Vivienne looked up. Her vacant eyes met his. Then she lolled forward and, slumping head first onto the table, fainted clean away.

*

‘Here, take this,’ said Mrs Moffatt with an exasperated, yet kindly, stare. ‘You’ll feel better.’

Miss Vivienne Edgerton sat hunched in a chair in the head concierge’s office, while Mr Simenon stood sentry outside and Raymond de Guise dabbed at his evening suit with a damp cloth, eager to be rid of the smears of rouge Vivienne had left on his lapels as he helped carry her through. Mrs Moffatt had wrapped Vivienne in her shawl; the poor girl was shivering, as if finally coming out of her stupor, a wild look in her eyes.

Vivienne took the lemon water Mrs Moffatt had offered and nodded her thanks. She looked chastened, thought Raymond, and so she might. The gossips would be talking. One of these days, word was going to get back to Vivienne’s stepfather – and Lord Edgerton was not known as a forgiving man. The rumour was he’d removed his own son from his will over some petty slight; the fact that Vivienne was here at all – instead of left to fend for herself – was only down to the insistence of his current wife, Vivienne’s mother. Raymond looked at her. Now that she wasn’t screaming, and her lips weren’t curling in hate, she was a sorry sight. And he wondered how it must feel to be her. Your own father long gone, your mother married to some strange gentleman from over the oceans who decides he cannot stand the sight of you – because, to him, all you are is a reminder that his new wife used to be in love with another. It had been a year since Vivienne Edgerton was uprooted from her New York home and compelled to cross the oceans, leaving behind all of the friends she used to know – and not to live in the grand west London residence into which her stepfather and mother had moved, but to live here, in the Buckingham Hotel. No matter how grand the Buckingham was, no matter how indulged she was by the management and staff, it was not a home. Seeing her now, Raymond thought she looked lonely. Everyone else who lived here had companions. The housekeeping staff. The dancers. Maynard Charles himself. But as for Vivienne . . .

‘Get yourself together, dear. When you’re ready, I’ll take you to your suite. We can use the service lift.’

Vivienne’s eyes shot up. ‘You won’t tell my—’

‘Hush, dear. We’ve been here before, haven’t we, you and I? Nobody else needs to know.’ Mrs Moffatt’s eyes lifted and looked at Raymond de Guise. ‘You’d better be back to the ballroom, Mr de Guise, before you’re missed.’

He was almost at the door when Vivienne reached for him.

‘Mr de Guise . . .’