In Bed With a Stranger by India Grey

cold.’
    In the sultry twilight Sophie pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. ‘I know the feeling. I was only there for two weeks, but I could think of nothing but how cold I was.’ Her eyes found Kit’s again, and another jolt of electricity fizzed through him as she added softly, ‘Well, almost nothing.’
    ‘Go on.’ Kit’s voice was like gravel as he forced himself to drag his thoughts away from that time, when Sophie’s presence at Alnburgh had been like a knife in his side, tormenting and obsessing him.
    ‘Then Leo came home.’
    Juliet sighed and let her head fall back. ‘If I say it was impossible to stop what happened between us, that sounds like an excuse. But that was how it felt.’
    Tell me about it , Kit thought wearily. If he’d been a nicer
person he probably would have said it out loud, to let Juliet know that he was every bit as fallible and incapable of resisting temptation as she and Leo had been, but he didn’t. Opposite, Sophie leaned her cheek on her knees and looked at Juliet. Desire beat a relentless tattoo through his veins as he remembered how he had finally given up fighting the want, and in one of the castle’s ancient, dusty four-poster beds had given in to it …
    ‘We had three weeks before he had to go away again. We swore that would be it—that it was a one-off, a miraculous slice of perfection that would go no further. We made a decision not to write or keep in touch and so …’ her voice cracked slightly ‘… when I discovered I was pregnant there was no way of contacting him.’
    For the first time since she’d started speaking Juliet looked at Kit properly, her expression a mixture of apology and helplessness. ‘I didn’t even know where he was,’ she said, almost imploringly. ‘By that time he’d been selected for the SAS and everything he did was top secret. I was terrified. I was also horribly sick, which meant Ralph soon guessed I was pregnant. He was … happy. It didn’t cross his mind for a second that it couldn’t have been his baby.’
    ‘And you didn’t think you should tell him?’ Kit said tonelessly.
    ‘Of course I did. I thought about nothing else. But I was ill, and Leo wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing.’
    Philippe had come back, bearing more dishes, which he set down on the table, seemingly oblivious to the currents of tension flowing across it. As he retreated again Sophie felt an urge to escape from the emotional cyclone that seemed to be building in the thick, hot air and follow him back to the kitchen. Where she belonged.
    Kit waited until he was gone to speak again. His eyes were
like lasers as he looked across at his mother, his voice dangerously quiet.
    ‘And how long did you do nothing for?’
    ‘You were about a year old when Leo came back.’ Juliet didn’t meet his gaze, busying herself taking the lid off a terracotta tagine and spooning out its fragrant contents. ‘It had always been the plan that Leo would take over the running of the castle when he left the army, but everything had changed. Ralph thought you were his. Leo felt he’d already taken his brother’s wife, and he couldn’t bring himself to take his child and his home as well.’
    Her hand shook, so that cous cous spilled over the tabletop. Raising her head, she looked at Kit. ‘He gave up Alnburgh without a second thought, but we couldn’t give up each other.’
    ‘So you left to be with him.’ In the candlelight his face was masklike, only the cuts showing that he was flesh and blood. ‘Did you just forget to take me with you?’
    Sophie’s head throbbed. She discovered that she wanted very much to shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears, to make it all go away, like a child.
    ‘Oh, Kit, it wasn’t that simple!’ For the first time Juliet’s voice lost its careful moderation and became raw with weary emotion. ‘I didn’t leave straight away, as you know. We tried to stop seeing each other, but deep down