“Bally awkward, actually. Meant to be looking after this Earl chappie. Completely lost him.”

“What rotten luck. Seems you’ll have to make do with me instead.”

For a moment, this seemed to trouble Alex. “Well, I was doing this little job for Luc. But…well”—he turned to me helplessly—“Hilary’s a jolly old family friend so I’d really probably better take care of him if that’s all right with you?”

I patted his shoulder. “You know, I think that might be for the best.”

“Huzzah. Victory for common sense.” Alex took the earl’s arm gently. “Come on, old bean. I’ve got oodles of chaps—and chappesses for that matter; no need to be sexist, it is the twentieth century—simply dying to have a chinwag with you.”

“Marvellous,” returned the earl. “One so seldom gets to talk about dung beetles to an appreciative audience. You know, they shot me down in the Lords again. Shortsighted bastards…”

I slumped against a pillar as they vanished into the function room—from within which I could already hear the melodious sounds of a male voice choir warming up with the Welsh national anthem. Chances were, this would be the last opportunity I got to droop and catch my breath for the rest of the evening, so I was damn well making the most of it. I did, however, adjust my posture into something approaching respectability because I was fairly close to the lobby, the guests were already beginning to arrive, and “shagged out before you’d even begun” wasn’t a confidence-inspiring look in a fundraiser. Which was unfortunate because “shagged out before I’d even begun” was pretty much how I was feeling.

Basically, though, it was fine. Everything had come together. It always kind of did. And, if I was being honest, it was nice seeing the whole team weirdly united in their support for our technically important but thoroughly unglamorous cause. To say nothing of the annual treat that was Rhys Jones Bowen in a suit. And by “treat” I meant “subtle headfuck” because he always managed to look like an undercover Marxist.

Although, speaking of treats of suits, I couldn’t quite resist checking out the tuxedo-wrapped piece of manhunkery who’d just come in and was asking the receptionist for directions to the CRAPP fundraiser. And then immediately felt guilty because I had a possibly-actually-real boyfriend now. And then the confused opposite of guilty when I realised the tuxedo-wrapped piece of manhunkery was my possibly-actually-real boyfriend.

I lifted my hand in an “I am definitely not overwhelmed by how hot you are” wave. And Oliver came striding over in a flash of black and white and gorgeous.

“You are ridiculously good-looking,” I said, attacking him with my eyes, “you know that?”

He smiled at me—all jawlines and cheekbones. “Normally I’d say the same to you, but at the moment you look like you got dressed in a toilet stall.”

“Yeah, there’s a fairly obvious reason for that.”

“Come here.”

I came there and Oliver made a number of swift, certain adjustments to my clothing that I found weirdly sexy despite being entirely SFW. He even redid my bow tie. And from the front and everything. You had to admire a man with coordination like that.

“There.” He leaned in and kissed me chastely. Apparently, somehow we’d gone from people who needed to practice any sort of physical contact to the ever-challenging appropriate workplace smooch. “Ridiculously good-looking.”

I was probably gazing at him pathetically. “Well. Not ridiculous. Maybe slightly absurd. In the right light.”

“On the contrary, Lucien. You’re always captivating.”

“Okay. You’re sailing perilously close to the wind here. Because if you keep this up, I’ll need to shag you in the nearest closet, and I’m technically supposed to be doing my job here.”

“And”—another of his killing-me-to-pieces smiles—“I’m supposed to be helping you with it.”

“Got to be honest, I’m fifty-fifty on the job thing right now.”

“You know that’s not true. You’ve worked very hard for this.”

I sighed. “Yeah, okay. But you better make it up to me later.”

“I fully intend to.”

Then he slid his arm around my waist and we went in together.

Chapter 41

Professor Fairclough’s welcome speech ended, as it always did: “Please give generously because Coleoptera are, by any objective measure, more important than any of you.” Which, y’know, was very her and I liked to think it was part of the CRAPP experience. I mean, at what other high-end fundraiser would you be told, to your face, that you were worth less than an insect? She stood down to a polite smattering of applause and then Rhys Jones Bowen’s Uncle Alan and the Skenfrith Male Voice Choir took the stage and began singing soulfully in Welsh about, well, I didn’t know because it was in Welsh.

“So”—I leaned in to Oliver—“we’ve got about half an hour to an hour of networking before dinner. The trick, basically, is to never look like you’re trying to get money out of people so that they can feel good about themselves when you eventually get money out of them.”

He frowned. “That sounds rather outside my skill set. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stand next to you and look respectable.”

“Yeah, and if you could occasionally talk middle class at people, that’d be helpful too.”

“So, eaten any good quinoa recently—that kind of thing?”

“Perfect. Just slightly less sarcastic sounding.”

We circulated—it was mainly “hello, so glad you could make it, how’s your business/child/novel/horse” type stuff, but occasionally people would want to stop me for a longer conversation, which meant I got to introduce my pointedly appropriate but genuinely wonderful new boyfriend. I was relieved to see that while a couple of our most, how can I put this politely, “traditional” donors had stayed away, we’d still done pretty well, at least in terms of turnout. A handful of new developments, including Ben and Sophie, had shown up, and despite all the posturing, most of the concerned-about-your-values crowd appeared to have backpedalled—either because Alex’s plan had somehow worked or because they’d been full of shit from the beginning. So thanks for that, fuckers.

“Adam,” I bonhomied, “Tamara. So glad you could make it. Don’t you both look lovely.”

Adam gave one of his acknowledging nods. “Thank you. The suit’s black bamboo hemp.”

“And this,” added Tamara, indicating her annoyingly gorgeous gold silk caftan, “is by one of my favourite designers. She’s very new, so you won’t have heard of her yet, but she runs a made-in-Africa social enterprise, working closely with local artisans who specialise in traditional techniques.”