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Back One Enchanted Evening
Chapters (50)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. The Grand Masquerade Ball
  5. Five Months Earlier . . .
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. September 1936
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. October 1936
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. November 1936
  30. Chapter Twenty-two
  31. December 1936
  32. Chapter Twenty-three
  33. Chapter Twenty-four
  34. Chapter Twenty-five
  35. Chapter Twenty-six
  36. Chapter Twenty-seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-eight
  38. Chapter Twenty-nine
  39. Chapter Thirty
  40. Chapter Thirty-one
  41. Chapter Thirty-two
  42. Chapter Thirty-three
  43. Chapter Thirty-four
  44. Chapter Thirty-five
  45. Epilogue
  46. A New Year
  47. Extract from Anton Du Beke’s next novel’
  48. Acknowledgements
  49. About the Author
  50. Letter from Author

‘I should like to dance, Nathaniel,’ she declared, the words exploding out of her in a frenzy that took Nathaniel quite by surprise. ‘I should like, this New Year, to be in the ballroom with everyone else, to take the floor alongside the King and tango and waltz and quickstep with the rest of them. My mother is going to be there and I would have her know I am not a pet dog, to be forgotten when the mood suits her. I would have her know I am my own person, with my own passions and prides and my own life to lead. That it takes more than money to get rid of me. And yet . . . I would not make a fool of myself. If I am to dance at the New Year’s ball, I should like to know I am befitting of the ballroom. Would you . . .’ The fire with which she’d been speaking was guttering out. The words began to run together, merging into a monotonous mess. ‘. . . tutor me? Just as de Guise is tutoring that simpering wretch in there?’

Nathaniel paused. The door to the dance studio was still open a fraction and, by the light of a dozen lamps, he saw Raymond and the girl stumbling across the room. Their silhouettes made a strange shadow dance across the walls. Then his gaze drifted back to Vivienne Edgerton. She was curious, this creature. She was driven and bold . . . and yet the fire she had was concealing something else. Something half-broken, something that was crying out for someone to piece it back together.

‘Meet me in the ballroom at dawn. We shall begin at once.’

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-one

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ON THE UPPER DECK OF the number 6 omnibus Hélène Marchmont pulled her burgundy cloche down low. Few of the office clerks and day-trippers around her would ever have set foot inside the Buckingham Hotel, but there had been a time when Hélène’s face had gazed out from the billboards at Piccadilly Circus, or graced the covers of the magazines in the roadside stands, and Hélène was not in the mood to be recognised.

By the time she stepped off the bus, she felt freer. Brixton Road was a rush of office clerks and railway workers coming home for the night. The crowds outside Marks and Spencer on the corner of Atlantic Road were deepening and, further up the high street, shoppers streamed out of Morley’s department store. The lights in the music hall gazing down the hill were just flickering to life, drawing people to them like moths to a flame.

It began to rain as Hélène marched into the still bustling markets of Electric Avenue. Half an hour later, she emerged back onto the high street, where one of the last remaining horse carriages was disgorging its passengers, with a bunch of daisies in one hand and a small rag doll in the other.