So there was absolutely no reason for her to feel awkward about going to bed that night. No reason to lie, twitchy and self-conscious, when Torr wished her goodnight in a neutral voice, turned on his side and fell asleep.

Mallory was left to listen resentfully to him breathing. It wasn’t fair that he could fall asleep so easily when she couldn’t relax. That dip in the wretched mattress meant that she had to cling tenaciously to her side of the bed to stop rolling against him, but it was bitterly cold still, and the warmth of his body was dangerously inviting. She couldn’t snuggle into him, though. Somehow it seemed more uncomfortable now that there was the possibility that they might be friends than when she had been certain that she disliked him.

Torr was lying with his back to her, but she could tell from his slow, steady breathing that he was asleep. At least, she thought he was. Resolve wavering, Mallory listened harder, but his breathing was slow and steady. He was definitely asleep, she told herself. He wouldn’t notice if she froze on the edge of the bed or if she moved a bit nearer.

Decision made, Mallory inched closer to his warm bulk. The mattress sagged, and the old bedsprings creaked rustily when she moved, and she held her breath, but Torr didn’t stir.

Snuggling into his back with relief, she pulled the duvet tight around her so that she was cocooned in warmth, and then, because she didn’t know what else to do with it, she put her arm over him and rested her hand on his chest. She could feel it rising and falling beneath her palm. He had washed his hair in the bath, and it smelt clean and fresh and vaguely lemony. She could smell soap on his skin, too, overlaid with a faint hint of woodsmoke from the fire.

Torn between the luxury of feeling warm and her disquieting awareness of Torr’s nearness, Mallory spent another night drifting in and out of sleep. Every time she surfaced she was aware with a tiny shock that she was still pressed against him, but a sleepy part of her brain would remind her that it was only because she was cold, so that was all right.

Once, though, she woke with a start when he stirred and turned over. She had to quickly turn too, or she would have ended up face to face with him. The next moment she froze as Torr pulled her back into the shelter of his body and kissed her shoulder, just where it curved into her throat, mumbling something unintelligible.

Every cell in her body jumped in shock at the touch of his mouth on her skin, and Mallory inhaled sharply, but Torr was still sound asleep. There was no embarrassed apology, no hasty pulling away. Instead he wrapped his arm closer around her, holding her tight against him, and buried his face in her hair with a slumbering sigh.

So.

Mallory lay very still. Now what? She could disentangle herself and push him away, but that might wake him up, and that really would be awkward. It was obvious that he had just reached for her out of instinct. He probably thought that she was somebody else-another woman he was used to sharing his bed with.

Who?

The question jolted Mallory out of her slumber. Still held close into the curve of his body, she lay turning it over in her mind. Who exactly was Torr expecting to find lying next to him in bed?

His ex-wife? It seemed unlikely. Torr had been divorced for ten years, and from the little he had said she had gathered that the marriage hadn’t been a matter of grand passion on either side.

So it must be someone who’d been in his life more recently. They had lived such separate lives since they were married that Torr could easily have been having a passionate affair without her having any idea, Mallory realised. But if he was in love with someone else, why marry her?

It could only mean that the other woman wasn’t free, she decided. Perhaps she was married, or she might have ended the relationship for reasons of her own. For the first time Mallory wondered whether Torr too knew the pain of rejection. Could it be that beneath that unyielding exterior he also knew how it felt to have his heart broken?

The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. It would explain why he smiled so rarely, and why he had decided on a loveless marriage. Inheriting Kincaillie could have been just the impetus he needed to try and break free of painful memories.

Hadn’t he said as much when he’d told her that they were going to Scotland? Mallory remembered. It will be a fresh start for both of us, he had said. God knows, we both need it.

She had been so wrapped up in her own misery over Steve that it had never occurred to her that Torr might be suffering too. Lying tucked into his side, craving his warmth, Mallory felt ashamed of herself. She had never used to be so self-absorbed. Wretchedness had made her boring and selfish, and it was time she stopped.

If Torr was unhappy, that would certainly explain why he had chosen to throw himself into the enormous task of restoring Kincaillie-such an unlikely project for a man as hardheaded and realistic as he was. Instead of wallowing in his misery, the way she had done, he had obviously chosen to set himself such a difficult goal that he simply wouldn’t have time to think about what he was missing, just as she had decided to do earlier that day.

Without being aware of it, Mallory started to relax. Knowing that she might not be the only one hurting made things easier somehow. Torr might understand more than she thought, and if he was finding it hard to let go of a dream he had lost…well, she was the last person to blame him for that. Perhaps, after all, they had more in common than she had thought.

Torr’s breath stirred her hair, and his arm was heavy over her, pinning her against him and effectively making it impossible for her to move without waking, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Mallory decided to forget about moving away. If they were going to keep sleeping on this mattress, she would just have to get used to it.

She would have to get used to a lot of things over the next year, so she might as well make a start.

The restless night took its toll the next morning. Mallory woke feeling jaded. She found herself watching Torr more closely, wondering if she was right in her assumptions, but as usual he gave nothing away. If he did have a broken heart, he was hiding it pretty well-certainly a lot better than she had done. And, in spite of everything she had told herself about how much easier it would be if she and Torr were friends, what she remembered most about the night was the feel of his mouth on her shoulder.

Mallory shivered slightly at the memory. She wasn’t quite sure how that had felt, but it certainly wasn’t like being friends.

So she was relieved when she came back from walking Charlie to discover that the kitchen was empty. Torr had tidied up and disappeared to his survey.

Having wrinkled her nose at the state of it when she was getting dressed that morning, Mallory decided to tackle the bedroom first. She found a pair of rubber gloves, pushed up the sleeves of her fleece and pulled the bed into the centre of the room with a determined expression. If she was going to do this, she would do it properly.

When Torr came to find her a few hours later she was on her knees, wiping down the skirting board with a damp cloth. It was always so cold when she was dressing and undressing that she hadn’t wasted time inspecting the room properly, and when she did, she was horrified that she had actually spent two nights in it.

She had spent the morning brushing down spiders’ webs, sweeping under the bed and vacuuming every inch of the floor. She had emptied out the musty wardrobe, and removed the old newspapers that lined the drawers in the chest. Most of them were dated 1976, and, judging by the accumulated dust and dirt, Mallory wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover that was the last time the room had been cleaned at all.

Now the furniture had been wiped and polished, the window was clean, and she was just about to wash the floor. It was dirty work, and she had soon removed her fleece, so her T-shirt was looking distinctly grubby.

Torr paused in the doorway. ‘I’ve put the kettle on. Do you want some lunch?’

‘That sounds great.’ Mallory sat back on her heels and wiped the hair from her forehead with the back of her arm, unaware that she was leaving a dusty smear. ‘I’ve just finished.’

Looking around the room, Torr’s gaze came back to rest on her face, and one corner of his mouth quirked. The silky dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, but stray strands were sticking to her forehead and there were smudges of dirt on her nose and cheeks. She was almost unrecognisable from the stylish and immaculate interior designer he had first met.

‘Quite a transformation,’ he said.

She got to her feet and brushed the knees of her jeans. ‘It was absolutely disgusting,’ she told him.

‘Actually, I was thinking about you.’

‘Oh.’ Mallory laughed awkwardly and grimaced as she looked down at her filthy T-shirt. ‘I must look a complete mess!’

‘I was just thinking that you look better than I’ve ever seen you,’ said Torr slowly.

There was a tiny pause. Her eyes met his, only to skitter away. ‘What, with spiders’ webs in my hair, smut on my nose and dirty jeans?’

‘Even with all of that.’

‘You’ve done a good job in here,’ said Torr that night, as he sat on the edge of the bed to take off his socks. He looked around him. ‘It’s not a bad room now you can see it properly. It seems twice as big, for a start.’

‘I know.’ Mallory propped herself up on one elbow to survey the results of her hard work with some satisfaction. She had washed the walls as well as the floor, before packing away their clothes in the newly polished chest of drawers and the rickety old wardrobe, which had had an airing for the first time in years. Even in the feeble light of the overhead bulb the room seemed fresher and cleaner and tidier, and bigger, as Torr had said. It smelt better, too.