“I know you do. Of course, she was also an internationally renowned chef before she did a spot on a TV show.”

Hanna didn’t mean it as snide. Liza knew she didn’t mean it as snide. And it was important to remember that you could be a successful career woman without also getting your face on iPlayer. But now wasn’t the time to make that point. “Sorry, not all of us grew up eating in Michelin-starred restaurants.”

“I did not grow—” Hanna checked herself. “There’s drinks in the drawing room if you want to go down. It’s pretty, I think.”

In all honesty, Liza was not especially interested in drinks, and while she was interested in pretty drawing rooms, she wasn’t quite willing to give Hanna the satisfaction of admitting that. But she also wasn’t interested in sitting around an expensive room in an expensive hotel for two days and three nights, glaring at her wife with nothing to say. So they went downstairs to see if they could find something to say there.

Chapter Two

Sir Richard, in the Drawing Room, with Drinks

Friday, late evening

In different circumstances, it would have been a dream holiday. A silly dream, admittedly. A dream about sitting in wingback chairs under subtle lighting while hail rattled on the highlands outside. Instead, it was almost stifling. Too much proximity as an overreaction to too much distance.

The drawing room was warm and cosy and smelled of fresh-brewed coffee. A real log fire crackled in a grate, and next to the real log fire sat an equally real, although substantially less loggish, gentleman dressed in a manner that might have been called natty at around the time people used the word natty, but which now read more as hipsterish; all three-piece suits and watch chains. He was in that unguessable age range that could have been anywhere from twenty-something to forty-something, and he somehow gave the impression of wearing a monocle despite not, in fact, wearing a monocle.

“I say,” he said, glancing up from his newspaper, “are you new? Where are you in from?”

“They have come from London.” This observation came from a second man, short and with a distinct, if non-specific, western European accent. Unlike his companion, he did not bother to look up from the journal in which he was furiously, but meticulously, writing.

“I didn’t ask you, Perseus.” His natty companion threw a sullen look across the room, then extended a hand to Liza and Hanna. “I’m Quirke, by the way. Sir Richard Quirke. But you can call me Dicky—all my chums do.”

“What makes you think they will be your”—Perseus cleared his throat—”chums?”

It was, Liza had to admit, a reasonable comment. Although honestly, she wasn’t sure whether Sir Richard’s aggressive friendliness was better or worse than the other man’s stand-offishness.