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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

‘NO!’ Nancy took the phials and slid them back into the lavender pouch. ‘Vivienne is wanton and Vivienne is cruel. Vivienne’s a drunk and all of these things people say, but they’ve never given her a chance, have they? I’m the one she stood there and openly mocked and threatened, but I’m willing to see past it. Why isn’t anybody else? All they see is the stupid, pretty little rich girl desperate for attention down in the ballroom.’ Nancy paused. ‘Well, I see her for what she really is. She’s an addict. She’s lonely and lost and she’s scared and, if she’s cruel and destructive and she doesn’t care, well, that’s the reason why.’

By now Nancy was breathless. She resisted Raymond’s arms and steadied herself until she could speak once more.

‘You’ve got that look in your eye,’ said Raymond. ‘Nancy, what do you mean to do?’

‘Why, isn’t it obvious?’ she replied, folding her fist so tightly around the lavender pouch that the glass phials inside shattered with a satisfying crunch. ‘I’m going to do for Miss Edgerton what I did for my father. She’s too far gone to do it herself, so . . . I’m going to help her out of it, and there isn’t a thing in the whole of the Buckingham Hotel that’s going to stop me.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-eight

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MAYNARD CHARLES SLAMMED HIS OFFICE door and prowled the room, stopping only to pour a stiff brandy from his decanter. He drank it in one, then poured himself another. The first was to relieve all of the tension that had been pumping through his body as he faced Raymond de Guise. The second was to take the edge off the sudden wooziness that hit him as he drank back the first. By the time he poured himself a third, he had reached some equilibrium again. He was calmer, more self-possessed; the doubts that he had done the right thing were beginning to fade as the brandy’s warmth spread around his body.

He stood at the window. He’d made a mistake here, somewhere. A hotel director was supposed to be a master tactician. He was supposed to be able to move his pieces around the board with the skills of a chess grandmaster, deploying his bishops and knights, quietly advancing his pawns until they, too, could take positions of influence in the vast hotel engine.