“We’ll just make sure they don’t know. If I start doing well enough, I can hire a staff to do the actual work.”

“Very enterprising of you. I wish you luck.” His gaze strayed back to the bed, now in half-made disarray. “My, but that is a fine-looking bed,” he said. He gave the mattress an experimental push to test the springiness. “Who knows what notable historical characters might have had a romp on this bed? Henry the Eighth, do you think? Nell Gywnne and King Charlie?” Then he looked up at me.

He was standing very close, so close that I found it unnerving, especially given the subject matter of the conversation and the way he was looking at me.

I moved away. “I don’t think the Featherstonehaughs would approve if they arrived early and found a strange man in their house, bothering the servants.”

He smiled, his eyes flashing a challenge. “Oh, so you’re getting bothered by me, are you?”

“Not at all,” I said haughtily. “I am being paid to do some work and you are keeping me from carrying out my duties, that’s all.”

He was still smiling. “I see,” he said. “Very well, I’ll go. I can tell when my presence is not wanted. Although I can name a long list of girls who would have found the chance to be alone in such surroundings with an attractive man like myself too good to turn down.”

I realized with a pang of regret that I may have given the impression that I wasn’t at all interested, which wasn’t exactly true.

“You said something about taking me to a party this week?” I said as he turned away. “At the Café de Paris? With Americans?”

“It turned out not to be suitable for you after all.” He was looking away from me, and it came to me that he had taken someone else in my place.

“What were they, drug fiends?”

“Journalists. And you can bet they’d just love a scoop on a real royal personage gate-crashing their party.”

“Oh, I see.” Now I didn’t know whether he was genuinely concerned for my welfare or had just decided that I was too straightlaced and boring to be bothering with anymore. He must have noticed my face fall.

“Don’t worry about it. The world is full of parties. You haven’t seen the last of me, I promise you that,” he said. He put a finger under my chin, drew me toward him, and brushed my lips with the lightest of kisses. Then he was gone.

And I stood there, watching the dust motes dance in the morning sunlight, half wishing for what might have been.

I had finished the bedrooms and finally plucked up courage to attack that drawing room. There was no way I was going to take out those Persian rugs and beat them, the way any good servant would have done. I ran a sweeper over them and then started to sweep the dust off that vast parquet floor. I was down on my hands and knees, sweeping the area around the drawing room fireplace, when I heard men’s voices. Before I could do anything sensible such as hide behind the nearest suit of armor, the voices came closer. I kept my head down and brushed away furiously, praying that they wouldn’t come in here, or at least not pay any attention to me.