Maynard Charles continued. ‘You understand what you’ve done here, don’t you? The ballroom – my ballroom, lest you forget – demands you down there. Christmas is coming, not to mention New Year. You know what this season means to us, Raymond. You know the peril we’re in! Put the Buckingham on the society pages for the spring and we may yet survive. But to do that we need this Christmas. We need the Masquerade Ball at New Year to leave whatever they have planned over at the Imperial and the Savoy and the Ritz in the shade. I’ve been planning this season since the last one ended – and now it’s to go to waste, because of one drunken night by my principal dancer? They’re coming to see you, Raymond. The King himself is gracing us with his royal presence. You’re to dance with the Queen of Norway, with Märtha, her crown princess. Lord Edgerton will be in attendance. All of the board.’ Maynard Charles’s face was purpling with rage. He looked like an incandescent beetroot. ‘Your responsibility here extends much further than your own little world, Raymond. You are part of a much bigger whole. Raymond de Guise, the lovelorn aristocrat dancer and his glacial beauty of a partner, Hélène Marchmont. You remember what happened when Hélène took her leave of us for a year? Finding a replacement for somebody as popular and loved was near impossible. And now I have to do that for you with only weeks before the Christmas season begins.’

‘Mr Charles, if you’ll let me speak—’

‘I don’t want to hear another word!’ Maynard Charles thundered. ‘When this gets out, what do you think is going to happen to our ballroom? They’ll be laughing at us, Raymond. Laughing all over London! At the Savoy and the Imperial and all those other parochial little palaces. The King coming to a ballroom where the principal dancer is a bloody mess. A bloody fool!’ Maynard Charles stopped to catch his breath and, the moment he did so, another thought, even worse than all these, occurred. ‘I’ll have to explain this to Lord Edgerton. There’ll be questions from the board. Why the gentleman dancer I insisted we pay for is spending the Christmas season lounging in bed. What these mysterious bills are. Doctors and dentists.’ He spat the word with such opprobrium it might have been the most unutterable curse under the sun.

Instinctively, Raymond tensed. Perhaps the adrenaline was still coursing through his body, but for a passing moment he wanted nothing more than to drive his fist into Maynard Charles’s angry face. But no, he told himself. That’s Ray Cohen talking. Not the debonair gentleman Raymond de Guise.

He composed himself. ‘I can still go to the ballroom. I can still fraternise with our guests—’