Billie had exclaimed with pleasure. ‘Do you remember how you felt that night? What you were thinking about?’
Alexei had tensed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he had confirmed, but he had not gone on to share any revelations on that score, although it had seemed to her that he was rather distant for the rest of that day and, indeed, the days that followed. Her elation that he had at last recalled some facet of that evening had gradually dwindled when he’d failed to mention it again.
Sometimes they played at being tourists, going further afield to sleepy hilltop villages where they wandered round market stalls piled high with fresh produce in dazzling colours and bought home-made bread, olives, honey and also armfuls of lavender that Billie loved to use to scent the chateau. To Alexei’s amusement, Marie, the
