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Copyright © 2018 by Aitana Moore

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

Other books by the same author:

Historical romance as Lara Blunte:

The Last Earl

The Abyss

True Born

To Be King

(Winner of the Wattys 2015)

Contemporary romance as Lara Blunte:

A Man in Africa

ONE

Her hair had been dyed, cut and dried, and she appraised the result.

An eager salon assistant moved around her with a small mirror to display her head from all sides. The hairdresser stood with an eyebrow raised, as if daring her not to like his work.

The color was an achievement. There was an icy patina to her yellow hair, but he had preserved its luster. Her eyebrows, too, were the right shade — not light, not dark — and the cut had left her with a well-behaved mane that reached her shoulders.

She nodded, although she didn't much like blonde hair. It was almost invariably fake, and in her real life she liked what was authentic. Women changed completely when they dyed their hair, becoming someone they were not, and for many that was the point.

It was certainly the point for Lee. Four months before she had been a blue-eyed redhead with long hair, then brown-haired and dark-eyed, and now she was a blonde with her own green eyes.

The hair color would take some maintenance. She supposed her roots would show after three weeks, and she was booked in a rehab clinic for four. Well, she had done more difficult things in her life than figuring out how to cover up roots.

The price tag for her new hair, manicure and foot spa was almost five hundred euros. Her nails, painted a light taupe, lent elegance to her every movement as she distributed tips.

The receptionist smiled, having learned to use clients' names as much as possible. "Merci, Mademoiselle Walker!"

“C’est moi qui vous remercie,” Lee said. On the contrary, thank you.

Lee’s new name was Vivien Walker. A first name that would sound good to a man, combined with a common last name. In the middle she had stuck something faintly religious and just a little pretentious, Marie. Vivien Marie Walker.

Vivien’s mother would have been a faintly religious, slightly pretentious woman and would have insisted on Marie. Her father would have come from an honest English family that once crossed the sea to America, and he would have worked hard to afford decent suburban comforts.

Vivien would be much more ambitious than her parents.

"Merci, Mademoiselle Walker," the assistant repeated, opening the door for her.

Lee smiled at the name that wasn’t hers.

TWO

Geneva was an old, old city, and over time had harbored many talented delinquents. If you quietly stole a rare object, you could probably fence it there. Collectors gathered in Geneva, or sent their representatives to acquire jewels, works of art and ancient artifacts they were not supposed to own.

Most of the collectors could be trusted. They liked to keep beautiful things for their eyes only. A few couldn’t resist showing off, like King Candaules revealing the nakedness of his wife to a servant. Those people might be caught, the precious object of their passion removed, and a bevy of lawyers set in motion to prove their innocence.

But there was a certain latitude for genteel criminals in Geneva, Lee thought as she walked along the lake to the Four Seasons. It was only seven in the morning, and only May. In the distance, the French Alps were snowcapped, but then they always were, and the air was still decidedly chilly. Shielding her eyes from the silver flash of sunlight with sunglasses, she held the high neck of her cream cashmere coat around her throat until she had entered the lobby of the hotel and moved confidently to the restaurant.

It was half full. Businesspeople in crisp suits were already talking of money. Women in expensive track suits, fine jewelry and no makeup carefully chose what to eat from the low-calorie side bar. And millionaires who had no work to do sat with their families or entourages, probably nursing jet lags.

Such as the Saudi millionaire she had come to see, who occupied a table for six in the center of the room. Of course he would be there; he liked the buffet too much to have breakfast in his room.

“Good morning,” the hostess said in a soft voice. “Breakfast?”

“Yes, please,” Lee said.

The girl consulted a sheet as she asked, “May I have your room number?”

“I’m not staying at the hotel.”

The hostess’ smile didn’t waver. “Welcome to the Four Seasons. Please follow me.”

She would have led Lee away from Mansour Al Madhi, but Lee delicately pointed to a table a little beyond his group, near the window.

“Can I sit here?”

“Of course,” the hostess said.

Lee’s high heels gave her a different walk than Cathy’s, the version of her that Al Madhi knew. Cathy had been the redhead, a happy-go-lucky Texan who had favored bikinis, resort clothes and bare feet in his yacht. They had stayed anchored off the coast of Phuket for the three weeks they had known each other, four months ago.

Cathy hadn’t ever worn perfume, whereas Vivien liked Chanel No. 19. As Lee swayed by his table, Mansour sniffed the air. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, that he was looking at her.

Her heart thudded hard, until it almost choked her. The feeling made her dizzy, but her steps didn’t falter.

“Here?” The hostess indicated a small table with spotless linen, delicate china and white roses in a small silver vase.

Lee loved white roses. She smiled. “Perfect.”

“Will you enjoy the buffet or—”

“Yes, I’ll have the buffet, thanks.”

“May I have coffee or tea brought to the table in the meantime?”

“Coffee, please. And a bottle of Evian.”

She didn’t have to say it shouldn’t come in plastic. As the hostess walked away, Lee calmly removed her sunglasses, and didn’t look up to see if she was being watched by the man whose jewel she had stolen. It had been a heart-shaped Burmese ruby pendant surrounded by diamonds, hanging from a platinum chain. Mansour had bought it for two million dollars, and Lee’s associate had had to fence it for a fourth of that price.

Still, she could easily recall the feeling of the ruby resting between her breasts. The stone had been deep red against her tan, doing justice to its color: pigeon’s blood. The small diamonds had flashed at the slightest of her movements. Her heart beat fast again at the memory. It had felt better than anything, to wear that pendant, but she never spent much time with the jewels she stole. She had passed it on to Quinn almost immediately, and the only trace left of it were the hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that appeared in her account, weeks later.

Not a bad payday for a three-week job. Just not good enough.

Still without raising her eyes, she took her phone from her designer bag and found the file with the report she needed to study.

The first image in it showed a multi-faceted, cushion-cut blue diamond, flanked by tiny red diamonds in a platinum setting. A fancy vivid blue diamond, with internally flawless clarity grade.

Feeling her eyes moisten from staring at the ring without blinking, Lee reflected for the hundredth time that a fancy vivid blue diamond of that size and clarity was just about as rare as a rock could get. And the pink-red diamonds, although small, were not to be sniffed at, as the color was even rarer than blue.

The ring had been auctioned by Christie’s for twelve million dollars only a year ago and had already appreciated. Now it was probably worth fifteen million.

Lee glanced up, pretending to study the buffet, and found that Mansour was looking at her. The pulse in her throat beat again, like a tiny hammer against her skin. There was a reason for her to sit openly in front of a man she had recently robbed. Her associate, Quinn, would faint in horror, had he known what she was doing — because it was an insane reason.

Before she decided that she was ready to steal fifteen million dollars, she needed to see if she could get away with it.

She stood and once more walked toward Mansour. He sniffed her again as she passed his table and stood with her back to him, considering her choice of fruit and pastries. Lee didn’t look back, but she could feel his eyes following her as she returned to her table.

Her throat was dry, but her hand didn’t tremble as she picked up a fork and stabbed a piece of melon, taking it to her lips. It didn’t tremble as she scrolled on her phone to read more of the information Quinn had compiled for her.

The photograph of a handsome, dark-haired man frowning at the camera substituted the image of the ring.

James Anthony St. Bryce.

For a second, she got lost in the eyes staring back at hers, as if from that photo he could already see her. There was strength in those eyes; there was pain. There was a sort of wildness — or was she making things up?

Lee looked up again to find Al Mansour studying her, and she didn’t look away. She gave a small frown, as if to let him know that he was being inconvenient. Still he stared, but her heartbeat didn’t accelerate or her temperature change, because there was no recognition in his face.

People saw what they wanted, and Al Madhi would never believe the woman who had stolen from him so brazen as to seek him out like this. Her experiment, such as it was, had ended. Al Madhi could provoke no more fear or excitement in her. He was the past.

The future was James St.Bryce.

Lee’s finger flipped the man’s photograph up to land on another — a tabloid cover featuring St. Bryce, still frowning. But this time, a red banner on top of his body read: KILLER?

THREE

“Why do you want to look like everyone else?” Cora wailed again. Her blue eyes widened. “Is someone after you?”

Lee smiled at her sister. “I’ve told you, no one will ever come after me. That’s not how things work.”

“Are you sure?”

Entering the biggest job of her career meant more danger than usual for Lee, but a tranquilizer had rounded off the sharp edge of her anxiety. As the ski lift took the sisters to a slope of medium difficulty, she thought of James St. Bryce with the same detachment that she watched the white expanse of snow below them.

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Why are you blonde, then?”

“Just for a change."

“At least don’t do that thing to your lips anymore.”

Cora was only fourteen, but she was waking up to the world and becoming certain that Lee’s constant fiddling with her looks meant that she was unhappy.

Lee couldn’t tell her the truth — that she had to change because of her career as a criminal. She wished she could keep all bad things from her sister, always, but she supposed it was better for Cora to think that she was unsure of her attractiveness than that she seduced men and stole from them for a living.

“You don’t look bad,” Cora allowed. “You just always look best the way you really are.”

“I think I’ll dye it back soon.”

“And your new boss?” Cora asked eagerly. “Is he Italian?”

“Very English.”

“How much is he worth?”

Lee smiled. Cora didn’t ask out of greed; it was a game they played.

“A billion dollars,” Lee said, smiling. “Or thereabouts.”

“And what will you do for him?”

“Well, it’s really interesting, actually.”

“Is it?” Cora asked doubtfully. She had certainly not heard that before.

“Yes. He’s not a businessman. He’s an anthropologist. Went to live with tribes in Africa and Asia. Papua New Guinea, I think, as well. Spent years doing that.”

Cora’s interest was finally piqued, and she began to listen with more attention. “What, like Tarzan or something?”

“Or Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Lee smiled as Cora grimaced at her bad joke and continued, “Then he lived in a Buddhist monastery for a year, so he knows quite a bit about that, too. He wants help organizing his notes and doing more research so he can write about what he saw and lived through. A mutual friend put us in touch, and he liked me. It’s less well paid than usual, but more interesting work.”

It wasn’t all lies, but while James St. Bryce had studied anthropology and spent years living in jungles and deserts, and while he had studied Buddhism in a Japanese monastery, he wasn’t writing any book — as far as Lee knew.

Yet if she managed this job, it would be better paid than anything she had ever done. She reckoned she might be able to keep at least five million of the fifteen million pounds the ring was worth. Whoever bought it would have to risk selling a recognizable jewel or would have to break it into at least a couple of pieces. That would be the real crime.

She would just have to keep talking to Cora of her jobs as personal assistant to the very rich as highly paid, and of Quinn as a financial wizard who multiplied her money. And when she had millions, she would make up some other story to explain the windfall. But Cora was waiting for more details about her new boss.

“The poor man moves about with a cane and is always in pain,” Lee said.

That was true enough. Bryce (she had found out the man never used the “Saint” part of his name, probably because he had always been at odds with his family) had crashed his car under the influence of drugs and alcohol and had gone through three knee surgeries. As instructed by a judge in London, he was checking into an exclusive rehab center to get rid of a Tramadol addiction.

The center was in Italy, and Lee had also checked into it, to get rid of her own fake addiction. She had started taking Tramadol three weeks before so she could convincingly play the part of an opioid user. It was a good thing that her mark was headed for rehab, as Lee hated drugs of any sort.

“Is he handsome?” Cora asked.

Bryce’s face flashed through Lee’s mind before she gave a small, dismissive laugh. “He’s in his sixties!”

Cora grimaced again. She had probably imagined something closer to the truth, and Lee needed to steer her away from that idea, or she would google “billionaire anthropologist” and find Bryce. The Tramadol was making Lee talk too much, but there was nothing like the mention of age to entirely lose the interest of the young.

“What if he likes you?” Cora asked, wrinkling her nose. “Men are a bit pigs.”

They’re all wholesale pigs, Lee thought — but she didn’t want Cora to believe that. Good things could still happen for her. She could still love and be loved.

“His wife will be with us,” Lee said. “And he’s very shy. And even if he made any sort of a grab, I can run faster than a man with a bad leg.”

“Or hit him with the cane!”

They laughed as they got off the lift and started their descent on skis.

As she watched Cora’s blonde ponytail fly behind her, Lee reflected that even the worst person in the world — and she might be close to that, some days — held something sacred, and Cora was sacred to her. Cora was the only sacred thing.

Skiing with her sister took Lee’s mind off things, and she didn’t have much time to think of Bryce. Still, when two days later she dropped Cora off at boarding school, there were tears in the girl’s eyes. I wish we could always be together, Lee thought.

“After Umbria, I'll be out of coverage four weeks,” Lee said. “But I’ll find a way of calling you.”

“Your bosses are always out of coverage.”

“Rich people are weird. And they never want to be found, so they don’t care how far away their holiday homes are. But I’ll call you. In the meantime, you know the drill: if you can’t reach me, reach Quinn.”

“But Lee …” Cora leaned against her, turning up her face with a pout. “Try, try, try to make it this summer. Let’s just go swimming. I mean, don’t feel guilty or anything if you can’t, but try!”

It was going to be mid-June by the time Lee left rehab, hopefully with Bryce. It might be well into July before she got her hands on the diamond, and then she’d have to hand it over to Quinn and erase all traces of her new identity, making sure she had left no trail leading to her. She might not make it back to Switzerland before September, when Cora’s classes would start again. And school was all important.

They kissed and stood rocking each other until Cora had to go in. Her ponytail bounced again as she ran through the school gates, and she never looked back.

As Lee arrived back in Geneva that afternoon, she wondered how much time she had until Cora began disbelieving all her stories. Cora was innocent for her age, but it wouldn’t be long.

“Why the frown?” Quinn asked as he opened the door of his flat to her.

Lee made the effort to smooth her brow. She hadn’t realized her preoccupation was showing. But Quinn knew her well, and he was a keen observer.

“Thanks for the money,” she said airily as she walked past him.

“Pristine money. Shouldn’t cause you any trouble,” he said in his Irish lilt as he closed the door. “Don’t know about the next part. Millions of dollars …” He gave a low whistle.

“You won’t be able to handle that?”

“You forget who I am,” he said with a proud toss of his head, which he turned into a beckoning movement. They walked through creaky but polished old floors to his study as he added, “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Glancing around the room, Lee chose to perch on the arm of a sturdy sofa, while Quinn took a seat behind a massive Art Deco desk that held three computer screens and had, it seemed, dozens of drawers.

He leaned back in his Eames chair, putting his hands behind his head. Quinn had small features that were almost too pretty for a man, and sharp hazel eyes. She didn’t blink under his scrutiny.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You’re on opioids, the man’s really smart and—”

“How do you know he’s really smart?”

“Would he have become a billionaire in a few years if he weren’t?”

“Well, he started out with stuff. And someone else invested his money.”

“True. It still took guts, to get rid of all the land and the houses. A thousand years of family history, blah-blah-blah. You know what twats the English are about that sort of thing. Have you seen the uncle wailing about it in YouTube?”

“That’s an old interview, but I’ve seen it. No interviews with Bryce.”

“Which proves my point. Any man with a remotely public life who can resist talking to journalists is smart. If they don’t fall for the pressure, vanity usually gets them, but not this bloke.”

She shrugged with one shoulder. “You’re just assuming.”

“All right. It’s likely that he’s less intelligent than you. But you have to give him props at least for being … daring?”

She thought of Bryce’s eyes again. Savage eyes.

“What are you saying?” she wondered slowly. “That I should give up?”

Quinn considered her for a moment. “No. That you should be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

He sat back and moved the chair in small half circles. “You’re careful always on the edge of being not careful.”

Lee laughed. “Is that so?”

“You have an impulsive side,” Quinn insisted without smiling. “At the end of the Al Madhi job, you jumped off the side of the yacht in the middle of the night and swam to shore.”

“He moved the yacht, and I just had to go. You know very well that sometimes things don’t go as you plan, and you gotta wing it.”  She cocked her head at him. “It turned out all right, didn’t it?”

She would never tell Quinn that she had paraded in front of Al Madhi only three days ago to see if he would recognize her. That kind of thing was exactly what Quinn meant, and she knew he was right. But that’s why he worked from home, forging passports, hacking information and moving stolen goods — because he was good at that kind of controlled risk.

What she did was different.

“As long as the ring isn’t insured…” she said.

“Can’t find sign of insurance.” Quinn glanced at the screens of his several computers, as if the information about Bryce could suddenly change.

It was essential to find marks with jewels that were not insured, because the police of the different places where she stole would not go after her with any special dedication. They had too much to do. But big insurance companies would certainly be interested in the profile of a recurring female thief that cost them millions, and would be happy to pay private investigators to do nothing but look for her.

“Still,” Quinn went on, “I’d feel better if he were like most of the men, hiding the stuff from the greedy ex-wives trying to fleece them. If he doesn’t have that kind of reason not to insure the ring, he’d be wise to at least put it in a bank vault. But let’s believe he’s an eccentric, and that he’s meant to be grieving. Or at least very troubled.”

“That outdoorsy type …” Lee said, ignoring the slight sympathy for Bryce in Quinn’s tone. “Men like that don’t tend to worry about details. Someone has to push them to worry about that kind of thing. And in any case, I won’t do anything I’m not sure about.”

“There’s also the other matter.” Quinn looked at her meaningfully. “I mean, Britain isn’t Burundi, and if the police cleared him of murder, he probably didn’t do it. But still, he has a temper.”

“I get that he’s different,” Lee said. “Except that, in the end, everyone is alike.”

“I didn’t say he was different, I said — I meant he might be dangerous. But it’s your call.”

She gave a small smile. “I won’t come crying to you.”

“And I won’t visit you in prison. I have a living to make.” Quinn opened a drawer and removed a US passport from it, which he handed to her. “This is as good as they come, but use your French one to cross borders.”

“I’ll have to use this one, if Bryce invites me to England. Which is the idea.” Lee flipped through it. It had entry stamps that looked real, including one for Italy — and she wasn’t even there yet.

Her associate pursed his lips. “The passport should hold up, even at Heathrow or Gatwick. Just don’t use it if you don’t have to, and never go to America with it.”

“I’m never going there again,” she said in a low voice.

When it was time for her to leave and they had reached the door, he repeated, “Be careful.”

Lee kissed his cheek, and Quinn said nothing else as she left.

Back at the hotel, as she cut tags off the new, elegant clothes she had bought for Vivien, Lee wondered whether what she had told Cora was true. Could she run faster than Bryce?

Could she fool him and disappear with his diamond?

She locked the suitcase with two determined clicks and placed it on the floor, getting into bed with her phone. Once again, she found the information on Bryce and scrolled through the photographs, until she found the image of a heartachingly beautiful woman with eyes and hair of deep black.

Mia Archer, top model and Bryce’s wife.

The ring had been a present for her on her twenty-fifth birthday, a year ago almost to the day. A rare diamond for a rare beauty.

That had been three weeks before Mia was found smashed at the bottom of a cliff.

FOUR

Lee didn’t mind the calming effect of the Tramadol as she drove on the Sun Highway between Rome and Milan. Near Assisi, she exited toward Perugia and took smaller roads to enjoy the sight of rolling green hills, stone farmhouses and fields of flowers.

She could now imagine what it would be like for an addict to give up the drugs coursing through his system, but her horror of depending on anything was much greater than a need for comfort or false euphoria. It would be good to let go of the Tramadol.

The sign on an old wall told her that she had reached the clinic at Villa Balbina, and her mind focused on the present. There was strict security at the gate; she had to get out of the car to show her documents and open the boot. They took her luggage — probably to make sure that she didn’t have a second phone, or any medication hidden in it — and waved her through with smiles. She followed a sinuous gravel path to the fifteenth-century monastery that was now an exclusive rehab facility.

At the door of the main building, an attendant who had been waiting ran down the steps.

"Buon giorno," Lee said with a faint smile.

It wouldn't do to look happy, or to show interest in the beautiful view or in the arches of the old cloister, since she was supposed to be coming to them in distress.

The attendant took the keys of the car and told her in good English that she would find her luggage in the room. She took a deep breath before climbing the steps to the reception, but there was no need to do anything else than hand over the passport and cell phone to a serene girl, then follow a nurse who shook her hand and asked if she had come alone.

Family support was an important factor in rehabilitation, but there were people who checked themselves into a place like that without saying a word to anyone. Lee was going to be one of them.

"Better this way," she said, and the nurse nodded.

The woman led Lee to the clinic, housed in the adjacent building. Quinn's email-hacking had disclosed that Bryce was already there. As she walked with the nurse, listening to her explanation about what the next days would hold, Lee kept her eyes open for Room 14.

She heard Bryce before she ever saw him.

"I’m not a bloody child!”

The cursing was followed by the noise of glass breaking, and the nurse gave a quiet, apologetic smile.

"Sometimes ..." Instead of finishing the sentence, she added, "It doesn't happen very often."

Lee made no comment as she was taken to a different corridor, to room 36. It was a spare but elegant room, in keeping with the medieval character of the place. After weaning off the drugs, she would be moved into the main building for therapy.

The nurse asked her if she had any jewels on her for safekeeping, and Lee answered truthfully, "I never wear any."

No, she only ever held them for a moment before she passed them on. A fancy vivid blue diamond of flawless internal clarity: she would let it flash on her finger before she handed it to Quinn. There would be poignancy to that fugitive, solitary pleasure. It would be a moment of beauty, and beauty provoked pain or indifference if one tried to hold on to it.

Despite the Tramadol, after the nurse left Lee lay in bed feeling a light film of sweat cover her. A corridor away there was an angry, hurt man — and she was going to relieve him of precious things he didn't need. She realized with a pang that she was afraid of a man she hadn’t yet met, but she liked that fear. It was a challenge.

Her heart began to thump as she thought of James St. Bryce. She reminded herself that there was still a week to get through before she met him and hoped with a sort of dark courage that weaning off Tramadol should prove painful for her, so that she would feel what he felt.

FIVE

What will it be like this time?

It was a question Lee always asked before meeting a mark, and she asked ten days later, as she walked to the addiction group she was supposed to attend every morning.

The psychiatrists of Balbina had suggested that she should also join an anger management group. Dr. Grether, who had first spoken to her, had detected unresolved issues that made her angry beneath the surface. He didn’t know the half of it; but then, wouldn't a professional of the mind have heard everything?

Anger management was a bonus because they had also assigned Bryce to it. She was now in two of her mark’s groups and would probably coincide in other therapies. There had already been a distant glimpse of him limping with the aid of a cane as he walked in the garden.

They would meet each other at the pool or in the dining hall, when he stopped taking his meals privately. She didn't know how often he would use the common rooms, but the medical staff had proclaimed solitude to be a no-no. Bryce was something of a renegade, and she wondered if he would insist on keeping to himself. And if he did, would they consider his treatment pointless and invite him to leave?

What will it be like this time? Lee wondered again. Familiar butterflies stirred in her stomach as if she were going to meet a lover, but there was also a hollow sensation of dread in her. Sometimes she perspired, and her heartbeat accelerated. She must remind herself that it was only because she had stopped taking Tramadol. Bryce must be feeling a lot worse.

She entered the meeting room, and there he was.

Lee had seen him online many times since Quinn’s presentation. What struck her, however, was how vivid he seemed in the flesh. People often looked smaller, fainter and more faded than their likenesses, but Bryce had gone through two knee surgeries and an addiction to painkillers and still appeared ready to dive to the bottom of the ocean or climb the summit of mountains — if it weren’t for the cane he was holding.

His hair had the rich darkness of a classical painting, and his profile an austere nobility she would have expected from an ancient Roman rather than a modern Englishman. He was tall and straight, and his expensive but discreet clothes could not hide the lean strength of his body. His skin was burnished, not tanned — as if he had spent so much time outdoors that it could never turn pale again.

He was a very beautiful man. She almost felt like saying a very beautiful animal. Not because he seemed brutal in his good clothes, with his elegant bones, but because she had hardly ever seen any creature that compelling.

Most eyes were either trained on him or kept returning to him, as if the people in the room had to check again and again that he was real. He did not have the vapid air of most handsome men, that overripe love of self which made them demand the same amount of attention from others that they found natural to give themselves.

No. There was, instead, a pensive but sharp intelligence on his face.

When those present began to sit, his eyes swept by her without lingering as he stood with polite patience. Could he be waiting for the women to take their seats? To the manners born, Lee supposed.

But his knee clearly pained him as he found his place, half a circle away from her.

The villa was a haven where the rich and famous could dwell in their problems. In the room there was a famous British actress in her late forties, her face transformed by surgery, an Olympian athlete and an old rock star. Lee peeked at them covertly. It would make more sense for her to be curious about people who were famous in America than about an English aristocrat whose feats and scandals hadn't translated to the tabloids at home.

It was probably not the first stint in group therapy for most patients, as they didn’t need much prodding to talk about their problems — the actress crying fat tears, the rock star with self-deprecating irony, the athlete blaming himself for his own lack of discipline. Then it was the turn of two women and a balding man who were addicted to sex. They spoke about looking for love in the wrong places.

Bryce had been quiet during the session, neither nodding nor murmuring anything like everyone else. Dr. Faure, the therapist who led the addiction meetings, must have sensed that he was not willing to participate.

"James, would you like to share something?" she asked.

The reply was swift, "I'd like to give up my turn in favor of hearing more sex stories."

There was laughter in the room, mostly from the Europeans, but Faure frowned. "Come on, James."

Bryce nodded, accepting the mild rebuke, but he still said, "I'd like to pass for today.”

"Fair enough," Faure said, looking around the circle for someone else.

“Vivien” didn’t speak, although Lee had a story ready for her. A year ago, Vivien had hurt her back in a fall from a flight of stairs, and with the determination of a self-made woman she had pushed through the pain to keep working. She had begun to rely on Tramadol without even realizing it, and now she was dedicating a whole summer to get rid of the addiction. There were issues of neglect in her fake family—a distant father and a mother profoundly dissatisfied with life—which might point to an underlying tendency to depend on opioids, or to get angry. That might make her more like Bryce.

But the ninety minutes were soon over, and people got up to have a coffee break before their next session.

At the anger management group, however, Bryce was as quiet as before. The athlete and the businessman were there as well, and Lee decided to speak. She needed to call Bryce’s attention somehow, as he seemed uninclined to making eye contact with anyone.

"I was surprised, actually, that you suggested this therapy to me, but you told me I hold my anger in check," she told Dr. Grether. "I must hold it so much in check that I don't even know that I'm angry."

"Then you feel it's a mistake that you're here?" he asked.

She swung her leg a couple of times, stopping the movement with the tip of her ballerina slipper. Bryce watched her foot as everyone waited for her answer.

"I guess I’m angry that—I'm angry that at some point we were all told that things were a certain way, but then we learn that it isn’t quite like that. We’re told about Santa Claus, but then we’re allowed to find out he’s not real. But about these other things, the big things in life like unconditional love? It’s as if we can’t look around at each other and say, ‘This isn’t true, is it? You know that too, don’t you?’ We can’t do that anywhere, except maybe in a place like this. Everywhere else, we must keep pretending that it’s real.”

She was out of breath, but she had said something like the truth. Bryce looked directly at her, with purpose. His eyes were penetrating, like the blue in an X-ray, and they made Lee hold her breath, afraid that he could read her thoughts.

Grether, perhaps briefed by his colleague, asked Bryce, "You've been through a lot in the past year, James. How do you feel?"

“I feel a pain in my knee,” Bryce said, and there was some defiance in his expression.

He likes to dominate situations, Lee thought, through silence or irony.

“Is that all? Do you think that it’s a mistake that you’re here?”

“In anger class?”

“It’s an anger management group.”

Bryce thought about it. “I honestly don’t know.”

“All right, would you say that you have a history of anger?”

“Don’t most people?”

“You have a history of actual brawls,” she pointed out.

“Ah, Doctor, but you see,” Bryce said, and his smile was charming as well as ironic, “I think that in those instances you mention, I was right to get into fights.”

Some people laughed again, but Grether insisted, “Why do you get that angry, James?”

Bryce switched the cane back and forth between his palms for a moment, then said, "I come from a privileged family. I was never hungry; I always had clothes and I went to good schools. I don’t like to complain.”

“Still, that’s not all that people need. Did you feel loved?”

“I couldn’t say that, no,” Bryce said after another moment. “But I didn’t get to feel unloved either. Love would have been something vulgar and absurd in my family. Toffs, you know. We don’t love, and we don’t fight.”

“But you do fight,” Grether pointed out.

“I was taught not to, but I’m a slow learner.”

“Did you take pleasure in being different than your parents expected?”

“I am a little vindictive,” Bryce admitted. “But I did have enough presence of mind not to stick around them just to be the negative of their film, with the black and white switched.”

"And what did you mean when you said you honestly didn’t know if you belonged in anger management?”

"Because there is a part of my anger that I don’t want to manage.”

Cocking his head, Grether frowned. He probably didn’t hear that too often. "Can you give me a specific example?"

Bryce looked around the group. “I believe some of us here have wondered, at one point or another, how our parents were allowed to have us.”

There were renewed nods around the circle.

“You can imagine how I felt at finding out my mother was pregnant again when I was thirteen,” Bryce continued. “I was beyond furious. I told her that a crocodile laying an egg would make a better mother.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. I’ve told you, my parents didn’t get into arguments.” He took a deep breath. “But you see, then my sister was born. And as soon as I saw her, I understood that she was what had been missing all my life.”

Lee’s throat tightened. It was as if Bryce were speaking for her, describing how she had felt when she had first seen Cora. It had felt like salvation.

“I took her everywhere with me, even before she could walk,” Bryce continued. “When she began to speak, she had this tiny voice with a lisp. I never got tired of listening to her, no matter what she went on about. I told myself that little girl who was so perfect would be truly loved.”

Grether nodded. “That means you do recognize the importance of love in your life, of human relations—”

Bryce interrupted him, but not unkindly. “I’ll never be the poster boy for kumbaya, Doctor. I recognize the importance of some human relations.”

Grether nodded again. “Go on.”

“Later, I got married. A few months after our wedding, my wife fell from a cliff in our estate and got smashed against the rocks.”

"Whoa!" Kevin, the black Olympian athlete, raised a hand to his face, his fingers spread as he waited for the rest of the story.

Bryce’s half smile turned sad as he continued, "One of the theories I had to hear was that I had killed my wife so that I could sleep with my sister."

A murmur went up in the room, led by Kevin. "That's not right, man!”

“No, it isn’t right," Bryce agreed, and he sounded tired. "But I had trained to deal with the eternal error in human exchanges. I was meant to ignore it, knowing that people who say such things are in a hell of their own and that it has very little to do with me. Instead, I chose to get angry. It was a choice.”

“Why do you think you made that choice?”

“Because if you go way back before the noblemen in my family, what you'll find is an ape,” Bryce said. “And I don't want to let go of that ape. My father cared about the noblemen; I care about the ape, because despite anything you may say here, sometimes anger is the only thing to feel."

Bryce’s eyes turned savage again. "Sometimes it's righteous."

SIX

Bryce was not in the dining room at lunch, and Lee knew from Quinn’s hacking that he had physical rehab for his knee in the afternoon.

At art therapy, she let her thoughts drift as she painted. She liked to use abstract brush strokes of black ink on paper to give the impression of a subject. When she stepped back, she realized that she had made a likeness of Bryce. The ink had captured the darkness of his hair and the sharp line of his cheekbones and lower lip. She had also captured something she hadn’t seen when looking at him: the pain in his eyes. Others might recognize him, and she quickly used the ink to cover the image.

“Didn’t like what you did?” the woman next to her asked, peering at her easel.

Lee wondered if Bryce’s face was still visible under the coat of fresh ink, but the woman only smiled and returned to her painting.

You’re imagining things, Lee.

On her way back to the main building, she was startled to spot Bryce leaning against the stone wall of a shed in animated conversation with the gardener. He was wearing riding clothes and boots, which probably meant he was on his way to equine therapy. Lee hadn’t signed up; she was afraid of horses. They were beautiful but unpredictable animals.

Bryce was smoking a cigarette, speaking in Italian to the gardener and laughing heartily.

He's not all that grim, then.

Slowly expelling the smoke from his lips, Bryce stared at her through narrowed eyes as she passed, but she pretended not to see him.

She was nevertheless surprised to see him having dinner on the terracotta terrace with everyone else. Patients could sit anywhere they chose, and the two female sex addicts slammed their behinds onto chairs at Bryce's table, almost as if rushing to claim him. His eyes widened very slightly in comical alarm, and he invited Kevin to the table through an expansive gesture.

Lee’s view of his table was blocked by the male sex addict, Bob, who had chosen to join her. The rock star also ended up at her table, as did Claire, the British actress. When the two women were left alone at the end of the meal, Lee took advantage of the fact that Claire kept staring at Bryce to ask, “How is he a nobleman?”

“There was a title in his family once,” Claire explained as Lee pretended not to know. “Earls of Somerville, until the first Queen Elizabeth started chopping off their heads. She was a paranoid old thing. Loved beautiful men and turned on them when they didn’t love her back. And this one” —she jerked her chin toward Bryce— “wouldn’t have done as he was ordered. He’s a rebel. Do you know, he told his father to stuff the inheritance and just left the country as soon as he was of age? I don’t think he ever saw his parents again. Returned after they died in a car crash.”

“You know a lot about him,” Lee remarked idly. “Is he that famous?”

“I sort of knew his wife. Mia Archer. She was a model, and we were in a cover shoot together once. They were madly in love.” The actress waited a moment before lowering her voice dramatically to add, “Until she was found all broken and dead.”

Raising her eyebrows, Lee said, “That must have been terrible for him.”

Claire nodded. “And for a while they thought he might have done it.”

“Really? But the husband is always a prime suspect, isn’t he, if there’s an accident like that?”

“Yes, they decided it was an accident. He wasn’t around and couldn’t have arrived in time to push her.” Claire took a deep breath, considering Bryce. “But people wondered if he lost his head over something. I don’t know why that just makes him seem even more attractive.”

Lee scoffed. “Does it?”

“Not the murder part. The wildness. Killed things with his hands for years in the jungle.” Claire gave a high, brittle laugh. “He’s from the type of family that should have spewed a white and doughy boy. Instead, he came out as if he was switched at the hospital.”

“Well, he’s not white and doughy, that’s for sure,” Lee said, but she couldn’t bring herself to glance at Bryce.

“No, he ain’t. And those eyes … He’s just—sex is what he is. Good heavens, if I ever got hold of him …” Claire covered her mouth to hide a greedy smile but shook her head. “You’d think a man like him would be a favorite with the gods, but we all know what happens when the gods love you too much.”

“No, I actually don’t know,” Lee said wryly.

Claire widened her eyes. “They destroy you.”

SEVEN

"Anyone sitting here?"

Bryce didn't wait for Lee’s answer. He picked up the towel that was neatly folded on the sun bed next to hers and dried his face.

It was Sunday, the one day without group meetings. People were free to relax, get a massage, talk to each other or take elective classes.

The pool was large, rectangular and surrounded by trees in bloom. Lee had managed to get a place in a quiet corner and sat reading until she heard excited squeals: Shirley, the American sex addict, had spotted Bryce. She wanted to giggle when the petite brunette stuck out her ample bosom, barely contained by a one-piece swimsuit. It was especially funny to see Bryce looking anywhere but at her. Stepping to the edge of the pool, he dived in and began to swim laps.

After a quarter of an hour, Shirley descended the steps to the water and sat coyly moving her legs, waiting for him to get tired.

But when he did, he climbed out at the deep end and limped to the sun bed next to Lee’s.

"It's free," she said in answer to his question.

He shook the water from his hair. Some drops fell on Lee's thigh and she looked at them for a second, before wiping them with her hand.

"Sorry," he said. “Force of habit."

Throwing himself down on his bed, he narrowed his eyes against the sun. His body was taut, but not in a way that Lee disliked. He had wide shoulders, strong arms and a tight belly, but he wasn’t bulky; his neck was elegant and his muscles long. On his upper back he had a tattoo that didn’t seem to come from a parlor. It depicted triangles and uneven crosses that looked Orthodox or Ethiopian, and that had faded to blue.

Bryce was casual and friendly, but there was an intensity to him. Lee could feel it from where she lay, and it made her unable to turn on the somewhat cheap seductiveness she employed with most marks. Bryce was used to admiration, although he seemed to ignore it, but he was also highly intelligent. He wouldn’t like any obvious attempts to lure him and would probably mock her if she tried. Or at the very least he would lose interest in her, when by doing nothing she had drawn him to her side. There were to be no shortcuts with this man, although Lee feared that by not pretending hard to be someone else, she might sink into her own real reserve. That wouldn’t do either. Or would it?

Who would he like me to be?

"I think the pool might not be a great idea for the sex addicts," he observed.

Shirley was gaping at him as if she were a child and he candy, while Bob threw hungry, furtive glances at all the women.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Lee begged.

“I don't mind if they laugh at me."

"That's not what they're doing."

"I'm not going to look. I got my thigh squeezed at the dinner table yesterday."

"That's forbidden!"

"Forbiddenissimo," he said. "And the worst part is that as the hand started to ascend elsewhere, I had a knee-jerk reaction."

"You hit your knee?"

"On the table, and it's massive wood."

She was supposed to stop laughing, but she couldn't.

"Thanks for your concern," he said dryly.

"We should still not make fun."

"Don’t worry, by the end of this we'll all have spilled our guts on the floor to a room full of strangers. As you said, that's the good thing about being in rehab, everyone admits to being screwed up."

"You admitted to not wanting to be cured the other day. You’ll get in trouble for that.”

“And you sound like you behaved well in school.” He considered her for a quiet moment before continuing, "Since I wasn't going to be allowed to be silent for twenty-eight days — now twenty-one, thank heaven — I had to say something. What are you reading?"

She showed him the cover of her book: A History of Umbria.

"Is that exciting?”

"It's not meant to be. If they had fun books here, we might not talk to each other."

"Now I feel obliged to be more fun than the history of Umbria. What does it say?"

"Well, there were Umbrians here at one point."

"That sounds reasonable.”

"Then Etruscans."

"Cheeky bastards."

"Then Saint Francis.”

“I think he threw everything in his father's house out of a window. I can only imagine doing that to my parents.”

"It's probably easier to be the parents of a sinner."

“Depends how much you sin,” he said a little grimly. Bells started ringing. “Already noon?”

“Lunchtime, almost,” she said.

He faced up, and she had a moment to study his face. There was a slight deviation on the bridge of his nose which saved him from being too perfect and made him more interesting. His eyes were almond-shaped and a deep shade of blue. Fancy vivid blue, like his diamond. Sometimes they looked dark, but at the moment they reflected the sky.

“Have you explored the place at all?” he finally asked her.

"Not really, there's always something going on."

"Isn't that too true?" he drawled. "I've made friends with the staff and I’ve been running away at night, so I can show you. Come on."

He got up and she followed, stepping into flat sandals and wrapping a black dress over her white bikini. He picked up the clothes he had left at the end of the pool and put on light khaki pants and a white shirt, which clung to the wet spots of his body as he buttoned it. They walked through the garden, and soon they were in the cloister, a sunny rectangle surrounded by stone arches.

"They told me this part dates from the fourteenth century," he said.

"I like that period.”

He took her hand, and she started as if she had stepped on a live wire. He didn’t notice; he pulled her through a side door into a church. The walls were made of stripes of black and white marble, and shiny wooden pews had been neatly placed around an altar. Bryce pointed to a cerulean blue ceiling with silver stars.

"For the congregation to dream of heaven," he said.

Lee slipped her hand out of his. She hadn’t expected him to touch her yet, and it was hard to control a wild beating of her artery that felt like terror. She moved away to study the faded frescoes on the walls. Bryce was close behind her as she entered a separate space, which must have been the sacristy. She turned inside, looking at the stories depicted on the walls, till she was face to face with him. He had put an arm over the threshold as he watched her. The top of her head barely reached his eyes, although she was a tall woman. There was that heat from him again, that something.

She managed to give a vacant smile, and he looked at her strangely, as if trying to pierce through her empty friendliness. And then there was a decision showing on his face — like a truce; as if he were accepting what she had offered him for that moment without believing it for a second. He was cool and too intense all at once, and she was glad when he moved to let her pass.

On the way back to the pool, they went by the house where art therapy took place. Their work for the week was on display, and Bryce strolled in.

"Is something here yours?" he asked as he looked around.

"Yes."

"I'll guess."

"All right."

Lee waited as he looked at the different artworks. He stopped at a couple, then stood before the ink painting she had made: it was a vertical brush stroke with small details that represented a woman seen from the back.

"This is yours," he pronounced. “It’s very good.”

She was slightly annoyed that he had guessed. "It's not all that.”

He turned from the drawing to look at her, as if she were worth studying as well. Lee didn't budge, but she could again feel a pulse on her throat jumping. She wondered if he could see it.

“We’re almost fraternizing," he said slowly. "It's forbidden."

Lee managed to smile. "Forbiddenissimo."

He stepped back, as he had done before. "After you."

They returned to the main villa, and Lee told herself that she need not feel the sharp pain high in her stomach. The fright was over. She found herself wishing that he wouldn’t touch her for a long time, because she needed to prepare herself better.

Bryce was not like the others.

EIGHT

It was difficult to accept the lights-out rule when she couldn’t sleep. Lee had always escaped rules, especially when there was no reason for them.

She was in no need of discipline, really. Not of the kind Balbina could provide. And for someone who made her living by stealing, it was only too easy to slip out of the villa at night. She knew, for one — because Quinn had told her —that the cameras in the corridors were false, and not really filming anything. For another, she could slip by the night guard at the reception unnoticed; the man was always reading a book, looking at a small TV, or sleeping.

Outside, it was a completely different world when no one was about. It was taxing for her to always be in company, always pretending. The darkness around the villa was her friend, and she luxuriated in it as she might luxuriate in black velvet. And in diamonds, she thought with a smile as she looked up at the stars.

The smell of cigarette smoke gave her pause when she approached the cloister. It wasn’t faint enough to be coming from the staff quarters, or from the guards at the gate. The smoke now surrounded her, but it was coming from above. She looked up and gasped. There was Bryce, looking down at her and smiling. He was above an arch that curved atop a door. The end of his cigarette burned in an orange circle as he drew on it.

“Knew you were a transgressor,” he said in a low voice. He expelled more smoke from his lips as he considered her, leaning his elbows on the stone. He added, after a second. “Come up here.”

She hesitated, only because she was so unsure of him. His eyes were sardonic as he watched her. “Afraid of something?”

“Which way?” she asked.

He pointed at a pile of stones to their left. The stones had probably been left there to fix some old part or another of the church, and Lee climbed them. He leaned over and stretched his hand, the cigarette clamped between his lips, as she was still short of reaching the top. With surprising strength, he pulled her up.

“I’m sure that’s not good for your knee,” she said as she joined him.

He lifted his head and blew the last of the smoke, flicking his cigarette over the side. “Don’t worry about my knee.” Picking up a glass he tilted it toward her. “Some wine?”

"James!" Lee protested.

"What?”

"We can't drink."

“Says who?” he asked, taking a sip of the wine as if to prove they could.

“We’re in rehab.”

He smiled. “For our mental problems, not for this.”

“For Tramadol addiction.”

Turning, he moved toward the ground. The arch was wider than it seemed from below and had a hollow part where he had created a sort of terrace, with some cushions, candles and a bottle of wine. He arranged cushions for her and sat down a little stiffly, leaning back. She sat next to him.

“I had to take Tramadol because of two knee surgeries,” he said. “And when I was forced to come to rehab, I wanted to keep taking the damned pills so I could bear the lectures. I've stopped now. That's my story, what's yours?"

Lee shook her head. "If that's true, then why did you let the judge send you to rehab?"

"Have you ever tried arguing with an English judge bent on giving you a moral lesson? He had probably made up his mind about me before I ever stepped into court.”

He poured more wine into the glass. He hadn’t been expecting company, or she supposed he would have more than one glass with him. He lifted the one he had at her.

“No?” he asked.

She did want a drink, and she supposed it would make them bond. She took the glass and sipped.

“So you’re not an alcoholic?” she asked.

Bryce scoffed. "Don’t think I’ve been truly drunk more than six or seven times in my life, and that’s a lot for an Englishman to say. And I wasn’t drunk when I crashed, I just lost control of the car on an icy patch.” He turned to look at her, and he was close. Too close. His eyes swept over her body. “And you're no more of a drunk than I am."

Lee knew the look of a drunk, and it was true that she didn’t fit the profile. Someone far gone in alcoholism wouldn’t manage to keep tidy, not all the time. Still, she had to keep protesting, “I had an addiction to Tramadol, and haven't we learned that one addiction just leads to another?"

"If you’re the addictive type.”

It took a moment for her to ask, "Are you always so sure of the things you say?"

“I’m sure of this.”

"You're bad,” she said, before he took the glass from her hand.

His fingers brushed hers, and she felt a tightness in her belly. He bit his lip as he studied her. “You’re just trying to act right,” he stated.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Putting an arm behind his head and balancing the wine on his stomach, he said, “I’m saying you’re bad as well.”

You have no idea, she thought.

“I’ve no idea how,” he continued, as if he had read her mind. “And it’s not an obvious way, either.”

It was unnerving that he wouldn’t look away from her, and that his eyes caressed her even while the line of his lips mocked her.

Kiss me and be done with it, she thought. But he didn’t. He was even less obvious than she was.

Instead, he said, “You should be scared to be out with a killer.”

And then he sat up so suddenly that she had to clench her fists not to jerk away. But he was only taking a closer look at her, and offering her the wine again.

“Cigarette?” he asked, finding the packet.

“I don’t smoke,” she said.

“Neither do I.” He patted the ground for the lighter, the new cigarette between his lips. When he lit it and inhaled the smoke, his face looked like a devil’s. “Except when I want the time to pass by fast. Or go really slow.”

Leaning back against the cushions again, but this time in a sitting position, he still looked at her. He was comfortable doing that and saying nothing. Lee imagined it was his beauty that gave him confidence, but there was also strength to him. His shirt was unbuttoned, although he never appeared like that in company. She supposed he hadn’t had to mind his manners up on this Gothic arch by himself.

“You’re not a killer,” she said suddenly, just so that she didn’t have to look at his chest, so carelessly displayed by his open shirt.

“You don’t know that,” he replied. “I used to kill things every day.”

“In the wild, you mean?”

“Claire’s been telling you my adventures, I guess?”

“Some of them. You killed to eat, though.”

For the first time, he looked away. “Well, it’s like this: When you’re out there and you need to hunt for food, because there is nothing else to eat, really, your body just sings.”

“What do you mean?”

His eyes had gone far away now. “That men are made to kill. Men, especially. That’s what testosterone is for. Makes us get out of that cave after something that could just as easily kill us. But it doesn’t matter, because we long for violence.”

Again he leaned his head back, exposing his neck, slipping a hand under his shirt as if he were tempting her to touch his smooth, golden skin, drawing on the cigarette and blowing the smoke at the sky.

“So when we are out there and it’s sanctioned, when it’s what we have to do to survive and feed others, our body just sings with it. Everything is perfect.” He stopped for a moment, remembering. “Sometimes we would hunt with nothing in our bellies, and when we finally killed, we would have to drink a cup of blood, just so we wouldn’t faint.”

Lee shrugged, taking the glass from him and drinking the red wine. It was as warm as blood. “You are a killer, then. Is that what you mean?”

Lazily, he turned his head toward her. “I mean that every man wants to kill. It’s our mission. Women want to give life, men want to take it. But if we live in a place with laws, they stop us.”

“And your body doesn’t sing anymore?” she asked with a small smile.

“It does,” he said. “When it fucks.”

The word was like a blow to her, but by his smile, she knew he had meant to shock her. Or perhaps not shock her, but not to use any euphemisms either. Not to say “make love.”

“Fucking, killing machines, we are,” he added. He flicked the cigarette over the edge again. “We should all be locked up, but not in places like this, where we can run away at night. Forever.”

 “They thought you killed your wife,” she said suddenly, her voice coming out of her mouth as in a dream. She hadn’t meant to say it.

His look at her was frightening then. A little. It was sharp, and piercing.

“Have you ever wanted to kill anyone?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Could you have done?”

Lee lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

“That’s the point. Anyone could.”

“But enjoying it?” she wondered.

“That, too,” he said, and his face was perfect and remorseless, like a god’s.

NINE

Sunday came around once more, and the second week was over. After the night on the Gothic arch, Lee had not managed to spend a lot of time alone with Bryce. Balbina, with its endless meetings and insistence on group activities, was the wrong place for that.

Although he sometimes spoke in the group, he had not mentioned his wife or her death again. When the therapists tried to bring up the subject of Mia Archer, they were met by Bryce’s unyielding irony, like a steel gate closing before them.

The dreaded family day came around, and neither Lee nor Bryce had anyone to bring. He had told Kevin his sister would only come over his dead body. Lee could understand that feeling. Had this been a real situation, she would never have allowed Cora to come and hear anything about how she really felt. She had spent years making sure Cora would never know. James might feel the same about his sister — that she should have her youth, and that it should be as happy as possible.

Still, the therapists expected them to attend the meetings. They might not have anyone there, but they should still see what addiction did to others’ families. James seemed pained for some of the people he had come to know, especially Kevin since they had become friends, but he didn’t speak much. Neither did Lee, but she caught him looking at her with a different light in his eyes a few times. Was he thinking they were alike? That would be a useful thought for him to have. It would bring him closer to her.

Lee wanted to ignore the fact that she had begun to believe they were alike. Two misfits among the misfits. The pegs that would fit no holes. Creatures who couldn’t be made to conform, although he had been born on a different side of the tracks from her, and he had stayed within the limits of the law since.

She didn’t suppose he was sick, like her, unless he were hiding a bigger crime than theft.

In any case, the four weeks of rehab ended, and Dr. Faure concluded at the final session: "It's about the connections in your life. Without them, you'll reach for every bottle, every pill, every drug, every warm body. We've seen here that it isn't easy to love and be loved, but we've also seen that it's what we all long for. Existence is just survival without love."

“Neatly wrapped with a bow,” Bryce said for Lee’s ears only as they walked out of the meeting.

“Maybe all this is for nothing, anyway,” Lee said, realizing her voice sounded hard. “People like us don’t get cured in twenty-eight days. It’s not like we have chicken pox.”

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

“Twenty-eight,” she lied. She was twenty-four.

“That’s six years younger than me,” he said. “You’re cynical for how young you are. You gotta believe in something.”

She glanced at him and saw that he had a wicked twinkle in his eyes. No, this wasn’t a man who would ever say or even think platitudes.

They had Sunday to relax and slowly say goodbye to the friends they had made. It was the last day at Balbina, and she was running out of time to wrangle an invitation from Bryce to go home with him. But there were few people left, and he took the sunbed next to hers once more at the pool.

"Where are you going now?" he asked.

"I don’t know. I took the summer off. The business is mine, and there will still be real estate for me to sell in September. Or October. I was thinking of Rome. I haven't ever seen it."

Bryce turned, shading his eyes. "You haven't seen Rome?"

"Only from the window of the car, and only the part near the airport. Thought I'd leave it for after."

"There’s very nice real estate there,” he said. “Will you give me a ride?"

"What?"

“I don't have a license at the moment.” He added with a cheeky grin, “We can share the price of petrol.”

On Monday people left at different times, and there were no more goodbyes. Lee's rented BMW was waiting at the bottom of the front steps when she was ready; so was Bryce. He opened the driver’s door for her and went around to the passenger seat.

As he waved to the staff, he said, "They're all thinking we’re going to fraternize now."

"I like speed," Lee warned as she drove off, lifting the golden dust of Umbria behind them.

"Oh, that’s perfect. I only almost died in a car accident."

A quick glance told her it was another irony. He didn’t look like he minded her driving fast. She was a good driver.

"Where are you staying?" he asked three hours later, when they faced the traffic of Rome.

"Piazza Navona."

"At the Raphael? That's not far from where I live."

"Where?”

"A piazza about ten minutes from you."

"I'll drop you off," she said.

"Certainly not. I'll drop you off."

Lee laughed. "I happen to be driving, so that would be difficult."

"Not at all," he said, sounding immensely British. "I shall accompany you to your door, and then take a taxi to mine."

He would brook no argument as he directed her toward Piazza Navona. They parked on a side street and he walked her to the Raphael, gallantly pulling her suitcase.

"Here you are," he said at the door as a bellboy took her luggage. "I'll pick you up at eight."

She frowned. "You'll—?"

"Pick you up at eight. You've got yourself a cicerone. Believe me, a leggy blonde does not want to do Rome alone."

Lee found a good salon, had her roots done and at eight she was ready, wearing a cool, sleeveless dress with a soft skirt. Bryce’s eyes were polite; they didn’t sweep over her or insist on holding hers. He was cool, not intense Bryce.

"We're going across the river," he said. "To Trastevere."

It was an easy stroll to Ponte Sant'Angelo, an old bridge over the Tiber, where they stopped to look at St. Peter's Basilica in the distance and at the angel statues along the way. The castle that housed Emperor Hadrian's mausoleum was in front of them, on the other side.

The bridge had a throng of people, happy that summer had come. Bad music from flutes made Bryce wince with an eye closed. African immigrants exhibited fake bags, crying, “Gucci, Prada, Miu Miu-uuuu!”

Rome was the most beautiful city Lee had ever seen, and Bryce appeared to know it well. He guided her through small medieval streets with red walls in Trastevere until they reached a square with a beautiful church. At the terrace of a restaurant, he was greeted by the owner. The men exchanged a few pleasantries as the owner showed them a reserved table. Bryce pulled her chair and took his place.

"Aren't you famous?" Lee asked.

He raised his eyebrows. "Famous?"

"Yes, I’ve heard you come out in magazines and all."

"I think you mean tabloids. Are you worried you'll be in them too?"

"We're practically in the middle of the square, and I think the paparazzi were invented here?"

"But I'm infamous in the UK, not in Italy."

"I thought they knew no borders. I mean, the British ones would still have the ones here looking for a story about you, wouldn't they?"

"Sure," he said. "'Wife murderer enjoying Rome with blonde.’ ”  His look held some defiance in it, but also something else, more difficult to interpret.

She hadn’t thought of him as a murderer for a while, but he wasn’t a man free from secrets, or from rage. None of that would make her back away. She could take care of herself.

“I confess I looked you up this afternoon, now that I’m online again,” she lied.

“It would have been silly of you not to. I was clever when I ran away to rehab, though,” he said. “Left loads of red herrings. It will take a moment for them to catch on to where I might be.”

"You don't seem to care."

"Might have to hobble after a few people to make them eat their cameras. It will be fun."

The restaurant owner materialized next to them with a waiter bearing a cold bottle of Crystal champagne. "We got it this afternoon, as you asked.”

"Then let's hear that pop."

Lee wouldn’t make the mistake of protesting too much; not after they had already broken the drinking rule together. The champagne was carefully poured into flutes and placed before them. The waiter nodded, smiled and left.

"You're the sinner,” said Lee, clinking her glass against his. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“Explain that to the devil at the doors of hell,” he replied with a wink.

There was a buzz in her head as they left the restaurant, but there was tension as well, heightened at every step that took them across a different bridge and on to the historic center of the city. He stopped underneath a large house with high painted ceilings and lavish chandeliers.

"It's a Roman palace," she said.

"I know. It's mine."

"Seriously?"

"I’m renting it because of the view — want to have a look?"

Her ribcage felt tight as they climbed the stairs. Bryce wouldn't wait anymore. He hadn't slept with anyone in weeks, and he must be ravenous. She was going to be his meal. He held on to the banister as he climbed. His knee had improved but wasn’t completely healed.

Maybe it would just be a nightcap. Maybe he was tired.

He opened the door to a magnificent little palace and ushered her through frescoed corridors over marble floors, past large rooms furnished with antiques and on to a large, semi-circular lounge overlooking the ancient forum.

Lee gasped at the ruins of the most powerful ancient civilization, glowing at her feet, but Bryce put his arm around her waist, turning her. His other hand held the back of her neck as he kissed her.

His mouth was soft and firm at once, and he tasted clean despite the champagne; he even tasted good. He was a strong, healthy male, and she gave in to the slight pressure on the small of her back to lean against him.

He was a good kisser, but she felt exactly what she had felt every time she had been kissed in her life: nothing.

TEN

Bryce might be famished, but he didn't act like it. After kissing Lee for a good while, he laid her gently on the sofa. His lips didn’t leave hers as she unbuttoned his shirt and tugged at his belt.

"We can take it slow,” he murmured.

She didn’t want to. She wanted it to be over, but he kissed her and stroked the small of her back as if they had all the time in the world.

Kneeling on the sofa, he removed his own shirt and kicked off his shoes and socks. He pulled her dress over her head and unhooked her bra slowly, as if he were revealing a treasure with patient anticipation.

"You're beautiful," he said almost dreamily.

He nuzzled her breasts, delicately letting her feel his stubble for a moment, then he wrapped his tongue around her nipple. He seemed to avoid getting it hard, only holding it between his lips and licking it softly.

She stayed in the same position, kneeling, as his hand slid inside her panties.

No! she almost screamed. Her heart thumped like a beast throwing itself against the bars of a cage. The image of that man, his thick fingers, his voice, “You’ll like this …” It always hit her and made her hate the man touching her. She wished she could shriek and run.

But he never touched her there. He only stroked her buttocks, cupping one side as he kept kissing her.

It was torture. She wanted to tell him to go ahead and do the same as the man had done. Every man wanted to do it. Why did he have to take so long?

Bryce bent her backwards, holding her fast as if remembering she was meant to have a bad back. He laid her down, and still he kissed her, placing himself between her legs.

He moved back a little to look at her, and she closed her eyes, turning her face to one side. She felt him enter her, and she emitted a moan. He had made her wide open, and he was moving very close to her, bone against bone. She kept moaning, wondering how he could have so much self-control, why he couldn’t be like other men and just take his pleasure without bothering with her.

Her moans became louder as she threw her head back, trying to get him over the edge, but to her shock, Bryce pulled back and rolled away, although he wasn’t finished.

Then he raised his hands and slowly clapped.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Ten for the effort, five for the performance," he said, putting an arm behind his head.

"What do you mean?"

"That you're pretending."

Lee flushed, exposed to eyes that had become detached and sardonic.

He nodded toward a thin blanket wrapped over the back of the sofa. "Use that, if you want.”

She covered herself as he lay nonchalant in his nakedness.

"Sorry, I've been rude," he said. "And you're a guest in my house. But if I wanted to lie on top of a woman who isn't feeling anything, I'd go to hookers."

A bout of nausea hit Lee’s stomach. She tried not to show it. "I think I was nervous, or it was the champagne. I haven't drunk anything in a while."

Bryce watched her for a second and said, "No, I think you're always like that."

She flushed harder. "How can you know what I'm like?"

"I thought you might be nervous, but I don't think so now. I think you don't feel anything."

"Maybe you don't make me feel anything.”

There it was, her anger. He had brought it out. If she didn't manage to make him stop examining her, everything would be ruined. Lee looked at the door, wondering whether she could grab her dress and bolt, but he lay sideways on the sofa, his head propped up by his hand, blocking her escape.

"Could be, but you know what, I still don't think so. You don't like sex.”

Lee held on to the blanket, bringing it closer to her neck. "What are you talking about?"

"Why your problems sounded so fake at therapy. It was as if you had read a book on the stuff you should be saying. Don't mistake me, it’s clear that you have some serious issues, but it was just as obvious that you decided to go on about something else."

The words came out of her before she could stop them: "I want to go to the hotel."

"We’re only talking,” he said calmly. “You're upset because I caught you pretending what you don’t feel."

"A lot of women pretend.”

"Must be terrible." He grimaced almost comically. "I can see this is bothering you, but—"

Her voice sounded brittle. "What business is it of yours, James? Some women are like me, what does it matter?"

"Were you always like that? No boyfriends when you were a teen that made you feel anything?"

"No."

"What about by yourself?"

She covered her ears. "Stop!"

He whistled. "Not a single—"

"Stop, stop, stop!" she shouted more loudly in his face.

He sat and put his arms around her as she struggled. "Please don't thrash about or you might hit my knee."

Exhausted, Lee lay against his chest. He stroked her back, but his touch wasn't sexual.

"Don't talk about it," she begged.

"All right.”

"I'm sorry that I pretended. I feel that I have to do it, or—"

He pulled back a bit. She lay in the crook of his arm as he brushed the hair away from her face. "You don't have to do it with me."

She gave a small smile. "I'll friendzone you?"

He shook his head.

"Then you'll take me to the hotel, and I'll get another cicerone?"

He scowled and shook his head again.

"What, then?"

"How do you feel about just sleeping? We're tired, aren't we?"

"I don't think I'll sleep a wink."

He picked her up despite his knee and moved down the marble hallway, stopping at the threshold of his bedroom for her to reach the switch with a toe and flip it. The bed was a lavish antique and occupied a great deal of the room. He laid her down and stretched next to her, pulling the covers over them.

"We'll tell stories. How's that?" he said.

Lee allowed her head to fall on his shoulder. "My father read me The Little Match Girl once.”

“Isn’t that Andersen? He was a glum wanker. How did it go?”

“It’s New Year’s Eve and a little girl is trying to sell matches in the street. She’s afraid of going home without selling any, because she’ll be beaten. She sits lighting the matches and seeing lovely things in their glow, until she runs out and sees her grandmother, who carries her up to heaven.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “It doesn’t make a lot of business sense to waste the matches she was meant to sell.”

“The point is that she was committing suicide,” she said in a tone that was suddenly unsentimental.

“Blimey. And you were how old when your father read this to you?”

“Six.” She stopped short of adding: Just before he died. That had happened to Lee’s father, not Vivien’s.

“And what did you think?”

“Oh, I cried for hours.” Lee smiled, remembering the scene. “I couldn’t stop crying, so my poor father had to invent a sequel. He sat there and pretended to read that the little girl hadn’t really died, only seen her grandmother in a dream. The good grandmother had breathed warmth into her. She was found by a family and taken into their house, where she spent a wonderful evening, and went home the next day with money and a feast.”

“And founded a match company, no doubt.”

She laughed. “Don’t be cynical about my father’s story.”

“He wasn’t always distant, then,” Bryce remarked.

It was easy to get caught in lies when you let your guard down — she had to remember that this was a man who listened. “No, not when I was small. It’s easier for parents to relate to small children, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, is it?”

“Guess not in your case.”

He resumed stroking her hair. “I think we’ve had enough psychoanalyzing for a while.”

“So you won’t ask me anymore?”

“No. And you don't have to feel ashamed. Shit, as they say, happens.”

There was another silence before she remarked, “You curse a lot.”

“You don’t curse at all. Who washed your mouth with soap?”

My kind grandmother, Lee thought, but said, “Will you tell me a story?”

“Can’t remember any, and yours has spooked me.”

“You must have stories of your travels.”

“No one wants to listen to other people’s travel stories.”

“I do.”

“You’re a special one. But I’ll tell you another day, because I’m feeling either lazy or sleepy.”

“James?”

“Yes?”

She swallowed. "What do you want with me?"

"Oh, I'm committed."

Lee felt a pang of dread, but managed to ask, "To what?"

"Don't be scared, not to marry you or anything.” He gave the delighted laugh of a boy. “I’m committed to the terrible sex!”

ELEVEN

At least all was not lost, Lee thought when she woke up the next morning.

She hadn't had to run away, and Bryce wanted to entertain himself with the possibility of "curing" her. He would want her to stay by his side, and she could even stop pretending that she was enjoying sex now that he knew she couldn’t.

It appeared that he liked what was broken, perhaps because he was broken himself. Nevertheless, his interest wouldn’t last long. She needed to get to the ring. Seeing what a detached view he had of his own wealth, she could well believe that he might not have insured it.

He was arrogant. Or something.

Besides, if she didn’t move fast someone else might get to the diamonds before her. Over fifteen million dollars, just sitting in a home safe … it was too much of a temptation.

His side of the bed was empty when she opened her eyes, although it was only six o’clock. She had a shower in the marble bathroom and put her dress back on. Her face looked fresh without makeup.

Bryce was on a terrace facing the Roman hills. He was in a headstand, his eyes closed as he appeared to meditate.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You don't."

He got out of the headstand and smiled, looking young in his pajama bottoms with disheveled hair and a mischievous grin.

"Hungry?"

A table was set amidst terracotta pots with flowers, under a large square umbrella. Again, he pulled the chair for her and removed the silver covers from several dishes, revealing scrambled eggs, toast, golden waffles, croissants, jam, butter and a variety of fresh fruit.

"Do you like any of this?" he asked.

"All of it."

"Good."

He piled food on her dish as he bit into a piece of toast and served her coffee. Lee thought that she wouldn't be hungry, but she found herself eating.

"News of the day," Bryce said, looking at the Corriere della Sera. "A piece of Antarctica is about to fall off and seas will rise, Syria is worse than yesterday, and Roma won against Milano 2-0. That's football, which you would know as soccer. Oh, and 'British billionaire bangs blonde.' "

"Idiot."

“I’m not quite a billionaire, but I like alliteration.” He smiled at her. "I haven't bought the tabloids yet. There was nothing on the web linking you to me or me to Rome, though.”

She played with her coffee spoon. "I need to go to the hotel."

"My man will drive you there, so you can get your things.”

“My things?”

“To stay here, of course. It will be a waste of time for you to keep your room at the hotel. And you should return your car, you can use mine.”

"It’s a little early—"

He frowned. "I thought we agreed! You need to undergo very intense therapy."

"Don't joke about it."

"I won't, it would only make your control issues worse."

Lee stared at him. "You've got me diagnosed, have you?"

"Most sexual problems come from control issues. You don't want to abandon yourself. You're afraid of the ecstasy I could give you."

Men always thought they gave women ecstasy. They were often wrong.

"I'm glad it's so simple, and that it amuses you,” she said.

"I'm smiling because I'm thinking of you naked.”

"This will be unbearable, I can't—" Lee stood, but he took the hand she had closed into a fist. "Would you please stop talking about it?"

"Of course, my little Frigidaire, talking of things only ever makes them worse."

She laughed at Frigidaire, although she wanted to be angry. He kissed her hand.

“Let's be off soon. A walk is recommended, every day, for all people — those who like sex and those who hate it." Bryce laid down his napkin. “I’ll shower while you go get all your things.”

He went back into the house and she sat looking at the old roofs and spires of Rome. Bryce would be a challenge. He controlled situations through charm and humor instead of being overbearing or fawning, and she wasn’t used to that.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge. She duly went to the Raphael with the driver and packed her things. When she took the toiletry case to fill it, she felt the weight of the pot of cream inside. Taking it out, she unscrewed the bottom, letting four mini cameras fall on the palm of her hand. She would need to plant one of them above Bryce’s safe and watch him typing the combination. But the safe must be in London, or in the family country estate. She had just spent a month getting to know Bryce, and she needed things to start moving fast.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he were less smart? Oh, well.

She put the cameras back, screwed the bottom of the jar and finished packing. An hour later, she and Bryce strolled through the outdoor market in Campo dei Fiori. Lee wore white Capri pants, a black top and flat sandals. In jeans and a white T-shirt, Bryce carried an old camera.

Lee had developed a certain calm in relation to having her image taken. It was inevitable in the age of the iPhone. Her marks would often snap images of her in front of anything, like a dish of salad. She would erase the images before leaving, but even if they were stored somewhere in the cloud, she wore big sunglasses, made enough faces and changed enough that she would not be easily recognized in a casual photo. As for Bryce, if he took pictures of her, she would open the camera and spoil the film later.

He was going to be her last job, after all. Five million pounds, free of taxes, and Quinn would have enough as well.

They went by the house where Keats had died, and because she was supposed to make her money through real estate, she remarked on the price of property in the center of Rome.

"A penniless poet could die here in the 1820s. Now only someone like you could afford an apartment in this area."

"Too noisy."

"Well, there you go, only someone as rich as you would turn up his nose at this."

Bryce sat on the stairs, amidst tourists and locals, and pulled her to the step below him. He was like a big cat, leaning back on his elbows, his legs stretched on either side of her in a display of loose possessiveness.

Wasn’t that a contradiction? People were either possessive or not. He seemed too confident to bother.

When hunger struck them again, they ate off Via Condotti, at a small place that wasn't too touristic. Then they strolled to Villa Borghese, where he showed her the Bernini statue of Apollo and Daphne. It looked lifelike, as if a god had truly pursued a nymph as she turned into a tree to escape him.

Bernini had captured Apollo’s expression of surprise; his right hand clutched emptiness while the left rested almost tenderly on Daphne’s hip, which was already turning into bark. The nymph reached upward with fear and a sort of triumph, her hands and hair becoming leaves.

Bryce quoted, " ‘Destroy the beauty that has injured me, or change the body that destroys my life.’ "

Lee’s eyes followed every detail of the statue. "It's incredible that he could make marble look so delicate.”

The Rape of Proserpina, another Bernini, was a different matter. There was no triumph or escape for Persephone as Hades, Lord of the Underworld, locked her into a violent hold. From the side Hades was all muscle pushing forward, his legs, arms and torso straining as he lifted her. Persephone, her feet in the air, struggled in vain. A dog behind her showed pointed teeth.

But Hades’ hands were beautiful as he held Persephone by the waist and gripped her thigh. Bernini had managed to depict both strength and desire in the way the god’s fingers sank into the woman’s flesh. It was remarkable work.

Bryce stood on the other side of the statue, and Lee covertly watched his hand, holding the camera. It was like the statue’s — elegant and strong.

As he moved, she remained where she was, staring at the exquisite marble tear on Persephone’s cheek. She almost started when he materialized at her side and caressed her stomach absentmindedly.

He let her go, moving away to look at something else. Lee waited a moment before she followed him. As she reached the main door, she was pulled into another room. It had many statues, their silhouettes visible under cloth or plastic. Bryce placed her against the wall and nuzzled her mouth with his for a few seconds before he forced her lips open and kissed her with his tongue.

Lee almost gasped at the pain that hit her deep inside like a blow. The skin all over her body rose, and her breasts strained against her bra. She felt her underwear moisten and flushed in shame.

His hands kept her hips still as he kissed her, his tongue teasing hers, his stubble hurting, and Lee found herself breathlessly clinging to the solid, lean muscle on his back. She pushed into his kiss until their teeth almost touched, and with a stifled moan she grasped a handful of his hair. Now he held her just below her buttocks, his fingers digging into her flesh like the statue’s.

But he let her go again, one arm on the wall next to her as his breathing slowed and he stepped back — and soon she stood alone in the room with the statues, dizzy from knowing what she had wanted him to do.

Never, never, never had she thought that. She rubbed at her mouth, looking at her hand, afraid that something would show on her face.

After a moment, she followed him as he strolled through the gallery.

The afternoon was warm, and Lee was glad when they stepped out into the sun. It had been cold in the gallery with all that marble. Perhaps that was why she was still shivering. They bought ice cream from a shop that had a dizzying array of flavors and slowly walked back to the little palace.

At Trajan's Column, Lee stopped to admire the thousands of finely carved figures. "There are so many columns and obelisks in Rome.”

"Now there's the one in my trousers," Bryce observed dryly.

Lee covered his mouth with a gasp, but his eyes were full of mischief.

They had a nap at the palace, which was cool even under the hot sun. Once again, she slept well with him next to her. In the evening he asked if she minded staying in; his knee hurt. She wanted to tell him to avoid walking over uneven old cobblestones, but she frowned the thought away. It would make her sound like his girlfriend, and she was only his experiment.

The cook, who was so discreet that Lee hadn't even known he was there, served them dinner in the living room. Afterwards, she leafed through art books and Bryce watched a replay of the soccer match between Roma and Milano, though he already knew the outcome. When it was over, he turned off the TV and opened a silver box, taking out a thin cigarette and a heavy jade lighter.

"Is that—?" Lee asked.

"Weed," he said, the joint between his lips as he lit it.

He took a deep drag, held it in and offered it to her. She had never done drugs and looked at the joint with suspicion.

"It's natural stuff," he said. "Now legal in a great number of American states. And no authority in Italy ever bothers about a joint.”

“Is it for medicinal purposes?” she asked tartly. “Good for my condition?”

“Come on, the worst that can happen is you eating all the sweets in the house."

Hesitating for another second, she took a timid drag, only to cough raucously. Bryce laughed and took another pull, then she took two small drags, holding the smoke in.

"You're a funny one," she said after a few minutes. Why shouldn’t she say it?

"Am I? Why?"

"I don't know, you went to learn about Buddhism, but you have mansions and you do drugs."

The smoke came out of his mouth in bursts as he laughed. "I think you're mistaking Buddhism for the Catholic priesthood. For one, I wasn't a monk, I was only learning meditation from them."

“Why did you go learn?”

“To see if I could control some things.”

“You said you like your temper.”

“I don’t exactly like it. I just think it cuts to the truth sometimes.”

She wondered just how much it cut …

"Since you didn’t learn to control your temper, what did you learn?”

“I was better at the stamina type of exercise. You know, staying in the same position and putting up with heat and cold. Putting up with pain without Tramadol, sometimes. Mostly managed to control my sex drive, too. At least the mindless lust part.”

Lee looked around at the room. “What about not being attached to wealth?”

"I'm not very attached to anything. I have three houses, true, but that’s four houses less than the previous generation. And I have land, a boat and some cars. Some art. But the truth is that I’m keeping all that for my sister. I'll start traveling again one day with very little on me. It was nice to do that.”

A small pang of regret struck Lee. Why? Because a stranger spoke of leaving on his own?

The joint was more than halfway gone, and Bryce put it in an ashtray and lay down on the wide sofa. Lee didn’t feel any different, except that the light around the ancient forum seemed to change color, and every detail looked sharp. Thoughts began racing through her head, and she didn't realize that she was sitting with her lips open as she stared at nothing.

When she turned toward Bryce, she found him watching her. The scant light hit his bones, creating sharp shadows on his face. If archaeologists in the future found his skull, they would be able to tell he had been beautiful.

There was heat coming from him. It came from his skin.

Without much thinking, Lee crawled on top of his body. He didn't move. Instead, it was she who opened his shirt to touch his hot flesh.

How alive he is, Lee thought, looking at the pulse beating in Bryce's throat. And what a strange thing skin was, something so thin and vulnerable that covered him from head to foot. She ran her hands over his chest, feeling his heart dance under her fingers. Opening his belt and zipper, she looked at the place where he ceased being brown from the sun and became white. She looked at that line for a while, then at the discreet path of hair that descended from his belly button to his underwear. It was a lovely part of him.

No man had ever lain so still for her, and Lee enjoyed it. He had made no movement to touch her. He only lay passively under her hands and lips.

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…

She undressed him slowly, nuzzling the path of hair, then took his face between her hands. Lee kissed Bryce as he had kissed her at the gallery, slowly, moving her lips back and forth, then hard. She stuck out her tongue to meet his.

It felt good, for the first time in her life. He let her kiss him until their lips hurt.

He had borne his own excitement for a long while and she felt sorry for him — but when she started to slide down his body, he kept her where she was.

"No," he said. "When you take me in your mouth it will be because you want to. Otherwise, don't worry about me."

They went to bed, and Lee couldn't help laughing when she heard the shower running, and Bryce's loud yelp as he got under the jet of cold water.

TWELVE

"Since I am into cold showers now, we should go somewhere warmer," Bryce said.

Lee had been living at the Roman palace with him for a week, and every day they explored the city — and every evening she explored his body.

The previous night they had lain in bed naked, and she had let him nuzzle her neck with his stubble as he caressed her belly and hips. The fact that he hadn’t touched her in any of the obvious places, that he hadn’t touched her like that man, had provoked an ache in her that was both terrible and irresistible.

She had found herself moving back until her skin touched his and the softness of her buttocks met his hardness. It excited her. As she turned her head to be kissed, she also twisted her body so that his hand could cup her breast. He didn’t. He only stroked the side with the back of his fingers, and his other hand stroked the inside of her thighs until the pain inside her was sharp. That pain was desire, and she knew it.

But as soon as she started feeling like that, he moved his body away from hers and his hands were gone. In the dark, she saw his eyes flash for a moment with a feral light, but he fell asleep soon after they closed. She lay awake for a long time, watching him sleep, wanting to touch him — wishing he would touch her. Her breasts hurt, her insides, her mound of Venus.

Touch me. I won’t beg you. You do it.

The next day, as they visited the city, she looked at his hands as he poured a glass of wine, peeled a fruit or broke the shell of a lobster for her. They sat in a café reading and, without looking away from his book, Bryce flipped the hem of her skirt and stroked her knee. She was disconcerted when her body reacted almost violently. She wanted to open her legs to him right there, and the thought — after an initial, dizzy moment — shocked her.

He was so comfortable in his hot skin, Lee thought as she walked behind him through the Capitoline Museums, where they looked at marble busts of emperors, orators and philosophers. That wasn't English of him at all.

Usually she was the more beautiful half of a couple, but it wasn't the case now. Many women were beautiful, but it was rare for a man to be as handsome as Bryce. Even in the street, females offered themselves to him, throwing glances of admiration as he passed, standing brazenly in his way or staring across a restaurant. If you added the money and the charisma, she supposed he could have any woman he wanted in the world.

"What do you think about us going?" he insisted when they returned to the little palace. "I can't surprise you, you get upset."

She liked the little palace … "Do you mean somewhere hotter than Rome?"

"A hot, hot place. We’ll sail to Sicily.”

"Is that where your Italian house is?"

He lifted his eyebrows in assent. "What say you, madam?"

Lee ought to find a way to get him to London. They had done their bonding, he trusted her, and now it was time to progress toward her goal. Yet if she said she had to go to London, he might say goodbye and go to Sicily — and it would be difficult for her to change her mind without looking suspicious. Bryce was good at sensing things. It would take longer for her to get to his safe, but the payoff would be huge.

The voice in her head sounded reasonable, and it shut up the more businesslike voice that told her to press on with the job. It shut up the voice whispering that she wanted to stay in Italy with him because she wanted more of him.

"Let's go,” she said.

A sentence of his set a network of people, invisible to her, in motion. What a different life, she thought as they boarded a helicopter two hours later, than hers had been.

"You're poor, you'd better get used to it. You can't lie down all day," her mother would tell her when she had migraines and lay in the dark to endure them.

They had had no money for doctors or painkillers other than aspirin, and Lee — or Lynn, as she had been called then — had to go about her chores in the ramshackle house they inhabited. She had to take care of Cora, whose shrieking had pierced through Lynn's aching head like a spear. The poor baby was hungry, because their mother hadn't bought any food except what Cora couldn't eat: hard pop tarts and bags of salty chips which Lynn made soft by soaking in water.

Lee shook her head to get rid of the memories as they landed by the sea side. The helipad was in a marina, and a short distance away on the boardwalk there was a yacht, the Esiankiki.

"What does it mean?”

“A Maasai name,” he explained. “Means ‘young maiden.’ ”

He ushered her into the boat and leapt up on his left leg, although his right knee was getting stronger every day. After introducing her briefly to the crew, he took Lee to the back of the boat for the departure. The yacht flowed over calm waters; they couldn't have wished for a more beautiful day. Once they were clear of the bay, Lee started at the loud crack of canvas as white sails unfurled.

"They're wonderful!" she couldn't help exclaiming.

His eyes were soft. "You're a girl after my own heart, you know."

"Why?"

"Just taking pleasure in something simple like that."

He pulled her to him, and they watched the sails fill with balmy but steady wind. Much later they anchored in the crystalline waters around the Aeolian Islands and jumped into the sea for an hour. They dried under the sun as the yacht navigated the Strait of Messina.

"It's dangerous here when the wind is up,” Bryce said. “There's a natural whirlpool on this side and that big rock on the other side. They say this crossing was the inspiration for Scylla and Charybdis."

Lee had looked that up because of a Sting song. Scylla and Charybdis were two mythical monsters and Ulysses was forced to choose between them when passing through a strait. He opted to avoid the whirlpool, thus sacrificing less of his men.

The devil or the deep blue sea, she thought, looking at Bryce. The devil with his deep blue eyes.

The trip became more prosaic as they negotiated fishing boats, ferries and sailed by industrial installations, until the houses and churches on the coastline appeared again. It was evening when they reached the serene bay of Taormina.

A driver was waiting to whisk them away to an old red mansion perched above the sea, aptly named Villa Rossa. The front doors were open and the light inside was soft and inviting.

The staff greeted them as they walked in, "Buona sera!”

The two men and two women there smiled and chatted about the state of the house, the weather and what there was for dinner.

The villa had vaulted ceilings, niches with antique statues of saints and frescoes in almost every room. The frescoes were faded, and Bryce told her that he would not attempt to restore them; their state of decay preserved the old gentility of the house.

They walked across the entrance hall and onto a terrace surrounded by lemon and orange trees. Before them, in the distance, was Mount Etna.

"Wow!" Lee couldn’t help exclaiming at the sight of the white-peaked volcano. "You're full of surprises, aren't you?"

"It's not me, it's the place. This is why I love Italy."

Bryce plucked a large orange from a low-hanging branch and opened it with his fingers. It was blood-red inside. He offered it to her, and she sucked on it. He took it and put his lips where hers had been.

"Does that thing ever erupt?" Lee asked, nodding at the volcano.

"A while ago there was a lava flow of about one kilometer, and ash got all over the furniture. Kind of exciting."

"Aren't you—?" she was going to say afraid, but he never seemed afraid of anything. Perhaps he didn’t care if he lived or died.

She had felt like that at different times, but Bryce was a perfect animal: healthy, strong and fierce. Lee had the sudden wish that he should be happy — and that he shouldn’t hate her too much when she ran away with the ring. Not too much.

"I actually think that it might be a good death," he said. "Like in Pompeii. They'd find our bodies holding each other, and we'd stay like that always."

Lee scoffed. "I suppose that's the only way for love to last forever.”

He gasped. "You said the L-word!"

"Stronzo," she told him, using an Italian curse word because it seemed less harsh to her than an English one.

"Bella," he said in a low voice.

They kissed in the shadow of the volcano, and for once Lee stopped thinking of what was to come.

THIRTEEN

After a day in the sea below Villa Rossa, Bryce invited Lee to explore the surrounding towns. He waited for her on the terrace, and when she walked out in a green silk dress with a lower neckline than she had worn so far and a skirt slightly above her knees, he widened his eyes.

“Something wrong?”

“Something’s too right. You'll be like sex walking down the piazza, Frigidaire."

As they left, Lee saw their reflection on the glass. They looked tanned, relaxed and elegant, as rich people in love ought to look.

But she wasn’t rich yet, and they weren’t in love.

A silver Aston Martin was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps.

“Shouldn’t you have a Ferrari or a Lamborghini?” she asked with a laugh.

“Scusa, but the coolest cars are English,” he said. “Not as good plumbing as the Italian and German ones, but I got this one from James Bond. Shoots poisoned smoke, goes underwater and all.”

He opened the passenger door for her.

“Then you have your driver’s license back?”

“No.” He closed the door and went around to his side.

“Ah, all right. You're James, I'm the Bond girl and you have Her Majesty's permission to drive.”

"You'd be the definitive Bond girl. But where would you keep your treacherous knife?"

He ran his eyes over her with a quizzical look before turning on the ignition and letting the motor purr for a few moments. Boys and their toys. It was true that moving to the gate felt almost like floating.

“Watch, I’m looking left and right before I go out.” After a few yards he stopped again. “And look, I’m stopping at a stop sign.”

“Are you going to keep doing that all evening?”

“Incredible, I’m going within the speed limit!”

Lee rolled her eyes. “Just don’t take me to jail with you.”

“Can you imagine you and me in a cell together, all dirty? Too bad you wouldn’t be in mine, there would be a big Sicilian brute going for my cute ass instead."

He pronounced "cute ass" like an American.

“If you are trying to turn me on, you’re managing,” Lee said.

“And what would be happening next door, at the women’s facility?" he wondered. "Vivien in a dress that makes her eyes look greener, wrestling a busty black-haired girl?”

“You’re turning yourself on now.”

“It started at 'Sicilian brute'.”

As they drove through winding roads lined with olive trees, he remarked, “You don’t swear, you want to stick by rehab and traffic rules — yet I'm sure you’re a transgressor. I just haven’t figured out exactly how.”

“Believe me, there’s nothing very interesting here.”

“I beg to differ.”

On the radio, Frank Sinatra crooned to the tune of Witchcraft and Bryce sang along.

The music sent Lee back to the time when she thought she would become famous. She had been fifteen, singing old songs like that one into a wooden spoon. Cora had been five and had danced to her sister’s voice. Those had been the good moments.

Then there had been the auditions to sing in clubs. There had been the hands all over her when she was hired, or before. Too bad she hadn’t had the guts to try for TV programs where one could arrive looking like a disaster, only to sing like a dream and record at least an album or two.

Instead, another passion had taken hold of her. She had fallen in love with shiny rocks and discovered that it was easier to take them than earn them.

Bryce hadn’t said anything in a while, and she realized that he always did that when she escaped into her own head — he stayed quiet and let her have her thoughts. She did the same for him, and perhaps that was why they had gotten along so far.

They ended up in Syracuse, crossing a bridge to Ortigia, the island that contained the historic center of the city. There they strolled past squares, Baroque palaces and white churches. At the Palazzo Impellizzeri they stopped to look at the stone heads lined up on the façade and Bryce bought arancini, fried rice balls with mozzarella, from a cart. They stood at the wooden counter of a bar to share a glass of cold prosecco.

“I don’t like places that are all tidy and perfect,” Lee said. “Here they don’t hide that time has been through. They know how to live alongside it.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Bryce repeated, caressing the side of her breast until she shivered.

They had dinner, each making a glass of wine last. Later, as they drove by a small town, they heard music and laughter coming from a place with Chinese lanterns hanging outside. A sign said “Il Ballo.”

“Let’s try this out,” he proposed. “The music isn’t rubbish. That's what I like about these out-of-the-way places, no hip-hop."

Inside they were greeted by cries of “Hello!” from customers who were in an advanced good mood. Lee smiled at the men looking her up and down, and when they gestured, asking her to dance, she shook her head and pointed at Bryce.

“Husband?” one of the men asked in English, showing the ring finger of his left hand.

Bryce materialized next to her with a bottle of water and told the men, “È accompagnata, ragazzi.”

Lee didn't know if that meant "She is with me" or "She is taken,” but she thought either would do the trick. The men booed him in fun, and Bryce took her into the next room.

A slow song started. She allowed herself to be lost in the pleasure of moving to music in his arms. Two faster songs succeeded, and he swiveled her around until they got tired. When he went to get them another drink, the Sicilians who had talked to her at the entrance still stared at her. They were in a group with two girls and another man. Standing alone under their scrutiny, Lee began to feel self-conscious.

The taller of the men moved toward her with a big smile on his face. Oh, no…

“You dance with me?” he asked her.

Lee shook her head. “I’m with my husband.”

The man was a bit drunk and losing his sense of what was wise. “It’s not problem. It’s just dance. Here we dance with married woman. We come special for dancing."

When Bryce returned, he handed her a prosecco and held a glass of something like whiskey. The man nodded at Bryce and said something in Italian, gesturing toward Lee.

She laughed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t you?” Bryce looked at her for a moment. “Then dance with him.”

“You think?”

He shrugged, and by then the man was pulling her to the floor with a hand around her waist. Lee kept a safe distance from him and told herself the place must be like some old ball or country festivity, where a woman might be invited to dance by anybody.

Her partner tried to say a few things, but she couldn’t hear him over the music. Lee searched the room, but Bryce was gone. Upon a few more turns she found him leaning against the door frame. He didn’t seem happy.

What did he mean by encouraging her to dance with a stranger and then looking like he disapproved? Almost without realizing it, Lee began to dance with more feeling, her feet picking up the rhythm of the salsa. A cry of approval came from her partner’s friends.

At first, she thought it was just harmless fun. It was the way young people got when they drank and wanted to let off steam. But another dance began, and the man greeted it by holding on to her waist, although she wanted to return to Bryce. Her partner pulled her closer as he rolled with her in sensual turns.

“My friend is waiting,” Lee said, trying to break free.

“Friend?” her partner asked. “I thought he was husband.”

He moved closer to her as she looked around. She would have to push the man in a second, but Bryce beat her to it.

“Basta, no?” Bryce told the man with apparent calm, although he had pulled him away from Lee by the shoulder and stepped between them.

“Ma comme, basta?” the man said, looking offended. He went on to say that he was only dancing and made a brusque gesture to mimic Bryce pulling him. “Ma chi sei tù?...” Who are you to ...?

 “Who am I?” Bryce asked in Italian. “I’ll show you who I am in a second.”

The argument, which might have been avoided, escalated easily between the two males. The smaller man seemed unwilling to be scared off, perhaps because he was on his own turf. His friends had noticed the encounter and moved toward them. Encouraged by the reinforcement, the Sicilian made the mistake of poking Bryce’s arm to make a point.

After spending time with Bryce, Lee had started to think of his temper as a myth — but when she put a hand on his chest to guide him away from the group, she was unceremoniously swept aside. By the time she regained her footing, he had headbutted her dance partner with a loud crack.

The Sicilian fell on the ground with a bleeding head. One of the women in his group scratched Bryce as another man was felled by a blow of the Englishman’s fist.

No, Lee hadn’t seen him in full beast mode — but there he was. From the side he looked just like the statue of Hades, his muscles bulging as he leaned forward to meet the fray without any apparent fear of getting hurt. His forehead and the corner of his mouth were bleeding and his fists were like hammers as he punched his way into the group.

The people in the room became a wave going back and forth. There was screaming from the women and loud shouting from the men, as well as glass and furniture breaking. The barmen came in from next door and announced that they had called the police. Bryce took Lee’s hand and entered the women’s bathroom. She stumbled, her heels clattering on the tiles.

“What are you doing?”

“Let’s go,” he said, pulling her by the upper arm.

His face was a mask of fury and blood. He opened the window, and as she climbed out, he followed.

“You don’t have to touch me,” she cried when he started dragging her toward the car.

“Shut up.”

Lee struggled, because she didn’t like to be gripped, and she didn’t like to be told to shut up. She thought that digging her heel into his shoe might wrench him from whatever trance he had entered. The mad look on Bryce’s face made her flatten her back against the building.

“Get in the car!” he said again, clearly holding on to his temper.

She flounced by him, her arms crossed. He opened the door for her. It was hard to tell if he did so because his manners wouldn’t abandon him, not even then, or whether he was making sure she wouldn’t get away.

“Get in,” he repeated when she hesitated.

“No, I—"

He moved, and she got in, angry at herself for letting him frighten her. He got behind the wheel and within seconds they left with a screech of wheels.

“There’s blood on your face, you can’t drive like that,” she said.

The car came to an abrupt halt on the edge of the road and he punched the steering wheel three times, roaring, “Be quiet!”

Lee opened her door and ran out. Bryce threw his door open and overtook her with a few strides. He held her by the arm again, and she tried to strike him.

“Are you crazy?” he asked, taking hold of her hands. “Get the fuck inside that car!”

“I’m not getting into an accident because you’re an asshole,” she screamed in his face.

Bryce turned cool, like hell freezing over. “Get in the car, Vivien.”

“Let me drive, then.”

“The hell.”

“I won’t go if you—”

He spoke slowly near her face. “I can’t leave you here, so get in the car now, and everything will be all right.”

Lee pulled away from him in a futile show of rebellion. She walked unevenly over the gravel and got into her seat. He followed her, pulled the rearview mirror toward him and tore a piece off his shirt to wipe the blood from his forehead and eyes.

“Put on the belt,” he commanded curtly.

"You're acting like a fucking asshole.”

"That's what I am."

At the villa, she ran through the halls into the bedroom, glad that no one was around to see the state of him. His steps, behind her, made her hasten her own; it was as if he were a predator about to overtake her. She tried to lock herself in, breathing fast. He pushed the door and stood in the threshold against the light.

“Don’t you come near me,” she said, ready to throw anything at him. There was only her bag on the armchair, and beyond it a lamp.

Ignoring her, he moved to the bathroom. A sharp triangle of light invaded the room. He studied his forehead and jaw in the mirror.

You shouldn’t go in there.

But he was hurt. She went into the bathroom, putting her hand on his shoulder so that he would sit on the edge of the bathtub, and pressed a towel to the wound.

A moment passed without him looking at her or saying a word, then his fingers sank into the back of her thighs, below her buttocks.

Bryce stood, lifting her and opening her legs as he placed her on the wide marble sink. His lips found hers as he pulled her panties aside. With his left hand he freed himself and entered her easily, because the shock of his kiss had made her ready for him.

There wasn’t a word or look from him, just his hardness and his strength.

And this time there was no appeal. As Bryce moved, something started to grow in Lee — the kind of ache he had made her feel before, but which now became unbearable. There was nowhere for that ache to go, and Lee thought she might burst into pieces as she pulled her to him and heard a long cry. It wasn’t until it ended that she realized it had come from her.

FOURTEEN

Exhausted, they slept in his semen and his blood. The morning found them almost exactly in the same position. Lee opened her eyes only after remembering where she was and what had happened.

Bryce had thrown a leg over her in his sleep, and it looked like they had been in a fight. Her arms were bruised, his knuckles raw from hitting the steering wheel, his forehead bloody. The room, too, was in disarray. When Lee managed to move, she discovered that she was still wearing sandals.

Pleasure had felt violent, as if she were being turned inside out. This is what makes women weak. She hadn’t understood before, although she had been told often enough.

She tried to get up, but he wasn’t asleep and held on to her.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Instead of letting her go, he turned her around. Her back was to him now, and her mouth folded in a determined line, but for once he wasn’t paying attention. He touched her without haste or urgency, as if the werewolf had become man again. The double sensation of his lips against her neck and his hand on her breast had quickened her pulse, and she wanted to get up and away from him, but she couldn’t.

There was the ache, deep in her for him, and the more she wanted to get away, the stronger it was. She hissed when he entered her, it felt right, it felt right, and the sinuous dance of their bodies became more focused as he knelt on the bed, pulling her hips to his, until the ache burst into a bright surge that made her cry out and left her blind inside for a long moment. Bryce’s hand clutched the headboard as he threw back his head, and she felt him throbbing as he let out a moan.

“You can pee,” he said after a moment, in a voice deeper than usual.

Her legs trembled as she stood. She could hardly bend to remove the silly sandals, but she finally managed and walked to the bathroom in bare feet.

A minute later Bryce came to the door, hair disheveled, eyes half shut with sleep and pleasure. Lee got up without speaking, and he raised the seat. Closing one eye in pain, he waited. He was also battered, but he didn’t seem to mind.

He turned on the shower and entered it, pulling her inside. Lee felt the weight of the water on her neck, but it lifted as he moved under it. He let the stream soak him, moving his head slowly to one side and the other, stepped back and shook his hair. The soap he grabbed smelled woody, and although it stung them, it made it easy for him to enter her again as he held her against the marble wall.

She was sore and it hurt to go on, but it felt better than anything ever had.

Afterwards they fell in bed, soaking wet, and slept for about an hour. It was nine o’clock when they woke up.

Still without a word, Bryce found his pajama trousers, donned a robe and left the room. Lee didn’t move while he was gone. As she lay on her stomach, unable to move, it was as if she had been trapped in the lair of a satyr, feeling what she had never once managed to feel until then.

There would have been cold anxiety to accompany that thought, if she hadn't heard a rapping of knuckles on the French window. She jumped into a kneeling position, fast as a cat. It was Bryce, motioning for her to come out. As she opened the door, he removed his robe and held it out for her, tying it around her waist.

Breakfast had been set in a little corner behind shrubberies, where they could look at Mount Etna without being seen. He pulled out her chair and took his place, turning his face to the sun.

Lee sat, dazed by pleasure and fear, and bruised by lovemaking. A few moments later, he served her coffee and put toast on her dish. But he said nothing, and anger began to rise in her. She stroked her upper arm, which had purple finger marks. He saw the gesture, and yet offered no excuse.

“Aren’t you going to apologize?” she asked.

“What for?”

“For this!”

She showed him the bruises; he pushed back his hair to display the cut on his forehead.

“You did that to yourself, and you did this to me," Lee said.

He took a sip of his coffee. “That’s not exactly how it went.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Not really, it would be a very obvious conversation.”

Anger was turning to fury in Lee. “Is that right? You won’t even talk about what you did?”

“Then talk about what you did, so this goes in the right order.”

“Are you seriously telling me that my dancing with a guy could provoke that huge fight?”

He looked savage once more, and disdainful. “Why don’t you tell me what game you’re playing at, so I can play it with you?”

“Game?”

“A beautiful woman traveling the world alone, and you don’t recognize a pest who’s about to get handsy? I think you do. I think you’d know how to put him in his place as well.”

“I was about to—"

“A little too late, don’t you think?” he asked. “How would you have liked it if I danced with my leg between a girl’s, stroking her back, with you standing right there? Wouldn’t that have made me a creep? A dickhead? So what does it make you?”

Lee stood. “You said you’d never make me do anything!”

Bryce threw the cup in the saucer, where it spilled coffee as it landed, and stood as well. “Are you accusing me of forcing you? You were pulling my hair toward you, not away.”

“You’re a liar!”

“You’re the bloody liar!”

His eyes were full of triumph because he had made her want him. Before she knew what she was going to do, Lee slapped him hard across the face. The look on his face, a look of madness, made her back away, turn and run into the room.

She managed to get hold of the door and swing it closed with all her strength. The glass shattered just as he arrived, and he raised his arms to protect himself from the flying shards. Lee didn’t even stop to watch him leap past the destruction and into the room. She had rolled over the bed and grabbed a jug of water on the side table, which she also threw at him.

But Bryce had good reflexes. He ducked, and the jug shattered against the wall. It would take a second for him to reach her, long enough for Lee’s hand to close around the short handle of her bag. As he approached, she swung it forward, adding another hand to the effort. The rectangular bottom of the bag hit Bryce on the jaw as the metal in the corner opened a thin gash on his cheek.

He hadn’t expected that, and the force of the blow stunned him for a moment. Lee stepped out of reach of the arm making for her and found her keys in their big metal ring. She ran the jagged part against his arm, causing another gash.

“That’s enough!” Bryce bellowed.

As she ran toward the door, he grabbed her around the waist, knocking the wind out of her, and took her wrist, making her drop her keys by twisting it slightly. Lee struck his shin with her naked heel and all her might, but it looked like the man could bear pain. He didn’t even grunt as he twirled her in the air like a ragdoll. She landed on the bed on her back and bounced up, her nails ready to claw out his eyes.

But Bryce only swatted her hands away and straddled her as she twisted under him, shrieking.

“It’s not fair, it’s not fair!”

It wasn’t fair that he was so much stronger than she. But all he did was place her arms under his knees as he put a hand on the thighs flailing behind him.

“Stop,” he said.

She wriggled. “Don’t you tell me to stop.”

“Will you please stop?”

Lee blew the hair away from her face so she could see him staring down at her.

“You’ll play the calm card now, will you?” she asked, out of breath.

He looked around the room. “Looks like we’ve destroyed everything. Can we have a truce?”

It took her a moment to nod. He got off her, cautiously, and backed toward the headboard, leaning against it. She sat up and rubbed her wrists as he touched the gash on his cheek and looked at the blood.

“Nice,” he murmured. “Might have blinded me. That would have given you an advantage, maybe.”

“So would have breaking my arms.” She looked toward the door. “Your staff doesn’t seem to mind.”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “They’re Sicilian. This just sounds like a mild disagreement to them.”

Lee looked away again, because she wanted to laugh. It was the dry way he said things in his accent.

“I’ll pack,” she said.

“Why, do you want to leave?”

“I think it’s best, no?” Her eyes ran over the room, then shifted toward him. “Don’t you want me to?”

“Not at all. Good cardio.”

She did laugh. “Don’t be stupid!”

“I mean,” he said, cocking his head. “I’m not really the type who loves me a pitched battle all the time, but it looks like we both have bad tempers, and that anger management did absolutely fuck-all for us. Still, according to the principle of deterrence, after this show of force we might keep each other calm.”

Shaking her head, Lee gave a wry smile. “Don’t know if that principle works so well.”

“Sometimes it results in a cold war, and we would definitely not want anything cold. Still,” he said, sliding toward her. He placed his legs on either side of her body and brushed her hair away from her face. “Not ready to see the last of you.”

“You think I’m interesting because I might just kill you?”

He smiled back at her, and there was the boyish defiance in his eyes again — as if he dared her to. “No, I just think you’re interesting.” Pulling her close, he nuzzled her lips with his. “And then there’s this.”

“What is this?” she whispered, even as her short breaths betrayed her.

His hand found the edge of her robe and slid up her body. He caught a nipple between the length of two fingers as his other fingers cupped her breast. “Progress has been made. What kind of therapist would I be, if I didn’t continue the treatment?”

“Don’t talk about it,” she begged.

“No,” he said, his lips against hers. “It’s not a talking therapy, thank God.”

She was frightened of what he made her feel, but there were reasons for her to stay. There were fifteen million reasons, Lee told herself.

FIFTEEN

Lee’s fear was real, and in the days that followed their physical bond became a tug of war, or rather two: one of Lee against Bryce, the other of Lee against herself.

She knew what pleasure felt like now — but instead of a garden of delights, she found a lunar landscape full of doubt. The thought that she might become dependent on a man was so overwhelming that sometimes her body would lock like a vault. He would always notice she had shut down, even if she tried not to show it. 

No matter how attracted he was to her, he managed to keep his head, at least in bed. As she dictated what they would or would not do, there was a glint in his eyes that told her he would do whatever he pleased, eventually.

At that moment, he had stopped touching her because she had kept him from sliding down her body. He put his head on the pillow and began talking of where they could go that afternoon, as if they weren’t lying naked together.

She wanted him to continue, but he meant to ignore her. It was what he did when she had a fit of shame or anxiety. Her body crept closer to his and she caressed his chest, letting him know that she was ready for him, but he yawned, stretched and got out of bed. Lee was outraged as he walked to the bathroom, leaving her to her desire.

As the day wore on, she swore to get revenge. Did he think he owned her? He would see. She would have the last laugh.

The day passed — and he didn’t touch her.

She watched him from the terrace as he swam laps in the pool. It was as if he had bowed out and left her to her lone struggle, since there was nothing left to deny him.

James St. Bryce would have made a great criminal. He was a shape shifter and a good psychologist. He was merciless, when he cared to be.

The ultimate surprise might be that I want his diamond, but every day he surprises me.

Bryce was also chivalrous in an old, old way. He would stand as she entered a room, pull her chair, take her hand when they climbed down the cliff to the beach, carry her shopping as they walked together in town. She imagined men and women in another century, unable to touch each other beyond what politeness would allow; she imagined them burning for each other all day long.

Lee couldn’t give in. She called him “James” to his face but kept saying “Bryce” in her head. Sooner or later she would steal his blue diamond. It was better to hate him than to want him.

But it was in Villa Rossa that Lee began thinking of Mia Archer.

She had at first dismissed the case against Bryce, knowing that anyone around a violent death or an accident could be considered a murderer. The efficient British police had investigated him and let him go, and his conversation about killing atop the Gothic arches of Balbina might have been simple provocation. But her interest in Mia was awakened when she witnessed his rage. It had appeared before a second had turned into the next. In that second, he had become someone else entirely — the ape he had said he cherished.

Bryce had to go to the marina to renew the yacht’s registration, and Lee took the chance of looking around the villa. The first thing she noticed, after going through it from top to bottom, was the absence of a safe. At least there wasn’t one she could find. Well, she hadn’t thought the diamond would be in Sicily, anyway. Al Madhi had kept the ruby in his yacht, or anywhere he went, to keep it from his wife’s clutches. Bryce was free. He didn’t have to carry anything around with him, and he didn’t seem afraid of losing things.

The second thing was that there wasn’t a single photograph of Mia in the entire house. Not one. There were several of a girl who must be Caitlin, but there was no Mia.

There was no trace of her anywhere: no feminine touches, no clothes, no objects that might have belonged to a woman, apart from what was in his sister’s room.

It was as if he couldn’t bear to see her at all.

He must have loved her a great deal.

For the first time in a while, Lee took her phone and googled Mia. She had been a successful model, and there were hundreds of photos of her on the internet. Mia of the dark hair, the black eyes, the full lips. Mia had been stunning.

When, scrolling sideways, she happened upon a photo of Mia and Bryce together, it was as if she had been sucker-punched.

He had loved a woman, had had a life with her. Lee’s throat thickened, and her stomach hurt until she understood with surprise that she wasn’t interested in Mia because she thought James might have killed her. She was jealous.

She was wildly jealous.

The image of Bryce loving another woman, in the same bed they now shared, made tears jump to her eyes.

When he returned, she pulled him to her. His body was cool from the sea, hers hot from misery, and she asked him to close the shutters, but he wouldn’t. There was no escaping him. He was determined to educate her. Sex wasn’t meant to be tidy — it was an exchange where permissions were given, one after the other, where there was gentleness and violence from both sides.

She ran bruised lips over the scratches on his shoulders before she fell asleep. When she awoke, he was sitting on the bed by her side. It was already evening.

“Come,” he said.

He helped her put on a dress and led her through the villa to a room inside his office. It was his darkroom, and she had already seen it that day. But this time Lee gasped. Prints were now hanging from a line to dry, and most were of her. She was in Rome — studying the Bernini statues, buying fruit in the outdoor market, eating an ice cream.

She was in bed, naked and asleep. Her body made curves against the white sheets.

“James, you can’t have that!”

He looked like a devil in the red darkroom light. “We can tear them up and burn all the negatives. But I wanted you to see how beautiful you are.”

“No,” she shook her head. “This is …”

He put a loose arm around her and indicated a photo where she lay on her back, her hair clinging wetly to her breasts. “Thou art all fair,” he quoted. “There is no blemish in thee.’ ”

She turned around in his arms, away from the image, but didn’t look at him. “The Bible? Really?”

“Well, the Old Testament, when things were epic.”

“I’m some old sinner, then, or a barren desert woman?”

“No, and not a goat either. A queen. So stop being ashamed,” he said. “There’s nothing vulgar about you.”

“Because you aren’t vulgar,” she replied. “You don’t think like other people.”

He gave her another cheeky grin. “Don’t know about that.” Glancing around, he asked, “Shall we torch all the photos?”

And Lee surprised herself by saying, “No. Not yet.”

“You’ll let me have them a while, then?”

“Yes.”

“Hell’s bells, I think you almost trust me.”

Her smile would have been sad, but she made it bright. “Almost.”

But later, when they were in bed, he said sleepily, “I need to go home.”

Lee hid her dismay. “Do you?”

“Yes,” he said, but he was nearly drifting off, and she didn’t ask him any questions.

Would he invite her to go with him? Or was his experiment over? She needed to get to the safe, but she dreaded leaving the old villa in the sun. She dreaded the change that was coming at them like a monster already moving in the dark.

SIXTEEN

A familiar mix of dread and excitement flooded Lee as the immigration officer at Heathrow opened her fake American passport. He ran the encoded information on the opening page through his computer, and she kept her face blank. Bryce, however, tapped the counter twice. It was a slight, unconscious gesture of impatience, but the soft thuds of his finger sounded like explosions to her.

The officer stared at Lee for a bare second — time enough for her to imagine him turning to summon the guards. Instead, he said, “Have a good stay.”

Bless you, Quinn.

London was gray, black and steel blue. Everything seemed delineated by fine ink. Everything was precise, fast and ruthless. They had left the hot yellow days behind, the summer rain and the old bed. This was the real world.

Lee winced at the noise of wheels on the wet pavement and at the drops of rain falling on the windshield as they drove to Bryce’s apartment.

“Come on, you don’t have anything better to do,” he had said three days ago.

She thought that he might ask her to go home with him — men always did — and she had half wanted to say: No, I have to go. I have things to do. She could have said that and never seen him again, but he had pulled her close and started to kiss her breasts over her shirt, and she knew that she would go, for more selfish reasons than she might have followed a different path.

Bryce’s flat was by the Thames, and it didn’t look like a home at all. It was a folly in glass and steel that some top architect had created to keep millionaires prisoner. He had expensive art and designer furniture, but the real star of the place was the huge window that looked out at Westminster Abbey.

Again, there was no sign of a woman anywhere. Had Mia never been there, or had he erased her presence as he had in Villa Rossa?

In any case, London moved at a very different pace than Rome or Sicily. Bryce received a business call almost as soon as they arrived. Halfway through it, he walked into an adjacent study and pushed a wooden panel aside to reveal a safe. He opened it and stood sifting through papers until he found what he was looking for. Pacing back and forth as he consulted the sheets in his hand, he continued the conversation.

Lee stood in the middle of the living room, shocked by the gaping safe. She could probably just amble over and glance inside, but she didn’t. Instead, she put her forehead against the window, watching the black water of the river below.

Bryce’s reflection appeared behind her. He had finished his call and now whistled a tune as he looked through his correspondence. A large manila envelope caught his interest. It contained a narrow blue case.

“Look, I’ve got something for you.” She turned to face him, fearing what it would be. “I know you never wear jewelry, but I thought that unless it’s a psychosis you might make an exception?”

The case was in his hand, and she wanted to say, “No, no, I don’t want you to give me jewels! Not you.”

He snapped it open, and inside it there was a thin, delicate chain in white gold and a round medal engraved with geometric forms. She saw at once that it represented two people with stars above them. Three of the stars were tiny — but very good —diamonds.

“Hate it?”

Lee shook her head.

“May I?” he asked.

She nodded, lifting her hair so he could fasten it behind her neck. He planted a kiss there without saying anything.

The thought went through Lee's mind like the swift cut of a razor: I love you. She turned to kiss him and kept her face against his, so he wouldn't see how horrified she was.

Later, he cooked them dinner as she sat on a high stool, watching him. He laughed as he glanced at her.

“I just had this vision of you as a little girl. Dark-haired, probably a little bit of a tomboy.”

She nodded. “Yes. I liked to see the stuff boys would do, how they'd make things. They looked so free, you know?”

“It’s a good time, childhood. Pity the adults are there to spoil it. That’s why I’m having mine a second time.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. I’ve done what everyone has to spend their lives doing: I’ve made the money. It’s true that there was some to begin with. Lots of land and crumbling houses. I was lucky, but getting rich was a sterile process.”

“Was it?”

Nodding, he poured her a glass of wine. “Just moved money from one side to another. I was lucky, too, that my friend is a whiz at that. He was lucky I told him to go for the risky stuff. It worked out well for us.”

“So what’s left to do?” she asked him.

“Plenty.” He took a sip of his wine before he threw pieces of eggplant into a pot with tomato sauce. “When you’re in the desert, you wake up and listen to the silence, but you know it’s not just silence. You can hear the breeze shifting the sand. Sometimes it picks up, because a wind is coming. In a jungle, you’ll hear live things stirring — the birds, the monkeys. You can hear things crawling, even. You can smell the rain about to fall, ripe fruit in trees, animals that are nearby. Your senses are sharp. You’ll spend the day earning your food and your rest.”

“Most people couldn’t live like that.”

“No, there are too many of us. And it’s true that it’s not easy — I just find it a bit easier than to be locked in rectangles with glaring lights and machines ringing.”

“Then you want to go play in the mud again?”

“I need to.” He turned from the stove and gave her a lopsided smile. “Need to be a man part time. You’ll come with me. I’ll protect you.”

“You’ll probably have to. I’ll start screaming at the first ant colony.”

“I doubt that, somehow. Come on, wouldn’t it be better than a kick in the teeth?”

Lee pretended to consider his question. “I guess so.”

"Does that mean you have been kicked in the teeth?"

"By a mule, but she was all I had."

After dinner, he forbade her from helping, cleared the table and began to clean the kitchen. She moved to the sofa, finding a guitar propped up against the wall. “May I?” she asked.

Bryce looked over his shoulder. “Certainly. If you know how to play.”

“I won’t ruin your guitar, don’t worry.”

“Can you sing?” Bryce asked. “Serenade me, then.”

Lee plucked at the guitar a little, then softly began,

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind but now I see …

Bryce had turned off the tap as he listened to the voice he didn’t know she had, ringing clear in the large room. She had always been able to abandon herself to music.

‘Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear

And Grace my fears relieved

How precious did that Grace appear

The hour I first believed

He moved closer, his hands wet and forgotten by his side.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind but now I see.

“I had no idea,” he said, moments after she had finished. “I had no idea you could do that.”

She shrugged. “Used to sing it in church when I was little.” She gave a short laugh. “When I believed.”

Lee didn’t look up, but she felt him approach and take the guitar from her hands. She let him lift her and take her to bed.

But afterwards, in the silence, she thought of the safe in the living room.

She had thought one way and then the opposite a thousand times since he had left it open. Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t think he had any reason to distrust her.

She had thought one way and then the opposite ten thousand times.

Now she claimed to be thirsty but didn’t let him get water for her. On naked feet, she went to the kitchen and dissolved a Valium in his glass. A life without trusting anyone was impossible, therefore it wasn’t hard to fool people if you were willing to lie.

Bryce drank the water and fell asleep, and she lay with a tightness in her chest that was like grief.

There was no time for a proper extraction. She had to take the diamonds and run. Lee didn’t kiss Bryce, touch him or look at him as she put on her jeans, a sweater and Converse sneakers on her feet. She grabbed all her documents and her bag before leaving the bedroom.

It seemed like a million steps to the safe. It seemed like steps to the gallows. When she got there, the safe was empty.

Lee stuck a desperate hand inside, feeling for a case, for any object. There were only papers. It was the only thing that could have helped her: to find the ring, take it and leave — but it wasn’t there. Her insides felt as if they were melting. Soon she would be nothing but a pool of dirty water gathering at the bottom of a sink.

She had lost, and it was time to run. The mean old blues were coming, yes, they were coming for her.

SEVENTEEN

There was always the thought of time when she had the mean blues — the thought that time was passing for everyone else, but that it had frozen for her.

She ought to get up, wash, eat, but the blues could stop her like a giant hand pushing her into the ground. The notion that she ought to do something made it all worse. Everyone else was doing something, but she couldn’t.

Although Lee had closed the heavy curtains in her hotel room, there was light coming through a slit. Sometimes it was white, sometimes yellow or blue; sometimes it came in and left fast, sometimes it blinked, sometimes it stayed still a while.

And there was noise, too. It was the noise of people living with appetite. They were laughing, calling each other, whistling. They were going somewhere to eat, and they would be hungry, they would go drinking, dancing or to a show, they would laugh. Some would make love. Some would fight.

Was it only four days ago that she had been laughing with Bryce in an old bed?

The medal he had given her hung between her breasts. She could feel it biting into her flesh, telling her that she was crushed because for a second she had dreamt of him.

She knew too well how that dream ended.

How long have I been crying? she wondered. The sadness wouldn’t lift, and she knew better than to struggle against it. She had to let it build around her like a cocoon weaved by kind, invisible hands. The cocoon would become thicker and thicker, until no one could find her.

The thought of Cora was the only thing reminding her that eventually she needed to resurface. She couldn’t leave her sister.

Lee sobbed, watched the lights and slept. She slept and slept.

A noise woke her up. Someone was fiddling with her door. Someone was opening it.

“No!” she shouted. “There is a ‘don’t disturb’ sign, go away.”

The carpet was soft. She couldn’t hear steps, but she felt them.

“Vivien …”

Lee gave a strangled cry and pulled the covers over her head. “No, no, no! Go away!”

Bryce sat next to her on the bed, his hand stroking her back.

“Please go away …” she begged.

“I can't."

“Why did they let you up?”

“I sneaked in.”

“How did you find me?”

Lee felt so tired she couldn’t even speak. When he pried the cover from her fingers and lowered it, she hid her face in the pillow. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“You’re just sad.”

She shook her head, still hiding her face, unable to say anything. He brushed her hair behind her ears and repeated, “You’re just sad.”

Tears overflowed from her eyes, and her pillow was already soaked. Bryce lifted her, although she tried to fight him off. He was too strong for her, and he wouldn’t leave her alone.

His tenderness was a lie.

“It’s all right, Viv,” he said. “Cry as much as you want.”

“You don’t know how much that is.”

“Won’t be more than an ocean, and I can swim.”

“You have to go away, James. I have to stop by myself.”

“Sorry, I’m selfish. I can’t stand the thought of you alone here. I prefer to watch you cry, at least we’re together.”

“But we’re not,” she whispered.

“No? Shall I tell you what I think you’re thinking? That there isn’t anything as good in life as the bad is bad. That life is a struggle that makes no sense and isn’t worth it. That people are in a fight for themselves, clambering on top of each other’s heads, taking you or elbowing you out of the way according to their needs. That I’ll be kind to you for a little bit, then get tired and move on. That none of it will ever get better, but you stay alive because you’re stubborn and don’t want to be beaten, and there are people you can’t leave behind.”

She listened to him, and to his heart beating. “You’ve had the mean blues, then?”

“I call it the black dog,” he said. “And when I have it, I’m pretty sure that’s how things are, and that anything else is plain bollocks.”

“Do you think it isn’t?”

“I think it’s all pretty bleak, to be honest.”

Lee gave a small laugh. “I can count on you to say the truth.”

“Yes, if what I think is the truth. And here’s some more of it: life can be worth it, my sweet.” He picked up the medal that lay against her chest. “I’ll exchange moments like these for a thousand black dogs.”

Lee started crying again. “I don’t want you to see me.”

“Tough, I’ve seen you. You’ve seen me act like a complete idiot, and you put up with it.”

“It’s different.”

“You think sadness is weakness and anger strength? I’m a bloke, I can’t cry as much as I should, so I go out and smash things.”

“I can’t stop crying,” Lee said in a garbled voice.

He lay down, holding her to his chest as he kicked off his shoes. “You don’t have to.”

“How did you find me?”

“You still have to check into hotels with your documents in this country.”

Why had she used her Vivien papers?

His shirt had become sodden with her tears, but he stroked her back until she fell asleep.

The next time she opened her eyes, the heavy curtain had been drawn a little. There was some daylight in the room, and a tray on the bed. He made her sit up, fed her sweet tea from a small spoon and gave her pieces of stewed apple. She couldn’t eat most of it.

Lee didn’t protest when he undressed her and carried her to a bath. The warm water hurt her, but he put her in slowly, allowing her to get used to it. Maybe he knew how it felt when your nerve endings only acknowledged pain.

Once she was in the bath, she didn’t want to get out. The air would be cold, and it would also hurt. He took her right arm and ran the soap to her elbows, then did the same with the left arm. “Look, you have white gloves. You can go to the ball.”

Soaping her hair, he gave her a princess hairdo to go with the gloves — but she hadn’t stopped crying yet, and he hadn’t asked her to try.

All day he lay with her without saying anything, only feeding her tea again with the little spoon. In the evening it was still light, and he wrapped her in the blanket and carried her to a big swiveling chair near the window where he sat with her on his lap.

They were near Covent Garden. She had hastily found a hotel in a busy part of London, because the blues were even worse if she went somewhere too quiet and isolated. The lights appearing in the city as night fell were like diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds.

“You don’t like London,” she said.

“I do, actually. Or did, when there weren’t so many idiots following me to take my photo. I used to eat Chinese food for five pounds and then see a film. Could be something Iranian or the three first Star Wars films in a row. I’d go to Charing Cross to the big bookstores and stay there a long time, just browsing. Then I would have a pint at the pub. I wish I could show you London, but I’d become Hulk in ten minutes with all the creatures that would come after us.”

“That’s too bad. I would have liked to see it."

When he took her to bed again, she held his face and kissed him. She removed her own clothes as he undressed. And that night, for the first time, they made love.

EIGHTEEN

James.

He couldn't be "Bryce" any longer, not even in her head. He was completely James, and she would be lying to herself — the most malignant kind of lie — if she pretended otherwise.

The blues were gone as they drove in his white convertible Jaguar toward Deerholt, though Lee knew better than to think they were gone forever. They were lurking somewhere, as was his black dog, but James had come to find her. No one had ever done that.

"Promise you won't leave without a word anymore," he had asked her the night before in his flat.

"What do I do if I have to leave?”

"Not drug me and sneak off, for example. If you are sure you want to go, tell me and I'll accept it. But I’ll have to be convinced.”

She had smiled. "You are conceited.”

"I know you don't want to go. Promise.”

"I promise."

"Cross your heart and hope to die?"

"Stick a needle in my eye."

The next morning, she had woken up to him shaking a small box.

"Another present?"

"You'll like this one, strange-woman-who-doesn't-like-presents."

His driver's license was inside. "Is that what you went to get yesterday?"

"The authorities love me now. And that means I can drive you to the wondrous world of Deerholt, and then you'll have seen all my houses. And all my cars. Apart from that, I only have the one nuclear submarine."

"We're going to Deerholt?"

"If you don't mind," he had said. "Caitlin's birthday is two weeks from now, and I'm the one putting on the shindig."

"Her twenty-first birthday? And you're only beginning to organize it now?"

“The invitations are out, an extravagant amount of alcohol has been delivered and some people with tents have been booked. We'll drink, we'll be under cover if it rains, and people will come and spoil my lawn.”

Now, as he switched gears and maneuvered the Jaguar through country roads, Lee wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t leave, or that he wouldn’t want her to leave. She was only sure that she couldn't steal from him.

James St. Bryce wasn't a job anymore. A giant hand had tried to squash her a few days before, and after he had come to find her, she had squashed her fears with the same ferocity.

“We're approaching the old place,” James said.

"Anything I should know before we get there?"

He lifted both hands from the steering wheel, palms up, as if saying there might be a lot to know, or nothing at all. “Let’s see … Deerholt was the estate I wanted to keep. The other one was larger and closer to London, and it’s now in the loving hands of a rich family, with tourists walking through it all the time. The St. Bryces” —he gave a wicked grin— “they wouldn’t have stood for that, you know.”

“As if you would have liked it.”

“I’d have hated it.”

“You aren’t modern then.”

“I’m not.”

“Anything else?"

He didn't answer for a long moment. Lee wondered if he would finally mention Mia. She had died there, and he knew that she knew. But he shook his head, and they soon crossed an old stone gate with the statue of a deer on top. Lee swiveled to look at it.

"Are there deer in the park still?"

"There's one looking at you."

To her right there was a brown stag with white spots, staring at the car with a serious face under long antlers.

"It's gorgeous!"

"It can get grumpy. The females are sweeter.”

“Aren’t they always?”

He laughed. “Not by a long, long shot!”

They were inside his property, yet it seemed like they drove for a while before reaching an ornate iron gate with swirling leaves and stars painted in gold. James got out of the car to open it, and once the car was through, he stepped out again to close it.

“Do you see why the aristocracy couldn’t keep its useless ways? They’d have to pay a lot of people to stand at every corner.”

The road ahead was lined with the twisted, tortured trunks of great trees. Lee had a glimpse of rolling lawns that were so green they seemed computer-generated. When the avenue ended, James followed a roundabout toward the mansion, which was finally revealed in all its splendor.

It stood flanked by ancient oaks and tall, leafy elms, and was much bigger than Lee had imagined when she had looked at photographs online. From the front, the roofline of Deerholt had four circular towers and two pointed ones. They were interspersed by Dutch gables and, further back, tall chimneys. The house looked more like a small castle.

As James parked the car before the steps and they climbed out, Lee looked around her. "You didn't lead me to expect this."

"What do you mean? I said Elizabethan.”

“That’s a lot of rooms,” Lee observed, indicating the large windows on the stone façade.

“About a hundred. But most of them aren’t ever used.” He put his arm around her waist. “I’m offended you didn’t google this more thoroughly. Properties should interest you.”

“It felt a bit rude,” she said, knowing she had slipped up. Wouldn’t Vivien, who worked in real estate, wish to know everything about the house? Lee didn’t want to pretend anymore, but she needed to be careful.

James lifted a finger, as if asking her to listen. All she heard was the noise of hammering.

“The sound of Deerholt. An endless amount of things to fix all the bloody time.”

Two Great Danes ran through the open door toward James. He pulled their ears and patted them, saying, “Brought you someone who smells good. She didn’t expect us to look like Disney World.”

“Stronzo.” Lee read the motto on top of the threshold, "Amor gignit amorem?"

"Love begets love.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Talk about irony.”

He held her hand as they entered a sumptuous hall, where two stone staircases descended from a mezzanine, curving gently toward the ground. The marble floor was white with black details and the ceiling vaulted like a cathedral’s. Quite a few portraits of dead St. Bryces hung on both sides of the staircase.

But there wasn't much time to look around. A woman in her fifties appeared from the hallway on the right, smiling.

"Mr. James, welcome home!"

He smiled back. "Mrs. Taylor, this is Vivien."

The woman extended a soft hand, and her smile reached her eyes. Not a Mrs. Danvers type, then, Lee thought with relief. That cheerful woman would probably not end up setting another fire to the place.

"I hope you'll be very comfortable here," Mrs. Taylor said. "If you need anything at all, let me know.”

“Thank you.”

“You'll even have sun today.”

She pointed at the sky through the high windows. The large clouds floating in the blue didn't seem menacing.

"Though, mind you," Mrs. Taylor continued. "Things here change very quickly. We’re by the sea, and the sea is so unpredictable, isn't it?”

“In England, anyway,” James said.

“Where would you like tea, Mr. James? Outside?"

"In the peacock room, Mrs. Taylor. Vivien will enjoy it."

"It's almost ready.”

The Jaguar was driven away, and their luggage brought up by young men who nodded at her and exchanged a few words about football with James.

“I’m famished,” he said, pulling her through a long corridor.

There was no time for Lee to dwell on the glimpses of the drawing rooms they passed. They were all the size of football fields, but the peacock room was more intimate, which was probably why James liked it. Vertical strips of golden stone around the wall were carved to look like stalks of flowers and reached up to the ceiling, where they bloomed into open petals. There was old, hand-painted wallpaper depicting peacocks in exquisite color and detail. They perched on thin branches of trees with other colorful birds and a discreet amount of leaves.

James threw himself on a blue sofa. Everything in the room was priceless: the polished antiques, the furniture, the stone fireplace. Logs were piled inside a brass basket on the floor.

"They keep it very tidy,” Lee said.

"I never used to be allowed inside this room. The dogs like it.”

The Dalmatians rolled on the carpet and settled before the empty fireplace, wagging their tails.

He pulled her to him. “Let’s desecrate the peacock room.”

"Tea’s coming soon …”

"They’ll knock."

The knock came when they were entangled, lips to lips, like two teenagers. Lee sat up, running a hand through her hair. After a discreet moment, two young women entered carrying big trays and greeted them with smiles. James asked about their families and they relayed their news as they set the low table in front of the sofa with porcelain plates of sandwiches, scones, cake, jam, butter and a silver pot of tea.

"Shall I pour?" one of the girls asked.

"Miss Vivien will do it. Thank you, Greta."

“Miss Vivien?” Lee asked as they left.

“Should I have said Ms. Vivien?”

“I've never poured proper tea!"

"This isn’t the Japanese tea ceremony. You just pour.”

“I’m sure it’s full of secret things I’m not supposed to do,” she said, eyeing the pot with suspicion.

"Just milk in last," he said, picking up the newspaper that had come with the plates.

"You are going to become unbearable, aren’t you?”

"I thought I was always unbearable."

When they went upstairs to change for a walk around the estate, James asked Mrs. Taylor whether there were Wellingtons that would fit Lee.

"Miss Vivien is so tall," Mrs. Taylor said, "The only other person as tall—”

She stopped short. She had been about to mention Mia.

"Caitlin's might do," James said calmly. "She isn’t as tall as Vivien, but her feet are monstrous."

Mrs. Taylor laughed. "That’s not true!”

“Do I really need boots?” Lee asked. “I grew up stepping around mud.”

“Just you wait to see this place when it really rains,” James remarked.

A large photograph in a silver frame caught Lee's eye. There was Mia on the mezzanine, smiling with the glow of love in her eyes.

James walked past the frame without a glance. Something in the way he had refused to look, in the set of his shoulders and the determination of his steps as he moved away made Lee think that if Mia’s photograph was there, it wasn’t because James had recovered from her death and could see her likeness without pain.

Things were never that simple.

NINETEEN

As he chatted with Caitlin on the phone, James mouthed an apology. His sister was full of ideas for her birthday party and he had to take notes. Lee went downstairs after Mrs. Taylor, who had procured the Wellingtons and found her a pair of riding boots as well.

"I'll just send them to the stables," Mrs. Taylor said. "In case you feel like riding.”

There was going to be a lot of riding, Lee supposed. James loved horses and wouldn’t rest until she was comfortable on a saddle. Lee thanked Mrs. Taylor and wandered to the right of the staircase. She passed a red drawing room with a lavish carpet. Another room was a library, with books from floor to ceiling and carved wooden ladders. The last room was turquoise. It was larger than the peacock room and there was a grand piano in it — nothing less than a Steinway.

The sofas were comfortable and worn. There was a side table with photographs showing generations of the St. Bryce family, starting in the mid-1800s. Lee stopped before the portrait of a couple sitting with a baby swaddled in expensive lace and a dark-haired boy behind them. The boy was James. The insolence in his gaze and the slightly mocking set of his mouth were there, although Lee knew how quickly they could turn to real laughter. It was surprising to see what a mixture he was of his parents: tall and dark like the father, but with the mother’s almond-shaped blue eyes and high cheekbones. She had expected James to be different from them in appearance as well as personality.

At the end of the row of frames, there was Mia again. This time she and James were coming out of the church where they had just become husband and wife. Mia looked like a fairy-tale princess in a cloud of white veil, with James’ arm around her waist. They laughed at the shower of rice falling on them. It was a spontaneous moment, very different than the posed wedding photos of previous St. Bryces.

The happiness in the image hurt Lee, but she reminded herself that she was the intruder, not Mia. The poor dead woman had been there before her.

Lee studied the lustrous oil paintings in the room. What did she have to do with people who had been rich for a thousand years? Her own father’s fortune and family history, which had been the stuff of fantasy when she was little, were almost a joke in comparison to James’.

The last portrait on the wall was of Mia again, and it wasn't a painting but another photograph. She was half naked, her breasts precariously covered by her long hair. Mia had had the same natural style as Lee, when Lee wasn’t pretending to be someone else.

Moving to the piano, she tried a few keys. What this English house needed was some good Southern music. Her fingers started playing St. James' Infirmary as she sang softly, “Let her go, let her go, God bless her, wherever she may be ...”

When she looked up, James was at the door.

"Don't stop," he asked.

She closed the piano. "I want to see the grounds before it gets dark."

"It won’t get dark before ten. But we can go.”

Outside in the sun, Lee reflected that she couldn't hate Mia, a girl she had never met and who had died tragically young. She couldn't blame James for grieving over her. She took his hand in a fit of regret for having been jealous. There must have been a lot of suffering for him.

The gardens displayed a mixture of classical landscaping with wild modern touches. Lee loved flowers and here they were lush, watered by plentiful rains and cajoled into perfection by the gardeners. She stopped to caress fat white roses.

When they arrived at the stables, her riding boots were waiting, and she was offered Caitlin's filly, Marquise, to ride. It was a beautiful animal with a golden coat and creamy mane.

"She can tell you're scared," James said when Lee backed away at Marquise’s nod. "You must act tough."

Lee hid behind him. "That doesn't help.”

“Ride with me, then.”

His stallion was so black that its coat had a blue sheen, but it had a white face. It had been named Hero in what could only be another irony. James pulled him outside by the reins and mounted. Stretching his hand to Lee, he placed her in front of him on the saddle, and they were off at a light gallop.

"You can’t be scared of riding. Lessons start tomorrow morning."

Lee sighed. "All right."

“Don’t you like horses at all?”

“I think they’re beautiful. I once saw Spanish mustangs running wild on a beach. I’ll never forget how free and strong they looked.”

They rode through rolling lawns and past weeping willows to a lake. As they crossed a stone bridge toward a Chinese pagoda, Lee squinted at the swans swimming in the distance.

“It doesn’t seem like you,” Lee said when they climbed a grassy knoll with a good view of the house.

“What doesn’t?”

“This place. I mean, it’s gorgeous baggage, but I think you like your freedom. You probably can’t even get rid of a chair because some king sat on it.”

“Can’t say I care about where kings put their arses.” He cocked his head as he looked at the house. “I tell myself that I’m doing this for Caitlin — that I can’t let it go because it’s her heritage as well. But I do have a love for this place.”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

James smiled. “It’s a tremendously vulgar display of wealth.”

Lee turned around, shading her eyes with her hand. "Where’s the sea?”

He waved past the house. "Way back there. We'll see it another time.”

“I’d like to.”

When he helped her dismount at the door of the house, he said, "Dinner in about an hour. I'll take Hero back to the stables and let you get dressed in the meantime."

Get dressed. Lee almost laughed out loud, wondering whether she was expected to wear a long gown. Although Lee’s grandmother had indoctrinated her in the ways of the gentry, hers had been the American gentry. Mrs. Frances Bergeron would probably be greeted with repressed sneers by the English aristocracy — much as she greeted everyone at her colonial home. Lee would have loved to see a snob snubbed, but she would have to forgo that pleasure.

After showering, she put on wide-legged white linen trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. She pulled her medal over the shirt; although she wasn’t used to wearing jewelry, she would have felt its absence. Stroking the chain, she wondered what she was risking by staying around James.

I deserve a little happiness.

Not true. Happiness was either natural to people or hard-earned through good deeds and wise decisions. She certainly didn’t deserve it. She had to content herself with a lucky streak here and there or pleasures that always made her feel guilty. James was both.

Dinner would be in ninety minutes and she ought to call Cora. Instead, she inspected James’ room. It had a wide bed with massive wood posters but no awning. The silk wallpaper depicted an ivory and black forest. The carpet and curtains were pale gray, almost silver, and the bedside tables and lamps were of sleek contemporary design. The room managed to be glamorous and masculine at the same time.

It was the corner suite, and a large window looked out onto the lawn and the lake beyond it. She sat at the heavy oak desk and read some notes written in James’ uncompromising handwriting. They were about Caitlin's party. A frame held a photograph of him at perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with little Caitlin on his shoulders. There was another image where he was a few years older, wearing a red cloth around his waist, a bead necklace and holding a baby cheetah. The dirt of Africa was dry and yellow behind him.

A few tribal objects lay on the desk: amulets, small idols and arrow heads. They were the first trace she had found of his life in the wilderness. She opened the notebook that lay on top of a stack, looking at sketches he had made of people, animals and primitive tribal constructions. There were notes as well: Changing night sky = seasonal changes in animals and plants. This was accompanied by the drawing of stars in a pattern.

There was dirt or sand trapped between the pages, and some held pressed leaves or dried flowers.

The second notebook on the stack said, on the very first page:

Sometimes I want to throw myself against something and not even know how I got there. It would be like jumping into a roaring waterfall, a big one, thinking I might not make it out at all.

I find it hard to forgive, and then I wonder why I give myself so much importance. Why should I be forgiving anything, when we are all more sinned against than sinning? We should have the enormous generosity of not expecting anything from anyone.

But without shame and guilt, wouldn’t we all be terrible?

It was dated eleven years ago.

They knew very little about each other. But he had brought her to his house, to show her his past; he had allowed her into his family; he usually answered her questions. She, on the other hand, kept coasting along as if she might never have to tell him a single truth.

The more time passed, the more serious her lies became.

I find it hard to forgive, he had written.

I am vindictive, he had said at rehab.

Men were made to kill, he had said.

Lee tried to open the drawer on the desk. It was locked. Finding anything locked made her immediately long to open it. She didn’t like secrets that weren’t hers — she preferred to know things, even when they were bad.

Now that they were at Deerholt, it was better to know, for example, what had happened to Mia.

Lowering her head, she studied the lock. She had the tools to pick it open. But James’ voice made her stand and move away from the desk. He was walking over the lawn toward the house. In less than three minutes he would be in the room. She made sure the desk looked undisturbed and took a book from a shelf without looking. She would lie in bed, pretending she had been reading as she waited for him.

It was an old leather-bound book of poetry, and she opened it at random.

Ah, love, let us be true to one another…

James had already unbuttoned his shirt as he walked in.

“You have dirt inside your books,” she remarked, shaking the volume in her hands.

“What is it?” He looked at the cover. “Anthology of British Poetry? That one traveled a bit. I’m surprised some of the books made it back. They’re heavy.”

He began to undress, and his image became a little blurry as she reflected that it wasn’t possible anymore, was it?

It wasn’t possible for her to be true anymore ...

TWENTY

James never talked about Mia. In the three days since they had arrived at Deerholt, he hadn’t taken Lee anywhere near the sea.

When he left on the fourth morning to deal with business matters, Lee holed herself up in the turquoise room with her phone and looked for the report Quinn had compiled for her. She had asked him to find information on the investigation of Mia’s death. He had attached quite a few documents.

Mia St. Bryce had been found dead at 5.15 p.m. on June 5, 2017. Her absence had been noted at teatime by the housekeeper, Mrs. Alicia Taylor. A search through the house and gardens had not been fruitful, and knowing that she liked to walk by the sea, Mrs. Taylor had sent some of the staff to look for her on the beach.

A stable hand had finally spotted her body, smashed on rocks below the cliff.

It transpired that she had been seen by passers-by climbing the path toward the cliff at around 4.45 p.m. There had only been a 30-minute window of time for an accident or an attack to occur, but no one had witnessed either.

The police had found displaced soil where she might have slipped and fallen, or where she might have been pushed.

Her husband, James St. Bryce, had been in London that day. His alibi was given by a friend who had lunched with him. They had last seen each other at around 2.15 p.m. This was corroborated by the restaurant staff.

He arrived at Deerholt at 6.45 p.m., having stopped by his flat in London after lunch, a fact that could not be confirmed by anyone.

The tabloids first floated the possibility that St. Bryce had driven down to his estate in Dorset and killed his wife, because the press was whimsical. The fall of the golden boy, the explorer, the aristocrat who had thumbed his nose at tradition was too juicy a story to ignore. Newspapers and magazines listed every instance of his terrible temper and his cold defiance of his parents. They hinted at an unhealthy attachment to his sister. Mia might have done something to enrage him.

Quinn had attached the same lurid tabloid cover she had seen before, with a black and white photograph of James frowning at the camera and the title “KILLER?” in red letters across his body.

St. Bryce, said the article, might have planned Mia’s death and used the lunch with his friend as an alibi.

But there was no motive. On a photo of her twenty-fourth birthday, three weeks before her death, the couple looked tanned and happy in Santorini, and the diamond ring sparkled on her finger.

They were so in love, everyone said.

Mia’s death had been ruled an accident after due investigation. It was unlikely that St. Bryce had jumped in his car in Central London at 2.15 p.m., made it to Deerholt in three hours, found his wife at the cliff, had an argument with her and pushed her over the side. The trip itself took that long.

No one who knew them thought he had any reason to kill Mia. Even her parents considered the notion ridiculous.

They were so in love, everyone repeated.

Yet Lee had witnessed James’ anger. She had run away from him in Sicily, insulted him and slapped his face. Had they been somewhere dangerous, somewhere like a cliff, might he not have lost his head and pushed her?

Could that have happened to Mia? Had he become enraged over something trivial and killed her — and, wracked with guilt months later, smashed his car against a tree?

Sometimes I want to throw myself against something and not even know how I got there.

Lee was hiding a lot from him. What was he hiding from her? Everyone had something to hide.

Men were made to kill … Men long for violence.

She erased the email and the history of her searches and walked outside to a wind that had salt in it. No one would stop her if she decided to walk toward the sea. Wasn’t it normal to go see it?

But she didn’t. Instead, she ran inside again and upstairs to the room, hoping to open his drawer. She was sidetracked by the scent of flowers. A large vase of white roses had been placed by her bedside. There must be three dozen roses or more, only separated by purple leaves and small green flowers.

"Did I get it right?"

She started and turned. James was at the door. She hadn’t heard him arrive.

"White roses?" he asked.

She held a petal between two fingers. "Yes, I love them. I don’t care for the red ones.”

"Didn’t think you would. Time for your riding lessons. Come on."

"My, you're bossy."

“Can’t let you chicken out,” he said, moving into his dressing room.

The lessons went well that day, with Lee less wary of Marquise. In fact, Lee got along with the filly so well that when she heard the sea in the distance, she galloped that way.

"Vivien, where are you going?" James asked.

Marquise galloped past the large shrubbery maze at the back of the house, past the trees, until Lee could almost taste the spray. She urged the animal on, even as she heard Hero thundering behind her.

I must get to the sea.

Beyond the trees, the landscape opened into a green expanse. She could hear waves crashing below and seagulls cawing above. Lee would have continued riding, if Hero hadn’t appeared on the path to block Marquise's way.

The filly jumped sideways in fright, its hooves slipping, until James managed to take the reins from Lee and steady it.

"Are you insane?" he shouted with a scowl on his face.

He jumped down and pulled her off Marquise. She pushed him away with her gloved hands, but he still held on to her arm as if he were afraid she might fall, even away from the cliff.

"Have you lost your mind?"

"Let me go!”

James wasn’t listening. He dragged her forward until they were standing at the edge of the cliff. "Look down there! I said look! Do you want to fall and break your neck? Is that what you want?"

Lee looked. It was a long fall, full of craggy, pointed rocks on the way. What a horrible way to die. Maybe it had happened exactly like that: Mia had struggled as he held her close to the edge and fallen. She stared down, unable to look away, while her fingers clutched at his shirt.

He pulled her to safety again, unable to speak for a minute until he managed to say, "Don't ride here. Don't even walk here. Promise?"

“Yes.”

The horses stepped back nervously as he let go of her and took them by the reins.

"Is this where she fell?" Lee asked.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. He didn't want to talk about Mia, and he didn't react well when he was forced to do anything — but she needed to know.

James turned toward the sea. The sky was changing, as Mrs. Taylor had said it could. White clouds were chased by fast dark ones, and the water was now an unruly gray. He walked past her, almost to the edge of the cliff.

“This part of the coast used to be called Broken Waves before Deerholt was built. There were a lot of shipwrecks here — smugglers, mostly. Pirates. When I was little, the staff used to tell me stories of treasures that sank right there, and of people trying to get to them and being smashed against the rocks.”

The movement of the water crashing below hypnotized him for a few moments as the wind blew his hair over his forehead.

"She fell,” he said, “but the sea didn't take her. She got caught on that rock."

Lee looked. There were several places where the rocks formed platforms, or where their uneven peaks might have stopped a body from tumbling all the way to the sea.

“She had been taken away by the time I arrived. The police showed me the photographs afterwards. Mia was lying in the strangest position. One of her arms was twisted under her, her head was at an impossible angle, her legs looked broken. Her eyes were still open, and her mouth too, but her face was half gone. Smashed. I saw the close-ups. It was like ... horror."

"I'm so sorry," Lee said.

"Come away from there. The wind can be very strong."

"I'm sorry," Lee said. "I didn't mean—"

"Come."

He helped her onto Marquise, mounted Hero and took her reins, perhaps fearing that she might still turn toward the cliffs. It started to rain as they rode to the house. Leaving her there, he rode on to the stables.

By the time Lee finished taking her shower, the rain had become a full storm. Bolts of lightning looked stark against the lawn outside, like white flashes from an old camera, but there was no sign of James.

The enormous house was quiet. It was Saturday night, and the staff had left in the afternoon. James had said they would have the place to themselves till Monday morning. He wanted it that way.

Thunder rumbled or cracked like gunshots, and the rain was thick. When Lee approached the window, there was a flickering light coming from a room below her. She descended the stone staircase and followed the light to the turquoise room. James was sitting by a fire. He was soaked, and the temperature had become chilly.

Mia — naked and beautiful — looked at them from her photograph on the wall. There was, again, a twitch of jealousy inside Lee, but she pushed it aside.

"I didn't mean to upset you," she said.

"You didn't upset me. You scared me."

"I wasn't going near the cliff.”

"You were going fast, you don’t ride well, and you don't know that side of the estate."

"Because you haven't wanted to walk there. I thought I'd look at the sea. We've been here as if it doesn't exist."

The rain dripped from his face to the floor, but he didn’t bother to wipe it.

"You have secrets, don't you, Vivien?" He threw her a look. She was taken aback as he continued, "You have 'Top Secret' written all over you. Have I asked you about anything?"

She shook her head.

"I think you have a right to your secrets, that's why," he said. "But sometimes I wonder what they are.”

"I don’t—"

“For example, you could be a mole. From one of the tabloids. Maybe they sent you to that rehab after me to get into my bed. Maybe your supposed frigidity was a ruse to get me interested, and all this sexual awakening keeps me hooked until I talk about murdering my wife."

"You're crazy. How can you say that?"

He had worked himself up into one of his rages, except this one was cold and mean. "And she's all elegant, doesn't ask questions, doesn't curse, sings like an angel. Shags like one, too.”

Lee couldn’t hear that word. She turned, ready to leave, but he reached her first.

"What is it you want to know? Ask me.”

She was also furious, and she didn't bother to hide it, “I don't care about any of your secrets. I don't think there is anything worth knowing."

"But you know what I want from you. What is it you want from me?”

"I don't think there is any secret here, except that you loved your wife, and you can't forget her,” Lee said, glad that she had managed to keep her voice from trembling. “You loved her so much you can’t even mention her. I'm not a spy, James, and I don’t know what you want with me. Let me by.”

This time he stepped aside. What was there that he could say, after all? He made no motion to follow her when she left the room.

TWENTY-ONE

It had been drilled into Lee for years that a girl must be immaculate. A girl must not throw her things every which way. She must never look disheveled or dirty. Her things reflected who she was, and a girl must be a lady.

There was a man downstairs who might be more dangerous than the black night and the storm outside, but Lee set her suitcase on the luggage rack in the dressing room and slowly packed.

Shirts and blouses must be folded. T-shirts folded and rolled up. Fill the nooks and crannies with socks, stockings, underwear. Lay trousers and jeans flat. Cardigans and silk items must not be stretched. Shoes on the side, inside cloth bags.

If she paid attention to what she was doing, if she did it with care, she wouldn’t think of James. She wouldn’t be afraid of him or want him, she wouldn’t be sorry that she was about to leave. She wouldn’t think — for a while — that she would never see him again.

The summer interlude had cost her dearly, but she kept taking clothes from hangers, folding, rolling and tucking.

Some thoughts seeped in, although she tried not to pay heed to them.

This is what happens when you let your guard down.

Lee closed the suitcase. Now she needed to call someone who could drive her to a train or all the way to London. She took her phone and sat on James’ bed. Perhaps there would be an Uber there, in the middle of nowhere. The idea of an Uber picking her up at Deerholt during a storm almost made her laugh. It would be a great ad.

When she heard James’ steps approaching, however, she waited. The evening was not over. There was a third act to be played.

He walked in holding a black velvet tray. A motion of his arm created a sparkle in the air, as if he were a magician performing a trick. Diamonds — many, many of them — landed on top of the bed cover, right in front of her.

There were necklaces, bracelets, earrings, all of them flashing. Lee held her breath, dazzled by their purity.

He knows. He knows that this is what I came for. He's caught me.

His voice cut through her fears. "Do you think a man gives diamonds like these to a woman because he loves her?"

When she managed to look at him, she hadn’t yet resumed breathing.

"He gives them because he cannot love her,” he said.

Something brushed by Lee like the flimsy edge of a dress, and she flinched. It was relief, immediately followed by guilt.

“My wife wanted me to say that I loved her, and I couldn’t,” James continued. "So the diamonds rose in value as time went by. The more expensive the stones got, the more clearly I was saying that I didn’t love her — until there was this one."

Once more he swung his arm. Something fell on the bed with a thud.

The ring. Lee had waited so long to see it, and there it was, thrown at her like a pebble. It lay smoldering with a deep blue light, and it was beyond magnificent.

"That's how much I didn't love her," James said. "That's what I couldn't talk about to anyone. Certainly not to a group of strangers. I couldn't even say it to you."

She shook her head, looking at the fortune before her: almost twenty million dollars in total. That was how much he hadn’t loved Mia.

"Why did you marry her?" Lee asked in a whisper.

It wasn’t easy for him to talk of feelings and not use irony; she knew that. He moved to the window as rain battered the glass while a fast wind howled through the trees outside. She could see his face reflected on the pane.

"When Mia said she loved me, I tried to break things up. She sobbed for hours, like a child.”

Lee didn't prompt him. She thought he might not say anything else — but after a moment, he went on, "I was touched by her sadness. And then I told myself it was high time I loved someone. I thought that I could try and make her happy, and that love would follow. She wanted to marry me, so I asked her. That was probably the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done.”

"What happened?”

“There was this look in her face as time went by … She was waiting for me to say I loved her, and I just couldn't do it. Three words, and I couldn’t for the life of me say them. So I started buying her jewels." He motioned toward the diamonds. "But they would only make her happy for a bit.”

Lee couldn’t speak, and James’ misery was an almost solid thing in the room.

“It just wasn’t any good, and I think she was so desperate that she began to play games to make me jealous. Flirting with my friends, with her friends, with strangers.”

His anger at the Sicilian dance place: He had asked her what game she was playing.

“After an episode like that, I told her it was over, and that my solicitors would be in touch. The same night she swallowed a bunch of pills. It wasn’t a real attempt at suicide — it was just a threat. Her mother answered her distress call and they found me. They wanted it kept out of the press.”

“Mia was very unhappy, then,” Lee said.

“That, and she was trying to get what she wanted any way she knew how.” He moved away from the window and sat on the other side of the bed. “I would get these phone messages from her many times a day, little framed phrases saying what love was or how she felt about me. And this is the bad part, that I started to feel rage — not just irritation, but rage. My whole life I had rebelled against false feelings, and yet she expected me to live a lie.”

His eyes flashed with anger — at himself, at Mia. One tried to get away from a pattern, only to fall more deeply into it.

“It was going to be a matter of time before I said savage things to her.” James leaned his head against the bed poster. “I thought I had the obligation to be truthful, but maybe it was just pride. And on her side, the need to have the life she had imagined, the life the magazines were writing about, was greater than anything. Than reason. Than happiness.”

“But you don’t know how to lie,” Lee said.

He scoffed. “We all know how to do that. And, in any case, just before the accident she cut off my escape. She told me she was expecting a baby."

"What?”

Why had there not been any record of a baby? Wouldn’t the police have said something? Wouldn’t the tabloids have feasted on that detail? James St. Bryce, killer of his wife and unborn child?

He had managed to keep Mia’s false suicide attempt and her pregnancy out of the press. What else had he managed to do?

"She told me the week before she died,” he continued. “We had agreed we would wait, but she was seven weeks along. I ought to have noticed, don’t you think?”

“It would be hard for you to know, if she didn’t want you to,” Lee said through stiff lips.

“So there I was, connected to Mia for the rest of my life through a child.” He took a deep breath. “And I was the opposite of tender when she told me.”

“Did you ask her to—?”

“Have an abortion? No. I couldn’t do that.” For almost a minute he sat looking at his hands, until he went on, “All I know is that when I saw her dead, I thought of the waste. What a waste. She was so young! And our baby was inside her … If I had passed her by, even if I had left her, she would have lived. She might have been sad for a while, but she would have recovered. She would have married someone else, she would have had children.”

“None of what you did or said leads to a death, James. It was an accident, that’s all it was.”

“Don’t you see?” There was desolation on his face. “I wanted her to leave me so badly that when I saw her all broken in that morgue, I was sure I had made it happen. I would have taken her place on that slab, if I could. She wasn’t going to live, and our child wasn’t going to live because of me.”

“James—"

He interrupted her, “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to go away. I couldn’t talk of this before, and I don’t know what to make of things — but I keep wanting you to stay.”

“I don’t know what to make of things either,” she said.

“Good.”

The diamonds lay between them, and he swept them aside with a motion of his arm as if they were nothing. They flew to the floor, the ring hitting the wall. But diamonds were the most indestructible material on earth, or nearly, and they wouldn't be damaged.

“Because then neither of us has to say a thing,” he added.

James pulled Lee to him by the arms again, and though they were sore, she didn't care. He kissed her hard, and she held on to him by the hair. It hurt, and neither minded.

They began tearing the clothes off each other, all teeth and nails, lips and hands. They made love until their bodies were raw. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted him as she had never wanted anything in her life. Lee sat up and made him stand before her. She looked up at him.

“I want…” she stopped.

“What do you want?” he asked, a hand caressing her upturned, naked face.

“I want you in my mouth.”

She pulled him to her by the hips. James held his breath, his fingers in her hair.

TWENTY-TWO

On Sunday, the storm hadn’t abated. It was as if they were the last survivors in the world after a flood or an apocalypse, locked in a stone house that would withstand anything — even if the windows shook and the wind screeched through long chimneys.

“Was there a wolf howling or was it me?” James wondered.

It was morning, and it looked as if the gale had blown through their room. The diamonds were still strewn on the ground, under the bed cover they had thrown aside. Lee had even forgotten them for a while.

James had brought her breakfast, and it was past one o’clock when they decided to eat again. Dressed in sweat suit bottoms and T-shirts, they moved like zombies in the kitchen, taking things out of the fridge and drinking wine from the same glass.

“I don’t think it will stop raining today,” Lee said.

They ended up walking around the ground floor, where there were fifty rooms — including a state dining room, a music hall with an original minstrel gallery and a large corridor that once served as the servants’ access to the upper floors.

The corridor was now full of paintings of bewigged ladies and gentlemen.

“Your people?” Lee asked.

“Handsome, ain’t they?”

Lee studied the pale faces, small eyes and pinched lips of James’ ancestors. “You don’t look like you belong.”

He leaned against the wall next to an unprepossessing forefather. “No resemblance? I’ve actually always hoped that some of the Italians who came over to paint used this very passage to crawl into the beds of the women in my family.”

“Did you have that fantasy?” Lee asked as they strolled into the armory.

“Of crawling into women’s beds?”

“Of having been switched at birth?”

“Every hour. I was fascinated by very small houses, like the one that was a shoe in the story.”

“That wasn’t particularly small.”

He twirled a finger in the air. “Cozier than this.”

Taking a broadsword from the wall, he handed the grip to her. The tip fell to the ground with a clang and Lee laughed. “I can’t lift it!”

James winked at her. “See why you need a man?”

“To fight with medieval swords?”

“You never know.”

They ended up in the turquoise room, watching old films on the couch. In the middle of Lawrence of Arabia, they fell asleep face to face. Lee awoke with a gasp, and James held her closer.

"What is it?"

Her eyes moved around the room. "I had a bad dream."

"You were with one of the ugly St. Bryces?”

“No ...” She frowned. "I was in a mist, and it was cold, very cold. I knew you were looking for me. I could hear you calling, but you couldn't find me. I had no voice, so I couldn't shout to you.”

He smiled. "That teaches you not to run off.”

She waited for the bad feeling to dispel. “Tell me travel stories. You promised.” Running her fingers over the tattoo on his shoulders, she asked, “Where did you get this, for example?”

“That was a reckless evening in Ethiopia.”

“Did it hurt?”

“The ink stung a lot.”

She touched the scar on his left shoulder. “This?”

“Big thorn tree in Africa. Bled like a pig.”

“This?” She touched a jagged line on his side.

“Got stabbed.”

“Are you pulling my leg?”

“No, my hands are on your arse.”

“How did you get stabbed?”

“Stupid story,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me something about you now?”

She was silent.

“Yesterday I told you things I haven’t told anyone,” he pointed out. “Tit for tat, come on.”

Her lips seemed glued together, but she managed to part them. “What do you want to know?”

His words were like a blow. “Were you molested as a child?”

Well, he knew how to get to the point. Lee could feel her body begin to lock, and he could feel it too, as he tightened his grip around her. But it wasn’t a brutal grip — it was a tender one.

“Yes,” she finally said.

“How old?”

“Fourteen.”

Now the silence was his. The heat from his body seemed to increase, and it occurred to her that he might be angry.

“Was it a relative?” he asked in a low voice.

Lee turned to face the couch, but she kept hold of his hand, now around her waist. She had never thought she would say a word about this, and she had never rehearsed the speech.

“My mother was a beautiful woman. Very beautiful. She couldn’t stand not being the center of attention, and not having a man near her…

“When I was fourteen, she was still young — but she had let herself go. Her body was shapeless after giving birth twice, her skin was lined, her hair was frazzled.

“At first she was jealous of me. I grew tall from one day to the next, and my breasts came out. She would have me wear those cheap training bras to flatten them, and she would cut my hair.

“All of a sudden, though, she started to do all the opposite. Made me wear her old push-up bras, cut-off tops and little shorts. She’d put lipstick on me — I can still remember the smell and the taste of that lipstick. Cheap. Fruity. She would keep refreshing it, and I smelled it all day.

“She’d take me to the café in town, and sometimes to the bar during the day. She’d tell me, ‘Go to the counter,’ although I didn’t need to get up.

“When men started coming to the table, I began to realize what she was doing. Using me as bait.

“Some of the men would come home with us or visit later. Then she’d scrub my face till it hurt and make me wear dungarees or something. When they saw that I was a child, a lot of the men would leave and not return. Some would stay for her anyway.”

It would be so awful to say it. It would be real again.

“But one was more interested in me after he saw how young I was. He knew what to do. He pretended to like my mother a lot, and she kept saying she had found someone, that she was in love. He wouldn’t pay any attention to me, and she was always sending me out of the house. Every now and again, he would throw a look my way, and it chilled me to the bone — but there was no one I could tell.

“One afternoon he gave my mother a coupon for a treat at the spa, and he was at home alone when I got back from school. I went to my room, and I wanted to lock it, but my mother wouldn’t allow us to have keys. He just burst in and sat down on the bed next to me, asking me how my day had been, and what had I learned. He put his hand on my leg. I could only look at his fingers. They were so thick and dirty. His nails were long and filthy, because he worked as a mechanic. When he lifted his hand from my thigh, he had grabbed it so hard that there was a mark there. That was all I could look at, that mark, when he pulled my shorts aside, and my panties too. He was staring, and drool came out of his mouth and fell on my body.

“He stuck his fingers inside me, and it hurt so much. His nails hurt me. He kept putting his fingers inside and saying that he knew I liked it, until his pants got wet in front.

“I wasn’t completely stupid. I knew he was going to keep on doing this, and I would have to throw myself in front of a car or something. And I couldn’t do that, because I had a little sister. She was only four, but who knew how sick this man was? Who knew how long he’d stay around?

“So I got up the courage to tell my mother. She slapped me across the mouth many times, as if she could put the words back in. She slapped me silly. I thought she’d break my teeth. Her eyes were crazy, as if she were begging me not to spoil this for her.

“Yes, that’s it. She never told me she didn’t believe me. She only told me to be quiet.

“I knew I had to do something, because no one else would. The next time he came to my room, I had a kitchen knife under my pillow. He sat the same way and put his hand on my thigh the same way. And I ran the knife across his hand with all my strength. He started to scream. There was so much blood.

“And he was a bully, after all. All bullies are cowards. He looked at me as if he were scared. He never even went to the hospital in that town, he just drove away with his hand all bandaged up, bleeding like a pig. My mother sat on the ground by the door and cried, but she never dressed me up to get men again.”

Lee didn’t say any of it.

That story would never be told, because she was ashamed. She was ashamed of the animal life she had led, although it hadn’t been her life. Her life had begun later, and it was also shameful — but at least it was her choice.

“No, he wasn’t a relative,” she finally told James.

It was obviously as difficult for him to ask as it was for her to answer: “Did it ever stop?”

“Yes. I made it stop.”

“How?”

She took a deep breath. “You said at Balbina that sometimes anger is righteous. I think sometimes violence is. Sometimes it’s the only thing.”

He turned her around to face him and brushed the hair away from her face. “Damn right,” he murmured. He gave a small, sad smile. “I like that about you. That you can take care of yourself. I don’t care about the rest of what you’ve done. Whatever it is, it’s fine.”

When he kissed her, it was with respect for her silence, perhaps even understanding of her sins — though he didn’t really know them — and tenderness. And she liked that about him, so much.

Later, in his room, he made the bed as she got on her knees and put the diamonds back on the tray. The ring felt warm in her hand. It made her heart beat fast.

James took the tray from her and walked to his study. She had kept a necklace and stood behind him as he opened the safe.

"There’s this one," she said, handing him the necklace.

"Thanks."

He placed the tray inside the safe and locked it. She saw the combination: 181958. She would remember it, even if she had no use for it. Numbers just stuck to her head.

TWENTY-THREE

By Monday morning, the weather had changed again, into a calm blue sky and barely a breeze. Broken branches and scattered leaves had already been cleared from the grounds, as if the storm had never happened.

When Lee went down to breakfast, the two young men who mostly did the heavy work in the house were carrying a big frame wrapped in cloth out of the turquoise room. She stood rooted to the steps as she watched Mia being removed.

In the morning room, James sat reading the newspaper. He took the hand she put on his shoulder and kissed it.

"Hello,” he said.

There was no sadness or worry in his face, but he wasn't callously getting rid of Mia either. Perhaps he had needed to tell someone that he hadn't loved her but that he still grieved for her, and he had finally told Lee. Perhaps he thought that Mia shouldn't be in the house where he was making love to another woman.

She had told him something too, and his eyes were thoughtful and tender as he she sat before him. Lee had been sidetracked by the diamond, but he had probably never lost sight of the fact that they were damaged, and that they were giving each other some solace.

He poured coffee for her. “Drink and eat. You’re riding today.”

It suddenly occurred to her that he made her feel welcome. She had never felt that way before. He smiled as she ate eggs, and even bacon, sausages, mushrooms.

“Sure you don’t want some deviled kidneys?” he asked, after watching her eat for a few moments.

She covered her mouth to laugh. “What the hell would that be?”

“You don’t want to know.” He picked up a pot of jam and set it before her. “Have some marmalade, then. Sugar is good for you.”

They went for their morning ride, and on the way back she felt like singing as she walked into the house. She was about to climb the stairs when a male voice said, "Morning!"

Lee stopped with her foot on the bottom step. A tall man of about fifty was walking her way, hands in his pockets. He had a vulpine look, with bristly dark hair and close-set grey eyes. His heavy eyebrows and hard mouth also made him appear somewhat thuggish, despite his good tweed jacket. The dogs followed him as if they knew him, but he obviously didn't work on the estate.

He half smiled and half studied her. Like James, he had a crooked smile, was tall and broad-shouldered. She recognized him from the YouTube video she had seen weeks before, where he had raged against his nephew for selling the family estates.

"I'm Robert. James’ uncle.”

She shook his hand. "I'm Vivien."

Robert must have seen James kissing her at the door.

"Does he know you're here?" she asked.

"Yes, it's accounts day," Robert said, and she detected a certain bitterness in his tone, though he kept smiling.

"I think he will be here soon.”

"By all means, go up and change. I know how it is after riding, we long for a shower, don't we?"

Lee nodded and went up the stairs as he added, "I'll make myself comfortable, don't worry. I grew up here."

The resentful uncle making a point. He wanted her to know that the house had belonged to him before it ever belonged to James.

After she showered and changed into jeans and a silk top, Lee heard Robert's voice through the window, "Met your live-in ..."

Lee watched James shake his uncle’s hand outside. "Do you mean Vivien?"

"Have to give it to you, you know how to pick them."

"Why, thank you, Uncle.”

They turned into the house, and she went downstairs again, without relishing the prospect of meeting James’ relations. In the turquoise room she found a middle-aged woman staring at the empty space where Mia’s photograph had been.

"It was high time, James,” she said.

She stopped short when she saw Lee at the door, and the look in her eyes changed from surprise to understanding, as if she had seen the reason for Mia to be gone. James walked in briskly just then, followed by Robert.

"Vivien, you've met Uncle Robert, haven't you? This is Aunt Imogen."

The two women shook hands. Imogen seemed like a more pleasant person than her husband, who had sat down and spread his arm along the back of the sofa as if he owned it.

James’ aunt-by-marriage asked the usual polite questions: how did Lee like Deerholt, had she been frightened of the storm, and wasn't it a beautiful day?

Robert listened to their conversation before interrupting it, "Where are you from in America? It's America, right, not Canada?"

"I'm from Phoenix," Lee lied.

James looked at her, and she realized that he had never asked where she had been born or where she had grown up — or much about her life, except what she had volunteered at the group sessions. He hadn’t asked anything at all, as if he had expected to only hear lies.

"Isn’t that a big desert?" Imogen wondered.

"It's almost in the Sonoran Desert," Lee said. "We are meant to get the most sunshine out of all major cities in the planet. Three hundred days a year."

"Well, then, you came to the right place if you want a change," Robert said with a laugh like a bark.

Imogen turned to James. "But the party! Don't you need any help to organize it? It's only a week away."

James cocked his head at her. “I think you mean, ‘Are you making a horrible mess?’ ”

They laughed as he put his arm around his aunt’s neck and kissed her temple. Perhaps jealous, Robert held out a hand to his wife, pulling her to his side. James sat next to Lee.

Imogen’s face was slightly chubby and full of tiny lines, and her hair was dyed an unflattering shade of dark brown — but she had beautiful cornflower-blue eyes and the warmest smile Lee had ever seen. Her husband caressed her shoulder as if he expected everyone to admire her.

“I’m sure it will be wonderful,” Imogen told James. “Although you hate parties with such a vengeance.”

"Let's hope there's no storm," Robert contributed. “People would have to come in!”

James ignored his uncle, "Cat wants to keep it small, Aunt Im. Well, not as small as I'd like, but under a hundred people."

"Bloody mob," Robert said. "The young people will be puking all over the house if you let them."

“There will be loads of them, and less of the old ones who might just get incontinent on the chairs,” James remarked.

"She told me it will be the 1940s. She's always loved that time," Imogen pointed out. "I don't know how many times she asked me to try and make her hair look like that."

Eventually, the men left together to go over accounts. Lee suspected that James supported his uncle’s household. Hadn’t he said there was another family estate, further south?

"How long have you known my nephew?" Imogen asked pleasantly.

"About seven weeks."

"Did you meet at—?"

"At rehab, yes."

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

"It's not a problem. People aren't very ashamed of going to rehab anymore." Lee smiled and added brightly, "Especially Americans like me."

Imogen laughed. "No, now people write songs about it, don't they? I'm sure it was nothing terrible for you, you look so healthy. As for James ... Well, I'm glad it's past. It’s been a year, but the aftershocks are always complicated." A shadow fell over her face. "I feel terrible about the baby. An innocent child, never born. But there — it’s the first time we meet, and listen to me being tragic. James wouldn't like it, and it looks like you've done him a world of good already. Have you got a dress for the party?"

Lee was relieved to abandon the subject of Mia. "No, I don't have any long gowns with me."

"Don't leave it to the last minute. You'll want something beautiful. Deerholt is spectacular when there is a party, you'll see. You'll remember it forever."

After Imogen and Robert left, James had to go to Dorchester to attend to more business. Lee took advantage of his absence to call Cora, telling her that she was now in the estate of her new boss. She swept the phone around the grounds of Deerholt.

"And there will be a party?” Cora asked. “Does the house have a ballroom?"

"It does. Still, I hope it won't rain."

"Send me a photo of your dress!" Cora begged.

The ballroom. Lee hung up, walking back inside and thinking that it would be on the ground floor. Why hadn’t they seen it the day before? It must be across the gallery, and they hadn’t gone that way.

Even if Mrs. Taylor finds me, she won't suppose I'm doing anything wrong. It's natural curiosity.

Coming upon large double doors, Lee pushed one open. The floor of the ballroom was made of polished wood in the shape of starbursts, and the walls were white with delicate silver stucco. There were three chandeliers protected by big cloths. The Italian masters had outdone themselves there, covering the ceiling with images of gods and goddesses.

Despite being impressive, the room looked ghostly.

Lee thought of another big house and how lonely she had been there. She had entered ghostly room after ghostly room on her own. Perhaps she and James had more in common than he knew. Than he would ever know.

She left the ballroom, only to meet Mrs. Taylor in the corridor.

"Mr. James said you should have lunch without him. Would you like it now?"

Lee assented and ate in the morning room, where the table was small. Now that James wasn't there to make her laugh, she thought of what she had seen and heard in the past two days. She remembered the way the diamonds had looked, sparkling on the bed, and she couldn't deny that she had felt a pang of regret when they had been taken away and put in the safe.

The less romantic side to diamonds had always fascinated her: such a lot had to happen for one of them to exist. They were created in the Earth’s mantle through ultra-high pressure. They endured forever.

She could look at the ring again. She would only be looking, not stealing. She could no longer steal from James. Those diamonds had meant suffering for him. They were part of his grief. He had gotten rid of his wife's photograph for Lee — but he wasn't done flagellating himself over Mia.

I'm only going to look, she thought again as she found herself going to his study. Making sure that the corridor was empty, she moved quickly to the safe and typed the combination. The door clicked open and the diamonds glittered inside.

Lee sat on the ground and softly pulled the tray toward her. All the jewelry was there, without any concern for order. The ring rolled back and forth on the velvet as if it were a mere bauble. It wasn’t even in a box.

Once more Lee held her breath, as if something solid could disappear just by sensing her excitement. She slipped the ring into her finger.

As she sat under the safe, out of the light, it flashed. It had been thrown from the mantle of the Earth to the surface, just so it could dazzle her.

That’s how much I didn’t love my wife.

The words rang in Lee’s head as if James were in the room saying them. A tray of expensive diamonds lay next to her and she was wearing fifteen million dollars on one of her fingers — and all they represented was the absence of love.

White roses had meant something. He had given her white roses from his garden because he had noticed that she liked them. He had given her a medal with memories of a special time they had spent together. He hadn’t listened to Mia, but he listened to her.

Why am I betraying his trust?

She removed the ring from her finger, placed it on the tray and knelt to slide it back inside the safe. An envelope, however, stuck out. It had probably been dragged by the tray. She took it.

JAMES, it said in a woman's handwriting.

She opened the envelope and unfolded the paper. It read,

James, my love, forgive me!

I can't live anymore, knowing you don't love me and that you never will! I just can't go on like this, it’s killing me slowly. I prefer a quicker end.

I wish I could explain and beg your pardon, but I think you'll understand anyway. You've always hated explanations. I hope you won’t be angry at me.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Don’t be shocked!

I’m sorry about the child! Forgive me. I forced you to do things you didn’t want to do because I loved you so much. I’m putting everything back as it should be.

But you should know, I've always loved you. I always, always will. I wish it wasn't impossible with all my heart, but now I know that it is, and that there isn't anything else to do but this.

Your M.

A suicide note.

I can't live anymore, knowing you don't love me… I prefer a quicker end.

Why had the police not ruled Mia’s death a suicide, if she had left a note?

Had she left the note to be found by James, and had he hidden it — unwilling to let anyone know that Mia had killed herself? How could he not have shown it to the police when it would have exonerated him?

Lee read the note twice, folded it and put it back under the tray. Closing the safe, she moved to the door. She hadn’t paid any attention to the noises in the house for a while. What a way to get caught.

After making sure there wasn't anyone in the corridor, she went on to the bedroom.

It was only when she reached it that the words began to make sense.

Don't be shocked!

I wish I could explain, and beg your pardon, but I think you'll understand anyway.

I hope you won’t be angry at me.

I’m sorry about the child!

I’m putting everything back as it should be.

But you should know, I've always loved you … I always, always will.

Those weren't the words of a woman about to commit suicide.

Those were the words of a woman about to leave her husband for another man.

TWENTY-FOUR

Why had Mia written that she was “sorry about the child”?

Because it wasn't James’.

Don’t be shocked! she had written.

Mia had needed love. She had even begged for it. All the diamonds in the world wouldn't have made up for the fact that she was young and beautiful, yet her husband didn't want her.

She had done more than flirt with his friends and hers to get attention. She had had an affair, and she had become pregnant.

Lee stood in the corridor, certain that had not been a suicide note. Mia had been about to leave James — but for whom?

Had James been so consumed by guilt that he had been unable to see it? Or had he known?

Lost in her thoughts, Lee opened the doors to different rooms on her way. James' present bedroom was probably not the one he had shared with Mia. It was too masculine, and he would not sleep with Lee where he had lived with his wife.

His room was at the end of the hall to the right of the stairs. Caitlin's was three doors down; he had shown it to her. Two sitting rooms and an old nursery with the toys of generations followed, and then a large suite right in the middle of the house. Lee opened the door and saw that the decoration was old-fashioned, as if it hadn’t changed in at least thirty years. It must have been James' parents' room.

After that, there were guest rooms until she reached another suite at the opposite corner of the house. Mia's modeling photographs were on the chest of drawers, with two larger ones hanging on the walls. It was a light-blue room, a compromise between Mia’s softness and James’ masculinity.

There was a large dressing room, but it was empty. Mia's things were gone. Nothing of hers was left behind, as Lee confirmed by opening drawers and boxes. The only trace of Mia in the house were the photographs.

A maid or Mrs. Taylor might come upstairs, and Lee would be caught nosing around. She left the suite and ran on tiptoes back to James' room. She had spied enough that day, but it was the first time in her life that she felt bad about it. Except that now, more than ever, she needed to know what had happened to Mia.

Who had been her lover?

If Lee managed to find out, then James would know that Mia hadn't killed herself — that the child hadn’t been his, and that her death hadn’t been his fault. He would know that Mia had been, in fact, ready to start her life again elsewhere, with someone else, just as he had hoped.

Finding out what had happened to Mia was the greatest gift she could give James.

She felt tired and stretched on the bed, looking at the digital watch next to her: it was past three o'clock. She wondered when he would return.

It would be all right if she closed her eyes for a moment. She was so exhausted from the emotions of the weekend. Finding Mia's note had at first made her feel alert, but now it added to her sleepiness.

When she opened her eyes, however, it was already dark. How long had she slept? The digital clock was blinking, as if there had been a power outage for a moment and it needed to be reset.

Lee sat up, noticing that the house was very quiet. Where was James? What time was it? She looked for her phone to see if he had called or sent her a message, but she couldn't find it, and neither could she find the light.

As her eyes got used to the dark, she walked to the window. James' car was parked right in front of the house. She made her way to the ground floor and found the main door open. There was darkness everywhere.

"Hello?"

At night there were only the cook and a couple of maids who served dinner in the house, apart from Mrs. Taylor. Had they gone off in search of help to restore the light? And why was James’ car there?

"James?" she called from the door.

It was cold, though the day had been warm and blue. The temperature descended by quite a few degrees at night. Lee ran down the front steps and walked on the gravel, still calling for James. When she reached the side of the house, there was a light in the sky. It looked as if it were being projected from the beach.

"James?" she called. "Mrs. Taylor?"

Lee moved toward the light, but there was a mist rising, probably from the mixture of hot air still left from the day with the cooler night breeze. It became thicker after the trees, but she made out a figure standing at the edge of the cliff.

"James!"

He was looking down at the place where Mia had fallen. Lee ran, but he didn't turn until she reached him.

"James, I couldn't find you."

"I'm right here."

She put her arms around his neck. He felt cold. "Come into the house. You said it was dangerous."

They crossed the mist again. Lee was thankful when she saw the light downstairs, and heard music playing: Come out, come out wherever you are…

"I know that song," she said.

"Sing it to me after dinner. Now we must change."

He followed her upstairs. Once they were in his room, he shut the door and took her by the waist. "I've been wanting to touch you all day.”

She leaned back until her lips met his.

"James ..." she whispered. "James, Mia didn't kill herself."

"I know."

"Do you? I thought—I thought the note made you believe—"

His hands were still. "When did you see the note? How?"

Lee's eyes flew open. "I—"

It was such a quick movement. In a second he had shoved her face down on the bed and twisted her arm behind her back. "How did you see that note?"

"You're hurting me!"

"Did you look in my safe? You saw the combination when I put the jewels away, didn't you? What were you looking for?"

"James, let me go!"

She tried to grab him with flailing arms, but he took her wrists and held them in one of his hands.

"You're looking at things which are secret," he said. "I told you to leave it all alone."

"Stop," she screeched. "Stop or I'll kill you!"

"Maybe I'll kill you!"

She still screamed, but he didn't stop. He had let go of her arms, but his hands closed around her neck.

"You'll be sorry you ever spied on me!”

Lee opened her eyes, coughing. She had been dreaming, still dressed and lying in the same position as she had been at three o'clock. It was only four, and it was still day.

"What's the matter?" James appeared at the door of the bathroom, wrapping a towel around his waist. "Have you had a bad dream again?"

Her heart banged against her ribcage, and she couldn't answer.

He approached her side of the bed and sat down. "Was it that scary?"

She nodded. Yes, it had been scary. But when he asked what the dream had been about, she said she didn't remember.

TWENTY-FIVE

This time London wasn’t cold, gray or hostile. The red of buses and phone boxes, the dazzling white of townhouses and the shiny black façades of pubs were all enhanced by sunlight.

London was the only place where Lee could buy a dress worthy of Deerholt. She had come alone, since James had become busy with last minute details for Caitlin’s party. It was a little over three hours driving each way, but she wasn’t staying the night. She wanted to go back home.

Home.

Home is where the heart is. Where was that for her?

Lee had paid for a half day in a hotel room where she could video-call Quinn.

“What made you give up?” Quinn asked.

He didn’t seem upset. He had warned her.

“You were right. He’s too smart, Quinn. He’d catch me for sure.”

“Is that all it is?” Quinn wondered.

She sighed. “He’s also a good person, and he has been grieving. I just don’t have the heart to do it.”

“Or the heart to leave, I guess?”

“Oh, I’ll leave. Soon.”

“And if he wants you to stay?”

“I can’t be half of a couple and you know it. You know all the stuff I couldn’t ever tell anyone — especially not him. It’s too late.”

Her smile must have been sad, because Quinn softened. He was a forger and a hacker — but he was more generous than most people she knew.

“You don’t know that, Lee.”

She shook her head and smiled again more brightly. “Let me have the end of summer, and we’ll meet to decide on next steps. I’ll try and find something good for us, although it might not be millions of dollars.”

He blew her a kiss, and Lee sat with the phone in her hand. Why had she said summer? It was almost August, and summer would end soon.

She took a deep breath and dialed a landline across the ocean.

A woman answered. “Hello?”

“Maddy?”

“It’s you.”

Maddy’s voice was flat and unwelcoming. It nearly always was.

“How are things?” Lee asked.

“Same as last time you called. And I’m sorry, but Billy is sleeping. I can’t wake him up.”

“All right. Tell him I called?”

“I’ll see how he is. Don’t want to upset him.”

“Did you get the money?”

The dry tone changed to grudging gratitude. “Yeah, I got it.”

“I’ll send more soon.”

“I guess that’s all you can do,” Maddy said, and hung up.

Yes, Maddy. It’s all I can do, and you ought to know it.

Jumping out of bed to avoid the anger rising in her, Lee grabbed her bag. Harrods wasn’t far from the hotel, and it was a good place to shop for an evening dress, as it had plenty of brand names on sale. Lee had just lost about $80,000 getting to James, and she shouldn’t spend too much on a dress she would only wear once.

Her phone rang. It wasn’t James.

“Yes?”

“Vivien? This is Caitlin! James’ sister?”

Lee masked her surprise. “Yes, I know. Hello!”

“I’m so sorry to call you out of the blue, but my brother is a complete beast!”

Lee stopped by a wall so she wouldn’t stand in the way of Londoners, who liked walking fast and frowned at those who ambled.

“Is he? Why?”

“He didn’t tell me you were going to London. You could have stayed with me — we could have shopped and had lunch. James thinks everyone is a misanthrope like him.”

In this case, James was right, although the girl sounded genuinely warm.

“I didn’t know, so I’m in Oxford,” Caitlin went on. “What a beast he is.”

“He is a beast.”

There was loud, delighted laughter on the other side. “I don’t think we mean the same thing.”

How ridiculous to blush! “Don’t worry about me,” Lee said hurriedly. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know, but listen! I’ve asked Steve to take you to lunch.”

That wouldn’t be much fun. Lee only ever met strangers for work. And who was Steve, anyway?

Caitlin explained: “We call him Attie, though, because his last name is Atwood. Old, old friend of James’. And of mine, really. At least he’s been around for as long as I can remember. I don’t know that he’s any less awful than my brother. Maybe more awful, actually. But he is going to be your chevalier servant today.”

Lee wanted to protest that she didn’t need anyone, and that she was on a mission, but she thought of the note. She knew nothing about James’ and Mia’s friends. Perhaps meeting one of them would help her find out who Mia’s lover had been.

In any case, Caitlin told her to meet Attie at one o’clock. “I’ll text you the address and send you a photo of the man.”

Lee ducked into the metro and surfaced in Knightsbridge. She had already researched Harrods and took the entrance with the Egyptian escalator, which she climbed to the first floor.

When she visited a shop, it was normally to buy things for a false version of her. She walked in the gleaming store among the mannequins and expensive clothes, catching glimpses of her blonde hair. How absurd that she should be buying clothes for a woman who didn’t exist to attend a real party. Not a party where she would be working, making a mark fall more deeply for her as she thought of his jewels — no, she was buying a real dress for fake Vivien to fall more deeply for real James.

When she got to Marchesa, she saw her dress right away: a long gown made of fine white silk and ostrich feathers.

The saleswoman smiled as Lee stood before it.

“Stunning, isn’t it? And you’re tanned. White will look good on you.”

“It’s like a wisp,” Lee said as the woman handed the hanger to her. The dress hardly weighed anything.

The woman smiled. “Try it on.”

It was going to cost a lot more money than Lee ought to spend. She demurred. “It’s too delicate.”

“Don’t worry, it’s less delicate than it seems. Let me get your size.”

Lee tried it on and lost her head. She wanted to wear it for James, and she bought it.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Or many thousands. But there was a happy flush on her face as she left Harrods with the dress inside a box and the box inside a bag. From there, she could stroll to the restaurant where she was to meet Attie, looking at the store fronts, at the bouquets of flowers everywhere and into the big ground-floor windows of houses on her way.

Steve Atwood, or Attie, was a tall man with wavy brown hair and roguish eyes. The flair of his pin-striped suit was a little cheeky, an attitude Lee had encountered before in upper-class boys. As Lee crossed the restaurant toward him, she supposed he was the hedge-fund-wiz friend that had helped James make his fortune. He stood to kiss her on one cheek and pulled the chair for her.

“I see you’ve accomplished your mission,” he said urbanely, looking at the bag.

“One of them,” Lee replied.

“I know, getting ready for a shindig of this caliber is like preparing for the Olympics.”

Attie acknowledged the waiter, who asked what they would like to drink.

“Water,” Lee said.

He looked aggrieved. “Impossible. We can’t meet over water, it will bring bad luck.”

“Then maybe I can have just one glass of something, since I’m driving.”

“We’ll settle on two glasses each. I know you have a hair appointment, so you’ll have plenty of time to get rid of the buzz.”

When their wine was before them, Lee said, “I’m sorry you had to babysit me.”

“On the contrary. And it’s not only politeness that makes me say this. I am always profoundly interested in the choices of my good mate.”

James’ friend was a flirt. He probably didn’t mean anything by it, and Lee didn’t take offense.

“I think he’s quite into you,” Attie said.

“Oh?”

“Not that he has actually mentioned it. It’s the fact that he hasn’t mentioned anything. That gives it away, as far as I’m concerned.”

“It would surprise me if he ever talked too much about anyone.”

“But there is also the fact that he tells me to shut up when I ask about you,” Attie said with an impish smile. “It’s rather earnest of him. Not usual James.” He crossed his arms on the table. “You are beautiful, that’s for certain. And you seem smart. I hope you’re giving him hell.”

Lee laughed. “What a hope for your friend!”

“Oh, we go back to birth. We can say what we want. And then there’s this message.” He picked up his phone and read. “Behave, or you’ll be sorry.”

“Why should I give him hell?”

Attie sipped his wine. “So that he reaches heaven, of course.”

“Seems a very twisted path.”

“No interesting path is straight. Certainly not the narrow one.” He studied her for a moment. “But you’re not that.”

The ring of Lee’s phone saved her. Attie rolled his eyes.

“How outrageously is he behaving on a scale of one to ten?” James asked when she answered.

Attie leaned forward. “I can hear you.”

James ignored him. “My sister does have silly ideas, sometimes. Don’t believe anything Attie says, and if he hits on you, stab him. Not the heart, he doesn’t have one. Aim lower.”

“Well, Attie,” Lee said as she hung up. “You’ve been put on probation.”

“What point is there in my saying anything now?” Attie wondered, but brightened up when the food arrived. “I love scallops, don’t you? And you won’t have loved anything until you have them with papaya puree.”

They ate the first mouthful, and the combination was exquisite.

“The Saint is such a romantic,” Attie remarked.

“Is that what you call him? The Saint?”

“It was his nickname at school, because of the old TV show. He was sort of our dear leader, you know. The teachers were scared of him, so we liked the protection.”

“He was like the Mafia?”

“Absolutely, except that he didn’t charge us. He was just fast with the lash of his tongue and not afraid of how many times he got punished.”

“And you think he’s a romantic?”

“Don’t you think so? I don’t mean stuffed animals and chocolate. I mean 19th century, all-or-nothing type thing.”

“Is that a thing?” Lee wondered.

“The Saint doesn’t know he’s a romantic, of course,” Attie continued. He threw her a canny look. “True romantics are always cynical because they’re expecting something absolute. While it doesn’t happen, they believe it doesn’t exist. Do you know, he’s never even had one of these hot, miserable crushes we all have when we are teenagers?”

“James was married,” Lee pointed out.

Attie pursed his lips. “The beautiful Mia. Well, yes. He cared enough to marry her, but Mia was no match for James, was she?”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“Well, in a way he wasn’t a match for her either. Just completely different universes. She believed in everything and then failed at it all. The Saint believes in nothing and sometimes makes miracles happen.”

Lee wanted to change the subject, and she wanted to hear more. She couldn’t, in any case, help being glad that Attie chose to talk so freely about James. She hadn’t even had to trick him into giving her information.

“Mia was a lightweight,” Attie continued with a curl of his lip. “And because the Saint is a gentleman, he didn’t see that she wasn’t really the innocent she pretended to be.”

Thinking of the body at the bottom of a cliff and of James’ suffering, Lee asked, “Isn’t that a little bit harsh?”

Her lunch companion shrugged. “It’s harsh that she died, but it doesn’t change what she was. I saw what she did to James.”

“And what did she do?”

“Made him miserable. A woman like that wouldn’t get anywhere with me, because I’m callous. James isn’t. James is tremendously decent.”

“A woman like what?”

“One who is cunning. Calculating.”

“It’s not how people describe her.”

Once more, he shrugged. “They’re afraid to speak ill of the dead. She was passive-aggressive, you see? She waited for people to do what she wanted, and when that didn’t work, she blackmailed them emotionally.”

Mia had had a lover, had been expecting a child and had ended up smashed against rocks. Did Attie seem so full of contempt because he knew what she had been up to?

“She was a type.” He tilted his head. “Can’t fathom you. Don’t think you’re a type.”

“Either we’re all types or no one is.”

Attie shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that. You could give the Saint a run for his money, I’ll bet.”

“He has a lot of money, so that would be a lot of running.”

“And it’s not his money you’re after either, I don’t think.” He peered at her. “Heavens, you just blushed. This is fun!”

“For you, maybe.”

Attie laughed with gusto. “All right, I’ll stop. I need to talk less, anyway, and learn more about you.”

“Investigating on behalf of your friend?”

“No.” Again he gave a true laugh. “I’ve been all intense, what a bore. And now James will kill me. Or Caitlin will.”

Lee also laughed. “You seem more scared of her.”

“Cat is a force to be reckoned with. She’ll make a much more ruthless investor than me. Top of her class.”

They left aside intense subjects and talked more generally. Attie turned out to be fun, and he drove her to her salon appointment when they were done. “See you at the old house, then!”

As Lee waited for her turn, another message arrived from James: Has he left you alone?

Yes.

Good. When will you be home?

Home…

I think not before ten.

You’ve been gone far too long. Isn’t that a song?

Lee smiled. I don’t know it.

Hurry back. Is that a song?

I’ll Be Seeing You. That’s a song.

I’ll Be Seeing You Soon. Is that a song?

She laughed out loud. Why did he make her feel so silly? An attendant came to get her, and she put the phone in her bag. As she sat down and let the hairdresser look at her color, Lee thought of all that Attie had said. The Saint is a romantic. He’s waiting for something absolute.

She thought of Attie’s cold eyes as he talked of Mia, the woman who hadn’t been good enough for James. Had Attie known that Mia was having an affair? He hadn’t spoken about the child. Wouldn’t he at least mention it, unless he knew nothing of it? Or could he know whose it was?

Mia had been having an affair, and Attie either knew or suspected it. Could she have been sleeping with him?

Would it be impossible for a man to sleep with his friend’s wife and still love his friend — and still despise the woman for being dishonest? No, it wasn’t impossible. Human beings did all sorts of things.

Had Attie slept with Mia? Had she met him on the cliff to say that she was with child, to somehow blackmail him emotionally — and had he pushed her? She was cunning … passive-aggressive … He didn’t seem the least bit sorry that she was gone. He was, by his own admission, callous.

If Attie were Mia’s lover, James didn’t even suspect it. He wouldn’t joke about his friend being a cad. No, James would have shaken him by the throat and tossed him aside.

For heaven’s sake! Attie is the first friend of James’ you meet, and you assume he’s a murderer.

James must have few friends, but the mysterious lover could also have been in Mia’s circle.

Still, when Lee left the hairdresser and got her car at the hotel, ready to return to Deerholt, she couldn’t help glancing at the hour. Neither could she help driving fast, as fast as the law allowed and sometimes faster.

To have killed Mia, James needed to have made it to Deerholt in less than three hours. Lee made it in two hours forty-three minutes.

TWENTY-SIX

Caitlin had run to the window at least five times while getting her hair done, to make sure the weather wasn’t changing.

“It’s a solid blue day,” Lee told her after the hairdressers left.

“It changes so fast here,” Caitlin said, her hands together in prayer as she took another look.

“Don’t you want me to do your eyes?”

The girl ran back to the chair on tip toes and sat down. They wore nets over their hair, which had to be kept in rollers until the party was about to begin.

It must be well-nigh impossible to dislike Caitlin. James' sister still had the beauty of a child, with creamy skin, soft eyebrows and light brown hair that turned golden near her temples. And, like Cora, she had a happy and generous disposition, for all that she would make a ruthless hedge-fund manager one day.

Lee gave the birthday girl discreet cat eyes with brown eyeliner and emphasized her lashes with mascara. A bit of lipstick, and she was beyond perfect.

There was a decisive knock on the door, and they screamed as the knob rattled.

“Go away!” Lee said.

“How long will you be in there?” James asked from the other side.

“Go away!” Caitlin repeated.

There was silence as the two women smiled at each other, but the door rattled again, and they screamed.

“Christ, I’m not bloody Count Dracula,” James protested.

“Go away, you can’t see us before the party,” Lee said.

“Well, the party is about to start. People tend to show up on time here, you know? As in less than one hour?”

They screamed again, rushing about the room.

“Why … are … you … screaming?”

“Go away! It's a girl thing."

They waited a little. Caitlin said, “He’s gone.”

But there was another shrill scream from her as she went to the window and found James outside, pointing at her rollers and laughing. She grabbed Lee by the waist and fell on the sofa with her. “Oh, you don’t know how happy I am that you’re here!”

“You are?”

Caitlin took her hand. “It has been a long, long time since I’ve seen James like this. I think he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him, and it’s because of you.”

Although Lee wanted to say that she might not have that much to do with it, Caitlin had already stood up and run to her dress. “I hope I don’t tear this!”

Lee helped her get into a very expensive silver evening gown that sparkled in a few choice places. Carefully unwrapping the hair net, Lee took each pin out slowly, letting Caitlin's waves descend to her back.

“You are a vision,” Lee pronounced.

Caitlin turned to look at herself, and it wasn’t vanity but joy that made her smile and sigh. “Oh, it’s going to be just as I imagined it!”

“Why do you like the 1940s so much? It’s a long time ago for you.”

“It’s so elegant: the hair, the gowns, the music. I guess I watched too many old movies with Aunt Im.” She suddenly looked worried. “I hope people like the party and don’t get bored.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

“Viv,” Caitlin said, taking her hand. “James told me I should ask you something, but you can say no, I’ll understand.”

“What?”

“He said I should ask you to sing, at least one song. He said it will be very special.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Lee said. “But if it gives you pleasure, of course I’ll sing.”

“Thank you! Now let me help you into your gown. People will be arriving soon.”

“No, you go. I can do this on my own.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Caitlin kissed her and ran to the door, and for a moment Lee could imagine a girl just like her, a hundred years ago, getting ready for her birthday party in that very room.

Remembering that James might try to get in to see her, Lee locked the door behind Caitlin. She stepped gingerly into her dress, pulling it over her body, and smoothed the silk, arranging the folds. Her make-up was done. She had painted her lips red and applied some mascara to her lashes; the mouth should be the star of the show in a 1940s look — the mouth and the hair, which she now freed slowly from the pins.

Caitlin was about to get an exquisite diamond bracelet from her brother. It had given Lee goose pimples, though not in a million years would she dream of stealing from them now. Her own white gold chain had become strangely precious to her, but it had been left in a box in the bedroom for the night.

Time to go.

She descended slowly to make sure that she wasn’t stepping on her gown, but she hadn’t expected James to be at the foot of the stairs, looking dashing in a black tuxedo but tamer than usual with his hair neatly brushed. The house was brightly lit, and the strains of brass instruments playing big-band jazz floated through the open door.

The white silk fell to the ground almost like water. Lee’s shoulders were bare, and the dress was held around her neck by asymmetrical strands of silk. Wispy feathers at her shoulder moved with her breaths.

There was desire in James’ eyes, and something more elusive — was it pride in her?

"I want everyone to see you and I don’t want anyone to see you,” he said as she reached him.

“Which one will it be?”

“Everyone. No one.”

He took her hand and kissed her wrist.

“Will there be a fight?”

He smiled angelically. “What fight? All you have to do is dance only with me.”

“And if someone else asks me, what should I say?”

“In England you’d say fuck off.”

She laughed. “That will sound appropriate in the ballroom. Did you know that you are slightly possessive?”

“No, I’m actually very possessive.”

“Then you shouldn’t dance with anyone either.”

“I won’t. Apart from Caitlin and Aunt Im, who don’t count.”

“You’re old-fashioned.”

“Absolutely. Which makes me think we might reach a compromise on a certain issue.” He took a small case out of his pocket and raised an eyebrow. “Throw it in the sea tomorrow but wear it for me today.”

James opened the case, displaying a brooch so beautiful that Lee gasped. Delicate diamond drops of different sizes cascaded down, shimmering. She understood that they represented rain.

“The storm …” she whispered.

“Hmm.”

“The diamonds—”

The diamonds were so pure, they must have cost a fortune.

“A brooch doesn’t go around your neck or wrist or ears, so you won't be showing off, and you can even hide it behind the feathers. I’d like to know you have it on you, that’s all.”

Lee nodded, and James found a place for it on her shoulder. He gently pulled a few feathers over it.

“It’s not my secret this time," he said, alluding to the guilt he had felt over Mia's diamonds.

Perhaps she had liberated him from terrible heartache by listening to the truth without judging him. And he had lessened her pain by never asking her anything — by just letting her exist next to him.

Tonight, in any case, they were in another time, when they could be different people. He could be a man dazzled by a woman in a white silk dress, and she could be a woman dazzled by a man and his gift to her.

Outside, Caitlin laughed. “Do you feel how warm it is? It’s just perfect.”

“Jinxer!” James cried.

“Oh, no! Where’s wood?”

He knocked on the door three times for her sake and they ran down the steps to meet her. Caitlin took her brother’s arm. “James, it’s exactly as I imagined it. No, it’s better!”

The stone terrace around the corner held an orchestra of men clad in white jackets playing Moonlight Serenade. The ballroom’s great doors were open. People would have the choice to dance under the stars outside, or inside under chandeliers that sparkled.

Lee hummed, almost swaying to the music.

“Oh, well. Let the games begin,” James muttered.

People were starting to arrive. They exclaimed over the beauty of the night, of the house, of the flowers and arrangements — and over the birthday girl, who flitted between guests like a fairy.

Lee observed their movement as she stood next to James. Soon Attie arrived, but he wasn’t yet in a tux. He swept his eyes over Lee. “Did you go back in time to Hollywood to get Vivien?” he asked his friend.

“Something like that,” James said, putting his arm around her waist.

Attie held up his hands. “Oh, the gesture of ownership! I get it! Not even one dance, huh?”

“Not even one,” James confirmed.

“It’s so attractive of you to be this primitive. Which room am I in?” Attie asked. “The usual?”

“Yes, your room.”

“Will run up and change,” Attie said, grabbing a glass of champagne from the table.

Lee watched him walk away: callous, ruthless but very charming Attie. Could he smile, and smile and be a villain?

Robert and Imogen appeared shortly after. He looked well turned out in his tuxedo, which he called a dinner jacket. Imogen clutched a shawl, apparently uncomfortable in her off-the shoulder dress.

“You look like a dream,” Imogen told Lee. “And Caitlin, good heavens, I’m going to be unoriginal and say: how she has grown! One doesn’t realize, seeing her in jeans all the time, but she is so stunning.”

James kissed her. “She is beautiful, kind and happy, and it’s all thanks to you.”

Soon there were over a hundred guests on the grounds, and Deerholt accommodated them generously. There was food, served in the garden on long tables. There were, it seemed to Lee, rivers of champagne.

It was time for dancing, and Caitlin laughed among admirers, choosing a young, blond man as her partner. They danced alone for a few moments, until the guests joined them.

“If you want to dance with me, you’ll have to pick me up,” Lee told James.

He frowned. “You mean lift you?"

“No, I mean pick me up.”

“Do that work again?”

“I don’t remember you doing it in the first place.”

“No, I’m very smooth.”

“Well, I’ll give you … three bids.”

James scoffed. “I don’t need three!”

She smiled, challenging him, and turned away.

“Hey,” he said after a while in an American accent. “I’m the owner of this joint. Wanna see my room?”

Lee froze him with a deadly look. “Excuse me.”

“Unfair,” he called after her. “That would work every time.”

She presented an uninterested back to him as she sipped champagne.

“Say,” he tried again. “You look like you have a body for sin, and I have a mind for it.”

Lee looked him up and down, full of disdain. “Just be grateful I wouldn’t waste good champagne by throwing it in your face!”

“Mine was a good line!” he protested as she moved away.

He pretended to pout when she looked at him again, and she was already laughing at what he would say next. Caitlin, however, caught her eye as the orchestra finished The Very Thought of You and Lee went over to the vintage radio microphone. James had thought of every detail, although he hadn’t appeared to be doing much.

The first notes to Melancholy Baby began playing, and the dancers stopped to see why Lee was standing there. The music carried her away, and her voice was smoky as she started slowly,

Come to me, my melancholy baby

Cuddle up and don’t be blue

All your fears are foolish fancies maybe

You know, dear, that I’m in love with you…

Lee only half noticed that the dancers had stood still to hear her better as she went on,

Every cloud must have a silver lining

Wait until the sun shines through

So smile, my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear

Or else I shall be melancholy too.

There was a moment of silence after she finished with a flourish, and then loud applause. She nodded, ready to leave, but Caitlin ran up to the microphone, “Please, one more, just one more!”

James watched Lee without saying anything, but the guests clapped, not leaving her a choice.

She knew what she wanted to sing, with a slight alteration, and began a cappella,

O my love is like a white, white rose

That’s newly sprung in June

The piano and the violin softly accompanied her.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lad,

So deep in love am I

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Until all the seas run dry

As if drawn by an invisible string, James stepped into the light. Lee couldn’t help showing emotion as she continued,

Until till the seas run dry, my dear

And the rocks melt in the sun

And I will love you still, my dear

Though the sands of time may run.

But fare thee well, my only love,

O, fare thee well awhile

And I will come again, my love,

Though it were ten thousand miles …

Once more there was silence as she ended, but this time she felt anchored by James’ eyes. Some of the people there, full of repressed emotion, wiped tears, and then the applause came. Lee was free, and James was waiting for her.

He didn’t say anything, he only took her hand and pulled her close to dance with her as if no one else were there — and that was his third and winning bid.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Before sunrise, when the sky was still dark, the guests that were left gathered on the beach and sent twenty-one sky lanterns into the air and out to the sea.

Having ditched his jacket, James stood with one arm around Lee and another around Caitlin to watch the lanterns fly away like good spirits. “Hope this doesn’t burn the place down. Did you make a wish for each one?” he asked his sister.

“I only really have one wish,” she said. “Happiness.”

Don’t we all? Lee thought.

“And that means happiness for you too,” Caitlin told her brother. She reached over him to take Lee’s hand. “And for you.”

“Little bit drunk, are we?” James remarked.

Caitlin spluttered with laughter.

“Maybe more than a bit?”

She looked up at him unsteadily. “Don’t make me go to bed, don’t!”

“I can’t make you do anything, you’re of legal age,” he said, looking over at the blond young man who kept throwing glances at Caitlin as if waiting for her. “Is what’s-his-name staying in the house tonight?”

“His name is Mike. And he’s staying in town,” Caitlin said.

“What happened to the Mexican bloke?”

She grimaced and kissed James. “Long story. Gotta go!”

James turned to Lee. “I don’t trust anyone who calls himself Mike.”

“You just don’t trust anyone near Caitlin,” Lee said. “You pay the price of all brothers, knowing what men are like and seeing the sister you love go off with them.”

He looked down at her. “Are you sloshed too?”

She measured an inch between her fingers.

As they went back to the house, many guests were leaving — some limping from dancing too much, some drunk, all praising the party. Some stayed, still dancing in the ballroom or slung, exhausted, over sofas and chairs.

They met Attie just as he was climbing the stairs to his room.

“Alone?” James asked him.

“They were too young for me, too old for me, too desperate,” he said. “And I’m too tired for anyone. See you later.”

The sky was turning lighter by tiny degrees, and James said, “We shouldn’t waste this sunrise.”

He led her over the lawn through the shrubberies, and when they reached the river, the Chinese pagoda was softly lit by lanterns, and breakfast had been laid out inside. James grabbed fruit from the table and took her to the swing under a willow tree. He put a cashmere blanket around her shoulders, and they watched the early-morning flight of birds while sharing a peach.

Lee leaned against his chest as he moved the swing softly with his foot on the ground. “Disgusting life.”

“I hope you give me five stars on TripAdvisor, is all I can say.”

“Four and a half because there’s compulsory horse riding.” She sighed. “Imogen said I would never forget the party when I go away, and I don’t think I ever will.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “Wish you’d stop threatening me with leaving.”

“I don’t mean to threaten you.”

“What are you doing, then?” He pulled up her chin to look into her eyes. “Didn’t you just sing I was your bonnie lad?”

“Yes,” Lee said, almost without sound.

“Then, as the good book says, let the morrow will take care of itself."

They waited until the sun was up to have their breakfast and walk back to the house. The guests had all disappeared, except for two or three who now slept across benches. Members of the staff were clearing the debris of the festivities and wished them good morning as they passed.

James went to find Mrs. Taylor, and Lee climbed to the room. The corridor on the second floor ought to be clear of people, as everyone had retired, but someone had just closed a door. Lee peeped around the corner.

Attie walked out of the suite where James had lived with Mia. What had he been doing there? He entered the room that had been assigned to him, shutting the door.

When James arrived at their room, Lee was standing by the bed. He slowly tugged on the silk straps that held her dress together. She closed her eyes, leaning against him. They were tired, with just enough energy for what they had longed to do all night. He lowered her underwear until it fell around her feet as she removed his shirt and trousers. They stood kissing, almost dancing again. James put her on the bed and stopped to look at her for a moment.

“So beautiful,” he said.

They slept till the afternoon, as did everyone else, but by three o’clock luncheon was being served in the dining room. Robert and Imogen were there.

“You're off already?” James asked as he inspected the food on the side table.

“Time waits for no man,” Robert said, and kissed Imogen’s hand. “And for no poppet.”

Lee had tied her hair back with a scarf and pinned the diamond brooch on her black top, something that James noticed with a smile.

“Vivien still looks in character,” Imogen remarked.

“She’s a Southern belle,” James said. “They have a timeless sense of style.”

Lee tried not to look at him. Why had he said Southern belle? Had he found out that she had lied to him from first to last? James wasn’t a man who would appreciate being lied to or cheated, but he had said that he would let her keep her secrets.

When she looked up, Imogen was watching her thoughtfully. Lee smiled, and Imogen responded. Had she also perceived something false in “Vivien”? Would she warn her nephew and niece that they might have a con artist in their house?

Robert was talking about business, and James had just agreed to go to Devon. The property there also belonged to the family, and James — as Lee had suspected — paid for its upkeep.

“It will be very nice to return your hospitality,” Imogen told Lee. “I hope you like lamb and Yorkshire pudding, that’s cook’s specialty.”

“We’ll have time to worry about the food later, Mo,” Robert said, taking his wife by the hand again. “Now we’d better run before the house fills up.”

They told the two young people not to bother accompanying them to the door.

“You’ll come, won’t you?” James asked Lee when they were gone. “It’s just a weekend. The house is beautiful, and it will make Aunt Im happy.”

“Of course."

“Good afternoon,” Attie drawled as he entered. “How are the love birds?”

“How is the Ancient Mariner?” James countered.

“Does feel like I’m carrying an albatross around my neck.” Attie looked at the food. “What are we doing today, playing croquet? Not going to see knights’ tombs or anything devoid of all interest, I hope?”

Lee watched him. It was safe to assume that he had been to Deerholt often, as he seemed to know it well and feel at home. Perhaps he had been in Mia’s suite to look out the window, since it faced the driveway. He might have been trying to see who was still at the party and who had left.

There was no time to think about it. Caitlin also appeared, sleepy-eyed, to bend over James, wrap her arms around him and kiss his cheek noisily several times. She also kissed Attie and Lee, but refused food and nursed a cup of tea.

“How can you bear to eat now?” she asked in a raspy voice.

By five o’clock, everyone but Attie was gone. They took advantage of the beautiful day to sit in the ample shade of trees and talk. James, Attie and Caitlin ended up playing a soft version of cricket, but Lee pleaded exhaustion and took advantage of their absorption in the game to go into the house and up the stairs. She found the hall empty, since the rooms had already been cleaned and the beds made. There was no staff about; they must all be downstairs, as was their custom in the afternoons.

She ran into James’ study, took a letter opener and carefully moved to the room at the end of the corridor. Had Attie really gone into the wrong room, or could he have been searching for something?

If there were anything in the suite — photographs or letters that a lover might want to destroy — Lee would find it. She was an expert at finding things, but she had to do it fast. Once she shut the door, she avoided looking in obvious places, as the police or James would have been through them. Instead, she concentrated on detecting false bottoms to drawers or hollow panels in the wardrobe. She searched behind photographs, large and small, felt the frames, looked under the mattress.

She found nothing, except ventilation ducts. There was one on the floor and she unscrewed the grille with the letter opener, but the hole was empty. Glancing through the window, she saw that drinks were being carried outside, and that James, Caitlin and Attie were sitting in the shade again, still chatting and laughing.

Another duct was hidden behind the antique chest of drawers. Lee felt the usual sense of excitement as she unscrewed the grille and felt inside the hole, bringing out a small, rose-gold notebook. It was covered in feminine handwriting.

The days take forever to pass ...

… would not notice anything ...

... I don't love him, or I don't know, but he loves me …

Lee read random sentences as she leafed through the notebook. Mia had kept a diary. A woman that beautiful would hate to admit that she wasn't loved. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone but herself.

The few words Lee had read made her more certain than ever that Mia had been murdered. She was just as sure that the identity of the murderer would be in that notebook.

Lee tucked it inside the back of her waistband, ascertained that everything in the room was as she had found it and silently left.

TWENTY-EIGHT

January 5th

The days take forever to pass when we are at Deerholt. I hate, hate, hate it here.

James goes riding or swimming, and then he reads and watches films or football. We hardly ever go to another town. When we do, he likes the old pubs, not the foodie ones. He thinks the old ones are funny, but they're full of smoke. They don't even have decent wine.

Sometimes he goes with me wherever I ask, but I can tell he's bored. He asks me what I want to do, but I know he doesn't want to go meet our friends or to parties.

I haven't seen any of my friends in a long time. People in the fashion world move on quick. James wouldn't stop me from seeing them, but he wouldn't come. He doesn't have patience for any of that.

He's too sure of things, or at least he seems like that. He’s sure of what he likes and what he doesn't like. He says it's because he's older than me — and also, I suppose, because he spent such a long time on his own traveling.

I'm the one who will have to have patience, I guess. In the beginning all that mattered was to be with him. It's still like that for me, but he has changed.

January 16th

Big huge fight last night. I couldn't help my jealousy, I asked him if he was seeing someone else. Why does he have to go to Nepal? He says he invited me, and I didn't want to go — but there was Cathy's engagement party, I couldn't miss it. How do you miss your childhood friend's engagement party?

I asked him to please, please tell me if there was another woman, and he went mental. He said he was no liar, no cheat and that if he saw another woman, I would be the first to know because he would tell me.

I just didn't believe it, because that's what any man would say. I kept crying — I couldn't stop. He almost brought the house down, he was so angry. I was hanging on to his arm so he wouldn't walk out, just being dragged on the corridor. He shouted at me to leave him alone for my own sake and left slamming the door.

He hasn't come back. God help me, I still think it could be another woman. Why would he have changed so much otherwise?

February 18th

Got a diamond pendant for Valentine’s. It’s beautiful. Cathy says it must be worth hundreds of thousands.

February 21st

Yesterday I kept writing on this diary when James came to bed. He kissed me, took up his book and didn't ask me what I was writing.

I went to Smythson and bought this on purpose, it says MY THOUGHTS on the cover, because I wanted him to read it. I can't find any way of telling him how I feel, because I start to cry. I decided to write things down right under his nose so that he picks it up and reads it.

My husband cares so little about me that he isn't remotely curious about what I'm writing here. He doesn't ask me, but not because he wants to find out later, when I'm not looking. It's because he doesn't care.

I start talking, and I see that he is looking for something to say because what I'm telling him doesn't interest him. He's not interested in people, or in the things I find out, even when they're funny, like the story about Maggie and Richard. He doesn't care about what I did today, or where I went or how I felt. He just humors me, and he thinks I don't realize it.

It's breaking my heart, it really is. I don't care if he reads this, but he won't.

February 26th

James won't talk about having a child. He says it's too early, that we have only been married a few months. I think if we had a child, he would love us both. He is a loving person, I see how he is with Caitlin, and he has always been kind to me. But I have never seen him be unkind to anyone, except to people who really deserve it.

Then I'm not much more to him than anyone else, and I'm less than his sister, that's for sure.

What's the point of not having a child? It's not like we are living a honeymoon.

March 2nd

S looks at me a lot. He also put his hand on my waist when he was coming out of the living room and I was going in. It could be an accident, just sort of holding on not to bump into each other, but he left his hand there longer than he should and looked me in the eyes.

I find myself flirting with S under James’ nose so that he will notice. It would make him beyond furious, and at least that would be something.

March 5th

So sad, so sad, so sad. He said it was better that we should part, that it would be better for me.

How could it be better for me? I will die if I'm not with him. It makes me so sad, so deep inside, that he said that. We've only been married six months, and he doesn't love me?

Did he love me before? He has never, ever, ever said it. Why did he marry me? I should go, but if I do I'll only take those pills again. My mother said to me once that if a man doesn't love you, he never will and it's no use waiting. I didn't think at that time that I would adore someone, and that he wouldn't love me. I can't stop crying.

March 11th

S says that I'm so beautiful, I shouldn't be sad.

I hadn't thought so before, but he is attractive. He noticed what James never sees.

But what can I do, I still love James. I've only ever loved James, and that's a tragedy.

April 10th

I haven't written in a while because everything has changed, and I don't know what to think.

S seduced me, and I've been living with this for a month now. He didn't force me, I can't say that, but maybe I was too lonely. I met him by accident in the city, we had lunch and we ended up in a hotel. Now I'm afraid that James will know. When he gets angry, he does crazy things. James could kill someone.

Would he even be angry, because of his closeness to S? Would he even notice?

May 16th

My birthday yesterday. James has given me the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen. It’s worth millions of pounds, and it’s a rare blue diamond. I know that he does that because he can't ever say he loves me. I'll come out in all the magazines wearing that ring, and my heart inside will be broken.

May 23rd

I don't love S, or I don't know, but he calls me.

If I never tell S about the child, if I tell James that it's ours, maybe he will see things in a different way. What if it was just me being too anxious about him and what he feels? James is different, he doesn't get anxious. He's either calm or really furious.

Maybe I just wanted too much, bothered him too much, got too nervous. If I relax and don't expect so much, maybe things will come. Maybe he will see that he does care for me, and he will want the child.

The truth is, though, that people don't love other people just because they have children together. Look at so many couples who hate each other, sometimes because of the children. It could make everything worse.

I don't know what to do. I wish there was someone I could speak to, who could help me, but I can't tell anyone this.

I have to tell James — or I have to tell S.

I can only tell one of them, and say: this child is yours, what do we do? 

Maybe the reaction helps me to decide what I want.

TWENTY-NINE

In the diary there were many pages covered in the same frantic handwriting blurred by tears, but Lee could only read it when James went off with Caitlin and Attie, and she managed to stay behind.

“S” could be Steve. Or was it some sort of code? Wouldn’t Mia have called him “A” for Attie as well?

Mia wrote that she wished that James would find the diary, but once she slept with S, she never hoped so again. She must have started hiding it inside the grille then, and she had died at Deerholt. That’s where the little rose-gold notebook had stayed, almost as if she knew she might end up smashed against rocks and wanted the record of her story to outlast her.

On the morning after the party, had Attie been in the suite looking for the notebook? Did he know of its existence? Why would he visit that room one year after Mia’s death, when the police had gone over it, when James would have already found anything there was to be found?

And if he wasn’t S, who was?

James would soon have to return to London and Lee would meet more of his friends, but in the meantime, there must be something she could find out, short of asking James for a list of every man of his acquaintance whose name began with S.

I only love James, and that’s a tragedy, Mia had written.

James had said that Mia was like a child, so it made sense for her to have a diary, like a teenager discovering the injustices of life. It made sense that her thoughts should be unsophisticated and self-centered, and that she had not had tools to cope with her boredom, her jealousy and her unhappiness. It even made sense that she wouldn’t write of her own schemes, of her attempts to make him jealous, of her plans to blackmail him through a fake suicide attempt.

The last thing Mia wrote, days before her death, was that she needed to decide whether to tell James or S about the child. She had told James: had he pushed her off the cliff for trying to blackmail him with a pregnancy? Had he become enraged at her attempts to manipulate him, just as he — perhaps seeing echoes of Mia in Lee — had become enraged in Sicily?

Had he planned his wife’s murder, driving down from London in less than three hours, luring her to the cliff and pushing her?

James could kill someone …

Lee couldn’t believe that James was a killer. She certainly couldn’t believe him to be a cold-blooded one — and if an accident had taken place, he would have owned up to it. People did sordid things all the time, but living with the guilt of killing a woman and his own child would have done more than send James crashing against a tree. He would never have kept such a secret.

S had killed Mia. She had told James about the baby, and he still didn’t want her. Mia had then, as the cunning emotional blackmailer that she was, told S, foolishly standing at the edge of a cliff. This was a man who knew James, and Mia had been about to bring everything out in the open and perhaps saddle him with a child he didn’t want.

In the week after Caitlin’s party, Deerholt regained its tranquility and Lee enjoyed being there as much as Mia had hated it. She and James spent most of their time at the estate, finding different corners to explore. They watched movies in the evenings and Lee began to like soccer when she understood the rules of the game.

Some days they took walks in small towns and she loved the terrible old pubs as much as he did. She loved the small teashops with old ladies like Miss Marple, who seemed frail but had clever eyes. They visited old abbeys, ruined castles and went to antique markets.

At night, or in the morning, or during an afternoon nap, they would make love.

I could get used to this, Lee thought, and then realized she already had.

And what did he feel, apart from not wanting her to go away?

Lee wasn’t Mia. She would never ask or expect to know. All she knew was that she sometimes sat listening for James when he wasn’t with her. She could be alone — she liked it — but when she heard his steps in the corridor, she always felt impatient to see him cross the threshold.

You’re in deep. But she wasn’t Mia; she was a survivor. She would survive anything. She would survive losing James.

On Friday they prepared to leave for Rosemount, Robert and Imogen’s house in Devon.

“Your generosity is great,” James told her as they faced each other in the bathtub. “God will repay you, my child.”

She put her feet on his chest. “Will it be that awful?”

“Robert will bore you by going over the portraits of the Earl and telling the story of how he was unfairly beheaded, and how we lost the title that’s ours by right, etc. He also has a collection of spoons.”

“Spoons!”

James nodded mournfully. “Spoons. There are hundreds. If he starts to take you toward the cabinet in the green drawing room, run.”

“Any more dangers I should know about?”

“Not really. Aunt Im won’t bore you. Just stick to her.”

Before Lee could get dressed, he started to sing inside the bathroom,

But fare thee well, my only love,

O, fare thee well awhile

And I will come again, my love,

Though it were ten thousand miles

Lee broke into laughter when he appeared at the door. He wore a ridiculous towel around his head as he finished in a booming baritone.

And I will come again, my love,

Though it were ten thousand miles…

She hadn’t stopped laughing as he caught her. Lee pulled a lock of his hair from under the towel.

“There, that’s better.”

“I would, you know.”

“What?”

“Travel ten thousand miles. To come.”

“I don’t think that’s what the song meant.”

“Yes, it is.” James lifted her and placed her on the bed. “And we have to be as naughty as possible today, since we’ll have to be quiet all weekend.”

“True,” Lee murmured, closing her eyes.

As they pulled up to the Tudor mansion later, Robert greeted them from the door. “Morning! How was the drive?”

“Smooth as silk,” James replied.

“Leave the bags, darling,” Imogen told Lee as she climbed down the front steps. “Someone will get them.”

Lee kissed her. “I’m afraid I had no idea what to wear here, and James wasn’t much help.”

Imogen considered Lee's dress, which was white with green flowers. “You’re a movie star. And you’ve been wise and worn flat sandals.”

Three small dogs ran out yapping. Robert introduced them. “Whistle, Pongo and Fox. We can take them for a walk later, that way you see the place, Vivien.”

An unexpected twitch of compassion for Robert ran through Lee. Now that he was in his own house, he displayed a childish desire to please. Imogen smiled placidly as he blustered around like a boy, showing things and hoping for praise. It was as if she knew what Lee was thinking yet couldn’t love her husband any less.

Rosemount was smaller than Deerholt, and it had maintained its Tudor interior. The original wood wainscoting made the hall look dark even during a bright morning, and Robert had kept armors and medieval weaponry there.

When he began waxing eloquent over axes, Lee had to bite her lip not to laugh. She was glad James couldn’t catch her eye. He was busy pushing the dogs aside with his foot as they jumped on his legs with shrill barks.

“Settle down!” Robert ordered sharply.

On the mantelpiece of a large stone fireplace, there were family photographs. The images of Robert and Imogen at Deerholt were recent, and Lee was surprised to see how attractive they had been. Imogen, so plump and lined now, had once been a beauty with classical features and a seductive body. Robert had had the magnetism of a young Sean Connery.

“Talk about movie stars,” Lee said.

Imogen snorted, embarrassed, and flapped a self-deprecating hand. “Those are the good photos.”

“Aunt Im was my first crush,” James said.

“She was everyone’s crush,” Robert said, looking fondly at his wife. He took her by the waist. “And is still mine.”

Imogen flapped her hand again, laughing, as they went through the house and out onto a terrace facing the sea.

“Not bad, eh?” Robert asked Lee with satisfaction. “Especially on a day like this.”

“How is that going?” James asked, motioning toward an old stone lighthouse to their right.

“It’s almost done,” Robert said. “There’s just the paint job inside and then clearing crates and rubble."

“Kept its character.”

“Oh, anything else wouldn’t have done.”

James pursed wry lips. “Certainly not.”

Imogen stayed behind to see to lunch as Robert showed James the improvements his money had made. Lee walked with them, enjoying the salty air and the breeze. When they returned, there were drinks waiting outside. Lee accepted white wine and Imogen poured some for herself as well, while the two men had gin and tonics.

“Do you live here all the time?” Lee asked.

“We lived in London for a while, when we were bringing up Caitlin. But once she went to Oxford, we really wanted to get out of the city. It’s not for us.” Imogen looked around at the garden. “I quite love it here.”

Lee inspected the blooming flower beds. “Are these the products of your green thumb?”

Her hostess gave a throaty laugh. “Yes, and I’m rather proud of them.”

“Will you show me?”

"Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bore.”

“I love flowers,” Lee said. “I can’t get over how beautiful they are in England.”

“It’s all the rain, you know. And then, every English person is a gardener at heart."

Imogen stood and told Robert she was giving Lee a tour of the garden.

“Are you sure she’s in for that kind of thing, poppet?” Robert asked.

“She says she is. Darling, keep the dogs with you or they’ll start burrowing.”

As they moved away, Lee could hear James causing mischief, “What Vivien really loves are small antique objects.”

“She’ll like the spoons, then.”

There were clumps of peonies, dahlias, and lilies — and bushes on the side of the house as well, with large red roses.

“It’s like an enchanted place,” Lee said. “What happens in winter?”

“I protect the earth here, but of course the flowers are all gone till spring. It’s one of the great, great joys of life to see them coming out again, growing and opening.”

“I hope I can have a garden like this one day. It’s a dream of mine, but I have to stop moving first.”

Imogen threw Lee a canny look, her eyes bright with meaning. “Don’t you think you will, soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, Vivien, James is in head over heels!”

Lee could feel herself flushing. “No, he—”

“I’ve known him since he was a boy and I tell you, I’ve never seen him like this. His eyes are always following you around, and he gives you that look—”

“What look?”

“As if only you and he were in a place, even if a hundred people are there. It’s how he looked at you at the party, how he danced with you. He was so proud when you sang. But it was more than pride, I think. It was—” Imogen stopped and thought for a second, cocking her head. “It was as if he had found something. Something he hadn’t expected to ever find.”

But he was looking for the absolute — or so Attie had said.

They resumed walking, and Lee frowned stubbornly at the flowers, finally saying, “Aren’t these projections, though? We get dazzled by someone else and we build a fantasy around that person.”

“And then we have to live in the everyday, true,” Imogen agreed softly. “And we don’t always look our best as time passes, and we have belly aches and colds and we get grumpy and we’re angry, or bored, or there are money problems and differences of opinion. Yes, there is all that.”

It took a moment for Lee to ask: “Is it still worth it?”

“Do you mean is it enough?” Imogen shrugged. “I can’t answer that. It depends on each person. There is something deep that comes with time, on top of a crazy love that once was there. The deep thing … well, it’s not what songs are written about, but it has long, strong roots.”

“In the best cases, I guess.”

Imogen took Lee’s hand. “I will say this, don’t be afraid. You’ll regret it. Don’t waste what there is between you, whatever it is, wherever it leads. If there is pain, deal with it later, but take the joy. We regret the things we don’t do, believe me.”

Lee must have looked spooked, because Imogen laughed and patted her arm.

“Listen to the crazy old coot talking about passion. I’ve been reading too much Mills and Boon. Let’s go to the lighthouse, I’ll show you what I’m doing there.”

They walked up a serpentine gravel path amidst the grass to the old tower, and Imogen urged Lee to be careful with the bricks and tools on the ground. On the right side of the lighthouse, she had already planted hydrangeas, mixing blue with mauve.

“They’re healthy,” Lee said.

“Yes, they’re doing well. I won’t surround the whole tower, but you see here—” she pointed to holes on the earth. “I’ve already prepared the ground, and I’ll plant till that curve there. There will be a guest room up here as well, so if ever you and James feel like having a little escapade, you’ll be welcome.”

The two women looked out at the sea.

“At least here we don’t have those dangerous, pointy cliffs,” Imogen muttered.

After a pleasant lunch, Lee managed to escape hearing about the spoons but not about almost every ancestor on the walls. In the afternoon, they took a drive through a countryside dotted with white sheep and ended up in the pretty seaside village of Salcombe, where they ate good fish and watched the yachts in the bay.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Lee said in the evening.

“No,” James agreed. “It’s a nice place and Robert wasn’t as boring as he can get.”

“Imogen is a darling.”

“So she is.”

They were again moving toward the lighthouse, which stood white in the darkness. James turned from the view of the city to stare up at the construction and laughed.

"I wonder how she puts up with his pretentiousness, though. I mean, look at that!"

James motioned toward the top of the door, where a stone carving jutted out. Lee hadn't noticed it before. It looked like an initial intertwined with vines and leaves.

"He had it brought here from a house we sold," James went on. "And something like that shouldn’t be moved, or it’s just ridiculous."

He kept laughing as Lee noticed that the wind had turned chilly.

"Robert is so obsessed with this bloody name. As if it mattered to anyone but him."

The initial, of course, was S, with a tiny “t” and “b”.

S for St. Bryce, the family name that Robert prized perhaps above all things.

"He really is like a character in an Agatha Christie novel," James added, taking her hand.

But Lee couldn’t laugh; not when she had just discovered that inside the house where they were meant to sleep, there was a cold-blooded murderer. 

THIRTY

Robert had been Mia’s lover.

Until she saw his photographs as a young man, Lee had wondered why Imogen, who was wise, had found a buffoon attractive in the first place. Yet he had once been strong and handsome, and perhaps Mia had still seen that in him, especially if he were giving her the attention she craved from James.

Mia had used the initial of his surname in the diary — the surname he shared with her husband. Perhaps by the time she and Robert began their affair, she no longer wanted James to find her diary. Or, if he did, she didn’t want him to guess she was sleeping with his uncle.

Yet she had gone on confiding in those pages. The notebook she had bought to call James’ attention ended up in deep hiding.

An old love has strong, deep roots, Imogen had said. And Robert loved his wife: he would often kiss her, put his arm around her when they walked, smile at her craggy face calling her poppet and love. It was the only endearing thing about him, and it wasn’t even pure.

Mia had told him that she was expecting his child — a child that Imogen had had never given him, either out of choice or difficulty conceiving — and she must have expected him to decide: new love or old love?

Robert had decided to keep the old one.

What had Mia said then? That Imogen, the wife he loved, would know? That James would know? James, on whom Robert depended for money?

Silly Mia, who didn’t know what people could do when they were cornered, when they were angry, when they needed to keep a secret. Lee knew only too well; Lee knew it could lead to murder.

Her mind presented her with the vivid image of Robert pushing Mia off the cliff, and she knew it was possible. Robert was a much more likely murderer than either James or Attie.

Lee’s heart beat so fast that James remarked on it. “Have you given yourself a fright?”

“Not really. Just a bad memory.”

He wouldn’t ask her what it was. He never did, if she didn’t volunteer information. Sensing that she was distraught, he didn’t make love to her that night, but he slept with his arm around her. When she moved, he only pulled her closer.

It was nearly three o’clock when she managed to leave the room. It was the hour of the wolf. Her grandmother had once told her that most people died around that hour, between three and five in the morning. It was the hour of deepest sleep, of faintest life — when humans could go mad if they were awake, haunted by their fears, their anxieties and their guilt.

“It’s the hour when the wolf comes to the door,” her grandmother had said. “Because it can smell terror.”

Lee had spent many an hour of the wolf awake, believing that she might be devoured for being weak or fearful. But not today. Today she had a purpose.

She didn’t know the house well, but when she arrived at a place she automatically noticed entrances, exits, and where stairs led. Once in the corridor, she descended to the first floor in silent, bare feet.

There wouldn’t be much time for her to look through Robert’s things. She needed to start in his study, the most probable place for him to keep secrets. Imogen, who didn’t seem to have a suspicious nature, would think it normal for him to lock legal correspondence and documents away from the prying eyes of the staff.

Lee could only use the light of her phone in her search. It wouldn’t attract attention if someone upstairs awoke and looked out the window.

There might be a safe, but would Robert keep something of Mia’s in there? She found it unlikely, since a safe was normally of common use for a husband and wife. Imogen’s jewels, for one, would be kept in it. And, in any case, Lee wouldn’t be able to open a safe — not without leaving a camera on it first, and she hadn’t brought the cameras to Rosemount.

Still, how could she tell James about his uncle’s affair with Mia if she had no proof? Once she found something, she would have to come up with a plausible reason for having looked in the first place.

Robert's heavy oak desk looked sturdy and uncomplicated. She opened and closed drawers and even lay on the floor to search under it for hidden panels. Nothing.

As Lee swept the feeble light around the room, her eyes fell on a cabinet against the wall, and she recognized it. A secretary cabinet, probably from the eighteenth century. Cabinets like that one had once been used as desks.

Most importantly, those cabinets often had secret compartments.

Robert was fond of antiques and would be aware of its secret features. On top, the cabinet had a built-in ormolu clock; the middle had vertical panels on each side and a bottom part that could be lowered to form a desk. There were gold decorations which Lee pushed aside until one of them moved, revealing a keyhole that was easy for her to pick.

Painted panels on both sides slid out and turned, revealing hidden drawers at the back, but there was nothing in them. She pushed them closed.

“Come on, come on, I know you’re here,” she mumbled.

The two vertical panels representing the lovers Pierrot and Columbine were held in place by golden screws. She pressed them, but the drawers that popped out only contained antique pots of ink and pens.

There was, right in front of her as she sat down, a horizontal centerpiece depicting a more elaborate Venetian carnival scene. It was made with pieces of light and dark wood carefully weaved together. Harlequin's black mask seemed slightly more dented than the rest of the panel. She pressed it and almost jumped back as the desk opened and a box rose, pushed up by a hidden mechanism.

It was an old but sturdy wooden box. Lee picked the lock.

It was full of photographs.

She put them on the desk and shone the phone light on them. They were images of different women, many of them naked. The newest photographs, printed in glossy paper on a home digital machine, were of Mia.

There were dozens of photos. Mia had abandoned herself to Robert’s camera like the top model she was. She knelt in corset and stockings, reclined in panties holding her breasts, lay face down with her hands between her legs. Her eyes were almost always looking at the camera, even when they were half closed; her lips were always parted. She was a lovely, sordid vision.

A whole series of photos showed her and Robert together. He must have set the automatic shutter and joined her, kissing her breasts, pawing her buttocks in hidden triumph over the nephew who despised him and gave him money.

No, Robert would not throw those away, just as he hadn’t destroyed photos of women he might not have seen in twenty years or more. He was too vain, and he might just be a sociopath — willing to kill someone to avoid the trouble she would bring him but unwilling to let go of the proof of her submission.

Lee had found what she needed. She efficiently put things back where they belonged, keeping two photos of Mia and Robert by sticking them in the pocket of her robe.

As the cabinet clicked into place, however, she knew that she wasn’t alone in the room.

Jumping out of the chair, she turned. Robert had a wooden bat, and it was already moving toward her. Lee felt the blow on the side of her head and had a fraction of a second to understand that it was strong enough to kill.

THIRTY-ONE

Murderers nursed their guilt during the hour of the wolf, consumed by the fear of being unmasked. Lee had forgotten that.

She remembered it in pain as she opened her eyes to a confined space and darkness. Lee was always alert when she woke up, even from a blow that might have brained her.

Robert had panicked, knocked her unconscious and he must have locked her up in a closet until he could think what to do.

But something was thrown at the door of the closet. If fell with a soft thud on the wood and was followed by another thud.

Lee understood several things at the same time: she wasn’t in a closet, and she wasn’t standing. She was lying down, there was wood above her and a vertical shaft of light. The thuds she heard came from earth being thrown.

She was in a box, and Robert was burying her.

Dirt seeped through, falling on her face, but she refrained from screaming. The light through the crack was the sky: it was becoming lighter. Robert had had to carry her out, put her in a box and dig a hole. That had probably taken a little time, and James was an early riser. He would realize that she wasn’t in the room and he might come out looking for her.

The noise of seagulls above told her that they were at the lighthouse. Robert must have put her into one of the long crates that had contained material for the site and was probably using Imogen’s soft flower bed to bury her, thinking that he could move her later.

There was no place where Robert could have hidden her from James, except under the ground.

Another clump of earth hit the crate and the crack went dark too. She ought to scream, kick the crate open and try to run, but she knew it was the wrong thing to do. It would make Robert desperate, and desperate people acted with violence. To be buried alive was one of the most feared deaths in the world, but Lee’s grave would be shallow. Robert had no time to dig a deep one, and that would be her salvation.

Her heart beat as solemnly as a funeral drum, and her throat narrowed. Lee told herself to breathe slowly so as not to waste the little oxygen there was in the crate.

Robert ran away to get back into the house, hide his dirty clothes and wash before anyone saw him. He had to put on a calm face and prepare a plausible story for James and Imogen when they found Lee missing.

But she wouldn’t die — not today! Lee gritted her teeth and kicked the bottom of the crate with all the strength of her naked feet. She was going to waste oxygen doing that, but it was her only chance.

She had been born in the dirt and mud, where stories of people being buried alive by mistake in shallow graves like this one were told almost with glee. Poor people knew how to kick and claw themselves out of a soft hole.

Lee kicked, and the wood broke. She could feel the splinters entering her feet, but she paid no heed. She pulled her legs back inside the tight crate so that the earth would fall to the bottom.

“Vivien!”

It was James, calling for her in the distance. The snappy little dogs were with him. They would smell her. Lee roared as loudly as she could. No, she was not going to die!

Her arms gave the top of the crate a mighty shove, and the earth above her was displaced toward her feet, falling through the hole and allowing her to move the little that was left on top of her. Her hand shot out, grasping the emptiness.

No, not the emptiness: another hand grasped hers and she was pulled out into the sun.

"Vivien!" James cradled her, looking desperately at her face. “Vivien, what the hell—?”

“Robert!” she cried, gulping the air.

It was clear that James understood nothing, but fury was quick to take over him. He picked her up and marched toward the house. Lee kept sucking air in through her mouth instead of speaking.

At the door of the terrace, Imogen stood in her dressing gown, her wan face full of surprise and horror when she saw Lee covered in dirt.

“What happened?” she asked.

James swept past her. Robert was in the hall of his ancestors, with their swords, axes and armors, but he didn’t seem willing or capable of grabbing a weapon to keep James at bay. He looked like he had reached the end of the line.

After depositing Lee on the sofa, James leapt at Robert and struck him down with a blow so hard it echoed from stone to stone. Robert did nothing to defend himself as James pummeled him.

“You fucking freak!”

Imogen shrieked. “You’ll kill him. James, please!”

Two women from the kitchen and the gardener appeared, but they stood without knowing what to do while the master of the house lay on the floor and his nephew beat him.

Running forward to grab James’ arm, Imogen cried, “Please!”

But in full beast mode, James pushed her aside. Lee took another deep breath and managed to tell poor, bewildered Imogen, “Robert killed Mia.”

James’ fist froze in the air and he turned toward Lee.

“I found out, that’s why he tried to kill me,” she added.

Robert was not unconscious, although his face was a mess of blood and both his eyes were swollen shut. It was as if he were waiting, even hoping, to be beaten to death. James’ face changed from anger into something like madness, and Imogen saw it. “No, James. James, he didn’t kill Mia!”

She faced her nephew. The scene was like the tableau of a tragedy, Lee thought helplessly.

“My love, no,” Robert said from the ground, choking in his own blood. “Please, love, be quiet. I beg you.”

Imogen shook her head at her husband and repeated softly. “He didn’t kill Mia, James.”

She collapsed, sitting sideways on the ground.

“I did.”

THIRTY-TWO

When James awoke and Lee wasn’t there, he went downstairs looking for her and heard yapping inside a room. Robert was coming in from a walk, he said. It seemed strange that he had gone out and not taken the dogs. It seemed even stranger that his clothes should be full of dirt.

And then James saw Lee’s medal on the ground just outside the study.

Robert didn't want his nephew to open the door for the dogs, but James ignored him. The three little creatures ran out, angry to be imprisoned even for a moment. They ran toward the lighthouse, and James ran after them.

He didn’t put two and two together; he was just afraid that Lee might have met with an accident. He ran out looking for her and found her inside a hastily-dug grave.

It was still hard for him to understand any of it now, as they sat in the drawing room across from Imogen. The police had arrived, but they were still waiting for the officers who would make a formal arrest of the murderous couple. Paramedics had tended to Robert and left. His face was unrecognizable, a bloodied mess where the eyes had become mere horizontal lines. He didn’t speak.

James held Lee close to him, as if he were protecting her but also being shielded from what he was discovering. She still had dirt on her face, hair and in the folds of her clothes.

Imogen hadn’t stopped trembling. She looked at the floor, not at them, but she talked with the relief and even eagerness of a person who had held onto a poisonous secret for too long and could finally confess it.

“Robert is a handsome man. Women would throw themselves at him. I suppose at one point I let myself go, and I accepted the idea that affairs would happen sometimes, and that it was only sex. But Mia was too close to home — she was James’ wife. I would always have to see Mia and imagine them together.”

James didn’t speak. He looked at Imogen as if he were seeing her for the first time. The only warm-blooded person in the family. The woman who had been a mother to Caitlin.

“I had to confront Robert, and I did. I said Mia was his niece! I could see Robert was overwhelmed by her, but he swore to me that it would end.”

There was a whimper from Robert. He was crying, although the tears hardly managed to make their way out of his bloated eyes.

Imogen's gaze was lost as she went on, "The two of you are so young and beautiful, you don’t know what it’s like to lose a love that has been there for a long time. We may seem like two old people to you but look …” She gestured toward a large photo of them on the mantelpiece. “We were young once, and madly in love. We were just like you are now.”

As Imogen went on speaking, Lee’s eyes wandered over the images of them laughing, holding each other: those were the good scenes of their marriage. The ones Imogen had wanted to preserve.

"I suffered as I aged, yes,” she continued, “because a man can still remain attractive, even in his sixties, and past forty-five it seems to a woman that the world is full of beautiful and much younger rivals. They’re everywhere. You see your husband looking at girls with desire, though his arm may still be over your shoulder. He is going to care for you, because you’ve grown roots together. There is the memory of complete happiness, there is all the time that passed — but he doesn’t want you. He wants a world of youth.”

Guilt and misery emanated from Robert, although he made no sound.

“But, you see, I never thought that Robert would leave,” Imogen said. “I thought his life was with me, even if his desires were elsewhere. I thought he understood that once he made one of these girls his wife, she would lose her appeal, and he would have lost me, the person who really knew and loved him.

“For the first time, Robert was talking about another woman, telling me that he was torn. Mia seemed like a way for him to start life again. He was struggling, but there was the very great chance, the almost certain chance, that she would win.”

Neither James nor Lee broke the silence that followed, and Imogen gathered her courage and raised her eyes to them.

“I went to talk to her. Robert didn’t know, so he couldn’t have stopped me. It was a weekend, and I remembered that she liked to walk on the beach in the afternoon, or by the cliff, and I went straight there to see if I could avoid gossip by avoiding the staff. When she saw me, she understood that I knew. She was such a child, wasn’t she? It was like only she and her needs existed. She apologized and said that she loved Robert, and she needed to think about the baby.” Imogen scoffed, though her face showed immense pain. “I didn’t know about the baby, but I understood then that it was all over for me. Of course Robert would leave me, he was finally going to be a father.”

The silence now lasted a little longer. Lee glanced at James and saw that he would be unable to say anything until Imogen got to the end of her story.

“I told Mia that she didn’t love Robert, that she loved James.” Imogen suddenly looked angry, as she would have looked at the cliff with Mia. “She admitted it. She said she would always love James, but that it was better to be loved, and that Robert loved her, not me. I saw it then, that Robert was her revenge on you, James, for not loving her. She was taking my whole life away on a whim, just to hurt you.”

There was still no answer, not a movement or word from her audience. She stopped and sighed. “I lost my head, and I pushed her. That’s all.”

The lady of the house smoothed her dressing gown over her knees. She would need to change soon, before she was taken away by the police. But she was almost done. “I came home and said nothing — but you called us later to tell us what had happened, and Robert understood what I had done. He didn’t sit weeping for Mia, though. He just held me, and he begged my pardon. He said that he had driven me to murder, and that he would never let me go to prison.” She gave another small laugh through tears that had begun falling on her cheeks. “Mia was dead, and Robert was back. And he loved me so much that he would do anything for me not to be condemned.”

James had to swallow twice before managing to say, “Do you mean that the death of a young woman and a baby seemed all right to you, as long as you kept your precious Robert — a liar, a cheat, a cheap ladies’ man?”

Imogen’s eyes were sad, lined and faded as she nodded. “Yes, James. You see, this is what love is after a while, when the crazy passion goes. You pretend to believe each other’s lies, and then you help hide each other’s crimes.”

Her nephew’s disgust showed on his face. “That’s not love.”

Turning toward Lee, Imogen shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to you. I guess Robert was protecting me.”

She gave a small smile at the thought.

After the police took them away, Lee said, “I want to go home.”

She showered to get rid of the dirt as James threw their things into a bag, and they returned to Deerholt. He drove in silence, his face pale. Every now and again he would give a small shake of the head, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had seen and heard. His wife had been unfaithful and the baby she was carrying not even his; his uncle had betrayed him; the aunt he loved was a murderess. The woman who had brought up Caitlin was going to jail, and he would have to tell his sister.

His hand searched for hers, and he held it firmly. She had ended up in a box, under the earth. He shook his head more decisively, as if to dispel the vision, but still said nothing.

What was there to say? It felt as if they were inhabiting a strange unreality; as if they had stepped into another dimension, where nothing was or ever would be the same.

In Deerholt, James washed her again in the bathtub, claiming there was still dirt in her hair.

At night, when Lee lay against his chest, he said, “I wouldn’t have put an affair past Mia, but I didn’t see that she was actually having one — much less with Robert. She used to talk about how old and ridiculous he was, but he had something she wanted, I guess. He gave her attention.” James was silent for a moment, before adding, “I thought Mia had killed herself because telling me about the baby hadn’t made me love her. What an idiotic egoist I am.”

Lee thought of Attie, who had seen Mia for the emotional blackmailer she was. James had known she was playing games, but he had felt too guilty to see all her machinations. Mia had told James about the child, and then she had told Robert — and for that she had been killed.

“Sometimes people are good at hiding who they are,” Lee replied. “If you’re not cut of the same cloth, you can’t possibly imagine certain things.”

She should know. He had paid attention to her. He had known she wasn’t telling him everything, but he had never suspected her of being a criminal.

“I’m not sure the truth is better,” he said. “It’s still my fault.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. Human feelings are the most powerful force on earth, and we should never play with them. Not if we can help it. Look at the chain reaction that was set, the moment I married Mia. A person and an unborn child dead and two ruined, including a woman I loved like a mother. If I had not been selfish, none of this would have happened.”

“What do we know?” Lee wondered. "We do our best, and we make mistakes."

“Perhaps.” He turned sideways to face her. “What I wanted to say is that this isn’t a mistake.”

“What isn’t?”

She could tell that it was difficult for him to put his thoughts into words, but he tried. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more horror or more relief than when I saw your hand come out of that mound of earth.” He caressed her cheek with his thumb. “The day I saw you in that hotel in London, it broke my heart that you thought you had to go through life alone. I only had to see you like that once to feel more for you than I’ve ever been able to feel for Mia.”

“James, you don’t know me …”

"I want to know you. I want you with me.”

The time to tell him is now. Tell him. Beg his forgiveness.

No, I can’t tell him now. Not after what he has just gone through. All the certainties of his life are gone.

When he pulled her close to him, there was his warmth, the pulse in his throat beating against her cheek, his strength. The feeling of unreality was gone because he was there.

She had a choice to make.

“I want to stay,” Lee said in a whisper.

“Good.”

THIRTY-THREE

The worst wasn’t over. The worst was telling Caitlin, and James went on his own to Oxford the very next morning, hoping that Caitlin wouldn’t read the story online or in a newspaper before he got there. Lee insisted that he travel without her, as the siblings would need their privacy. He stayed away for two days.

On Tuesday she woke up to find his car outside and went in search of him. He was at the cliff, still brooding as he stared down. He might never stop believing that he had set off the events that had killed Mia and made a murderer of his aunt.

“How is Caitlin?” Lee asked as she reached him.

James shrugged. The girl must be wearing the same white, haunted look that was on his face, and she would probably take a while to fully process what had happened.

“When I was little, Aunt Im used to come to the house just to see me,” he said. “Just to hug me, kiss me and sit in my room. I heard stories about good fairies, and I always pictured her. Even when I grew up, it was always her face I associated with kindness.”

“She is kind. She lost her head, James.”

“Yes, and I should know a bit about that. Too bad she lost it over a piece of scum.”

“Will you not go see her?”

“Caitlin is going. I said I needed some time and she understood. She thinks it’s because of Mia, and in part it is, but …” He looked at her. “I know how much it will hurt to see my aunt in prison. She doesn’t belong there.”

“No, she doesn’t. Sometimes it’s just the work of a second, isn’t it? Just seeing red.”

She shouldn’t sound as if she knew what she was talking about, but he didn’t seem to notice this time. He cradled her face between his hands. “How are you?”

“I’m all right.”

“Promise?”

She had managed to stave off the trauma of being buried alive. It would probably come to haunt her later, when there was less to deal with. Either that or she was a little too used to horror. 

But Imogen's words and her sad, defeated face played in Lee's head like a film stuck in a loop. After a while we pretend to believe each other’s lies, and then we hide each other’s crimes.

Could the crazy feeling that made her long for James even when he was next to her turn into something with deep roots — something that would last and not be ugly?

How could it? James had just found out that his wife, aunt and uncle had all lied to him. He had grown to care for Lee, and she had lied every day for weeks.

There wasn’t a good choice anymore. Lee had to pick the whirlpool or the rock: which one gave her the best chance of survival? Because she had to survive, as she had always done.

Ten days after the events at Rosemount, they had returned to a semblance of normal life. The hours went by full of needs, worries and pleasures, and the evenings were still warm and beautiful in August. It seemed like a good idea to go listen to a famous actress read poetry at the ruins of an abbey nearby.

“Summer is almost over,” James said as they lay in bed. “The days will get shorter.”

“It’s not over yet,” Lee said, trying to hold on to what was slipping away, a minute at a time.

“I’ve never liked September,” he said, caressing her back. “It always feels like a time for serious decisions.”

He would have to decide whether he wanted to help Imogen and Robert’s defense, for one, by paying for their legal expenses. The paparazzi were already after him and Caitlin, and his life would once more become a circus.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said simply.

If she were truly Vivien, she would stand by his side, under the savage scrutiny of the press.

How long would it be before some nosy journalist dug up her fake identity? How long before her photograph was reproduced so often that a mark from her past recognized her?

As he got into the shower, James didn’t sing as he sometimes did. He was sad, and Lee would have done anything to take his sorrow away, but she could only add to it. How long would it be before he found out that she had infiltrated his home under false pretenses?

It would be better if he found out from her, but she could never sit there and tell him her whole story, watching disgust replace tenderness. It would be impossible for her to get the words out, one after the other, that made up a tale of deceit and greed.

The only thing that might save her was his anger.

Lee got up and went into the dressing room, taking a cloth bag from a drawer. The corridor was empty; none of the staff would be on the second floor in the evening. She ran to his safe on silent feet and opened it.

The diamonds were there, strewn in confusion, but Mia’s note was gone when she lifted the tray. Had James destroyed it, knowing now that it was a note of betrayal, not of suicide?

It was the note of a woman who hadn’t been worth his consideration or his forbearance — perhaps not even for a moment.

Lee took the tray and tipped the diamonds inside the cloth bag. She wasn’t careful about how she replaced it. If James opened the safe, he would immediately see that the jewels were gone. She locked the safe again.

The cloth hung from a string, bumping against her calf as she walked back to the room. It felt light, considering there were approximately twenty million dollars inside it. She couldn’t have taken only the ring; James might not notice it was gone, if he opened the safe that day. She had to take everything.

He stuck his head out of the bathroom, his hair and face wet.

“Did you get hungry?” he asked.

“No.”

Standing in a T-shirt, Lee held the bag in plain sight. He gave it a cursory glance before he said, “Don’t spoil your appetite. I’m taking you somewhere nice for dinner.”

“I won’t.”

James turned back inside, and Lee walked through the hot steam from the bathroom and on to the dressing room. If he heard her opening the suitcase, he might ask what she was doing. If he saw it, he might ask her if she was planning to leave again.

She opened the case and threw the cloth inside.

There was no excitement; she wasn’t even afraid.

She wasn’t afraid when she walked downstairs and he kissed her. He liked her red dress and smiled at the diamond brooch on her shoulder.

“Your hair smells so good,” he said, his lips against her head.

They drove for an hour with the top of the car down, and still Lee’s mind dwelt on details. She found herself calculating how long the light would last. She wondered where they would eat. She wondered what poems the actress would read, and whether she would know them.

She didn’t think about the fact that she had no exit strategy; that she didn’t even know where she would go when she left Deerholt; that Quinn knew nothing of what she was doing and would be appalled; that she shouldn’t involve him.

She thought instead of the gray of James’ suit — it was dove gray — and of how white the cuffs of his shirt looked. She thought of his dark hair, blowing in the wind, of the line of his cheek, always of his hands.

On the radio Ella Fitzgerald began to sing,

Come to me, my melancholy baby

Cuddle up and don’t be blue…

James turned with a smile, and his smile was like a spear through her neck, making her unable to speak. He sang along with Ella, and Lee looked out at the countryside flying by, so green.

A darkness was coming, as if a soft hood were being pulled over her head by an executioner. James wasn’t going to notice what she had done. He wasn’t going to stop her, scream at her, demand the truth. He wasn’t going to forgive her, because he didn’t know he needed to.

He had survived a bad childhood, like she had, and had fought to become a decent man rather than the botched product of others’ neglect. She hadn’t done as well.

He was looking for the absolute, not for the worthless.

The old abbey appeared in the distance, standing on a green knoll, and Lee knew there was nothing she could do to make him understand he needed to stop her. They would sit at the reading and then at dinner. They would go home and make love again, and he wouldn’t ask her anything. He wouldn’t open the safe.

She would dissolve sleeping pills in a glass of water, hand it to him and he would drink it — although he knew she had drugged him before.

James would do all that because he trusted her. Her hand shot up for a moment, ready to grab his arm. She would ask him to stop there, on the side of the road, and with the bright sun of evening on her face she would confess.

But he misunderstood the gesture and took her hand, and she didn’t say anything. She would rather die than see the revulsion in his eyes.

After a while we pretend to believe each other’s lies, and we hide each other’s crimes.

Would he hide hers? Did she have the right to expect it of him?

Three of the walls of the old abbey still stood, but the high curved arches held no roof. As they parked and walked through the door, Lee thought of people in the Middle Ages, building churches they hoped would reach the sky — as if they could bridge the distance between themselves and heaven.

There were candles everywhere, and chairs had been placed in a semi-circle around a slab of stone that was once the altar, although time had eroded it.

How sweet it was that James’ hand should be on the small of her back, his body close to hers, as he led her to their place. It was so sweet, so sweet.

They sat down on the second row of chairs, and when James kissed the corner of her lips, as if no one else were there, she wanted to cry. She didn’t cry easily, unless she had the mean old blues.

It was a keen pain to have him next to her and know it was only for a few more hours. Yet Lee seemed serene as the famous actress took her place behind the microphone at the altar. The audience clapped with enthusiasm until the actress nodded, asking for silence, and began to read in a melodious, trained voice. Lee held James’ hand. It was the last little bit she would have of him.

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear

James, I’m not worth possessing. You are, and that’s why I can’t have you.

…Gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.

Lee could do this for James: steal from him, run away and make him angry. She would make him hate her, and eventually she would just be the half-forgotten thief who had been there to make things worse when he had discovered terrible things about his family.

Wasn’t it best to have all the pain at once?

The actress began another poem; it was also by Sara Teasdale. How funny to listen to a sad poet from Missouri in an old English abbey.

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea …

James listened closely, his eyes on the ground, until he raised them.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright

His eyes were sharp. Did he know that she was going to run?

There was still a chance that he would force everything out into the open. There was still a chance.

Would he ask her: What’s the matter?

If he asked, would she lie?

James, I am so scared of staying. I’ve never been so scared of anything.

Why, Vivien?

My name isn’t Vivien …

The actress went on, captive to the drama of the words and oblivious to theirs,

Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

We hope you’ve enjoyed Broken Waves.

James’ anger will ignite the plot of Lives Undone, Book 2 in the Deadly Lies trilogy, as they have to face more danger and mystery — and as he realizes he will do anything to keep Lee safe from her own worst impulses…

Here’s what readers are saying about Lives Undone:

“To say I liked the story would be an understatement. What a breathtaking experience to be Lee and James. Just when I thought I had it figured out, it would change direction ...”

“Ms. Moore makes me feel things with every word like I'm experiencing them for real.”

“I read a lot of books, and this has gone up to the top of my list!”

***

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Other books by the same author:

Historical romance as Lara Blunte:

The Last Earl

The Abyss

True Born

To Be King

(Winner of the Wattys 2015)

Contemporary romance as Lara Blunte:

A Man in Africa