In Bed With a Stranger by India Grey Page B

local people. Kit said little, and with the candlelight flickering over his face he looked like a carved saint in church: silent and suffering.
    It was as if the hurricane had passed and they had emerged into a calmer place. But the damage had still been done.
    Sophie was too tired, too overwhelmed by the revelations of the evening to think about what that damage might be.
    ‘You’ve made a very good choice.’
    Juliet’s voice was gentle as she looked down at Sophie, fast asleep on her nest of cushions. Her hair was spread out over the vibrant-coloured silk, and in the warm lantern-glow it was every bit as rich and precious and gleaming. She looked like an Eastern princess in some exotic tale.
    ‘Yes.’ Kit’s throat was tight with emotion. With love, and despair, and fear.
    ‘Although really, you don’t choose who you fall in love with,’ Juliet said. ‘When it happens, that’s it. And it doesn’t matter how impossible it is, you can’t change it because you know you’re in for good. For life.’
    Kit made a hollow sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. A pulse beat painfully in his temples, as if everything that he’d discovered that evening was gathered there. ‘It’s not always that straightforward though, is it? You can’t always just go with it because you want to.’
    He spoke more angrily than he’d meant to, and realised that she would think he was talking about her and Leo and the small boy they’d left behind. He wasn’t. He was thinking of himself as an adult. Now. Himself and Sophie and their future, which seemed suddenly fragile in the light of the things Juliet had just told him.
    Sophie stirred. A frown appeared for a second between her eyebrows and she raised her hands to cover her ears, as if she had heard his outburst and was blocking it out. Kit tensed against the tidal wave of love that crashed through him, the swell of cold, churning panic that followed in its wake.
    Juliet waited until she was still again. ‘I understand that you’re angry with me,’ she said, very softly. ‘I don’t expect anything else. But I’m so glad that you came and gave me a
chance to explain. Even if you can’t forgive what happened, I wanted to make sure you knew about Alnburgh.’
    She got to her feet, glancing at Sophie again. ‘Let’s not wake her. Come downstairs—I’ve had a copy made of Leo’s will for you. All the details about the estate are in there.’
    Kit stood up and went over to Sophie, looking down at her, fighting the urge to bend and kiss her slightly parted lips. In the constantly changing landscape of his life she was the one thing that was the same, the one thing that was true and good and wholly beautiful, but …
    He tore his gaze away from her and forced himself to follow Juliet.
    ‘The details being?’ he asked blandly. The palms of his hands were burning. He didn’t care about the estate. There were other things he needed her to tell him.
    ‘It was all sorted out legally at the point when we got divorced. Leo forfeited his right to inherit Alnburgh. He figured it was a bargain—he got me, and Ralph got the estate and an heir.’
    The stairs from the roof terrace emerged onto a galleried landing over the central hallway below. Lamplight illuminated the intricate plaster friezes and carved doors, the metal grille of an old-fashioned lift. Kit followed her along the landing and into a large room. She flicked a switch and the huge metalwork lantern hanging from the high ceiling lit up a sparsely furnished space, containing only a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a narrow single bed.
    Kit’s heart felt a jolt as he noticed the silver dressing-table set—hairbrush, mirror and tortoiseshell comb—he remembered from his mother’s bedroom at Alnburgh.
    ‘So Leo effectively signed away his son to his brother?’
    Juliet went over to the chest of drawers and pulled open the top drawer. ‘He was ill by then. He knew he couldn’t be a proper father, although he wanted