‘That I’m fine-’

‘Which you’re not-’

‘And that I don’t need a nanny,’ he growled.

‘A nanny is just what you do need,’ she said, coming close to losing her temper. ‘In fact I never saw a man who needed it more. No-scrap nanny. Let’s say a twenty-four-hour guard, preferably armed with manacles. Even then you’d manage to do something brainless.’

‘Then I’m beyond help, and you should abandon me to my fate.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said through gritted teeth.

She waited for a sharp answer, but it didn’t come. Looking at him, she saw why. He sat down, slowly and heavily, leaning his head back against the wall. She just stopped the glass falling from his fingers.

‘Time to stop pretending,’ she said gently.

For a moment Ruggiero didn’t answer. He looked as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of him. At last he turned his head slowly, to look at her out of blurred, pain-filled eyes.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said it’s time to go to bed.’

Hope appeared, looking anxious. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Ruggiero has told me he wants to go to bed,’ Polly informed her.

‘Did I?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘You did.’

He didn’t argue, but gave the shrug of a man yielding to superior forces and rose slowly to his feet. Then he swayed, and was forced to rest an arm quickly on Polly’s shoulder. She heard him mutter something that she didn’t understand, but she guessed it was impolite. Hope gave a signal, and at once Ruggiero’s brothers appeared, taking charge of him.

‘I’ll come and see you when you’re in bed,’ Polly told him.

He groaned. ‘Look, I don’t think-’

‘I didn’t ask what you thought,’ she told him quietly. ‘I said that’s what I’m going to do. Please don’t argue with me. It’s a waste of time.’

The young men wore broad grins, and the braver among them cheered. Then they caught their mother’s eye, and hastily escorted their injured brother to bed.