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Did he have to go? Did they really have to part? Was there no way they could be together?

Alex didn’t even want to glance at her watch, although she was aware that time had likely passed faster than she was presuming. They would need to disentangle themselves soon.

‘Harry, can I ask you something personal?’

‘I suspect you’re going to anyway,’ he said, stirring and looking at the time for her. He was polite enough not to mention the lateness but she could tell their few hours of intimacy was now already her past and she would shortly have to dress again, allow the mantle of respectability to descend onto her shoulders, and to play the good wife once more.

‘I feel I must ask.’ She paused only briefly. ‘Why are you not in love with someone already?’

‘I am.’ He threw her a shrugging glance. ‘But it’s a hopeless love.’

She swallowed. ‘All right, I walked into that. I should have said why aren’t you married?’

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and she missed his large, dependable warmth immediately. ‘Never found the right girl.’

‘Oh, come on, Harry. Women must have been flinging themselves at you for years.’

He gave a soft snort.

‘Let’s approach this another way.’

‘Must we?’ He stood and began picking up his clothes.

She noted he covered himself now, suddenly coy. He was feeling exposed by her question, no doubt.

‘I insist. Is there anyone in your life?’

‘There’s you.’

‘I don’t count.’ She sat up against the bedhead and watched him dress.

‘Why?’

‘You know why.’ He was quick, already pulling on socks, his attention diverted to scan for shoes. This was no doubt a throwback from his military days. ‘Who else?’

‘My mother.’

She laughed. ‘She doesn’t count either. Every boy loves his mum. There have to be others . . . and don’t say your aunt or your favourite dog or horse. Give me the truth. I deserve it.’

She waited while Harry appeared to think on this as he quietly did up the laces of his shoes. The bed rocked softly as his weight shifted and the silence, she realised, had also shifted into uncomfortable. In a heartbeat the atmosphere had thickened with a tension she’d not felt around him previously. She wished she could pull the question back, never utter it again, but it was out and he was clearly working out how best to reply.

‘There is someone, isn’t there, Harry? Someone you’re running from. It’s why you’re here in York on an errand no one asked you to make?’

The sudden stillness in the room – Harry now like a statue with his back to her, head bowed – gave her the answer she hadn’t realised until this moment she’d not wanted to discover, even though to all intents and purposes she had bullied him into responding.

‘There’s Bethany,’ he said, voice sounding as heavy as the weight he seemed to carry on his shoulders.

‘Bethany?’ Alex repeated, trying not to choke on the name.

‘My brother’s fiancée.’

She hesitated but as Harry didn’t elaborate, she pressed, like painfully picking away at a scab. ‘Why is your brother’s fiancée in this conversation?’

Harry straightened and stood. He didn’t meet her gaze yet, instead choosing to look out of the window into the distance to trees and fields. She knew exactly what he was seeing; this was her bedroom whenever she stayed with Charlotte. They’d been coming to the cottage since they were youngsters and if asked she could describe the landscape he was blinking at with accuracy. She refused to follow his gaze but fixed hers upon him and the internal struggle that showed itself in the frown and the shadows that seemed to dance behind his distant look. The memory of him near naked in the swimming pool yesterday flashed through her mind and how she had been unable to raise her gaze from the exposed, muscled chest that sported silvery scars and puckered flesh she had only today given what she called healing kisses to.

Bethany.

She didn’t mean to hate the name or the poor woman it belonged to, but Alex tripped over them both in her mind like a fallen log, an obstacle to her way forward.