Late that night, after the revelries had finished and the last notes of the Archie Adams Band had died away, Vivienne Edgerton stole across the upper storeys of the Buckingham Hotel and gently tapped at a narrow mahogany door. Inside, by the light of a dozen candles, Nathaniel was admiring himself in the mirror above his armoire. He turned to greet Vivienne. She had looked ravishing in the ballroom tonight, her lips plump and red, her hair sculpted so that she seemed a style icon out of the pages of Vanity Fair, her black velvet gown with its striking silver sash procured from a Knightsbridge tailor who had made pieces for Greta Garbo. She stepped through and closed the door softly behind her. Then she opened up in the most radiant smile Nathaniel had ever seen grace her face. He had thought he had seen her in the throes of ecstasy before – but this simple, childish joy was something else altogether.

He stood and embraced her.

‘Oh, Nathaniel, it couldn’t have happened better if I’d planned it myself!’ She lay her head on his shoulder, then drew back so that she could plant her lips on his. They hovered there for a moment, enticing, before she kissed him. ‘All that fool had to do was bide his time. Broken bones heal. Bruises fade away. They’d have had to put him back in the ballroom eventually. The guests would have demanded it. Where’s Raymond de Guise, they’d all say. But now . . .’

Nathaniel kissed her again. They slid, together, onto the foot of his bed.

‘Do we know what de Guise did?’

‘Mr Simenon spilled it all. He always does. Raymond hanged himself. He went down there meaning to lash Mr Charles and force you out of the ballroom, but he wound up flogging himself. Isn’t it the most delicious irony?’

Nathaniel beamed. Sometimes, the stars really did align. Two weeks until Christmas – and the only thing standing between him and dancing with the Queen of Norway on his arm when the New Year bells tolled was suddenly gone, cast out into the snow. My ticket to greater glories yet. My ticket to the palaces and boudoirs of the continent. To becoming a star for the ages . . . Surely there had not been a more satisfying Christmas story in the history of the world.

‘I saw the way they looked at me in the ballroom tonight. Not the guests. The dancers. Those ingrates in the Archie Adams Band. Kildare, that swaggering saxophonist who’s always creeping around Hélène – as if she’d ever stoop so low as to dance privately with one of them. They think I’m the reason de Guise is banished. As if I pushed him to it . . .’