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‘That poor girl,’ Holly whispered. ‘Whatever has happened, she doesn’t deserve to be spoken to like that.’

‘No,’ Giles muttered. ‘She doesn’t.’

‘You know, this is ridiculous,’ the man continued. ‘A place like this should have far better staff. You know how much money we pay? You know that our meal probably costs more than you earn in a month?’

He really was vile. The worst kind of human, and every word he spoke made Holly sick to her stomach. She could only imagine how the waitress felt.

‘Get the kitchen to sort it. Or we’ll get you sacked. That’s a promise.’

Holly looked back across the table towards Giles, ready to ask if she should do something, but he was already pushing the chair back and standing.

‘Giles?’ Holly said, but he didn’t respond. He was too busy marching across the restaurant towards the man.

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Holly didn’t know what to do. She was sure there were plenty of people in the hotel who could deal with the man. There was probably even somebody coming to sort it now. But Giles was already halfway across to their table. If she tried to stop him, she would just make the scene even bigger, and it would probably take even longer for everybody to get back to enjoying their meal. She just had to trust that he knew what he was doing.

‘Thank you, Clara,’ Giles said, tapping the waitress lightly on the shoulder. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

The waitress looked at him but seemed unable to respond. Instead, her mouth simply hung open.

‘I said, I can take it from here,’ he repeated.

She nodded rapidly and hurried away, out through the back of the bar. Hopefully, Holly thought, to find somebody in management before the situation escalated any further. But for all the anger she knew he felt, Giles was looking incredibly calm.

‘So, what appears to be the problem?’ He spoke in his best English accent, that smooth Mr Darcy tone Holly had seen hundreds of women melt to before. But he wasn’t dealing with women. He was dealing with men – drunk, cross men.

The man frowned. ‘What are you – the manager? I’ll tell you what happened. She gave me the bloody weekend menu. That’s what she did. Then when I tried to order stuff, she said I couldn’t have it. Stupid, just like I said.’

Giles tilted his head to the side slightly, as if absorbing all the information he had just been given.

‘So you verbally attacked a person for making a genuine mistake?’

‘It’s her job!’

‘Yes, yes, you’re right. And I’m sure you have never made a genuine mistake in your job. I’m sure you are perfect at everything you do.’

The man coughed and cleared his throat slightly. ‘I just wanted to enjoy my meal.’

‘Isn’t that a coincidence,’ Giles said, ‘because that’s exactly why I came in here – to enjoy a meal.’

‘Hang on. I thought you said you were the manager.’

‘No, no, you just assumed that. A mistake, I guess you’d say? Or stupidity? I’m not sure.’

The man’s cheeks flushed red, and Holly’s heart jolted up into her throat.

‘Are you saying I’m stupid?’ The man’s face turned puce. ‘I’ll show you?—’

He went to stand, but Giles grabbed him at the top of the shoulder, right on the inside of his collarbone.

‘Oh no,’ Giles said. ‘You don’t want to go there.’ In an instant, his demeanour changed. His eyes narrowed, and the tension in the room felt a hundred times higher than it had before. For Holly, at least, and that was saying something. Her whole body was on tenterhooks, waiting to see what happened. It didn’t look like a particularly aggressive movement on Giles’s part, but from the way the man was wincing, Holly assumed Giles knew exactly what he was doing.

For the first time, one of the other men at the table spoke. ‘Craig, maybe we should?—’

‘No,’ Craig said. ‘I’m not gonna be intimidated by somebody like him. Stupid snob.’

‘Snob?’ Giles once again tilted his head. ‘Quite possibly. Stupid? Absolutely not. Being stupid would be you thinking there is any way of you getting out of this situation with what you want. The best-case scenario is you get up now and you leave, and because I’m feeling generous, if you leave right now, I will pay for the excessive number of drinks you’ve already had. Any tab you’ve got open, I will cover. That’s how much I want you out of this room, so that I can enjoy my meal. But if you don’t want to go… well, I’d rather that didn’t happen, because I’ve been having a rough couple of weeks lately, and that would just make it worse. But it’s your prerogative. You can insist on staying, in which case, we will all have to wait here until the police come, and all these good people watching will give their statements as to how you physically attacked me when I came over to this table, ever so politely, and asked you to quieten your noise.’