The room was silent, watching. I looked at the scattered crowd of aristocrats, at their impassive, Botoxed faces. They were nodding, a subtle, collective agreement with Brenda’s brutal assessment. Their faces held a mixture of pity and contempt, all of it directed at me, the interloper. I searched desperately for Alex’s face in the crowd. He stood frozen by the bar, his own face pale, a champagne flute held halfway to his lips, stunned into inaction by his mother’s sheer, theatrical audacity. He would not, could not, defend me against her. He was a Sterling first, and my fiancé a distant second.

I was utterly, completely, alone.

The string quartet, sensing the dramatic shift in the room’s atmosphere, faltered and went silent, the last mournful note of a Vivaldi piece hanging in the air like an unanswered question. The only sound was my own, ragged breathing, the frantic, panicked rhythm of a trapped animal.

Then, from a high-backed, throne-like armchair in the corner of the room, a new sound: the sharp, authoritative tap, tap, tap of an ebony cane against the marble floor.