Earlier that week the boy had been badly dragged in yet another fall in the school at home. Smashed against the kick boards so hard his ribs bruised, he’d cursed all manner of deadly oaths in Arabic, and Luca was certain he’d witnessed the ‘click’ moment when an animal makes man his foe: Bechstein, a horse who had only known the very best of handlers and most skilful of riders in his short life, hated the prince.

In training today, the boy had been unable to get him to jump a single fence.

‘He’s competing the stallion again tomorrow.’ Luca rubbed his face tiredly. ‘His father’s booked a hospitality tent.’

‘You serious?’

‘He’s hosting lunch for eighty. My arse is for the firing squad if the horse kicks off.’

‘No shit!’

‘If only the boy listened. He’s got enough talent. He’s just a total brat.’

‘He’s not so bad,’ Signe volunteered. ‘Mishaal is always nice to me; he has good manners and knows lots about Sweden. He has a crush, I think.’ She eyed him for reaction.

‘Probably wants to make you his cougar Queen Noor.’

She looked rather taken with the idea. ‘I could have a string of four-star eventers.’

‘You’d have to share golden boy with his other wives.’

‘As long as I didn’t have to share the horses, that’s cool by me.’ That hucking laugh.

This time, Luca had no desire to share it.

‘His father will buy him another horse, maybe?’ Signe seemed to think the answer to everything lay in the patriarch’s bottomless pockets. ‘You can ask him to. You are his pet.’

‘Since when did you do what your pet told you?’ Luca felt powerless, his advice ignored, royal pride intractable in both father and son; those early wins had been taken as proof that the millions spent were justified. Luca must work the horse better, that’s all. Whilst the father – a jovial, Hibernophile racing fanatic – had favourited the Irish rider from day one, the message was clear: you will get this partnership to the Olympics, Horsemaker. Luca was a courtier. His smiling, fiddle-playing Irish charm was mandatory; having an opinion was not. They were all courtiers, the legion of brash horsey westerners with their loose morals and fast jump-offs.

Signe’s lips were on his right ear now, her little tongue working it like an oyster shell. His stomach curled, torn between pleasure and unease.

‘It was fun last time, hey?’ she purred into his ear, but instead of finding it arousing, he just felt worse that he couldn’t remember. They’d talked and laughed more last time, surely? Drunk more, certainly.

He tried not to let his mind drift back to that angry little figure picking himself out of the sand last week, whip arm raised to bring it down on the horse, enraged when Luca had stepped forward to snatch it away with a firm ‘no’.

They were in Signe’s staff apartment, which was neater and sweeter-smelling than his; she’d put on music he didn’t recognise, a clubby trance thing that she got up to dance a few steps to.