This was where they were to take supper. This is where the best-dressed and wittiest women dined with their male relatives and friends. Down below, a red-coated band was playing waltzes as couples whirled around. The whole restaurant seemed infused with a restless gaiety.

‘I do not think any of the ladies dining around us are the type to know someone like Madame de Peurey,’ said Rose.

‘No, they’re not. But I see an old friend of mine. I shall wave. Ah, he’s coming over.’

An elderly roué bent over the duchess’s hand, his corsets creaking.

‘You look ravishing,’ he said. ‘You will take Paris by storm.’

The duchess introduced Harry and Rose, naming her elderly admirer as Lord Featherstone.

‘Do sit for a minute, Jumbo,’ she said. ‘Have some champagne.’

‘Gladly. I shall feast my eyes on the divinity that is Lady Rose.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, you naughty old thing. The captain here would call you out. I need to find a certain Madame de Peurey.’

‘Zuzu? That takes me back. What a wonder she was. They fought duels over her.’

‘And where is she now?’

He cast an anxious glance at a formidable matron at his table. The duchess followed his glance. ‘I did not know you were married.’

‘I’m not, yet. Postage-stamp heiress. Widowed. Wants the title and I want her money. I’d better get back.’

‘Madame de Peurey. She was one of yours for a bit. Where is she?’

‘Have you a piece of paper?’

Harry produced a small notebook and pencil. Featherstone scribbled an address. ‘Right, I’m off. I can feel my postage stamps disappearing by the minute.’

‘You see?’ said the duchess triumphantly. ‘I knew it would be easy. Now, let’s eat.’

Rose began to feel light-headed towards the end of the meal. Parisian gaiety frothed around her. Down on the floor, couples swung around in the waltz. The duchess broke off eating to greet old friends who had come up to her table.

‘I never thought I knew so many people in Paris,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I was sure they must all be dead.’

The supper consisted of eight courses. By the time the brandies and petits fours were served, Rose glanced at an elegant bronze clock on the wall. Four in the morning! Lucky Daisy. She would have been asleep for hours.

CHAPTER SIX

The Dowager Duchess carried an air of solid assurance which belonged to a less uneasy age. That slightly raucous note of defiance was absent from her pronouncements. She did not protest; she merely ignored. Nothing unpleasant ever ruffled her serenity, because she simply failed to notice it.

Vita Sackville-West

Two bottles of champagne, seclusion and a magnificent double bed proved to be too much for Daisy and Becket. They were to be married, after all.

Daisy, despite her chorus-girl background, was still a virgin, but as she confided, giggling, to Becket, a dance number where she had to perform the splits five times a night in the past had no doubt eased the way to losing it painlessly.