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‘You showed me into the library while you went to the village shop.’
    ‘I remember.’ His voice held an edge of steel that made the smile wither. ‘And?’
    ‘And I looked at the books while I was waiting.’ She went over to lean against the desk beside him again, longing to touch him but not quite knowing how to. ‘I found some old Georgette Heyer—she’s my absolute favourite, so I took one down and opened it, and a letter fell out.’ She looked down at her hands, picking at one of the ragged nails she’d meant to file before he came home. ‘A love letter. It was addressed to “My Darling Juliet”.’
    Kit wasn’t looking at her. He was staring straight ahead, out of the window, the slats of the blind casting bars of shadows on his damaged face so that he looked as if he were in a cage. When he said nothing, Sophie went on in a voice that was husky and hesitant.
    ‘A-at first I assumed it was from Ralph and I was amazed. It was so beautifully romantic—so tender and passionate, and I just couldn’t imagine him writing anything like that.’
    ‘So who was it from?’
    ‘I don’t know. I didn’t have a chance to finish it before you came back, and …’ she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out then, touching his cheek with the backs of her fingers as she recalled the tension that had vibrated between them ‘… then
it kind of went out of my head for a while. I did look later, when I put the book back, but it wasn’t signed with a name.’
    He got to his feet, taking a few steps away from her.
    ‘So how do you know it wasn’t Ralph?’
    ‘Because it talked about you ,’ Sophie said, very softly, standing up too. ‘You must only have been tiny and he’d obviously just come back from visiting. He said how painful it was for him to leave you, knowing it was Ralph you thought of as your father.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ Kit demanded icily.
    Sophie swallowed. ‘It was none of my business at the time. I knew straight away that I shouldn’t have read it, and, let’s face it, we didn’t exactly know each other well enough for me to drop that kind of information casually into the conversation. And then afterwards … there just wasn’t the chance.’ She paused, nervously moistening her lips as she gathered the courage to voice the misgivings that had been silently closing in on her since she’d woken that morning. ‘I don’t know, Kit, sometimes I think we hardly know each other any better now.’
    Her stomach was in knots as she waited for him to reply. Standing with his back to her, his shoulders looking as if they’d been carved from granite. And then he sighed, and some of the tension went out of them.
    ‘I’m sorry.’ He turned round. ‘I don’t understand it, that’s all. Why the hell didn’t she just leave Ralph and go to be with him—whoever he was—and take me with her?’
    The bitterness in his tone made her heart ache with compassion, but at the same time a part of it sang. Because anger was emotion, and because he was talking to her about it.
    She shrugged, taking care to sound casual. ‘Maybe that’s what she wants to explain.’ Going over to him, she stretched up to lightly kiss his lips. ‘Let’s go. Let’s go to Morocco and find out.’

CHAPTER THREE
    A ND so, with her characteristic clear-sightedness, Sophie made the decision that they should go to see Juliet. All that was left for Kit to do was make the arrangements.
    If it hadn’t been for her he would simply have put the letter into the waste-paper bin, along with all the rest of the junk mail. He had long ago closed his heart to the woman who had walked out on him when he was six years old, promising to return. That broken promise, perhaps more than her abandonment, had sown seeds of wariness and mistrust in him that grew over the years into a forest of thorns around his heart. Sophie alone had slipped through its branches.
    And in the same way, when he’d shown her the letter