'Welcome to the Grand Ballroom of the Buckingham Hotel, a place of music and magic, of magnificence and splendor. Strung high with decorations for the Christmas festivities, today it is banked in a dozen miniature Norwegian firs, all of them bedecked in crystals and lights - while, gathered around its chequered dance floor, gather the great and good of London town. There is nowhere else, no other dazzling palace or mansion in Mayfair, that the finest members of Society would rather be.'
London, 1937. With a new king in place, tensions are rising in London and across Europe. Shaken by the Great Depression and with talk of another war coming, the Buckingham Hotel is trying to regain some stability. Upstairs, Vivienne Edgerton is desperate to do something worthwhile with her time and her stepfather's money, rather than spending it on frivolity and debauchery - but will this land her in even more trouble? And downstairs, chambermaid Nancy Nettleton is finally starting to feel more settled at the Buckingham, and hopes her brother will soon call London home, too. But she misses the man she loves, demonstration dancer Raymond de Guise, who is noticeably absent from the Grand Ballroom dance floor. The staff and guests of the Buckingham soon discover that in a hotel full of secrets, there's always someone listening.