The Westhampton twins and May Murray were bridesmaids, and Eva Murray was matron of honour. Boy had been grumpy about Eva’s being half Jewish – he had not wanted to invite her at all – but Daisy had insisted.

She stood in the ancient church, conscious that she looked heartbreakingly beautiful, and happily gave herself to Boy Fitzherbert body and soul.

She signed the register ‘Daisy Fitzherbert, Viscountess Aberowen.’ She had been practising that signature for weeks, carefully tearing the paper into unreadable shreds afterwards. Now she was entitled to it. It was her name.

Processing out of the church, Fitz took Olga’s arm amiably, but Princess Bea put a yard of empty space between herself and Lev.

Princess Bea was not a nice person. She was friendly enough towards Daisy’s mother, and if there was a heavy strain of condescension in her tone, Olga did not notice it, so relations were amiable. But Bea did not like Lev.

Daisy now realized that Lev lacked the veneer of social respectability. He walked and talked, ate and drank, smoked and laughed and scratched like a gangster, and he did not care what people thought. He did what he liked because he was an American millionaire, just as Fitz did what he liked because he was an English earl. Daisy had always known this, but it struck her with extra force when she saw her father with all these upper-class English people, at the wedding breakfast in the grand ballroom of the Dorchester Hotel.

But it did not matter now. She was Lady Aberowen, and that could not be taken away from her.

Nevertheless, Bea’s constant hostility to Lev was an irritant, like a slightly bad smell or a distant buzzing noise, giving Daisy a feeling of dissatisfaction. Sitting beside Lev at the top table, Bea constantly turned slightly away. When he spoke to her she replied briefly without meeting his eye. He seemed not to notice, smiling and drinking champagne, but Daisy, seated on Lev’s other side, knew that he had not failed to read the signs. He was uncouth, not stupid.

When the toasts were over and the men began to smoke, Lev, who as the father of the bride was paying the bill, looked along the table and said: ‘Well, Fitz, I hope you enjoyed your meal. Were the wines up to your standards?’

‘Very good, thank you.’

‘I must say, I thought it was a damn fine spread.’

Bea tutted audibly. Men were not supposed to say ‘damn’ in her hearing.

Lev turned to her. He was smiling, but Daisy knew the dangerous look in his eye. ‘Why, Princess, have I offended you?’

She did not want to reply, but he looked expectantly at her, and did not turn his gaze aside. At last she spoke. ‘I prefer not to hear coarse language,’ she said.

Lev took a cigar from his case. He did not light it at once, but sniffed it and rolled it between his fingers. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ he said, and he looked up and down the table to make sure they were all listening: Fitz, Olga, Boy, Daisy, and Bea. ‘When I was a kid my father was accused of grazing livestock on someone else’s land. No big deal, you might think, even if he was guilty. But he was arrested, and the land agent built a scaffold in the north meadow. Then the soldiers came and grabbed me and my brother and our mother and took us there. My father was on the scaffold with a noose around his neck. Then the landlord arrived.’