The prince was looking at a chunky blue and gold chronograph watch. ‘Luca will be back shortly?’

‘Expecting him any minute!’ Ronnie had heard nothing, which wasn’t entirely surprising because she’d run the cordless phone battery down talking to Blair. ‘Bay, I wonder if you’d mind keeping an ear out for Kes if I show Princess Atiya around the yard? She’s eager to have a quick look. Perhaps Your Highness would like to come too?’

For the first time since arriving, the prince smiled, showing very expensive white teeth. ‘I would like that very much.’

In the neighbouring kitchen, the phone’s battery had re-charged enough to make a half-hearted attempt at ringing. ‘That’ll be them!’

‘Whatever you do,’ Luca’s voice breathed urgently, ‘don’t let him anywhere near the horses!’

*

‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’ Pax growled furiously.

‘Can you drive any faster?’

‘Not up this hill.’ She was hammering the Noddy car as hard as she dared, the climb from Chipping Hampton up into the Comptons a horsepower-sapping drag of hairpin bends.

‘He’ll have the horse destroyed if he sees him. Worse, maybe. He wants to hurt him.’ Luca was mad at himself for complacently believing Mishaal had left the country. Madder still for not telling Pax, keeper of so many secrets that she had shared with him, now deeply hurt that he’d kept this one to himself.

‘Kes is there.’ She negotiated a tight left with a squeal of tyres. ‘If he’s in danger or sees anything that—’

‘He isn’t, he won’t.’

‘You don’t know that!’

He couldn’t argue.

They crossed the Fosse Way and were charging along the straight chestnut-lined avenue at last, passing the Austens’ farm on their left, a mini Daylesford peppered with discreet heritage-tone signs offering game cookery, country crafts and pottery courses, then up the slow climb to the outskirts of the village, the verges banking up to tunnel them, then opening out on the crest of the hill, where they could both see across to the stud, its yard lights glowing like a football pitch, in front of which sat the silhouette of a helicopter like a giant wasp, its pilot still sitting inside.

‘Oh shit.’

Pax careered up the driveway, raking the car to a halt beside the yard entrance so that Luca could spill out. As soon as he was through the arch, he spotted the four figures gathered outside Beck’s stable. He ran like his heels were on fire, not caring if he got a prison sentence for punching a member of an elite royal family to the ground. ‘Stooooooooooooooooop!’

Mishaal turned in surprise, his pregnant wife frozen beside him, feeding the Shetland a carrot.

Luca put the brakes on hard, feet sliding across the cobbles like ski moguls before tripping his way to a halt a few feet from the prince. He was looking apprehensive. ‘Luca, my old friend!’

Friend?

He gaze automatically went to Beck’s half-door. It was in darkness, no insomniac white face or pink nose. A bulky shadow of a henchman stood in front of it. His heart slammed.