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foray into corporate sponsorship, designed to give them maximum kudos with the type of people Veronica’s parents really would consider social equals.
     
    “I’m assured they’re very discreet.” Lytton said now, nodding to the cleaners’ van.

    “Hmm, were you assured they were very industrious too?” Warwick asked still looking downwards. “If so, I might ask for a discount if I were you.”

    “There’s some kind of procedural hold-up apparently.”

    “Oh?” That got his partner’s attention. “Problem?”

    Lytton shook his head. “As far as I’m aware it’s just a delay.” It better had be.

    “Matt, delays mean questions. The wrong kind of questions,” Warwick said with anxiety bleeding through his voice. “We need for this to be put to bed and fast. And if those comedians out there can’t do it—”

    The strident buzz of his cellphone cut Warwick off in mid-sentence. He fumbled in an inside pocket, eyes still fixed on Lytton’s and flipped the phone open without checking the incoming number.

    “Warwick.”

    Lytton saw the way his head ducked sharply and didn’t need telling who was on the other end of the line.

    “Darling,” Warwick ground out, the tone as much threat as endearment, “I’ve told you not to bother me while I’m working.”

    He whirled away, began to pace. Lytton tuned it out. He’d heard Warwick and his second wife having too many domestics to willingly eavesdrop on another. He turned back to the window and stared down into the courtyard again.

    This time the van’s front seats were empty and he saw the two cleaners, re-suited, collecting gear from the back. Whoever it was from, that phone call was good news as far as he was concerned.
     
    Unconsciously his shoulders came down a fraction.

    The worst, he thought, might soon be over.

4
    “I’ll be home when I damned well please!” Steve Warwick snapped into his cellphone and stabbed a thumb onto the End Call button with triumphant savagery.
     
    “Why did you marry that poor girl if you despise her so much?” Lytton asked over his shoulder, not moving away from that damned window like he was glued to the view.

    “Who says I despise Yana?” Warwick said easily, tucking the phone away again. He flung himself down into one of the deep-buttoned burgundy leather Chesterfields, draping an arm along the back.

    “Be careful with her, Steve,” Lytton warned. “You can’t afford to pay off another one.”

    “Yana and I understand each other perfectly. The advantages of marrying a poor girl from the Eastern Bloc.” He gave a wolfish grin. “She was brought up in a culture that accepts a man has his appetites and believes it’s a wife’s duty to cater to her husband’s every whim. And I mean every whim. ”

    Lytton didn’t smile in return. “She’s not living in the nineteenth century—she’s here and now,” he said. “In a culture where they have anonymous helplines for abused spouses and muckraking tabloid journalists. So, be careful.”

    Prig, Warwick thought, even as he flashed his teeth. You and that cold-hearted bitch you married deserved each other. “You gave Veronica too much free rein my friend,” he said lazily instead. And look where that ended.

    “I hardly think you’re in any position to lecture me on how I treated my wife,” Lytton said, glacial. He turned fully into the room so the light was behind him and Warwick couldn’t see his face for shadow. Without expression, his partner’s voice seemed cooler. “Tell me, does Yana know about your mistress—the one you’re planning to visit on your way back to town?”

    How the hell do you know that?

    But despite his momentary surprise Warwick laughed, automatically smoothing down his green silk tie. “ Mistress is such an old-fashioned word don’t you think?” he asked reflectively, crossing his legs and letting his foot swing. “And you’d be surprised. Yana knows everything I get up to without me having to tell her.