Book 16 in the Sean Dillon series, 2009

Fresh from the shower, Monica Starling sat at the dressing table in her suite in the Pierre and applied her makeup carefully. She’d dried and arranged her streaked blond hair in her favorite style as she always did, and now sat back and gave herself the once-over. Not bad for forty, and she didn’t look that ancient, even she had to admit that. She smiled, remembering the remark Sean Dillon had made on the first occasion they had met: “Lady Starling, as Jane Austen would have Darcy say, it’s always a pleasure to meet a truly handsome woman.”

The rogue, she thought, wondering what he was up to, this ex-enforcer with the Provisional IRA and now an operative in what everyone referred to as the “Prime Minister’s private army.” He was a thoroughly dangerous man, and yet he was her lover. Look at you, Monica, she thought, shaking her head-a Cambridge don with three doctorates, falling for a man like that. Yet there it was.

She put on a snow-white blouse, beautifully cut in fine Egyptian cotton, and buttoned it carefully. Next came a trouser suit as black as night, one of Valentino’s masterpieces. Simple diamond studs for the ears. Manolo Blahnik shoes, and she was finished.

“Yes, excellent, girl,” she said. “Full marks.”

She smiled, thinking of her escort, dear, sweet old George Dunkley, professor emeritus at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in European literature, bless his cotton socks and all seventy years of him, and thrilled out of his mind to be here tonight. Not that she wasn’t a little thrilled herself. When she’d accepted the United Nations’ invitation to this international scholars’ weekend, she’d had no idea who the guest of honor would turn out to be.