Entoweled, we headed back to the bedroom, where what sounded worryingly like the dawn chorus was beginning to filter through the windows.

“What time is it?” asked Oliver, blinking.

I scooped my phone from the table and had a look. “You don’t want to know.”

“Is it try-to-sleep o’clock or pull-an-all-nighter o’clock?”

“It’s quarter to could-go-either-way.”

“Ah.” He pushed his damp hair back from his forehead. “I’ll admit the all-nighter has never been my go-to strategy.”

I wouldn’t say it had been a strategy for me so much as how things tended to work out. “The trick is to push through the one hour when you really, really want to go to bed.”

“Just out of curiosity”—a wave of fatigue washed over Oliver’s face—“is that hour now?”

It wasn’t right now for me, but I suspected it could come on any minute. “Kind of. We need to find a way to distract each other.”

He laughed. “I could run another bath.”

“But think of your water footprint.”

“Is your way to distract yourself teasing me?”

“It’s working.” I grinned.

The other issue with the hour of all-nighter criticality was that it always passed incredibly slowly. I glanced around the room, looking for anything to occupy us. And it couldn’t be the bed because that was a one-way ticket to sleeping through Alex’s wedding. Unfortunately, while our surroundings were sumptuous in many ways, they were surprisingly short on entertainment. I suppose when you could ring a bell and get a servant to bring you a live peacock and a hand job whenever you felt like it, there wasn’t much need to also keep a Snakes and Ladders set handy.

Finally, my gaze settled on the fireplace, which was still crackling merrily and casting orange shadows over what I suspected was a very expensive Persian rug.

“Oliver?” I said.

He gave a little jolt. “Yes, I’m awake. I’m definitely awake.”

“Oliver,” I said again.

His eyes narrowed warily. “That’s your I’ve-got-an-inappropriate-idea face.”

I did. I totally did. “You see that offensively posh rug by that offensively pretty fireplace? That’s an actual fireplace with, like, fire in it?”

“I’d do a great many things for you, Lucien, but I draw the line at arson.”

Because Oliver kept relentlessly to a very sensible bedtime, I’d never seen him quite this dazed before. It was, honestly, kind of adorable. I stared at him. “Oh my God. How did you get to arson from ‘We should do something to keep ourselves awake’?”

The slightest pause. “Be gay. Do crimes?”

“I was thinking more…be gay, have sex? You know, on the rug, in front of the fireplace. Because it’s here and I think we’ll regret it if we didn’t.”

Another pause. “You want me,” he asked slowly, “to make love to you in front of the fireplace?”