That, at least, shook Hanna out of her gloom spiral. “Hey, you’re the one who got a new job.”

“I know.” Liza gave Hanna’s hand a final, half-hopeful squeeze before letting her go. “I’m not saying we don’t both have shit to work on. But the point is that I want to work on it. I’m not looking to bail, and I’m certainly not looking to hop into bed with the first femme fatale who walks out of a black-and-white movie and into my room.”

Hanna seemed to relax a little, but Liza was pretty sure they’d be having this conversation again. Some insecurities were perennial.

“So,” Liza tried, “should we go? It seems like … like we don’t have much to lose?”

That much Hanna could agree with. And there was little to be gained by hanging out in their room re-hashing the past. So they set out, Liza hoping Hanna wouldn’t ask how she knew which room was Ruby’s—not that Sir Richard told me was a particularly damning explanation.

They knocked on Ruby’s door and were greeted by an, “It’s open,” delivered with frankly unnecessary sultriness. Inside they found Ruby lounging artfully on the bed in a way that somehow suggested nudity despite her being fully clothed.

And she was, Liza noticed, pretty much the only notable thing in the entire room. The rest of it was spare enough to look almost abandoned. Even the bed she was lying on—framed in hangings but not a four-poster—didn’t look like it had been slept in. The bedside tables were plain white, and the only decorations on the walls were frustratingly contextless sketches of what appeared to be classical urns. Indeed, the whole place was frustratingly contextless, which, Liza supposed, made sense. Ruby was, after all, a frustratingly contextless woman.

“I see you’ve brought your wife.” Ruby gave a sharp smile. “How very adventurous of you.”

“Does this act really work?” asked Hanna with matching sharpness.

“All the time. Case in point, I have an update for you.”

Liza tried very hard to avoid putting two and two together but got to four anyway. “What do you mean, case in point? Are you saying you managed to seduce vital information out of somebody at some point in the last …”—she checked the time on her phone—”fourteen hours?”

“Why?” That smirk again. “What have you been doing with your time?”

“Who?” asked Liza in a mildly appalled tone that she hoped wouldn’t read to Ruby as judgemental, or to Hanna as jealous. “Half the people here are over sixty.”

She raised an eyebrow. “There’s a very sweet footman.”

“The one who looks like he’s barely out of sixth form?” Hanna seemed a lot less concerned about sounding judgemental.