Raymond took her by the hand to the dance floor and, while the other couples sailed past, he put his right arm around her waist and pressed his left palm against hers. ‘In your old world, you needed no man to lead. But perhaps you would do me the honour of allowing me to lead you tonight?’

They were already stepping together onto the dance floor, pivoting once as the rhythm of the music found them.

Grusinskaya smiled. ‘The body aches for it sometimes. To be on the stage again. Holding my arabesque. Turning a grand jeté. And yet . . . there are other enchantments in dance, are there not, Mr de Guise?’

Archie Adams had upped the tempo and the dancers’ bodies responded to the rhythm. Raymond looked into Grusinskaya’s eyes, and something in them seemed to thaw as the couple moved effortlessly into a quickstep, making their way in a succession of light hops and skips across the ballroom floor.

‘Where did you train, Mr de Guise?’

‘If I were to tell you, you would only be disappointed. There is no academy for the ballroom, madame. My body is not as trained as yours must have been, dancing ballet for the Bolshoi.’

‘And yet you were taught, were you not?’

‘I owe my dancing to a master of the arts. Georges de la Motte, a baron of France no less – and the best ballroom dancer I ever observed.’

‘You were his apprentice.’

‘I was his friend. But apprenticed to him also.’

The music swelled and soared. First the trombones took the lead, then the trumpets, until finally the saxophonist sailed into the song, his instrument filling the cavernous ballroom with its intoxicating sound. Raymond and Grusinskaya turned, crossed the dance floor, turned again – and, as they danced on, the edges of the ballroom seemed to fade away. Soon, though neither said a word, it was as if their bodies were one.

So lost in the dance was he that, at first, Raymond de Guise did not hear the shrieking on the edges of the dance floor. It was only when he turned past Hélène Marchmont and saw her eyes drawn to a place between the ballroom pillars that he looked up. Vivienne Edgerton was looming over a young lady sitting at one of the tables, Vivienne’s arm outstretched and her face open in a vulpine howl. ‘You!’ she seemed to be shouting. ‘You!’