting. He moved on steadily and did not look to see what damage might have been done, until he came into Dover Street, and was at last surprised: to find it crammed with carriages. Ten linkmen stood at the door of one great town houses; fine young ladies with their chaperones, British gentlemen and French officers flooded the steps as a great bustling noise of music and laughter and dish-clattering spilled down on them.

He stopped in the street, appalled, and had to be drawn back from the lights by Tharkay. ‘We will not get past that soon,’ Tharkay said. Laurence, choked with anger, did not immediately answer. He had never been a visitor to the house, but thought it had been let to a Radical member from Liverpool, a man who might have voted with his father on occasion. He mastered himself and drew Tharkay a few doors along to another house still occupied, but quietly so: a few subdued lights gleamed from between shutters, not a party to welcome the conquerors. Waiting by the gate they might pass for footmen or grooms, and be dismissed as such by the guests and their servants; with any luck the owner and his family were already abed.

They stood nearly an hour, stamping a little to warm their feet, and drawing back against the sides of the house now and then as another carriage reached the door to disgorge its passengers. Every minute brought fresh cause for indignation: the smell of hot roast beef, a burst of singing in French, a lady waltzing with a French officer past the open balcony doors. The carriages thinned out only a little over the course of their wait: a sad crush, with the King fled to Scotland and thousands of British soldiers dead or held prisoner.