‘I’m not one for backchat if that’s okay,’ Carly was saying. ‘I like to get my head down and work. You okay with me wearing earphones, yeah?’

‘If it’s what you want.’

‘I listen to audiobooks and podcasts mostly,’ she told him, eyes fierce, keen to be taken seriously. ‘I like learning things. At the moment I’m listening to a book called Everyday Sexism that Bridge recommended.’ The side of her mouth curled up. ‘And Beyoncé.’

Luca sensed she took no prisoners. In that, she reminded him of Pax. But whilst Carly seemed to want to like the horses more, she handled them awkwardly, manoeuvring one heavily pregnant mare out of her stable like a pallet trolley.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ he assured her, distracted by a waspish buzzing against his hip as, finding signal briefly, his phone started vibrating.

He had four missed calls, its screen told him, all Unknown Number. There had been many in recent days, the frequency increasing in the past forty-eight hours, but no voice messages. Was it Mishaal?

The prince’s London visit was helpfully all over the sports pages, the devoted fans of his newly acquired football club thrilled by the millions being sunk into their team, less so by the family’s cut-throat reputation for humanitarian crime and corruption. Luca had been perpetually on edge this week, counting down the days until Beck’s royal nemesis was safely back in the bosom of his family in the Middle East. Knowing Mishaal was in the same country made Luca very jumpy indeed, no matter how often he reminded himself that a man who travelled with such a rigidly fixed itinerary wasn’t about to slip out to the Cotswolds at the whim of his father. He had done his duty and called. They would both be relieved to leave it there.

By Luca’s calculation, there were just one or two more days before the prince and his caravan court departed until summer. Almost there. While the unknown calls to his phone were almost certainly ambulance chasers and sales scams – Mishaal had the landline number here, after all, kept under constant siege by Ronnie – he still preferred to ignore them until he knew for certain the prince had left the UK.

‘What next?’

He jumped when he realised Carly was beside him again. Mind still on Mishaal, he showed her where they pressure-hosed the feed buckets and barrows.

‘What exactly is my hour rate again?’ she asked between blasts.

‘That you’d have to ask Ronnie.’ Who had yet to pay him anything, but he remained too loyal to share that information just yet.

‘I’ve given up two other weekend jobs for this.’

Luca was grateful to hear a child’s voice yell beyond the walled yard and then a familiar husky catch of laughter amid talk: Pax.

His ear was already tuned for it, able to pick it out in an instant.

‘I need a contract,’ Carly insisted.

‘It’s just casual weekend work.’ Even Luca didn’t have a contract.