I stared at her in open-mouthed horror. “You mean I only have one evening shoe?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Queenie, you idiot. What am I going to do?”

“It’s a long frock. Nobody will notice.”

“They’ll notice if I walk with one high-heeled shoe on and one off,” I said. “I have no other high-heeled shoes suitable for evening. I’m doomed.”

“You could wear your bedroom slippers, I suppose.”

“They are fluffy. They have feathers around them.”

“Better than nothing,” she said. “Or I could sneak in to someone else’s room and nick a pair of shoes for you.”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” I said. “I’ll have to wear my black town shoes and just pray that nobody looks down. And I’ll write to Mrs. Tombs in the morning to have the other shoe sent on. Knowing her, she has probably thrown it out with the rubbish.”

“Sorry, miss,” she said. “But I did have it all packed up lovely when you wanted it opened up again.”

I sighed.

I timed my arrival in the anteroom for sherry so that I came in with Princess Charlotte and her misnamed sister, Virginia. Safety in numbers. I tried to bend my knees a little so that the gown hung over my shoes. But a glimpse of myself in the long, gilt mirror showed that I looked extremely strange, like a walking duck. The sisters did not appear to notice anything wrong with me and led me over to the sherry decanter. I swigged down a couple of glasses to boost my courage.

“Irene will not be joining us,” the dowager duchess said, coming over to take a glass of sherry that the footman had just poured. “Another of her migraines, I fear. That poor girl does suffer so.”

“It seems to me that her migraines are most convenient,” Virginia said almost to herself, but Edwina heard her.

“What a cruel thing to say, Virginia. Just because you have been blessed with the constitution of an ox, you could at least have a little sympathy for those of a more delicate nature.”

“A healthy amount of sex. That’s what the girl needs,” Virginia said, knocking back another glass of sherry in one gulp. “So she’s lost one man. So what? Plenty more fish in the sea. Did I weep and wail when my husband found himself a Viennese ballet dancer? Of course not. I simply moved on to bigger and better things. And I do mean bigger and better.”

“Virginia. You go too far,” Princess Charlotte said. “We have young and innocent ears in this room.”

“Nonsense. She needs to know what life’s all about. If Irene hadn’t been such a pathetic virgin when she came to Paris, she’d never have fallen for Streletzki.”

Mercifully, we were saved by the dinner gong. We went through, just four of us, myself and the three weird sisters.

“I see that Cedric is not going to grace us with his presence,” Edwina said. “That really is too bad of him, especially on your first evening here, my dear. But never mind. We’ll enjoy a good evening without him, won’t we?”