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Back One Enchanted Evening Save as PDF
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

Hélène did not want to put Sybil down. She clung on to her until her own feet were tired, simply breathing in her scent. Then, at last, she bent over the rail and laid her down in the crib. After that, she gazed over her for the longest time, humming a lullaby whose words she felt certain she’d forgotten. But the melody came naturally – and so too, Hélène remembered, did motherhood. It was a wonderful feeling. Each time she came back, she was afraid it had slipped through her fingers – but life was lived for stolen moments like these.

‘Sleep tight, little princess,’ she said as she left a kiss on the baby’s head. ‘Mama’s with you now. Mama’s here.’

November 1936

November 1936

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-two

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THE LAST LINGERING GUESTS OF the season had vacated the suites of the Buckingham Hotel. Nikolai Alexeev and Grusinskaya had departed to over-winter in the sunnier climes of some Moorish castle on the north Moroccan coast; Cormac E. Colby had returned to the promise of snow in New York City; the Schechts, the van der Lindes, the Townsend-Stuarts, all had returned to their mansion houses and Contin-ental estates. Of all the suites, only the Park Suite remained occupied – and, as any senior member of staff at the Buckingham Hotel would have told you, this too was the only suite not mentioned in the hotel’s glamorous brochures. Soon, the suites would have new guests to inhabit them; some would come for days and some would stay for weeks – for, with the nights drawing in, talk of Christmas and New Year was suddenly on the tongues of everyone at the Buckingham, from the lowliest hotel page to the hotel director himself.

As the eleventh hour drew near on a cold November night, two figures strolled arm-in-arm across the green expanse of Berkeley Square. The gleaming white facade of the Buckingham loomed above them, imperious in the winter dark. The lights in its windows were like a thousand glowing eyes, each staring out across the London sky.

Raymond de Guise took his arm out of Nancy’s and rested on his cane. It had, he decided, been the perfect evening: an evening to escape his confinement to quarters in the Buckingham Hotel; an evening to test his broken foot – which still throbbed, but had borne his weight well tonight; an evening to be free with her, with Nancy Nettleton, out in London town. The fireworks had rained over the river in beautiful arrays of oranges, reds and white. In Hyde Park the bonfire still burned, though it had long ago devoured the great effigy of Guy Fawkes that had been cast into it. The smell of woodsmoke was still in his hair, where it mingled with the scent of Nancy’s perfume: not the Chanel or Caron of Vivienne Edgerton, but the much subtler scent she’d picked up from the John Lewis department store two Saturdays before.