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‘Why were you so angry, then, Beatrice?’
‘I wasn’t angry. Well, a bit...’
‘Angry enough to call me a bastard because I didn’t text you any personal messages?’
‘No, it wasn’t about that,’ she lied. ‘I was more than aware that I wasn’t correctly dressed, without you pointing it out.’
‘No.’ He came right up to her face. ‘I said, “You don’t look like my liaison aide.” How did you not get that? Do you think I would just insult you for no reason?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Then youshouldknow.’
He sounded insulted, and maybe, yes, from everything Beatrice knew about him she should have known that. She stood still as he lowered his head and inhaled her new fragrant soapy scent.
‘You don’t smell like my liaison aide either. Are you going to misconstruethat?’
‘No.’
Great waves of lust seemed to rush towards her with his every inhalation, as if he pulled the tide in with every breath he took.
‘So what happened?’ he asked.
‘I thought a personal text, perhaps, or that when you called you might—’
‘Oh? So you wanted me to ignore Tobias and ask how you felt?’
‘No.’
‘Did you want me to say,Are you okay?’ He dropped his voice to a husky whisper, and finally said the words she had craved all week. ‘Or to be more considerate with my enquiry.How are you?Or,Speak soon.Is that what you wanted?’
‘No.’
‘A personal text, then,’ he said. ‘A little smiley face. So that when Jordan takes my phone to answer some message from the King she can say,Ooh, Beatrice is on fire for you?’
‘Of course not.’
She was shaking—not with fear, but with something just as primal. ‘Julius, not here...’
‘Why not here?’
‘Because if anyone came in—’
‘You think I’m going to have sex with you in a stable?’
It felt like it. Every atom seemed to crackle. But no, again she’d read him wrong.
‘I wouldn’t even try, because—believe it or not—I respect my lovers and I would never compromise them.’ He was insulted now.
‘What do the staff think we’re doing in here, then?’
‘They’ll think that you are being dressed down for your carelessness this morning. It would not enter their heads that I was sleeping with a member of staff. Not for a second.’
‘I’m going to go.’
‘No, Beatrice. We’re going to do something far scarier than sex. We’re going to talk.’
‘I have to get to work.’
