More rattled than I wanted to admit, I glanced away from him and saw Olivia and Beryl returning.

‘We’ll be having dinner in a minute,’ Olivia said. ‘And Ivana was wondering if you’d like to take Lady Calthrope in.’ I followed her glance to a tight-lipped, bone-thin woman in her mid-sixties seated on one of the sofas.

‘Of course,’ I said, just as dinner was announced.

I walked over to Lady Calthrope and she looked up at me with pale, hooded eyes. ‘Are you taking me in?’ she demanded.

‘Unless you don’t want me to,’ I said.

She raised a thin, blue-veined hand imperiously. I grasped it and helped her up. She stood for a moment staring boldly at me. ‘So you’re the American hypnotist.’

‘Yes.’

She linked her hand through my arm and without the least trace of embarrassment said, ‘That’s good. I was rather afraid you might be one of those ghastly Americans.’

There was nothing to say to that so arm in arm we followed the tasteful procession in to dinner. The State Dining Room was everything a State Room should be: blended strawberries wallpaper, seventeenth-century ceiling murals, a dining table that spanned from one end of the room to the other, massive chandeliers, heavy gilt mirrors, museum-size paintings, and a stunningly carved marble fireplace. We took our seats amid the flowers and candelabras.

I looked for the waiter and nodded at him. He returned speedily with my American measure of whiskey.

I had Lady Calthrope on my left, which, according to etiquette, meant that I was to talk to her until the first course was cleared away. There was no sharing platitudes with her—it was more like bouts of blunt trauma with an eccentric twist. Between rounds I glanced at Beryl and she smiled or raised her eyebrows at me from across the table, but I quickly realized that she was sitting next to a man who had decided that no conversation at all was possible with her. After a few failed attempts to engage him, poor Beryl was spooning her buttery leek and Stilton soup in stony silence.

Although I was intensely aware of Olivia sitting three guests away on my left, I never let my gaze travel to her. When the places were cleared, as custom required, I turned to converse with the guest on my right.

The Baroness Wentworth was a straight-backed woman with sharp blue eyes and pale lipstick. She smiled mildly at me. ‘So, you’re a hypnotist.’

‘Yes,’ I said politely, and catching the waiter’s eyes, nodded.

She glanced sideways at me. ‘Is it dangerous to look you in the eye?’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ I said gravely.

She giggled. ‘You don’t mean to say those frightful stage hypnotists are fakes?’

I shrugged. ‘It depends. If you see inconsistencies, then it’s a fakery. If you don’t, it isn’t.’

‘Inconsistencies such as?’

‘If a hypnotized person picks up a glass of water that he has been told is battery acid and drinks it then he is not hypnotized. He is either pretending or a shill. If he refuses to drink it then he is, because he genuinely believes it is battery acid and it will harm him.’

She turned fully toward me. ‘How fascinating. And how does one become a hypnotist?’

‘I wasn’t always a hypnotist. I began as a neurologist.’

‘I like clever people and I’ve always made a beeline for them.’

I glanced at Beryl. She was now being ignored by the gentleman on her other side. Her shoulders were sodden with disappointment and humiliation. All around me bits of foreign conversation swirled. An old boy was talking about getting pissed in the Bullingdon Club, a woman had been served a nice fat red Margaux at lunch the day before, someone else was discussing his stock of rare breeds in his organic farm, another had spent fifty thousand pounds at an auction but could not remember what he bought. The hubris and rudeness of this group of people was just too much.

Beryl was a sweet person who had arrived in such high spirits, so excited to be in the presence of the ‘cream of society’. But the haves had thoroughly snubbed a have-not. I was furious on her behalf and I was damned if I would let these stuck-up bores treat her as if she was a non-person.

I picked up my glass and to the open-mouthed horror of the Baroness I excused myself, and, standing up, sauntered over to where Beryl was sitting. The entire table had fallen silent with shock.

I looked at the man on Beryl’s right. ‘I’d like to exchange places with you. I believe I’m offering a far more advantageous seating choice. You’ll be sitting next to a Baroness no less.’

There was a horrified gasp from one of the ladies on my left.

The man gaped like a caught fish. He looked around him and then incredulously at me.

‘Surely you don’t mean for me to move halfway through dinner?’ he asked as if doing so would be tantamount to committing a cardinal sin.

My eyes and jaw were answer enough.

Without another word and with stony-eyed resentment he pushed his chair back and walked around to my seat. I took his place and winked at Beryl. ‘I thought you looked a bit lonely,’ I said.

She grinned suddenly, her whole face lighting up. Around us servants were busy moving plates and cutlery to accommodate the switch.

I glanced up to catch the waiter’s eye and met Olivia’s eyes instead. For a second we stared at each other then I moved my gaze along and met Ivana’s regard. Her expression was carefully veiled. Only a mask of social politeness was on display. She raised her eyebrows slightly at me. It was impossible to say what she intended to convey with this subtle gesture.

After dinner the men and the women separated as if we were still stuck in Edwardian times. Without the sexual tension provided by Olivia or the warmth of Beryl I became quickly and intolerably bored. I consumed another dose of Lord Swanson’s fine Scotch and left. I couldn’t stand the smell of their cigars or their unsubtle attempts to turn me into an outsider by constantly referring to the charmed circle of people they all knew. I was an outsider. God, was I glad that I wasn’t a member of their exclusive club.

I made my way back to my room. Someone had come in, drawn the curtains, and added fresh logs to the fire. It looked cozy, but it was actually chilly. There was a distinct draft coming from somewhere. I retrieved the tooth glass from the bathroom and poured myself a glass of whiskey. I drank it by the fire staring at the dancing orange flames and considered the events of the evening.

What her brother told me put a whole different slant onto Olivia’s amnesia. I had to get to the bottom of it soon. There was very little time left before Olivia was going to insist on knowing exactly what was going on.

I felt the drink seep into my brain cells, relaxing me. I was starting to feel drowsy when there was a knock on my door. Surprised, I went to open it.

Young, haughty, dismissive, precocious Daphne was standing in the deserted corridor. I raised my eyebrows. She was the last person I expected to see outside my door. She had been such a bitch. ‘All well?’ I asked.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Sure,’ I said, opening the door wider.

She sailed in. I closed the door and leaned against it.

‘Dinner was pretty filthy,’ she said with her back to me.

‘I thought it was excellent.’

She swung around on one heel, like a dancer. ‘Are you sleeping with her?’

‘Whom did you have in mind?’ I straightened away from the door, my face expressionless.

‘My half-sister, of course,’ she replied, with a pleasant smile.

And I knew then without a shadow of a doubt that she hated Olivia with the fierce hatred that comes from excruciating envy.

I crossed my arms. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but no.’

She smiled shyly, but her eyes were filled with malicious delight. ‘I saw her watching you.’

‘I don’t make a habit of sleeping with my clients. Far too confusing for me, let alone them.’

She smiled again, this time in that cold, aloof manner of hers. ‘What about their sisters? Have you slept with any of them?’

I stared at her. She was totally different from the girl/woman I had met in the Green Saloon. This was the Daphne Swanson with her well-bred spine exposed, without the pretensions or the aura of fake hauteur that her social set deliberately cultivated to place them apart from mere mortals. Here was the real Daphne, the central figure in her own drama.

‘I can’t say I have,’ I said mildly.

She bit her lower lip. ‘Would it be too awful to start tonight?’

My eyebrows shot up, but before I could answer there was another knock on my door.

She blanched, but in a flash she ran into one of the cupboards and shut the door on herself.

Bemused, I opened the door. Beryl was standing outside. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked glazed about the eyes. Why, she was as drunk as a skunk.

‘Oh good, you’re still awake,’ she slurred. ‘I was hoping you’d be.’ She proceeded to sway unsteadily into the middle of the room right where Daphne had been standing. She turned around and almost lost her balance.

‘Are you all right?’

She waved her hand and smiled benevolently. ‘I feel great. I just wanted to thank you for what you did tonight at the dinner table.’ She raised her forefinger and wagged it at me. ‘You rescued me.’

‘It was nothing,’ I said quickly.

‘No, no, no,’ she argued shaking her head. ‘No one else would have done such a thing. You’re a good man, Dr. Kane. A really good man. And handsome, too. You’re really handsome, you know. If I was twenty years younger…’

I looked at her with amusement. She was going to be mortified in the morning. If she remembered, that is.

‘It’s a lucky woman who gets you,’ she continued.

I shifted away from the door. ‘Where have you been all this while?’ I found it hard to believe she had been accepted into the club and had been getting sloshed with them all this time.

She grinned happily. ‘You’ll never believe it, but I found out that the cook is from the same little village in Devon that I’m from. Fancy that! I’ve been in the kitchen having a good old chinwag with her all this while. It was fun. She’s so nice. She opened a bottle of sloe berry vodka that she made herself and we had a few glasses. Phew! Potent stuff.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Right. The floor keeps tilting. I guess I ought to go to bed.’

I went to my bag and pushed out two tabs of headache tablets and dropped them into her palm. ‘Life won’t be worth it tomorrow morning if you don’t take these right away.’

She smiled dreamily. ‘You really are such a Prince Charming.’

I opened the connecting door.

‘See you at breakfast,’ she said and stumbled through the open doorway. I closed it and the cupboard door opened.

Daphne stepped out coolly as if hiding in cupboards was a thing she did every day. She walked up to me. ‘She’s quite right. You are quite the prince,’ she said, unzipping her dress and letting it slide to the floor. In that chilly room she stood as naked as the day she was born. I’ll admit she had a good body, a very good body.

She curved one corner of her lip invitingly and very deliberately began to walk toward me. I had the impression she could have been a good lay. Energetic and probably insatiable, but there was something viperish about her that made me think I’d live to regret any time spent in her pussy.

How did one politely reject a Sloane Ranger with a trust fund in the Bahamas? A vindictive one at that. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. There was a knock on the door and Lady Daphne became a flash of pale skin as she raced to her dress, picked it up and returned to the cupboard.

This was fast becoming a comical farce. I opened the door and Olivia was standing there in her coat.

She smiled. ‘Get your jacket on and come with me. I want to show you something.’

‘You make it sound dangerous,’ I said.

‘I’ll keep you safe,’ she said, with a smile.

‘Ah, but who will keep you safe?’

She blushed and I realized that I must have drunk far more than I thought. I was flirting with her! Every sober cell in my brain knew I shouldn’t go with her. It wasn’t prudent. But the alcohol was suddenly racing powerfully in my veins. I was surrounded by that horrid smell of her perfume that had actually started to grow on me and I fucking wanted to be with her.

Oh fuck it.