Nancy felt hot anger of her own now. ‘Defend him? For what? For being an obnoxious fool? For being one of those rich boys who think they own the world, and all because of the money in their back pockets? You’ve been in the Buckingham longer than I. You know the way of this world. But defend him as a . . . a fascist? You’ve danced with them before, Raymond. You said it yourself: the Grand is the Grand, and what happens inside—’

Raymond was quelled. ‘I was wrong—’

‘What changed?’ Nancy whispered. ‘What changed in you?’

The thought of them, men like Nathaniel, all his union friends, tearing his brother down from the barricades and trampling him into the earth. It was . . . the guilt. At last he admitted it. The guilt that he hadn’t been there. That he’d forsaken them all. That he danced for his supper for the very same men who would have seen his family driven out of their homes.

‘It’s our ballroom,’ Raymond stated. ‘I’m taking it back.’

*

Maynard Charles dialled the number furiously, so furiously that the telephone on his desk skittered off the edge and he had to pick it up from the floor and start all over again. Since the king – he would have to stop calling him the king – had stopped speaking, the radio had maintained a dignified silence. Now, as the voice of the BBC newsreader returned, he pulled the electric cord from the wall and waited for the voice on the other end of the line.

‘Yes,’ he began, when a lady finally answered, ‘I’m seeking Lord Edgerton. Yes, I need to speak to him immediately. Tell him . . . tell him it’s Maynard Charles. Tell him we must speak at once.’

The timid voice on the end of the line, no doubt Lord Edgerton’s housekeeper, did not get a chance to reply – for at that moment fists hammered at the office door and, even though Maynard barked out an order to wait, the door drew back to reveal Raymond de Guise. Maynard gave him a sharp look but the broken dancer closed the door behind him.

‘Raymond, this is going to have to wait. You’ll understand, this is a sensitive moment—’

‘And for me, sir, but I have to speak with you.’

‘Raymond, by God! I’m wrestling with something of far greater significance than—’

‘No,’ declared Raymond. ‘I insist. This can’t go on a moment longer.’

There was something so severe in Raymond’s tone that Maynard slowly replaced the telephone on its receiver. The housekeeper would, no doubt, be the recipient of Lord Edgerton’s ire, but that was somebody else’s problem.

He looked over his pince-nez at Raymond. ‘What’s happening, Mr de Guise?’