“You’d be right. And in answer to your question, I haven’t slept with him because he’s my stepbrother.”

For some reason that takes me completely by surprise. “Your stepbrother?”

He looks amused. “His mother was my father’s last wife.” He considers. “That sounds as if he’d found the one. Regretfully, it just meant he died before he could trade her in for a newer model.”

“How many did he have?”

“Seven,” he says almost reluctantly, looking out towards the wood.

“Seven.” My voice is high and loud and a pigeon who’d alighted onto the balustrade gives a startled flutter and flies off.

Zeb shakes his head. “Max’s mother was the seventh. He was fourteen when they got married, and I was twenty.”

“And you’ve kept in contact? Were you close?”

He shrugs. “Not at first because that’s a big gap at that age, but he’s one of my best friends now. Somehow he just held on.” He looks almost bemused at the concept and my heart twists. Then he shrugs. “I do keep in touch with all of my stepmothers though.” He looks suddenly awkward. “It wasn’t their fault the marriages failed, and they were very kind to me.”

I study him, feeling a rush of something push through me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s strong, and accompanying this rogue feeling is an urge to comfort him. Why, I don’t know. He’s the most confident and sexy man I’ve ever met, but for just a second he looked so vulnerable. I think of all those stepmothers and my own family where my parents have been married for thirty years. I open my mouth, but the moment is lost as he stands up and reaches over to the small table at the door.

“This came with the food,” he says, brandishing a leaflet. “It’s the itinerary for the week.”

“Itinerary? That sounds ominous,” I say slowly, reeling a little at the abrupt change of subject.

He shoots me a wry look. “Frances is a planner. She loves social occasions and is under the impression that her guests should be organised to within an inch of their lives. This is nothing. The last itinerary I had from her was two A4 pages long.”