by India Grey
‘That’s enough.’
The words were raw, razor-sharp, spoken in the split second before his automatic defences kicked in and the shutters came down on his emotions. Deliberately Kit unfurled his fists and kept his breathing steady.
‘If you think finding your way around the castle is confusing I wouldn’t even try to unravel the relationships within this family if I were you,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t get involved in things you don’t need to understand.’
‘Why? Because I won’t be around long enough?’ she demanded, coming closer to him again.
Kit stiffened as he caught the scent of her again—warm, spicy, delicious. He turned away, reaching for the door handle. ‘Goodnight. I hope you have everything you need.’
He shut the door and stood back from it, waiting for the adrenaline rush to subside a little. Funny how he could work a field strewn with hidden mines, approach a car loaded with explosives and not feel anything, and yet five feet five of lying redhead had almost made him lose control.
He hated deception—too much of his childhood had been spent not knowing what to believe or who to trust—and as an actress, he supposed, Sophie Greenham was quite literally a professional in the art.
But unluckily for her he was a professional too, and there was more than one way of making safe an incendiary device. Sometimes you had to approach the problem laterally. If she wouldn’t admit that her feelings for Jasper were a sham, he’d just have to prove it another way.
CHAPTER SIX
SOPHIE felt as if she’d only just fallen asleep when a knock at the door jolted her awake again. Jasper appeared, grinning sheepishly and carrying a plate of toast in one hand and two mugs of coffee in the other, some of which slopped onto the carpet as he elbowed the door shut again.
‘What time is it?’ she moaned, dropping back onto the pillows.
Jasper put the mugs down on the bedside table and perched on the bed beside her. ‘Nearly ten. Kit said he’d bumped into you in the middle of the night trying to find your room, so I thought I’d better not wake you. You’ve slept for Britain.’
Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d been awake most of the night, partly because she’d been frozen, partly because she’d been so hyped up with indignation and fury and the after-effects of what felt like an explosion in the sexual-chemistry lab that sleep had been a very long time coming.
He picked up a mug and looked at her through the wreaths of steam that were curling through the frigid air. ‘Sorry for leaving you to wander like that. Just as well you bumped into Kit.’
Sophie grunted crossly. ‘Do you think so? I thought he was the ghost of the nymphomaniac countess. No such luck.’
Jasper winced. ‘He didn’t give you a hard time, did he?’
‘He thought it was extremely odd that we weren’t sharing a room.’ Sophie reached for a coffee, more to warm her hands on than anything. ‘I’m not exactly convincing him in my role as your girlfriend, you know. The thing is, he overheard me talking to Jean-Claude on the train and now he thinks I’m a two-timing trollop.’
‘Oops.’ Jasper took another sip of coffee while he digested this information. ‘OK, well, that is a bit unfortunate, but don’t worry—we still have time to turn it around at the party tonight. You’ll be every man’s idea of the perfect girlfriend.’
Sophie raised an eyebrow. ‘In public? In front of your parents? From my experience of what men consider the perfect girlfriend, that wouldn’t be wise.’
‘Wicked girl,’ Jasper scolded. ‘I meant demure, devoted, hanging on my every word—that sort of thing. What did you bring to wear?’
‘My Chinese silk dress.’
With a firm shake of his head Jasper put down his mug. ‘Absolutely not. Far too sexy. No, what we need is something a little more … understated. A little more modest.’
Sophie narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean frumpy, don’t you? Do you have something in mind?’
Getting up, Jasper went over to the window and drew back the curtains with a theatrical flourish. ‘Not something, somewhere. Get up, Cinderella, and let’s hit the shops of Hawksworth.’
Jasper drove Ralph’s four-by-four along roads that had been turned into ice rinks. It was a deceptively beautiful day. The sun shone in a sky of bright, hard blue and made the fields and hedgerows glitter as if each twig and blade of grass was encrusted with Swarovski crystals. He had pinched a navy-blue quilted jacket of Tatiana’s to lend to Sophie, instead of the military-style overcoat of which Kit had been so scathing. Squinting at her barefaced reflection in the drop-down mirror on the sun visor, she remarked that all that was missing was a silk headscarf and her new posh-girl image would be complete. Jasper leaned over and pulled one out of the glove compartment. She tied it under her chin and they roared with laughter.
They parked in the market square in the centre of a town that looked as if it hadn’t altered much in the last seventy years. Crunching over gritted cobblestones, Jasper led her past greengrocers, butchers and shops selling gate hinges and sheep dip, to an ornately fronted department store. Mannequins wearing bad blonde wigs modelled twinsets and patterned shirtwaister dresses in the windows.
‘Braithwaite’s—the fashion centre of the North since 1908’ read the painted sign above the door. Sophie wondered if it was meant to be ironic.
‘After you, madam,’ said Jasper with a completely straight face, holding the door open for her. ‘Evening wear. First floor.’
Sophie stifled a giggle. ‘I love vintage clothing, as you know, but—’
‘No buts,’ said Jasper airily, striding past racks of raincoats towards a sweeping staircase in the centre of the store. ‘Just think of it as dressing for a part. Tonight, Ms Greenham, you are not going to be your gorgeous, individual but—let’s face it—slightly eccentric self. You are going to be perfect Fitzroy-fiancée material. And that means Dull.’
At the top of the creaking staircase Sophie caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror. In jeans and Tatiana’s jacket, the silk scarf still knotted around her neck a lurid splash of colour against her un-made-up face, dull was exactly the word. Still, if dull was what was required to slip beneath Kit Fitzroy’s radar that had to be a good thing.
Didn’t it?
She hesitated for a second, staring into her own wide eyes, thinking of last night and the shower of shooting stars that had exploded inside her when he’d touched her wrist; the static that had seemed to make the air between them vibrate as they’d stood in the dark corridor. The blankness of his expression, but the way it managed to convey more vividly than a thousand well-chosen words his utter contempt …
‘What do you think?’
Yes. Dull was good. The duller the better.
‘Hello-o?’
Pasting on a smile, she turned to Jasper, who had picked out the most hideous concoction of ruffles and ruches in the kind of royal blue frequently used for school uniforms. Sophie waved her hand dismissively.
‘Strictly Come Drag Queen. I thought we were going for dull—that’s attention-grabbing for all the wrong reasons. No—we have to find something really boring …’ She began rifling through rails of pastel polyester. ‘We have to find the closest thing The Fashion Capital of the North has to a shroud … Here. How about this?’
Triumphantly she pulled out something in stiff black fabric—long, straight and completely unadorned. The neck was cut straight across in a way that she could imagine would make her breasts look like a sort of solid, matronly shelf, and the price tag was testament to the garment’s extreme lack of appeal. It had been marked down three times already and was now almost being given away.
‘Looks good to me.’ Jasper flipped the hanger around, scrutinising the dress with narrowed eyes. ‘Would madam like to try it on?’
‘Nope. It’s my size, it’s horrible and it’s far too cold to get undressed. Let’s just buy it and go to the pub. As your fiancée I think I deserve an enormous and extremely calorific lunch.’
&
nbsp; Jasper grinned and kissed her swiftly on the cheek. ‘You’re on.’
The Bull in Hawksworth was the quintessential English pub: the walls were yellow with pre-smoking-ban nicotine, a scarred dartboard hung on the wall beside an age-spotted etching of Alnburgh Castle and horse brasses were nailed to the blackened beams. Sophie slid behind a table in the corner by the fire while Jasper went to the bar. He came back with a pint of lager and a glass of red wine, and a newspaper folded under his arm.
‘Food won’t be a minute,’ he said, taking a sip of lager, which left a froth of white on his upper lip. ‘Would you mind if I gave Sergio a quick call? I brought you this to read.’ He threw down the newspaper and gave her an apologetic look as he took out his phone. ‘It’s just it’s almost impossible to get a bloody signal at Alnburgh, and I’m always terrified of being overheard anyway.’
Sophie shrugged. ‘No problem. Go ahead.’
‘Is there a “but” there?’
Taking a sip of her wine, she shook her head. ‘No, of course not.’ She put her glass down, turning the stem between her fingers. In the warmth of the fire and Jasper’s familiar company she felt herself relaxing more than she had done in the last twenty-four hours. ‘Except,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘perhaps that I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier if you came clean about all this.’
‘Came out, you mean?’ Jasper said with sudden weariness. ‘Well, it wouldn’t. It’s easier just to live my own life, far away from here, without having to deal with the fallout of knowing I’ve let my whole family down. My father might be seventy, but he still prides himself on the reputation as a ladies’ man he’s spent his entire adult life building. He sees flirting with anything in a skirt as a mark of sophisticated social interaction—as you may have noticed last night. Homosexuality is utterly alien to him, so he thinks it’s unnatural full stop.’ With an agitated movement of his hand he knocked his pint glass so that beer splashed onto the table. ‘Honestly, it would finish him off. And as for Kit—’
‘Yes, well, I don’t know what gives Kit the right to go around passing judgment on everyone else, like he’s something special,’ Sophie snapped, unfolding the paper as she moved it away from the puddle of lager on the table. ‘It’s not as if he’s better than you because he’s straight, or me because he’s posh—’
‘Holy cow,’ spluttered Jasper, grasping her arm.
Breaking off, she followed his astonished gaze and felt the rest of the rant dissolve on her tongue. For there, on the front of the newspaper—in grainy black and white, but no less arresting for it—was Kit. Beneath the headline Heroes Honoured a photograph showed him in half profile, his expression characteristically blank above his dress uniform with its impressive line of medals.
Quickly, incredulously, Jasper began to read out the accompanying article.
‘Major Kit Fitzroy, known as “the heart-throb hero”, was awarded the George Medal for his “dedication to duty and calm, unflinching bravery in the face of extreme personal risk”. Major Fitzroy has been responsible for making safe over 100 improvised explosive devices, potentially saving the lives of numerous troops and civilians, a feat which he describes as “nothing remarkable”.’
For long moments neither of them spoke. Sophie felt as if she’d swallowed a firework, which was now fizzing inside her. The barmaid brought over plates of lasagne and chips and retreated again. Sophie’s appetite seemed to have mysteriously deserted her.
‘I suppose that does give him the right to act like he’s a bit special, and slightly better than you and me,’ she admitted shakily. ‘Did you know anything about this?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘But wouldn’t your father want to know? Wouldn’t he be pleased?’
Jasper shrugged. ‘He’s always been rather sneery about Kit’s army career, maybe because he’s of the opinion people of our class don’t work, apart from in pointless, arty jobs like mine.’ Picking up his pint, he frowned. ‘It might also have something to do with the fact his older brother was killed in the Falklands, but I don’t know. That’s one of those Things We definitely Do Not Mention.’
There seemed to be quite a lot of those in the Fitzroy family, Sophie thought. She couldn’t stop looking at the photograph of Kit, even though she wanted to. Or help thinking how attractive he was, even though she didn’t want to.
It had been easy to write him off as an obnoxious, arrogant control-freak but what Jasper had said about his mother last night, and now this, made her see him, reluctantly, in a different light.
What was worse, it made her see herself in a different light too. Having been on the receiving end of ignorant prejudice, Sophie liked to think she would never rush to make ill-informed snap judgments about people, but she had to admit that maybe, just maybe, in this instance she had.
But so had he, she reminded herself defiantly. He had dismissed her as a shallow, tarty gold-digger when that most definitely wasn’t true. The gold-digger part, anyway. Hopefully tonight, with the aid of the nunlike dress and a few pithy comments on current affairs and international politics, she’d make him see he’d been wrong about the rest too.
For Jasper’s sake, obviously.
As they left she picked up the newspaper. ‘Do you think they’d mind if I took this?’
‘What for?’ Jasper asked in surprise. ‘D’you want to sleep with the heart-throb hero under your pillow?’
‘No!’ Annoyingly Sophie felt herself blush. ‘I want to swot up on the headlines so I can make intelligent conversation tonight.’
Jasper laughed all the way back to the car.
Ralph adjusted his bow tie in the mirror above the drawing room fireplace and smoothed a hand over his brushed-back hair.
‘I must say, Kit, I find your insistence on bringing up the subject of my death in rather poor taste,’ he said in an aggrieved tone. ‘Tonight of all nights. A milestone birthday like this is depressing enough without you reminding me constantly that the clock is ticking.’
‘It’s not personal,’ Kit drawled, mentally noting that he’d do well to remember that himself. ‘And it is boring, but the fact remains that Alnburgh won’t survive the inheritance tax it’ll owe on your death unless you’ve transferred the ownership of the estate to someone else. Seven years is the—’
Ralph cut him off with a bitter, blustering laugh. ‘By someone else, I suppose you mean you? What about Jasper?’
Alnburgh is yours, Kit. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not.
In the pockets of his dinner-suit trousers Kit’s hands were bunched into fists. Experience had taught him that when Ralph was in this kind of punchy, belligerent mood the best way to respond was with total detachment. He wondered fleetingly if that was where he first picked up the habit.
‘Jasper isn’t the logical heir,’ he said, very evenly.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Ralph replied with unpleasant, mock joviality. ‘Let’s look at it this way—Jasper is probably going to live another sixty or seventy years, and, believe me, I have every intention of lasting a lot more than seven years. Given your job I’d say you’re the one who’s pushing your luck in that department, don’t you think? Remember what happened to my dear brother Leo. Never came back from the Falklands. Very nasty business.’
Ralph’s eyes met Kit’s in the mirror and slid away. He was already well on the way to being drunk, Kit realised wearily, and that meant that any further attempt at persuasion on his part would only be counterproductive.
‘Transfer it to Jasper if you want.’ He shrugged, picking up the newspaper that lay folded on a coffee table. ‘That would certainly be better than doing nothing, though I’m not sure he’d thank you for it since he hates being here as much as Tatiana does. It might also put him at further risk from ruthless gold-diggers like the one he’s brought up this weekend.’
The medals ceremony he’d attended yesterday was front-page news. Idly he wondered whether Ralph had seen it and chosen not to say anything.
‘Sophie?
’ Ralph turned round, putting his hands into his pockets and rocking back on the heels of his patent shoes. ‘I thought she was quite charming. Gorgeous little thing, too. Good old Jasper, eh? He’s got a cracker there.’
‘Except for the fact that she couldn’t give a toss about him,’ Kit commented dryly, putting down the paper.
‘Jealous, Kit?’ Ralph said, and there was real malice in his tone. His eyes were narrowed, his face suddenly flushed. ‘You think you’re the one who should get all the good-looking girls, don’t you? I’d say you want her for yourself, just like—’
At that moment the strange outburst was interrupted by Jasper coming in. Ralph broke off and turned abruptly away.
‘Just like what?’ Kit said softly.
‘Nothing.’ Ralph pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. As he turned to Jasper his face lost all its hostility. ‘We were just talking about you—and Sophie.’
Heading to the drinks tray, Jasper grinned. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t she? And really clever and talented too. Great actress.’
In his dinner suit and with his hair wet from the shower Jasper looked about fifteen, Kit thought, his heart darkening against Sophie Greenham.
‘So I noticed,’ he said blandly, going to the door. He turned to Ralph. ‘Think about what I said about the estate transfer. Oh, and I promised Thomas I’d see to the port tonight. Any preference?’
Ralph seemed to have recovered his composure. ‘There’s an excellent ‘29. Though, on second thoughts, open some ‘71.’ His smile held a hint of challenge. ‘Let’s keep the really good stuff for my hundredth, since I fully intend to be around to celebrate it.’
Crossing the portrait hall in rapid, furious strides, Kit swore with such viciousness a passing waiter shot behind a large display of flowers. So he’d failed to make Ralph see sense about the estate. He’d just have to make sure he was more successful when it came to Sophie Greenham.
It was just as well she hadn’t eaten all that lasagne at lunchtime, Sophie reflected grimly, tugging at the zip on the side of the black dress. Obviously, with hindsight, trying it on in the shop would have been wise—all the croissants and baguettes in Paris must have taken more of a toll than she’d realised. Oh, well—if it didn’t fit she’d just have to wear the Chinese silk that Jasper had decreed was too sexy …
