“Yes, please. I’m thirsty after all that strenuous activity,” she answered with a smug smile, leaning forward to pull the crumpled sheets up to cover her. “What are you doing this evening?” she called after him as he went into the adjacent dressing room.

“I’m engaged to dine with some friends,” he responded. He pulled the bell in the dressing room and asked the answering footman for tea. Petra’s presence in the four-poster bed next door was an open secret but no one ever saw her there. Her comings and goings were not secretive, but what she did when she was in the house was never made obvious. And Guy was confident in the discretion of his household staff.

Petra waited for him to go on, to tell her who his friends were, but Guy said nothing more, and she didn’t feel comfortable asking further questions. For all the wonderful ease and intimacy, the sense that there were no boundaries between them when it came to shared passion, she knew if she was honest with herself that there were boundaries, hard lines that Guy drew between them. What he did when he was not with her, how close he was to the other people who inhabited his private world was a mystery, and one she was somehow wary of penetrating. It was in those moments that she was aware of the gulf of experience that lay between them.

He was in his shirtsleeves when he brought her a cup of tea. “What are your plans this evening?”

“Oh, I’m engaged to go with a party to the opera, but it’s Wagner’s Lohengrin. It’s supposed to be a romantic opera but it all ends in death and dismay. I’m probably a philistine but it depresses me.”

“I take your point.” He returned to his dressing room and said nothing more on the subject of plans for the coming evening.

Petra drank her tea, feeling suddenly deflated. After the glories of the afternoon the prospect of an evening without Guy seemed rather drab, even though she had known they both had separate plans. It didn’t help that he was humming to himself next door as he completed his dressing.

“If you can get dressed in ten minutes, I’ll walk you home on my way to Curzon Street,” he said, returning to the bedroom.

“Brook Street is in the opposite direction,” Petra pointed out. “Anyway, I don’t feel like hurrying. It’s broad daylight on a June early evening so you can’t have any objections to my walking two streets home.”

“No, I can’t,” he said easily. “If that’s what you want, I’ll leave you to take your time.” He shrugged into his jacket, brushing an invisible speck off the well-fitting shoulders.