He trapped her hand against his skin and leaned over the inches of grass to kiss her.

“I say we cross that bridge if we come to it.”

THE REST OF SATURDAY passed in a haze, and most of Sunday, too. Sunday afternoon, as planned, Sasha drove into town to find a telephone box, from which he would call Harry to say that he’d had car trouble and would have to stay the night while the engine was being repaired, so he wouldn’t return to Rome until Monday. Foolproof!

Iris asked to go along, too. She was curious about the town—she loved old buildings and the art inside them. But Sasha said no, he’d run his errands faster if he knew she was waiting for him.

“Errands? What errands?”

“You’ll see,” he said, kissing her good-bye.

So Iris just wandered drowsily around the garden, listening to the stream and to the songbirds, until she remembered her sketchbook. Of course, she’d had to pack it after all, under Ruth’s knowing eye, and her charcoals, too. She headed into the house and the small, hot bedroom. Neither Iris nor Sasha ever took the time to unpack, and the sketchbook lay at the bottom of her valise, under all her crumpled clothes, forgotten. She dug it out and turned to leave.

But some instinct forced her to stop at the door. The shutters were closed and the room was dark, and the air still smelled of human sleep. Iris felt as if she’d lived an entire lifetime since they’d arrived here Saturday morning, had burst into this room and made ravenous love, and afterward she’d brushed her hair in the scrap of mirror above the dresser. She’d almost forgotten about that envelope in Sasha’s suitcase, and what it contained.

But not quite.

Iris rested her hand on the doorframe and stared at her short, round fingernails. A little dirty, perhaps, even though she and Sasha had bathed in the stream together that morning, and Sasha had soaped and washed her thoroughly. But that’s what you got when you spent the day outdoors. When you spent the day laughing and playing, walking and talking, drinking and kissing, rolling stark naked on the grass and the floor and the bed, away on your first holiday with the man you loved—the man who loved you.

Who trusted you.

Iris tapped her fingers against the wood and turned around. She bent over Sasha’s valise, still on the floor, and opened the lid to rummage around.

She looked in the main compartment and the small one, the zippered pocket next to the lining.

The envelope was gone.