The topics of Paris, couture, mingling with the rich and famous, learning French, and commercial enterprise got them through two cups of tea and several biscuits. The happiness bubbled off Maisie, and so did the ambition. She’d always had dreams, he knew. Or, rather, he’d always thought they were dreams. Maybe the word was ‘plans’.

“You really worked for this,” he said. “You knew what you wanted and you went and got it.”

“I was desperately lucky. To meet Phoebe—”

“Phoebe couldn’t have done anything for you if you hadn’t had the talent. And ideas, and hard work, and the guts to take a risk and reach for the sky.”

Maisie flushed. “You’re poetic today.”

“I’m impressed, is what. It’s not luck, or no more than your fair share of luck, anyway. You deserve this.”

“I don’t think I can,” Maisie said. “Deserve it, I mean. It feels utterly unfair to be this happy with all the awfulness going on. Everything in the world, of course, but also Phoebe’s father, and this ghastly business with Lord Chingford.”

“There’s always something. Take the good bits when you can, I reckon. You’ve earned them.”

“I’m trying. So how about you? Are things going well otherwise? With Kim, I mean? It certainly looked that way the other day.”

Will could feel he was going red. He wasn’t used to Maisie talking about this stuff. “There isn’t much of an otherwise right now. This business is pretty awful. And Kim—” He broke off there, but who else might begin to understand? “Oh blimey, Maise. I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be with him.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, dear.”

“It’s not that things are bad,” Will said quickly. “It’s been pretty good, honestly, but now he wants to talk about the future. A future. For us.”

“Oh!”

He groaned internally. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s wedding bells,” Will said, maybe a bit brutally, but he felt a bit brutal. “We don’t get wedding bells, him and me, that’s the point. I’m not even sure what a future means.”

“No. Because if it’s a man and a woman, you’ve got a framework. You can tell people about it and have a ceremony to prove you love each other, and they even give you a list of things to promise so you both know what you’re supposed to do. It all goes without saying.”

“Yes!” Will said, marvelling at her understanding. “That’s exactly it. And if you don’t have any of that, what do you have?”

“I don’t know,” Maisie said slowly. “Perhaps that it doesn’t go without saying. Perhaps that’s a good thing.”

“How do you mean?”