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Evangeline Smythe came to the rescue, bless her. She’s a genius with my hair. In two minutes, I was a picture of elegance—she caught up all the curls and swirled them round at the back—and I could even move my head. Off I went, feeling perfectly adorable. Not even Claridge’s marble lobby could intimidate
me
.
    Then Markham V. Reynolds stepped forward, and the bubble popped. He’s dazzling. Honestly, Sophie, I’ve never seen anything like him. Not even the furnace-man can compare. Tanned, with blazing blue eyes. Ravishing leather shoes, elegant wool suit, blinding white handkerchief in breast pocket. Of course, being American, he’s tall, and he has one of those alarming American smiles, all gleaming teeth and good humour, but he’s not a genial American. He’s quite impressive, and he’s used to ordering people about—though he does it so easily, they don’t notice. He’s got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he’s not disagreeable about it. He’s too sure he’s right to bother about being disagreeable.
    Once we were seated—in our own velvet-draped alcove—and all the waiters and stewards and maîtres d’hôtel had finished fluttering about, I asked him point-blank why he had sent me all those flowers without including any note.
    He laughed. ‘To make you interested. If I had written to you directly, asking you to meet me, how would you have replied?’ I admitted I would have declined. He raised onepointed eyebrow at me. Was it his fault he could outwit me so easily?
    I was awfully insulted to be so transparent, but he just laughed at me again. And then he began to talk about the war and Victorian literature—he knows I wrote a biography of Anne Brontë—and New York and rationing, and before I knew it, I was basking in his attention, utterly charmed.
    Do you remember that afternoon in Leeds when we speculated on the possible reasons why Markham V. Reynolds, Junior, was obliged to remain a man of mystery? It’s very disappointing, but we were completely wrong. He’s not married. He’s certainly not bashful. He doesn’t have a disfiguring scar that causes him to shun the daylight. He doesn’t seem to be a werewolf (no fur on his knuckles, anyway). And he’s not a Nazi on the run (he’d have an accent).
    Now that I think about it, maybe he
is
a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I’m certain that he wouldn’t think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I’ll watch him closely at the next full moon. He’s asked me to go dancing tomorrow—perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that’s vampires, isn’t it?
    I think I am a little giddy.
    Love,
    Juliet
    From Lady Bella Taunton to Amelia
12th February 1946
    Dear Mrs Maugery,
    Juliet Ashton has written to me, and I am astonished. Am I to understand she wishes me to provide a character referencefor her? Well, so be it! I cannot impugn her character—only her common sense. She hasn’t any.
    War, as you know, makes strange bedfellows, and Juliet and I were thrown together from the very first when we were fire wardens during the Blitz. Fire wardens spent their nights on various London roof-tops, watching out for incendiary bombs that might fall. When they did, we would rush forth with stirrup pumps and buckets of sand to stifle any small blaze before it could spread. Juliet and I were paired off to work together. We did not chat, as less conscientious wardens would have done. I insisted on total vigilance at all times. Even so, I learnt a few details of her life prior to the war.
    Her father was a respectable farmer in Suffolk. Her mother, I surmise, was a typical farmer’s wife, milking cows and plucking chickens, when not otherwise engaged in owning a bookshop in Bury St Edmunds. Juliet’s parents were both killed in a motor-car accident when