“It’s just that . . .” I began, conscious of his hand holding mine. “If I’m caught there might be a frightful stink.”

“If they notice you and realize that they didn’t invite you, they’ll only feel mortified that they left you off the list and glad that you came.”

“Well . . .”

“Look at me. Do you want smoked salmon and champagne or to go home to baked beans?”

“Well, if you put it that way, lead on, Macduff.”

He laughed and took my arm. “That’s the ticket,” he said and swept me along Park Lane.

“If you’re really Lord Kilhenny’s son,” I asked, my courage returning, “why do you need to gate-crash other people’s weddings?”

“Same story as your own,” he said. “The family’s penniless. Father invested heavily in America, lost it all in ’29; then there was a fire in his racing stables. Lost all that too. Had to sell the property and when I turned twenty-one he told me there was nothing for me so I’d have to make my own way. I’m making it the best I can. Ah, here we are.”

I glanced up at that formidable red and white brick building on Park Lane as Darcy swept me up the steps under the colonnade and into the front entrance of Grosvenor House Hotel.

The doorman saluted as he opened the door. “You’re here for the wedding reception, sir? To your right, in the blue ballroom.”

I was whisked across the foyer and suddenly found myself in a queue for the reception line. I was expecting doom to fall at any moment, when the bride and groom would look at each other. I could hear them saying loudly, “But I didn’t invite her, did you?” Luckily brides and grooms must be in a state of shock on such occasions. The bride’s mother murmured, “So kind of you to come.” The bride and groom were momentarily involved with the person ahead of us and Darcy took the opportunity to steer me toward a passing tray of champagne.

After a few minutes of feeling that my heart was going to leap into my mouth, expecting at any second to feel that hand on my shoulder, that voice barking, “She’s a gatecrasher, please have her escorted from the premises,” I started to relax and look around me. It certainly was very pleasant. The event was not being held in the grand ballroom, to which I had been for a ball during my season; it was in a smaller room, big enough for only two hundred or so, and now richly decorated with early spring flowers—the scent was heavenly. At the far end was a long, white-clothed table on which I could glimpse the many tiers of a cake. In one corner an orchestra (composed, as they so often are, of elderly men) was playing Strauss waltzes. I took a hot vol-au-vent from a passing tray and began to enjoy myself.

Darcy had been quite right. If you behave as if you should be there, then nobody questions it. People who half recognized me drifted up and there were several conversations along the lines of, “So, have you known old Roly long?”