The rural life had never been to his taste, but the prospect of weekends in the country with Ophelia was steadily beginning to acquire an aura of darkly erotic, forbidden appeal. Although his intelligence continually pointed out that Ophelia wasn’t his type-she was too argumentative, too little and too scruffy-he had got bored with Anichka in only two weeks and suspected that his turnover rate in the bedroom was becoming excessive. A change in feminine style and tempo would revitalise him, Lysander reasoned with satisfaction. He pictured Ophelia transformed into a radiant beauty, polished to perfection and spread across a four-poster bed wearing only a welcoming smile, and his libido reacted like a Formula One car at the starting line.

When he remembered the decrepit bedstead with the tatty drapes he had seen at Madrigal Court, the fantasy almost crashed. He contacted his household team, who took care of all his properties, and voiced his first ever personal request with regard to furniture. He ordered a four-poster bed complete with hangings. It would make a terrific wedding present.

Ophelia hurried into the lift in the Metaxis building.

Getting to London in time for her appointment had necessitated a pre-dawn departure on the train. She was dressed in her best-a black wool jacket and a neat grey knee-length skirt-a stalwart outfit that she dutifully dragged out for church, funerals and all such serious occasions. She was thinking that she had never been very good at eating humble pie and she knew that Lysander Metaxis would make a three-course meal out of her capitulation. Unhappily her surrender was eating her alive from inside out, because he had dared to do the unthinkable-he had locked her out of her garden! All-out war would have felt much more natural to her.