He never had come back to bed the previous night. She’d left him, posture rigid even in sleep, to his confusing mess of thoughts and feelings, and they had run amok in his exhausted brain all night. Eventually, it had only led to another collapse the likes of which he’d suffered in the theatre men’s room.

Mathilde hadn’t bothered him where he’d lain on the sofa as she’d left, probably reckoning him asleep. As though he could, with his head and bicep injury throbbing ...