He felt hollow with relief. That meant few people knew the horse was here. He could get him across to Ireland, maybe. If he persuaded Ronnie he’d never be safe to breed from, she might buy into the idea. ‘You need a better temperament if you want eventers.’

‘Two of his sons were BuCha finalists last year…’ she said, shooting him a wise look.

Making the final of BuCha – or Bundeschampionate, Germany’s showcase for young event horses – was the Holy Grail.

‘My mares all have temperaments sweet enough for two. Look at him!’ She threw up her arms and he floated in circles like a swan. ‘He’s utter class. He had the best grading scores in his year by a mile; his sire’s frozen semen still commands four figures a squirt; his half-brother’s five-star. He cost more than a Cheltenham town house at the sales as a weanling and sold for more than a Chelsea one before the London Olympics.’

Luca knew all this, of course. He’d been thrown in as part of the deal, the travelling Nanny McPhee tasked with keeping the notoriously tricky horse sweet while his new rider formed a bond. Instead, the boy and the stallion had almost killed one another. Had it not been for Luca’s intervention, one of them would undoubtedly be dead.

‘What was it you were going to tell me about him earlier?’ asked Ronnie. ‘The phone call interrupted us.’ The wise blue gaze that saw straight to his truth was tight on his face now.

Luca looked away, briefly reliving that awful night: running from the apartment block to the stables, hearing the screams from Bechstein and then the young prince. Racing along the corridor, blood on the shavings, splintered wood, the smell of fear and sweat rising like mustard gas. He could never describe the hell of it, even supposing he hadn’t pledged his silence, the prince’s loyal courtier, the door to a gilded shark cage always open if he needed it.

‘He was about the trickiest horses I ever rode,’ he said truthfully. ‘Not just sharp – flying daggers coming from all directions. Get unbalanced and he’d have you eating sawdust before you knew what hit you. Sure, he’s brilliant. He was fearless once. But he’s always been unstable; it was like riding uranium.’

It had been criminally irresponsible to sell a horse like Beck to a young and inexperienced rider, however many millions Paul Fuchs had pocketed from an indulgent Arab royal whose son wanted to play at being an international showjumper. Somebody should have spoken up.

Luca should have screamed dissent to the air-conditioned indoor school rooftop when he’d seen the boy failing, day after day. Instead, he’d buried his head in sand, Scotch and sin, far away from a love affair that had gone wrong, treating his job in the Middle East as heartbreak in exile. He’d relied on his riding instinct to get him through, that innate connection with Beck that he’d always taken for granted and ultimately abused. To his eternal shame, Luca had rather enjoyed the boy’s humiliation and his own breezy ability to get back on and show him how it was done. Look what money can’t buy you, kid.