At the landing-stage hands reached down to help her up the steps and guide her into the hotel. She made a stately entrance, followed by porters bearing her luggage in procession.

‘The Empress Suite,’ declared a lofty individual on the desk.

‘The Emp-?’ she echoed, dismayed. ‘Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?’

But she was already being swept away to the third floor where gilded double doors opened before her and she walked into the palatial apartment. Everything about it was designed to look like the abode of an empress, including the eighteenth-century furniture. On one wall hung a portrait of the beautiful, young Empress Elisabeth of Austria, painted in the nineteenth century when Venice had been an Austrian province.

To one side was another pair of double doors, through which Dulcie found her bedroom, with a bed large enough to sleep four. She gasped, overwhelmed by such opulence. A maid appeared, ready to unpack her luggage. Just in time she remembered Roscoe’s orders to ‘splash it about a bit’ and distributed tips large enough to get herself talked about even in this place.

When everyone had gone she sat in silence, trying to come to terms with the shock of being here, alone, when she should have been here as a blissful bride.

She forced herself to confront the memory of Simon, painful though it was. He’d assumed that Lady Dulcie Maddox, daughter of Lord Maddox, must have a potful of family money hidden somewhere. He’d courted her ardently, using practised words to sweep her away in a magic balloon, to a place where everything was love and gratification.

But the balloon had fallen to earth, with her in it.

Simon had lived lavishly-all on credit, as she’d later discovered. She hadn’t cared about his money, only about his love. But the one was as illusory as the other.