‘Mr Charles sent me for you. He’s asked for an audience.’

Asked for an audience? Vivienne tried to stifle her smile. Ever since Brogan had accepted his appointment as a new concierge, he had been adopting strange airs and graces. The boy thinks he’ll be hotel director one day, if he plays his cards right. But Vivienne knew that, in an establishment like the Buckingham, social climbing would only take errant Irish lads like Billy Brogan so far.

‘Haven’t you outgrown being Maynard Charles’s errand boy, Billy?’

Billy drew himself to his full height and beamed. ‘I’m always eager to be of service, Miss Edgerton.’

Admitting defeat, Vivienne strode up and out of the Grand, while behind her Gene Sheldon glided effortlessly from one side of the ballroom to another, a beautiful debutante in his arms.

The Grand Ballroom may have been launching into its spring spectacular, but that did not mean the machinations of the broader Buckingham Hotel could grind to a halt. As Vivienne crossed the glittering reception hall, a party of guests fresh in from Salzburg were being attended to by one of the day managers, while the doors of the golden lift opened to reveal an elderly dowager, weighed down by a gown of ivory silk.

With the music fading behind her, Vivienne crossed the check-in desks and, following a familiar corridor, came to the office at its end. Many were the times she had attended this office and stood outside its doors as if she were still a despairing schoolgirl awaiting a scolding. But she’d been quiet – quiet and clean – for three months now. The staff and the guests at the Buckingham Hotel must have thought she was a ghost, so rarely was she seen among them. It had never been Vivienne’s decision to come and live at the Buckingham Hotel. That had been the doing of her stepfather, Lord Edgerton himself – who had forced upon her not only his name, but a new residence, a new country, dragging her away from New York and keeping her at arm’s length from her own mother. But she had resolved, after last Christmas, that she did not want any more trouble.

So what am I doing here at all?

She knocked and waited for the deep, baritone voice to summon her through. Maynard Charles, the hotel director, was sitting behind his desk – as he did every evening – filling in a variety of ledger books and memos. He bade her to sit. A portly man, nearing sixty, he was wearing his usual pinstriped shirt and braces over his not insignificant belly. A tumbler of brandy was perched on the edge of his desk.