When she spoke she could hear her voice shaking.

‘I’ll be all right when I’ve calmed down. Perhaps you should go now.’

‘No, I won’t leave you like this. You shouldn’t be alone. Sit down.’

He guided her to a chair and left her for a moment, returning with a glass which he held out.

‘Drink this.’

Another choke of laughter burst from her. ‘It’s champagne.’

‘It’s all I could find. They seem to have cleared everything else away.’

‘I can’t drink champagne at my husband’s funeral.’

‘Why not? You didn’t give a damn for him, did you?’

She looked up and found him watching her with an inscrutable expression.

‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘I didn’t.’

Elise took the glass, drained it and held it out for a refill.

He obliged and watched her drink the second glass before saying, ‘Then I wonder why you’ve been crying so much.’

‘What do you mean? You haven’t seen me shed a tear today.’

‘Not today, no. But when you’re alone.’

It was true. In the depths of the night she’d wept her heart out, not for Ben, but for her desolate life, her ruined hopes, above all for the laughing young man who’d come and gone so many years ago. There was nothing of him now but aching memories.

It could all have been so different. If only-

Desperately she shut that idea off, as she’d done so often before.

But how had this man known?

‘It’s in your face,’ he said, answering her unspoken question.

‘You tried hard to conceal the truth, but make-up can only do so much.’

‘It fooled the others.’

‘But not me,’ he said softly.

At any other time she might have thought she heard a warning. Now there was only relief that he seemed to understand so much.

‘Drink up,’ Vincente said suddenly, ‘and I’ll take you out for a meal.’

His lordly assurance that she would follow his lead irritated her.