Chapter 8A clock in the distance struck one o’clock. At almost the same moment there was a faint sound in the passage outside Aria’s bedroom door. She switched off the reading lamp that stood by her side, plunging the room into darkness.
She was still dressed in the black evening gown that she had worn for dinner, but she had flung a wrap over her shoulders and now, despite the warmth, she found herself shivering as she listened.
It seemed to her that a century of time rather than a few hours had passed since she had come up to her bedroom and deliberately made no effort to go to bed. Instead she had sat pretending to read, holding the book in front of her eyes, but not seeing the printed pages.
Now, what she had anticipated had happened, and another sound told her all too clearly that
