‘Your sister?’ she asked, feeling a burst of panic as she went to the window too and watched them begin to walk slowly up the grass.

‘I shall go to greet them, sir,’ Måns said sombrely, slipping from the room.

‘You never mentioned anyone was coming.’

He glanced across. ‘I didn’t know. I guess she thought it would be nice for Linus to meet his cousins.’

‘Shit,’ she hissed, remembering again her just-out-of-bed look as the unexpected visitors began ascending the terrace steps; a few seconds more and they’d be through the garden doors and standing in the hall . . . Without another word, she ran down the corridor as fast as she could, knowing that whatever righteous indignation she had struck at Emil’s presumptions was now wholly undermined by the flashing of her butt cheeks. She took the stairs two at a time again, and was almost halfway up when she heard the woman’s strident tones.

‘Emil, are my eyes deceiving me, or did I just see a half-naked woman streaking down your hall?’

Chapter Seventeen

‘She is the nanny.’

‘Is she any good?’

‘She’s got ideas above her station. She keeps overstepping the mark.’

‘Do you mean to say she doesn’t kowtow to you? Goodness, that’d be a first.’

‘She doesn’t understand boundaries,’ he snapped.

Nina turned away from the window with a smile. ‘Oh, is that why she was streaking down your hallway, then?’

He shot her a look. Sarcasm was his sister’s default setting. ‘Don’t be rid—’

‘Emil, relax,’ she laughed. ‘I’m messing with you. Honestly, what’s got you so wound up today?’

He didn’t reply.

She went and sat down on the wooden settle. It was more comfortable than it looked, the proportions highly considered and the wooden arms almost silky to the touch after hundreds of years of absent-minded stroking. ‘Come and sit down. I want to hear everything. How’s it gone so far?’

Emil stared at her, too many emotions rushing at once. He couldn’t pick one, couldn’t settle on it. ‘. . . I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

He shrugged, just as Måns stepped into the room with his usual innate timing, setting down a tea tray and beginning to pour.

‘Well, did he recognize you?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

He shook his head, looking away from her and out of the window again. It was a moment before he realized Måns was holding out his cup of tea. ‘Thank you.’

‘Well, we shouldn’t be surprised. He was, what, three?’

‘Two years and four months.’

‘. . . Right,’ she said slowly. ‘So that’s only to be expected, then. Especially given Hanna didn’t see fit to keep you in his life, with hospital visits or photographs –’

‘She was trying to protect him.’

She arched an eyebrow, one of her finest features. They brought something fierce and elegant to her face, like sleeping panthers – silky and muscular. ‘Oh. We’re on her side now, are we?’