I straighten up slowly, prepared to apologise. But one look at his expression and I change my mind. My student loans need this money, and I’m just going to have to brazen this out. So I look him up and down slowly instead. “No wimple, then?”

“Not in office hours,” he says primly, making me smile. His voice is deep with a slight husky catch to it. For a second we stare at each other, and then he shrugs and gestures to his room with one large hand. “You’d better come in. Felix might need to do some actual work on his desk at some point today.”

I swallow hard and, standing up, I edge past him, getting a waft of very expensive cologne that smells of orange and sandalwood. “Watch out for the brimstone,” he mutters. “It’s over by the window.”

I snort and shake my head. “What exactly is brimstone, anyway?”

“Your extensive knowledge of The Tudors didn’t give you that knowledge, then?” he says, gesturing me to a seat in front of an enormous desk piled high with very neat stacks of paperwork.

“I must have dozed off at that point. If Henry Cavill wasn’t naked, I lost interest.”

“What a discerning viewer you are,” he murmurs. He looks at me as he settles back into his chair and slips on a pair of black-framed glasses. “Brimstone is an alternative name for sulphur. In the Bible it was called brimstone, which means burning stone.”

“Ah, good job, you’re educated. I must have missed that page of the Bible when I passed out due to boredom.”

For a second he stares at me, and I think I catch a faint twitch around his mouth which might denote amusement, but more likely it just means he’d like to throttle me. That’s the more common reaction I’m used to.

I gaze at him, the only sound in the room that of the chatter of people wandering in the courtyard outside which filters in through the open window. It brings with it a faint breeze, and I strain to catch it, feeling the sweat dampening my underarms and the faint track of grime on my skin. England is in the middle of a heatwave and there’s nowhere more miserable than London when it’s hot.

I sigh, and he looks up from the piece of paper he’s holding. “Something wrong?”

“It’s just that you look as cool as a cucumber, and I look like I’ve been thrown in an oven and then pushed down a hill.” He blinks and I bite my lip. “What does that mean, anyway?”

“Are you asking me to decipher your entire sentence? Because I’ve a feeling that the Greek gods setting Hercules his labours wouldn’t have tasked him with that one.”