There are people who enter a room and there are people who arrive, and Kitty Badminton Tannenbaum has never simply entered anything in her life.

She came with a reputation, a wardrobe with its own gravitational pull, and a name she was born with — Badminton — that sounds inherited and slightly implausible, which suits her perfectly. The Tannenbaum came later, via Winthrop, who made his fortune in Christmas trees and Christmas tree air fresheners and who has been quietly delighted by Kitty ever since. He asks very few questions. This is why it works.

Kitty does not make things. She commissions them — the straw bags, the sleep masks, the pieces that emerge from the Velvet Closet with the air of having always existed and simply been waiting for the right moment to appear. She has an unerring instinct for what a thing should be and the absolute confidence to tell someone else to go make it that way.

The Velvet Closet is hers. The door is never quite all the way open.

Come in anyway. She's expecting you.

Or did you need to follow the butler back The Main Hall?