‘I don’t care if you can fly. I don’t care if you can foxtrot on air. I don’t care if you move like a Greek goddess. Not when you have a face like that. Raymond, it’s time you understood your worth. It’s beauty I want in that ballroom.’ He turned on his heel, pointedly ignoring Raymond and turning to Doctor Moore. ‘Patch him up. Send for your orthodontist. Fill him full of whatever potions you have. Just get him ready for the battle.’ Maynard marched to the door, and there he stopped. ‘Raymond, you’re to rest. I’ll have one of the chambermaids come and turn this room over. We’ll send up food – soups, I should think, looking at the state of you. But, heaven forfend, if I see you out of this room looking like that, there’ll be no place for you at the Buckingham Hotel. I want to contain the rumours. Do you understand?’

Raymond nodded. ‘I understand, sir.’

Then Maynard Charles was gone, leaving a fuming Raymond de Guise behind.

*

On the ground floor, as the day manager welcomed a party of guests up from the Côte d’Azur, Maynard Charles slammed the director’s office door and threw a wild kick at his leather chair. Then, still purple with fury, he opened his cabinet and drew out one of the many card indexes inside. To a man in charge of so many different departments, so many moving pieces, a card index was a priceless resource. Maynard Charles sometimes thought that his card indexes were like little pieces of his brain carved out and filed away – and, ordinarily, the thought gave him enormous pleasure.

Not now. Now, there was too much anger pumping through him to make room for any pleasure at all. This particular card index categorised all the many dancers who had auditioned for a place in the Grand’s demonstrations over the years. But, more than that, it detailed all of the dancers at the Savoy, the Imperial, all of the other ballrooms across London where dancers were perfecting their art – and drawing in business for their establishments. Maynard Charles was a man of many talents, and the most important talent of all was self-preservation. The indexes in this office afforded him recourse in almost any situation. He had always known he would need to replace Raymond de Guise sooner or later. Gentlemen dancers got bored. They disappeared on midnight trains across Europe, or fell in love with an aristocrat who’d partnered with them on the ballroom for the night – or they got themselves embroiled in some scandal involving a minor royal, or a notable member of society. When that happened, Maynard Charles would need to know who the best dancers were in the other ballrooms across London. It would not do to merely promote somebody from the ranks. No. He needed to make a statement – and he needed to make it fast.