Raymond’s quarters were the grandest of all the demonstration dancers who lived at the hotel. There were six live-in dan-cers. Their quarters were arranged around a small kitchenette on the hidden seventh storey, above the vaulted ceilings of the hotel’s most expensive suites. Raymond’s room was not large but its windows opened onto a small terrace overlooking the square, the armoire was of a vintage French design, and the mirror in which he readied himself every morning was so big that it might better have been suited backstage at the Palladium. His bed, a four-poster, dominated the room and he threw himself into it now, barely even bothering to take off his coat. The bag that contained all the vestiges of Ray Cohen’s life he dropped at his side.

Even the bed seemed to be welcoming him home. After a night spent tossing and turning, oscillating wildly between pride that he’d escaped Whitechapel and guilt that he hadn’t made peace with the family he was once again leaving behind, it was a welcome embrace. He felt he could close his eyes there and then, but the scent of Chanel was still on his fingertips.

Inside the envelope was paper headed with the legend of the Buckingham Hotel. In tiny, precise handwriting, the words read:

Dear Mr de Guise,

I hope you will forgive our moment together in the Grand Ballroom. There is something so powerful in the music, in the movement, in feeling one’s body pressed up against another living soul. We forgot ourselves, dear Raymond. We were not in our right minds, and I should hate it if a moment like this might derail our . . . I was going to say ‘tuition’, but I should rather say ‘friendship’. We are friends, are we not, Raymond?

You know me well enough to understand how difficult a letter this has been to write. But I must swallow my pride. Forgive my indiscretion, let us say no more about it, and promise you will dance with me again, when the Grand is ready? I promise you will be rewarded . . .

Yours in anticipation

Vivienne

Raymond let his eyes drift over the letter. He heaved his legs over the edge of the bed and sat hunched there, slumped into a posture that should have shamed him as a dancer. Vivienne Edgerton. Dancing with disaster. Even in this letter there were both sides of her: the angel, who wanted only to dance and be admired; and the devil, who knew that, with the right words, she could make him do it. He had been foolish to dance with her at all. Whether he said yes or whether he said no, it could only end one way – in humiliation and defeat. She would either loathe him and make it known, or the rumours would begin, rumours of Raymond de Guise and the beautiful Vivienne Edgerton dancing in the ballroom at dawn.