With a vermouth cocktail in hand, Nathaniel White stood on the cusp of the Grand, preparing to take his first breaths of ballroom air. Tonight he would dance with whosoever desired him, but it was not until tomorrow that he would take his place in the demonstrations. Today he could watch and . . . he wanted to say ‘admire’, but admiration was not it. He needed to calculate. Calculate the strengths and weaknesses of the other dancers in the troupe. Watch Hélène Marchmont for her tiny imperfections. Because Nathaniel White intended to look good on his first day in the ballroom – and in that quest he would leave nothing to chance.

Nathaniel spotted Vivienne Edgerton alone at a table beside the dance floor.

Fortune favoured the bold. It had carried him thus far. So Nathaniel sashayed across the ballroom floor – that would soon be his – and, not caring to ask her permission, slipped into the seat alongside her.

‘Nathaniel White,’ she remarked at last, ‘you might have startled me.’

‘I announced my approach with a bouquet,’ Nathaniel replied. ‘I trust they were to your satisfaction?’

Vivienne shrugged. One bouquet of flowers was as good as another, but she didn’t have to tell him that. He would learn – if he didn’t know already – that spending money on a person meant nothing, not when one’s pockets were infinitely deep.

‘You aren’t to dance this afternoon?’

‘I’ll need to instruct Hélène in one of my routines first. The dances she performed with de Guise are not to my taste. They’re too stiff by far. They lack daring. They lack a certain passion. Well, I’m right, aren’t I? And I’m here to replace him, not to slip into his shoes.’ Nathaniel paused. ‘I understand I have you to thank for that.’

Vivienne remained impassive, though a slight smile twitched in the corners of her lips.

‘Of course, it begs the question . . . why,’ he continued.

‘Why?’ asked Vivienne – and for the first time she shifted so that she was looking at Nathaniel. He had a boyish face, more boyish than Vivienne remembered. Ordinarily she despised boyish men. There had been too many men like that in New York, chasing after her, trying to buy her cocktails in every speakeasy they could find. Vivienne was barely a woman herself and yet there was something odious about men who looked as if they had only just stopped nursing at their wet nurse’s breast. Nathaniel White kept swiping his shockingly blond hair out of his eyes, and fluttering his long dark eyelashes as he spoke. Impish. Yes, that was the word. And yet there was something about this particular imp that delighted her.