Rosalind pushed the rising anger deeper into her stomach. He was trying to start a fight, that was all. Get her angry so he could apologise and they could kiss and make up and she’d forget what they’d been talking about in the first place.

It was the same way he’d got out of every discussion that mattered for years. Any time she mentioned changing the way they lived their lives. Coming clean. Being together.

She’d stopped seeing it, after a while. Stopped asking.

But now … everything seemed clearer this weekend.

Including the fact she didn’t have to play the game his way any longer.

‘You didn’t tell me because you knew it would incriminate you if anybody knew. Which I assume is the same reason you didn’t tell Isobel, and why she believed you were having an affair with Clementine.’

‘I told you I wasn’t,’ he snapped. ‘You should have believed me.’

She got to her feet. ‘I believe in finding the truth,’ she said, feeling more like Dahlia than she ever had on a film set.

‘Rosalind, wait.’ Hugh grabbed for her hand across the desk, all his bitter anger gone, replaced with an earnest, loving smile. One she might have believed, before today.

‘This could be what we’ve been waiting for. An opportunity for us.’ His thumb brushed lightly against the back of her hand, caressing it, as he spoke. ‘I mean, with this murder, everything is going to come out, you’re right, of course it is. And as long as we stick together, we can help the police find the real culprit, yes? And then you and I … maybe it could be our time, at last.’

‘You’d leave Isobel?’ Never, in forty years, had he come out and said that. Oh, he’d hinted, he’d given hope, but he’d never said it.

‘Of course I would. For you. We need to weather this storm together, that’s all. Make sure Larch understands what really happened here this weekend.’

‘That’s what I want too.’

She met his gaze, held it for a long moment, drinking in the last of the love that she saw there.

Then she pulled her hand away.

‘I honestly don’t know if you were involved in this or not,’ she said, stepping back. ‘I don’t think you killed Clementine or Marcus yourself. I don’t think you could. But I don’t think you’re crying over either of them, either.’

‘Rosalind—’

‘I don’t want you to leave your wife.’ She felt the truth of the words as she spoke them. ‘I want to find out the truth.’

His face darkened, ruddy with an anger she wasn’t used to seeing from him. All his charm, his affection, had been stripped away, and she could barely look at the man left behind.