Was she making up for a steady, conservative youth? Or still punishing Stuart? Or trying to double down on the thrill of that night with Sergei?

Whatever the answer, the only thing she knew for sure was, at that moment, despite the booze, she wanted this very badly indeed and her abiding memory of the minutes that followed was of her sitting across him as she scraped her nails through the soft hair on his chest and threw her head back in absolute ecstasy.

22

SHE AWOKE IN his room in a tousled, but empty bed. She dressed, feeling intoxicated and sluttish in about equal measure, and hurried back to her room, where neither a shower nor her thumping hangover could quite drive out a deep contentment. Christ, she thought, as she looked at her face in the mirror, smudged with last night’s make-up, why was all that not a cause of regret?

Callum was waiting for her at the breakfast table. ‘I see you spared my morning blushes,’ she said. ‘Nice touch.’ And she meant it, too.

‘You were snoring.’

‘Not so charming.’ She waved over the waitress and ordered coffee. ‘I’m not going to throw any allegations at you,’ she said.

‘That’s big of you.’

‘I was seduced, fair and square, and I don’t unfortunately regret a single second of it.’

‘Good.’

‘But it’s never going to happen again. And you will be a gentleman and keep it to yourself in perpetuity.’

‘Well, on the latter, of course. On the former, if you say so. But why make a promise we may not keep?’

‘Because we damned well will keep it.’ She was glowering at him now. In the cold sobriety of dawn, she meant it, and it was irritating that he thought last night’s sublime charm would work as well in the harsh light of day.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I get it.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ The waitress brought Kate’s coffee and she eyed the breakfast buffet warily. Her head hurt. Callum leant back and smiled at her. ‘It was some night, though, right? You are one hell of a woman.’

‘I assume that’s how all your nights on the tiles ended in Prague.’

‘That’s beneath you.’ It wasn’t, of course, but it was a reminder that if you wanted your cease-and-desist message to stick, you had to give up flirting. She went and filled a plate with fresh fruit and tried to sober up in more ways than one.

‘Our flight isn’t until five,’ Callum said, ‘so I thought I’d show you around Karlstein Castle, since you love Gothic or, in this case, neo-Gothic architecture so much.’

‘I have business to attend to. I’ll meet you here at three, so we can share a taxi to the airport.’

‘Oh, yes, your husband,’ he said, deflated.

For a moment, Kate was confused. But she recalled Callum catching sight of the text from Stuart the previous night. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Fair enough.’

Callum left her, strolling away across the breakfast room with his usual loping insouciance. He was infuriatingly cool.