‘Nathaniel is everything Raymond de Guise is and more.’ Was Maynard Charles mistaken, or did he detect some bitterness in Vivienne’s voice as she said Raymond’s name? ‘He has demonstrated at the Imperial, but I know for a fact he’d drop everything in a second if the Grand opened its doors to him. You said you wanted something special, Mr Charles. Well, believe me – Nathaniel is special. He is –’ she hesitated before using the word – ‘beautiful, Mr Charles. And, you must understand, he is the son of one of Daddy’s colleagues . . .’

Daddy, thought Maynard. She uses it so easily when she wants something – and yet, in private, she seethes at even calling him her stepfather.

‘He would be an excellent replacement for Mr de Guise. Dare I say it . . . but I believe he might even surpass him for elegance on the dance floor.’

‘You’ve been to the Imperial, have you, and seen his work?’

Vivienne’s eyes flickered at him. ‘I’ve seen all of his work,’ she said with a vaguely licentious air. ‘He moves like an angel.’

Every muscle in Maynard Charles’s body was suddenly rigid. ‘I’ll consider it, Miss Edgerton.’

After she was gone, Maynard returned to his cabinet and reached for his index. Flicking forward to the cards that were marked IMPERIAL HOTEL, he picked out the one for NATHANIEL WHITE. Twenty-three years old. Champion of Blackpool and Edinburgh. He’d danced a season at the Café de Paris, then taken himself to Europe for a tour of the palaces. Yes, Maynard thought, perhaps a boy like this might be a draw. Something to bring extra magic to the world of their beautiful ballroom. But he was also one of . . . them. There was nothing here to indicate that Nathaniel White belonged to the British Union of Fascists like the other men who’d come to meet with Lord Edgerton – but he was a blood relation, and blood did flow thicker than water.

When you ran an enterprise as vast as the Buckingham, you had to be willing to make sacrifices to your honour. The gold coins of a fascist were worth every bit as much as the gold coins of a man of absolute morality. You could not deny any man a bed for the night, not if he had the means to pay for it. But the thought of inviting somebody like that backstage at the Grand? Maynard Charles had spent the best years of his youth on the battlefields in France. To court men who would make war again was one of the bitterest pills he had ever been asked to swallow.

Maynard Charles turned the card over and over again. The simple truth was that the decision had already been made. He fancied he could still smell Vivienne Edgerton’s perfume lingering in the air – and he wondered, not for the first time, how much of this hotel he really ran at all.

October 1936

October 1936