Alfred, emotional from his recent loss, decides to accept an offer of work from Gully, but may live to regret it. Lord Harwood’s mental and physical state continue to deteriorate under mounting pressure, pushing him towards Project Stormcloud as a solution to his problems. Thomas has an issue with his sister’s latest beau, and turns to the last person who’d want to help him for assistance.

Of the three people making up Alfred’s security firm, you’d have put money on it being reckless, hard drinking Daveboy to be the first to die, so the end of the previous episode came as somewhat of a shock (to me, at least). Of course, as the show has already demonstrated with Ian Puleston-Davies in this series, death isn’t necessarily the last that Alfred – or we the audience – see of a character, and Alfred has plenty of new bad dreams with which to be haunted.

Still, it’s clearly greed more than anything which drives him to accept Gully’s offer of ‘work’ in the form of a robbery, though it’s grief which affects his judgement and performance in numerous ways. That said, everyone gets what they are looking for out of the arrangement and all seems well, but how long can Daveboy keep his ego in check around Gully’s men and how long, for that matter, can Alfred keep his hands off Gully’s wife, who clearly has an interest in him, regardless of what she might say.

Meanwhile, Patricia Wayne has got herself involved with another unsuitable man – this time a fashion designer with a quite sordid sexual past – and finds himself turning to Martha to try to help him out in dissuading his wayward sister from this latest entanglement. It’s fairly obvious that the show is using this as an excuse to push Martha and Thomas into interacting again, but it works anyway – Emma Paetz and Ben Aldridge have great chemistry on screen whether they’re tearing chunks out of one another or being…friendlier, and the escapade makes for a nice subplot to the episode.

Bet and Katie make their way to London and start looking for Bet’s sister Peggy, who proves more elusive than Bet might have hoped. Along the way, it becomes clear that the two women are becoming closer. Katie is more and more willing to push back at Bet’s eccentricities and say what she’s actually feeling, and Bet seems on the verge of actually opening up to her newest friend. Knowing how changeable she can be, though, who knows how long this might last?

On the wider scale, both sides of the war have their own issues – Her Majesty’s Government in London must choose new leadership, a subject hotly contested from opposite ends of the spectrum by Inspector Aziz and John Ripper, and the Raven League’s leader is increasingly unstable. Project Stormcloud moves ever onward towards horrifying reality and it seems that the time approaches when Lady Gaunt may have to make stark choices.

Verdict: Keeps a lot of subplot plates spinning nicely all at the same time. Gripping stuff. 8/10

Greg D. Smith