Summary
A gilded-cage heiress, suffocated by velvet banisters and charity luncheons, trades her monogrammed handkerchief for a scarlet domino mask after spotting a classified plea for a woman ‘with a past as lurid as sunrise on sin.’ Corinne Chilvers, porcelain-doll of the Chilvers Trust, slithers into the role of a Parisian danseuse de cabaret, her spine arching like a question mark beneath chandeliers dripping counterfeit diamonds. Her mark: Nicholas Fenwick, a South American titan rumoured to balance emeralds on the rim of his champagne flute. Yet the ballroom is crowded—Pansy Hartley, a flapper whose laugh rattles like dice in a gambler’s fist, already trails smoke and scandal from her cigarette holder. Masquerades multiply: Corinne’s borrowed identity, Fenwick’s borrowed millions, Pansy’s borrowed time. When the masks finally slip, the emerald titan is revealed as a penniless decoy engineered by yellow journalists hungry for circulation, and Corinne’s fabricated shame becomes authentic exile. Parents bolt the manor gates; headlines howl. Still, love—messy, unbranded—refuses the script: a real proposal blooms in the wreckage, a genuine marriage in the margins of a hoax. Fenwick, no longer cardboard tycoon, storms the Chilvers mausoleum with nothing but sincerity in his pockets and rewrites the final act: forgiveness louder than scandal.
Synopsis
Bored with her life as the daughter of wealthy parents, Corinne Chilvers answers an ad in the paper for a woman with a lurid past. Hired to secure a declaration of marriage from South American millionaire Nicholas Fenwick, Corinne assumes the identity of a masked dancer to attract Fenwick's attention. Competing with Corinne for Fenwick's affections is Pansy Hartley, a woman who actually does have a shady past. After a series of misadventures, Fenwick falls in love with Corinne, whose parents, scandalized by their daughter's escapades, disown her. Reporting to her employers that Fenwick has proposed to her, Corinne discovers that the young man is not a millionaire, but rather the object of a publicity stunt, which is aborted when Corinne and Fenwick really do get married. Fenwick then approaches Corinne's parents and persuades them to forgive their daughter for her scandalous behavior.
