by Fiona Walker
Having been about to confide that the fattest of cheques had already been written, Legs found the words dying in her throat and the blood drained from her face. ‘Byrne’s here?’
She’d never for a moment imagined he would accept any invitation given his dislike of socialising and excessive pomp. But she hadn’t taken into account his Achilles heel, the need to understand his mother. Poppy’s olive branch had been grasped, and the consequences were potentially cataclysmic. Conrad would recognise him as Gordon straight away.
‘He’s taking a bath,’ Édith dropped her voice, glancing towards the hall. ‘Francis is livid Poppy invited him; he and my father are both convinced the prodigal son’s about to enact a Kind Hearts and Coronets family-tree felling. I suppose they could have a point. Jamie-go’s got to be prime suspect for the death threats. Hector’s under strict instructions to be civil to him, but you know how volatile my father can be after a couple of drinks. I thought we were lucky to get away without a murder last time, but tonight’s a dead cert.’ Looking at Legs’ left hand, her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you wearing the Kelly coat of arms on your ring finger? Is Francis buying engagement rings at Dublin Airport these days?’
‘I can’t get it off.’ Legs eyed the ring. ‘Did you say “Kelly”?’
‘A friend of mine has one just like it. Want help?’
She wasn’t sure she did want to take the ring off, but Édith had already taken her hand and was at tugging the ring. It was stuck fast. Before Legs could stop her, she’d put her finger in her mouth and was sucking at it, trying to loosen it with her tongue.
‘I always said you could twist anyone round your little finger,’ said a voice behind them.
Seeing two figures silhouetted in the door, Legs let out a nervous laugh.
‘What on earth are you two doing?’ Francis snapped.
Standing immediately behind him, Kizzy let out a startled cry. ‘I told you, Francis! I told you she wanted to punish me!’ She stormed past them and fled through the panelled service door with a sob.
‘Is she talking about you or me?’ Legs asked Édith shakily.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Francis huffed, starting to limp in pursuit, then letting out a few over-dramatic gasps of pain and deciding against it. ‘One of you two must go after her,’ he lowered his voice to a whisper; ‘she wants to talk about the letters.’
Raising a pair of amused, narrow eyebrows at Legs, Édith pulled off the ring with her teeth, almost swallowing it. Then, spitting it out onto her palm and wiping it dry with her opposite sleeve, she handed it back to Legs before sweeping out after Kizzy.
‘What does she know about the letters?’ she turned to demand of Francis.
‘Shh!’ Still framed in the doorway, he glanced over his shoulders at his stepmother’s guests. ‘I’d rather we didn’t speak about them in public tonight. And please don’t encourage my sister, Legs. You know full well she has a very malicious streak. ‘She …’ He took his deep, I-am-about-to-quote breath and Legs felt herself adopt the familiar brace position: identify quote, endure quote, interpret quote.
But to her relief, before he could start, his father’s booming voice called him away. ‘Francis! Come and tell Lord Palumbo about your plans for the new gallery in the tithe barns’.
It wasn’t a summons to be ignored. Nodding at Legs with that familiar, old-fashioned, ‘duty calls’ expression, he turned and limped away.
With a lump in her throat so big the tight strings of pearls around her neck threatened to shoot far and wide, Legs wondered whether that might be the last time she ever saw him. The dining room was empty. To her left, just a few paces away, was the service door in the panelling through which Kizzy had made her escape. It led to the back lobby from which she could run down onto the courtyard and out across the fields to Spywood.
But even as she pushed it open, she knew that she would be turning to climb the stairs not descend them. She had to warn Byrne that Conrad was here.
Chapter 40
Slotting Byrne’s heavy gold signet ring onto her little finger and clenching her fist to keep it there, Legs hurried along the back lobby in her toe-curling Moroccan pumps, taking the service stairs two at a time and racing around the first stair-turn with such silent speed that she didn’t notice the couple sitting at the top of the flight kissing until she almost landed between them.
She cannoned off bare scented shoulders, soft Wonderbras and bony collarbones, her face full of first red hair then black. Finally regaining her balance and straightening up, she clutched onto the banisters as Kizzy and Édith looked up at her in surprise, both rumpled and pink-cheeked with their lipstick worn off.
Muttering apologies, she edged hurriedly past them.
‘Wait, Legs!’ Kizzy called out. ‘We have to talk. I need to explain—’
‘No need,’ Legs raced on, realising that she’d just run head-first into a romantic reconciliation. It suddenly made perfect sense. Édith was the secret lover Kizzy had spoken about. It was Édith who had encouraged Kizzy to meet her birth mother, Édith from whom she always sought approval and with whom she matched one-liners like two bookends propping up a private joke collection. They must have fallen out because Édith refused to leave Jax, forcing Kizzy to run into Francis’s waiting arms, egged on by Poppy. Poor Francis had been completely out-manoeuvred. But Legs wasn’t concerned about Francis right now.
She burst out onto the main landing before knocking upon and then pushing open the doors to each bathroom on the landing in turn.
In the third bathroom along, magnificent naked male shoulders greeted her, tanned the colour of toffee and curved like the back of a Louis XV settee as they enfolded the end of the roll-edged bath.
Byrne was lying back in the deep, claw-footed tub, eyes closed. Fink was spread out wearily on the bathmat chewing a loofah.
As Legs stepped backward on tiptoes, Fink let out a gruff hello bark and Byrne’s eyes snapped open.
‘Sorry!’
‘Allegra!’ He reared out of the bath like a whale’s tail, dripping water everywhere as he grabbed a towel.
‘I’ll wait on the landing.’ She turned and bolted back out.
Legs couldn’t look him in the face as he stood framed in the doorway, dressed in hurriedly pulled-on jeans. Then she caught sight of his torso and found she couldn’t look him in the body either. He had a six pack. Who would have thought Gordon Lapis would look like one of those ‘Hunk of the Week’ posters stapled in the centre of teen girls’ magazines? The press would go mad for him.
‘I told you to go home,’ he whispered urgently, glancing towards the main stairs from which guests could be heard filtering between long gallery and dining room.
‘I haven’t told anyone who you are,’ she bleated, staring fixedly at a piece of cornicing.
‘What in hell are you doing here?’
Losing concentration on the cornicing, Legs found she was gaping at his chest again, marvelling at the breadth of his shoulders and the flat stomach. He had an outie belly button, she noted, and across one breastbone was a tattoo of a line of writing in an elaborate script that she couldn’t make out. She hurriedly forced herself to check out the ceiling once more. ‘I’ve been here all week.’
He let out a long sigh. ‘How did I guess you hadn’t just popped down from London to visit your mother yesterday?’
‘I was ill. I tried to leave – twice – but then Francis gave me the new Ptolemy Finch book to read.’
He didn’t appear to be listening, those flaming coal eyes wide with worry.
‘You kill him at the end, don’t you?’ she asked, looking him in the face once more.
He nodded vaguely, eyes so intense they almost fired her back against the wall.
Legs felt a bolt of illogical, angry grief. She hadn’t let herself fully believe it until now, even having left the book ten pages from the end when there seemed no other conclusion. ‘If your neighbours in the park out there find out who you are, they’ll lync
h you.’
He shrugged. ‘They’re not too happy about the book, it’s true.’
‘How can he die if he’s immortal?’
‘He sacrifices his immortality to kiss Purple.’
She knew that she must have read to within a few lines of this. She’d sensed it coming. Now he’d told her, she felt a great wash of emotion pulling her ankles from under her and spinning her round. She wanted to run along the corridor and grab the book from her bed. It all made such sense. But as usual, she went for the wisecrack in self-defence.
‘A lesson to us all in the dangers of open mouthed kissing,’ she muttered, eyeing him again.
They stared at each other for a ridiculous length of time. Fink moved on from the loofah to a sponge. Neither of them noticed a spider lowering itself boldly between them like a jewel thief on a wire.
But the call to dinner downstairs accompanied by the gong made them both jump.
‘I’d better get dressed,’ he said, not moving.
She nodded, equally frozen to the spot, her eyes tracing those words along his breastbone. ‘What does your tattoo say?’
‘Is geal leis an bhfiach dubh a ghearrcach féin,’ his deep voice breathed the words like a spell. ‘It’s Irish Gaelic: the raven likes his own nest. It’s a family saying.’
‘I have stars on one ankle,’ she told him. ‘It’s a family shape.’
He didn’t laugh.
‘What does “grime poo” mean?’ she asked.
His eyes softened with amusement, melting into hers. ‘Gráim thú,’ he corrected. ‘It means I love you.’
She stared at him for a long time, not trusting her own ears.
‘That would make some tattoo,’ she breathed.
His eyes were so intense they almost burned hers out. ‘Tattoos aren’t like rings; they’re not a part of your heart you give away. They stay with you.’
Slowly she held up her fist, uncurling her fingers one by one until she revealed the gold ring. ‘So take this away.’
Before she could react, out flew his hand, grasping hers, closing her fingers over the ring to keep it there.
Unable to stop herself, Legs launched herself forwards to kiss him.
‘You.’ He pulled her into the bathroom, talking urgently between kisses. ‘You – I – gorgeous creature – I – love –’
‘Grime poo too,’ she laughed, returning his kisses, amazed at the energy coursing through her, the sheer abandon of being in love.
But suddenly he pulled away, holding her face in his hands, those burning peat eyes unblinking.
She stared back at him in disbelief, lips buzzing so much she could barely speak. ‘Please don’t stop.’
His thumbs traced those pins and needles lips as though trying to erase the kiss.
‘What’s wrong?’ she begged.
‘You tell me.’
‘Conrad’s here.’
He took a moment to take this in before his face drained of colour.
‘He’s a pro,’ Legs assured him. ‘He won’t give you away. But he’ll use this, Byrne.’
‘It hardly matters does it? They’ll all know soon enough.’ He sounded like a man on death row, turning away to fetch the rest of his clothes.
She stayed in the doorway, watching him. Picking up a pair of socks, he straightened up, looked across at her, muttered ‘oh hell,’ before pulling her into the room and kicking closed the door to kiss her with knee-quaking thoroughness.
‘Please don’t tell me to go away again.’ She kissed him back eagerly, curling into his arms.
‘We couldn’t have met at a worse time.’
‘We couldn’t have met at all. That would have been so much worse.’
Fink and his sponge dodged out of the way as they span around the room kissing now. Far from getting dressed, Byrne was making terrific headway into the coral frock, his warm hands touching the most delightful of places. ‘I knew you’d catch me out, even before I met you. You flirted with Gordon for God’s sake. Nobody flirts with Gordon.’
‘I fancied Gordon from the moment he said he was going to call his new detectives Julie Ocean and Jimmy Jimee. I knew he couldn’t be as old and curmudgeonly as he made out to use Undertones song titles.’
‘You told me my skill was to build sexual tension over many months, years, books.’ He started to prise the dress off her shoulders, kissing the bare skin as it was revealed an inch at a time. ‘This isn’t months, Heavenly Pony.’
‘Sometimes.’ She kissed him back urgently between words, ‘sexual tension … is too … bloody huge … to need … building.’
The dress fell off one way and the hated turban flew off the other until she was sporting nothing but a pearl choker and a discreet star tattoo on one ankle.
‘Do you never wear underwear?’ he asked, taking a nipple in one mouth and making her stifle a squeal of pleasure.
The dinner gong was going again.
‘We’ll be in such trouble,’ she giggled.
‘I think we’ll skip the starter.’ He kissed the other nipple, manoeuvring her back against the wall.
‘Oh God – it’s almond soup to start tonight!’ she remembered.
‘Well that counts me out for a start.’ He put his hand between her legs and found her molten with excitement, ‘I’d rather drink from you.’
‘Oh please do.’ She managed to unbutton his trousers while still kissing frenziedly.
He lifted her knee to his side, running his hand from hip to ankle as he tilted his head to admire her tattoo, fingers lingering on the little inked stars. ‘These are neat.’
‘The family shapes,’ Legs laughed between kisses. ‘I always thought I should have had “live for the moment, live with the consequences” added.’
‘If it’s written in skin, you must live by the word.’ He moved closer still, kisses deepening, his hand enfolding hers and tightening as he felt the signet ring still encircling her little finger. ‘Until then, never let this go.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised, the ring a magic talisman now, making her fearless as she climbed his sides with her thighs, barely able to believe the excitement coursing through her veins.
There was a hammering on the door. ‘You in there Jamie?’
It was Francis.
‘Shit,’ Byrne breathed, quickly stepping forwards and putting a hand across Legs’ mouth to stop her squealing.
‘Yup – just shaving.’
‘We’re all waiting on you. Did you see Allegra at all before you went in there?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said, not committing either way, holding her tight to his naked chest.
‘Well bloody hurry up.’ Francis moved off, calling out her name.
Byrne wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her ear, speaking in barely a breath, his voice as soft as an Irish breeze. ‘We can both run away together. Tonight. You and me. Julie and Jimmy.’
She laughed breathlessly. ‘Do you mean it?’
‘I don’t want to be Gordon Lapis, Allegra. I want to be Jago Byrne, with you, on the run.’
‘I thought you wanted revenge?’
‘Right now, I want you more.’
She laughed even more, feeling increasingly hysterical, and he covered her mouth again. Then, sliding his hand away, he kissed her until all the oxygen seemed to float away from her brain in little bubbles containing exclamations like ‘wow!’ ‘zonkers!’ and ‘ker-wizz!’
‘What about the festival?’
‘There’s still a week before Gordon’s due to appear. Run away with me tonight, just tonight.’
‘Live for the moment, live with the consequences,’ she said shakily.
‘Your motto.’ He held her tightly.
‘How do we do it?’
‘You have to go back down there, sit through the meal; I can’t risk Conrad seeing me and it’ll ring too many alarm bells with the family if we both disappear. Tell Francis quietly that I’m unwell, that you’ve just found me throwing up in here. I’ll make su
re I stagger around looking suitably putrid for half an hour in case he checks, then I’ll get out and wait for you.’
‘Eascombe Cove,’ Legs said urgently. ‘I’ll take the tunnel from the cellars. We’ll meet there.’
He nodded, kissing her again. ‘I’ll be waiting.’ Then, as she reached for her clothes, he pulled something from a duffel bag on the chair by the bath and handed it to her. ‘Wear these.’
‘What the—?’ She unfolded a pair of freshly laundered Calvin Klein boxers.
‘Put them on,’ he insisted, looking up at her through his lashes. ‘It’s windy out there.’ His dark eyes sparkled. ‘And besides, if I can’t get in your pants right now this minute, which I sincerely wish I could, at least you can get in mine.’
He kissed her again, and it was all threatening to get completely out of hand when Fink, losing patience, crammed his wet nose and solid head between the two of them, wagging his long body for attention.
‘Eascombe Cove.’ Byrne planted one last, unforgettable kiss which seemed to breathe her right inside him. ‘I’ll wait all night if I have to.’
But no sooner had Legs pulled on the pants, along with the hated coral dress and turban, creeping out onto the landing, than Francis stepped out from the shadows of a doorway. Tie loosened and cheeks stained with colour, blond hair spilling across his face, he looked as angry as she’d ever seen him.
‘Legs … Jamie.’ He nodded to the figure silhouetted behind her in the bathroom.
‘Jago’s not feeling too well,’ Legs lied badly.
‘And he hasn’t even tried the soup,’ he drawled. ‘The trouble is, neither has anybody else. You really are spectacularly late for dinner, darling.’
