by India Grey
Her hips ground helplessly against him, so she could feel the hardness of his erection beneath his clothes.
‘My room,’ she moaned. ‘It’s the other way—’
‘Plenty more.’ He growled against her mouth and, without taking his lips from hers, felt along the panelling for the handle of the door a few feet away. As it opened he levered himself away from the wall and stooped to hoist her up against him. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist as he carried her forwards.
Sophie wasn’t sure if this was the same room she’d stumbled into on her first night, or another one where the air was damp and the furniture draped in dust sheets. The window was tall, arched, uncurtained, and the blue light coming through it gleamed dully on the carved oak posts of an enormous bed.
As he headed towards it her insides turned liquid with lust. The room was freezing, but his breath was warm against her breasts, making her nipples harden and fizz. He was still dressed, the wool of his jacket rough and damp against her thighs. As she slid out of his arms and onto the hard, high bed she pulled it off his shoulders.
She was on her knees on the slippery damask bedspread and he stood in front of her. His face was bleached of colour, its hard contours thrown into sharp relief, his heavy-lidded eyes black and fathomless.
He was so beautiful.
Her breath caught. Her hands were shaking as she reached out to undo the buttons of his shirt. He closed his eyes, tipping his head back, and Sophie could see the muscles quilt in his jaw as he fought to keep control.
It was one battle he wasn’t going to win.
Gently now, she slid her hands beneath his open shirt, feeling him flinch with his own raw need. His skin still felt chilled. Tenderness bloomed and ached inside her, giving her desire a poignancy that scared her. She felt as if she were dancing, barefoot, free, but right on the edge of a precipice.
His shirt fell away and quickly she peeled off her jumper. Slowly, tightly, she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her warm, naked body against his cold one, cradling his head, kissing his mouth, his cheekbones, his eyes, his jaw as he lowered her onto the bed.
His heartbeat was strong against her breasts. Their ribs ground together as he undid his jeans with one hand and kicked them off. Sophie reached up and yanked at the damask cover so she could pull it over them, to warm him again. She was distantly aware of its musty smell, but she couldn’t have cared less because he was cupping her cheek, trailing the backs of his fingers with exquisite, maddening lightness over her breast until her nerves screamed with desperation.
Reality blurred into a dreamlike haze where she was aware of nothing but his skin against hers, his breath in her ear, his lips on her neck. She kept her eyes fixed on his, swimming in their gleaming depths as beneath the sheets his hands discovered her body.
And with each stroke of his palm, each well-placed brush of his fingers she was discovering herself. Sex was something she was relaxed about, comfortable with. She knew what she was doing, and she enjoyed it. It was fun.
And this was as far removed from anything she’d ever felt before as silk was from sackcloth. This wasn’t fun, it was essential. As he entered her, gently, deeply, she wasn’t sure if it was more like dying or being born again.
Her cry of need hung in the frigid air.
She had never known anything more perfect. For a moment they were both still, adjusting to the new bliss of being joined together, and, looking into his eyes, she wanted to make it last for ever.
But it was impossible. Her body was already crying out for more, her hips beginning to move of their own accord, picking up their rhythm from him. His thumb brushed over her lips, and she caught it between her teeth as with the other hand he found her clitoris, moving his fingertip over it with every slow, powerful thrust.
The thick, ages-old silence of the room pooled around them again. The massive bed was too strong to creak as their bodies moved. Sophie wanted to look at him for ever. She wanted to hold for a lifetime the image of his perfect face, close to hers, as she spiralled helplessly into the most profound chasm of sensation. Their legs were entwined, his muscles hard against hers, and she didn’t know where he ended and she began.
She didn’t know anything any more. As a second cry—her high, broken sob of release—shattered the stillness she could only feel that everything she’d ever thought she believed was ashes and dust.
Kit slept.
Whether it was the whisky or the six-mile walk or the shattering, deathlike orgasm he didn’t know, but for the first time in years he slept like the angels.
He woke as the sun was coming up, streaking the sky with rose-pink ribbons and filling the room with the melting light of dawn. In his arms Sophie slept on, her back pressed against his chest, her bottom warm and deliciously soft against his thighs.
Or, more specifically, against his erection.
Gritting his teeth, he willed it away as remorse began to ebb through him, dissolving the haze of repletion and leaving him staring reality in the face. He closed his eyes again, not wanting to look at reality, or at Sophie, whose vibrant beauty had an ethereal quality in the pink half-light. As a way of blotting out the anger and the hurt and the shock of his discovery, last night had been perfect—more than he could have hoped for, and certainly more than he deserved. But it was a one-off. It couldn’t happen again.
Sophie stirred in his arms, moving her hips a fraction, pressing herself harder against the ache of his erection. He bit back a moan, dragging his mind back from the memories of her unbuttoning his shirt, wrapping her arms around him and holding him when he most needed to be held, folding herself around him as he entered her …
The whisky might have blunted the pain and temporarily short-circuited his sense of honour, but it hadn’t dulled his memory. Every detail was there, stored and ready for instant replay in the back of his head. A fact that he suspected was going to prove extremely inconvenient in the nights ahead when he was alone in a narrow bunk, separated from the rest of his men by the thinnest of makeshift walls.
Rolling out of bed, he picked his jeans up from the floor and pulled them on. The pink light carried an illusion of warmth, but the room was like a fridge and he had to clench his teeth together to stop them chattering as he reached into the sleep-warm depths of the bed and slid his arms under her.
She sighed as he gathered her up as gently as possible, but she didn’t wake. Kit found himself fighting the urge to smile as he recalled the swiftness with which she’d fallen asleep on the train the first time he’d seen her, and the way it had both intrigued and irritated him. But, looking down into her face as he carried her down the shadowy corridor to her own room, the smile faded again. She was like no woman he’d ever known before. She’d appeared from nowhere, defiant, elusive, contradictory, and somehow managed to slip beneath his defences when he’d wanted only to push her away.
How had she done that?
With one shoulder he nudged open the door to her room. The window faced north, so no dawn sunlight penetrated here, and it was even colder, if that were possible, than the room they’d just left. It was also incredibly neat, he noticed with a flash of surprise, as if she was ready to leave at any moment. Her hair was fragrant and silken against his bare chest as he laid her gently down on the bed, rolling her sideways a little so he could pull back the covers and ease them over her.
Her eyes half opened as he tucked her in and she gazed up at him for a moment, her lips curving into a sleepy smile as she reached out and stroked the back of her hand down his midriff.
‘It’s cold without you,’ she murmured. ‘Come back.’
‘I can’t.’ His voice was like sandpaper and he grasped her hand before it went any lower, his fingers tightening around hers for a moment as he laid it back on the bed. ‘It’s morning.’
She rolled onto her back and gave a little sighing laugh. ‘It’s over, you mean.’
‘It has to be.’ He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, physically st
opping himself from looking at her as he spoke so his resolve wouldn’t weaken. ‘We can’t change what we did last night, but we can’t repeat it either. We just need to get through today without giving Jasper any reason to suspect.’
Against the pillow her face was still and composed, her hair spilling around it and emphasising its pallor. She closed her eyes.
‘OK.’
The small, resigned word wasn’t what he had expected and it pushed knives of guilt into his gut. Why was she making him feel as if this were his fault? Last night they had both been reckless but the result was just the logical conclusion to everything that had happened between them since the moment they’d met. It had felt inevitable somehow, but nonetheless forbidden.
Kit turned away and walked to the door, bracing his arm against the frame before he opened it and saying with great weariness, ‘Sophie, what did you expect?’
Her eyes opened slowly, and the smile she gave him was infinitely sad.
‘Nothing,’ she said softly. ‘Nothing.’
After he’d gone Sophie rolled over and let the tears spill down her cheeks.
He had slept with her because he’d finally found a get-out clause in his moral rule book. He no longer had a duty to Jasper, and that made it OK for him. But what about her?
Last night she thought he understood, without making her spell it out, that she wasn’t betraying Jasper by sleeping with him.
It seemed he didn’t.
She hadn’t expected for ever. She hadn’t expected declarations of undying love. Only for him to trust her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘THE cars are here, madam.’
Thomas appeared in the hallway, his face rigidly blank as he made his announcement. But Sophie heard the slight break in his voice and felt the lump of emotion in her throat swell a little.
She mustn’t cry. Not when Tatiana was holding herself together with such dignity. Getting into the gleaming black Bentley, she was the picture of sober elegance in a narrow-fitting black skirt and jacket, her eyes hidden by a hat with a tiny black net veil. Jasper got in beside her. He was grey-faced, hollow-cheeked, a ghost of the languid, laughing boy she knew in London. She noticed his throat working as he glanced at the hearse in front, where Ralph’s polished coffin lay decked in white flowers, and as he settled himself in the back of the car he had to twist his hands together to stop them shaking.
Poor Jasper. She had to stay strong for him. Today was going to be such an ordeal, and his grief was so much more profound than anything she’d ever experienced. She dug her nails into her palm. And anyway, what did she have to cry about? She’d hardly known Ralph. And it was stupid, stupid to be upset over a one-night stand with a man she wasn’t going to see again after today.
‘After you.’
She looked up and felt her knees buckle a little. Kit was standing behind her on the steps to the castle, his perfectly tailored black suit and tie cruelly highlighting his austere beauty. His face was completely expressionless, and his silver eyes barely flickered over her as he spoke.
His indifference was like knives in her flesh. It was as if last night had never happened.
‘Oh. I’m not sure I should go in the official car,’ she stammered, looking down at her shoes. ‘I’m not family or anything.’
‘That makes two of us,’ he murmured acidly. ‘You’re Jasper’s girlfriend, that’s close enough. Just get in—unless you’re planning to walk in those heels.’
She did as she was told, but without any of the grace with which Tatiana had performed the manoeuvre, and was aware that Kit would have got a very unflattering view of her bottom in the tight black dress. She wondered if he’d seen that the hem was stuck up with Sellotape where she’d hurriedly cut it off at the knee this morning and hadn’t had time to sew it.
Further evidence of her lack of class. Another reason for him to put her in the category of ‘Women to Sleep With’ (subsection: Once) rather than ‘Women to Date’.
He got in beside her and an undertaker with a permanent expression of compassionate respect shut the door. Sophie found herself huddling close to Jasper so she could leave an inch of cream leather seat between her leg and Kit’s. As the car moved silently beneath the arched gateway she bit her lip and kept her head turned away from him, her gaze fixed out of the window. But she could still catch the faint dry, delicious scent of his skin and that was enough to make the memories of last night come flooding back. She wished she could switch them off, as Thomas had switched off the water supply when the pipe had burst. But even if she could, she thought sadly, her body would still remember and still throb with longing for him.
The rose-pink sunrise had delivered a beautiful winter’s day for Ralph’s send-off—crisp, cold and glittering, just like the day of his party. The leaden clouds of the last grim week had lifted to reveal a sky of clean, clear blue.
Outside the church of St John the Baptist people stood in groups, stamping their feet to keep warm as they talked. Some were smartly dressed in black, but most of them wore everyday outdoor gear, and Sophie realised they must be local people, drawn by the social spectacle rather than grief. They fell silent and turned sombre, curious faces towards them as the cars turned into the churchyard.
‘I forgot to bring the monkey nuts,’ muttered Jasper with uncharacteristic bitchiness.
‘People are curious,’ said Tatiana in a flat, cold voice. ‘They want to see if we feel things differently from them. We don’t, of course. The difference is we don’t show our feelings.’
Sophie bit her lip. She was one of those people, with her cheap dress and her Sellotaped hem. She wasn’t part of the ‘we’ that Tatiana talked about. She wasn’t even Jasper’s girlfriend, for pity’s sake. As they got out of the car and Jasper took his mother’s arm to escort her into the church, Sophie tried to slip to the back, looking for Thomas and Mrs Daniels to sit with. A firm hand gripped her arm.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Kit grimly.
He kept hold of her arm as they progressed slowly down the aisle of the packed church, behind Tatiana and Jasper and the coffin. Torn between heaven and hell at his closeness, Sophie was aware of people’s heads turning, curious eyes sweeping over her beneath the brims of countless black hats, no doubt wondering who she was and what right she had to be there. She felt a barb of anguish as she realised people must think she was with Kit.
If only.
‘I am the resurrection and the life …’
Beside her Kit’s hands were perfectly steady as he held his service sheet without looking at it. Sophie didn’t allow herself to glance at him, but even so she knew that his gaze was fixed straight ahead and that his silver eyes would be hard and dry, because it was as if she had developed some supernatural power that made her absolutely instinctively aware of everything about him.
Was that what loving someone did to you?
She lifted her head and looked up at the stained-glass window above the altar. The winter sunlight was shining through it, illuminating the jewel-bright colours and making the saints’ faces positively glow with righteousness. She smiled weakly to herself. It’s divine retribution, isn’t it? she thought. My punishment for playing fast and loose with the affections of Jean-Claude and countless others. For thinking I was above it all and being scornful about love …
There was a shuffling of feet as the organ started and the congregation stood up. Sophie hastily followed suit, turning over her service sheet and trying to work out where the words to the hymn were. She was aware of Kit, towering above her like some dark angel, as he handed her an open hymn book, tapping the right page with a finger.
‘I vow to thee my country …’
It was a hymn about sacrifice. Numbly Kit registered the familiar lines about laying down your life for your nation and wondered what the hell Ralph knew about any of that. As far as Kit knew, Ralph had never put his own needs, his own desires anything but first. He had lived for pleasure. He had died, the centre of attention at his own lav
ish party, not alone and thousands of miles from home on some hot, dusty roadside.
He would never have sacrificed his happiness for the sake of his brother.
Was that yet another item on his list of character flaws, or evidence that he was a hell of a lot cleverer than Kit after all?
Kit let the hymn book in his hands drop and closed his eyes as the hymn reached its stirring climax. Everyone sat down again, and as Sophie moved beside him he caught a breath of her perfume and the warmth of her body on the arctic air.
Want whiplashed through him, so that he had to grip the back of the pew in front to steady himself. Kit had attended too many funerals, carried too many flag-draped coffins onto bleak airfields to be unaware that life was short. Rules and principles didn’t help when you were dead.
Joy should be seized. Nights like the one he’d just spent with Sophie should be celebrated.
Shouldn’t they?
In the elaborately carved pulpit supplied by another long-gone Fitzroy, the vicar cleared his throat and prepared to start his address. Kit forced himself to drag his attention away from Sophie’s hands, resting in her lap. The skin was translucent pale against her black dress. They looked cold. He wanted to warm them, as she’d warmed him last night.
‘We come together today to celebrate the life of Ralph Fitzroy, who to those gathered here was not just the Earl of Hawksworth, but a husband, father and friend.’
It was just sex. That was what she’d said on the phone the first time he’d seen her, wasn’t it? Just sex. He had to forget it. Especially now, in the middle of a funeral …
‘Let’s just take a few moments of silent reflection,’ the vicar encouraged, ‘to enjoy some personal memories of Lord
Fitzroy, and reflect on the many ways in which he touched our lives …’
Ye Gods, thought Kit despairingly, rubbing at the tense muscles across his forehead. In his case, remembering the ways in which Ralph had touched his life really wasn’t such a good idea. All around him he was aware of people reaching for tissues, sliding arms around each other in mutual support while he sat locked in the private dungeon of his own bitterness. Alone.
