by India Grey
She was always so strong and funny and positive, but seeing her pressed against the grim tiles, her bravado in tatters and the tears beginning to slide down her cheeks, Kit felt his resolve crack. In one step he was beside her, pulling her forwards and into his arms, covering her trembling mouth with his.
‘It’s OK. You’re safe now. It’s gone.’
It was so good to hold her, so good to kiss her again. The relentless nightmare of the last twenty-four hours faded as he breathed in her warm, musky scent and felt her heart thudding frantically against his chest. His hands cupped her face, and in some distant part of his brain he was aware that the
numbness and the pins-and-needles sensation was completely gone. He could feel the heat of her cheeks, her velvet skin, each tear that ran across the back of his hand.
The realisation severed the last thread of his reserve. The desire that had been smouldering dangerously during the long journey when she’d slept beside him, her head falling onto his shoulder, mushroomed into a fireball. And as always, her need matched his. Her hands moved downwards, over his chest, pulling at his shirt.
‘Not here,’ he growled, pulling away.
She gave a gasp of laughter. Her cheeks were damp and flushed, her eyes glittering with arousal. ‘I’m glad you said that. After seeing that monster spider I don’t want to get down on the floor.’
‘Come on.’
Taking her hand, he pulled her forwards, through the gloomy corridors of the castle, up a flight of stone spiral stairs. Her feet caught in the long hem of her white dress and she stumbled. His grip on her hand tightened reflexively, stopping her from falling, and with the other hand he hauled her against him. Sophie could feel the hardness of his erection and gave a moan of need. Their eyes met.
‘Where are we going?’
They were both breathing in rapid rasps.
‘My room. Our room.’
‘Is it far? Because I …’
She trailed off, breathless, and he stooped down and scooped her up into his arms, striding up the remaining steps. Freed from the need to look where she was going, Sophie was able to focus her full attention on kissing him, starting at the angle of his jaw, moving upwards to take his ear lobe between her teeth, breathing out gently and murmuring, ‘I want you now. I need you inside me …’
She felt him reach down to open a door. His shoulders were rigid beneath her fingers, the muscles as hard as marble, and
he strode quickly across a room, his footsteps echoing on bare boards. Sophie lifted her head and looked.
The room they had entered was huge, circular and empty except for a hulking great chest of drawers, a magnificent carved wooden bed. Kit set her down beside it. Evening light slanted through a mullioned window, washing the white walls pink. His eyes were black chasms of arousal as he slid his arms around her, reaching for the zip of her dress.
‘This time,’ he whispered throatily, ‘we take it slowly. You’re too beautiful to be rushed.’
Without taking his eyes off her, he pulled it down, millimetre by millimetre. Sophie let out a shuddering breath, every atom of her resisting the urge to tear it off and then rip the shirt from his back, yank his trousers open. He trailed his fingers down her bare back, beneath the open zip. His eyes burned and a muscle jumped above his clenched jaw. She could tell what it cost him, this holding back. Frowning, almost as if he were in pain, he took hold of her shoulders and turned her round.
Sophie shivered as he swept aside her hair with his fingers. Her fingers curled into fists as his lips brushed the nape of her neck. In the silence she could hear the cry of the gulls wheeling through the apricot sky outside, the kiss of Kit’s lips against her skin.
His fingers slid the strap of her dress off one shoulder, then the other. It fell to the floor.
She turned round, trembling with the need to feel his skin on hers. He took a small, indrawn breath as he looked down at her body—naked except for a pair of lilac lace knickers—and with shaking fingers she began to undo the buttons of his shirt.
She wasn’t sure she could match his self-control. She had to bite down on the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from ripping the remaining buttons from their holes. Looking up she saw that his face wore an expression of intense focus.
In contrast, his eyes were hooded, gleaming with want. She reached the last button, and they flickered closed for a second.
‘Kit—’
He took a step backwards, sinking down onto the edge of the bed and keeping his eyes fixed on hers as he kissed her midriff. Her muscles contracted in a sharp spasm of want and she gripped his shoulders, anchoring herself against the delicious tension that was already beginning to build as his mouth moved lower and he eased her knickers down.
She let out a high, desperate whimper.
But he was relentless. With maddening slowness his fingers caressed her thighs while his tongue probed and explored. Her head fell back and she thrust her hips forwards, upwards, writhing and rotating as he breathed heat against her and his tongue found her clitoris.
Sophie fell forwards, burying her face in his hair. Feeling the violent shudders of her orgasm wrack her, he held her waist and pulled her back onto the bed with him. Kicking off his trousers, he was inside her in seconds, moaning as he felt her slippery wetness close around him.
For a moment they both stilled, their gazes locked. Then, very slowly, she reached up to kiss his lips.
‘I love you.’
It was little more than a shivering breath, but it shattered his self-control. Gathering her into his arms, he cradled her against his chest, and she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist as he drove into her, strong thrusts that took him to the brink. Feeling her convulse around him again tipped him over the edge.
Ecstasy rocked him. In that moment it was possible to believe he was immortal.
‘Kit?’
Sophie’s head was resting on his chest, the beat of his heart
keeping time with the distant rhythm of the waves below. She was dazed with happiness and the relief of being close to him again.
‘Mmm?’
His voice rumbled like distant thunder deep in his chest. Love blossomed inside her and a smile spread across her face.
‘I hate to ruin the poetry of the moment, but I’m absolutely starving.’
‘That could be a problem,’ he said gravely, tracing a lazy circle with a fingertip on her shoulder. ‘I have no idea what time it is, but the shop in the village will have closed ages ago and I’m not sure there’ll be anything in the kitchen. Do you want to drive to Hawksworth for dinner?’
Sophie considered for a moment as ripples of pleasure spread down her arm and through her whole body.
‘Would it mean getting dressed?’
‘Probably. They’re quite old-fashioned about things like that round here.’
‘In that case, let’s not bother.’ Rolling reluctantly away from him, Sophie swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up shakily. ‘Jasper will just have to sacrifice his Toblerone. And we have champagne.’
‘We have an entire cellar full of it, in fact,’ Kit remarked dryly.
‘Oh, yes. I suppose so. I didn’t think of that.’
She bent down to pick up her dress, which was buried under his hastily discarded trousers. As she moved them something fell out of the pocket and skidded across the polished floor.
It was a box. A square, black velvet box.
Without thinking, Sophie went to pick it up. It was only when she was standing there, holding it in her hand and staring down at it, that her brain caught up and she realised what it might be.
Her jaw dropped. Hope and joy and excitement ballooned
inside her as she lifted her head to look at him. For a second she could only think of how incredibly sexy he looked, sprawled against the white sheets in the dying light. And then she noticed his face. It was frighteningly blank.
‘Kit?’ Her voice was a dried-up whisper. Her heart was beating very
hard, as if the blood in her veins had turned to treacle. ‘What’s this?’
He sat up slowly, the muscles in his stomach and shoulders moving beneath the bronzed skin as he raised a hand and raked it through his hair in what looked like a gesture of resignation.
‘Open it.’
Her hands were shaking, making it difficult to unhook the tiny catch. The lid of the box opened with a soft creak. Sophie gasped.
The ring had a polished stone of iridescent green at its centre, but her hand was shaking so much that it caught the rose-pink rays of sun and made a rainbow of other colours shimmer in its depths. It was circled by a double row of diamonds. There was no doubt that it was very old, and very, very valuable.
She also had the feeling she’d seen it before.
‘It’s a black opal,’ he said tonelessly. ‘It’s called The Dark Star. It’s been a family engagement ring for generations.’
A memory stirred in the back of her mind. ‘Ah,’ she said with an uneasy laugh. ‘Is this that awkward moment when your girlfriend accidentally discovers the family ring you’re saving to give to someone who has the right breeding to wear it?’ Shutting the box again, she held it out to him. ‘You’d better keep it somewhere safe.’
‘Come here,’ he drawled softly.
She went towards him on trembling legs. Gently he took the box from her and pulled out the ring. Taking hold of her left hand, he brushed his lips over the hennaed vine tendril
that snaked down her third finger before sliding the ring onto it.
‘Is that safe enough?’
He pulled her back down onto the bed, taking her face in his hands and kissing her so that she wouldn’t see the despair and self-loathing in his eyes.
CHAPTER TEN
‘THAT’ll be twenty-two pounds fifty-six please. I’ll put it on the Fitzroy account, shall I, Miss …?’
Fumbling in her purse, Sophie looked up. From behind a forest of neon windmills and plastic beach spades on the counter Mrs Watts was looking at her with an air of beady expectation.
‘Oh. It’s G-Greenham,’ she stuttered, caught off guard. ‘Sophie Greenham. But no, thanks, I’ll pay for it now.’
‘But you’re staying up at the castle, are you?’ Mrs Watts persisted as she waited for the money, her killer interrogation skills masked by a veneer of friendliness and a polyester overall. ‘With Master Kit? Or His Lordship as I’d still like to think of him. Such a shame. He’s so much better suited to the role than Master Jasper—flighty, he is, always has been, a bit like his mother, the second Lady Fitzroy. In America now, so I gather.’
‘Yes,’ Sophie confirmed helplessly, handing over the money and glancing back towards the door in the hope that rescue was about to come in the form of a large party of noisy children in search of buckets and spades and bags of sweets for the beach.
It wasn’t.
‘Oh-h-h, now that’s a beautiful ring,’ Mrs Watts said avidly, taking the notes Sophie offered, her eyes gleaming like
those of a sparrowhawk that had just spotted a fat baby rabbit as they fixed on The Dark Star. Sophie had no alternative than to keep her left hand extended as Mrs Watts leaned through the plastic windmills to examine it. Thank goodness the henna tattoo had faded. ‘I think it’s nonsense what they say about opals being unlucky, don’t you? I remember seeing this on the first Lady Fitzroy. Lady Juliet.’ She beamed up at Sophie. ‘Congratulations are in order, then, Miss Greenham?’
‘Sophie. Yes.’
Beaming, Mrs Watts placed a hand on her ample, polyester-encased bosom. ‘Oh, I’m so thrilled. Master Kit is such a gentleman, and it’s a good many years since there was a proper wedding at the castle.’ She began gathering up Sophie’s purchases and putting them all into a carrier bag. ‘Sir Ralph got hitched to his second wife down in London—she never did like it up here much—but I still remember the day he and Lady Juliet got married. The whole village turned out to watch her father walk her into church.’ She paused, a bunch of rust-coloured chrysanthemums clutched in her hand like a bridal bouquet, a distant, dreamy look in her eyes. ‘Oh, she was a picture, she was … and a proper lady. She would never have let the castle get into the state it has. Such a shame it didn’t last.’
Sophie resisted the urge to tell her not to expect a ‘proper’ wedding at the castle any time soon. Taking advantage of Mrs Watts’s lapse into reminiscence, she grabbed the carrier bag and moved towards the door.
‘Here, you’re forgetting your flowers. Lovely ones they are too; Mr Watts’s pride and joy—prize winners.’ Mrs Watts came round the counter to give them to her and then, bound by some weird feudal imperative, hurried over to open the door for her. Sophie felt herself blush with embarrassment.
‘Thank you, but I can manage—’
‘Nonsense,’ Mrs Watts said stoutly. ‘You’ve a position in this village now. We’re very proud of our heritage.’
Acutely conscious of her cheap chain-store dress and sneakers, Sophie went out into the late-summer sunshine. The school term had just started again so the village had emptied of holidaymakers, but there was a small group of young mothers with pushchairs standing chatting beside the green. Sophie felt a pang of longing so strong it took her breath away for a second. Her period, usually relentlessly regular, was three days late. Impulsively she turned back to Mrs Watts.
‘What do they say about opals being unlucky?’
She flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, it’s just a silly old wives’ tale. I don’t go in for any of that kind of thing at all—horoscopes and star signs and all that hocus pocus. It’s love makes a marriage work. Love and trust and talking to each other. That’s what’s kept me and Mr Watts together for almost fifty years.’
Oh, dear, Sophie thought wistfully as she walked back up to the castle, it didn’t look good for her and Kit, then. Talking wasn’t exactly the area in which their relationship was strongest. The closeness they’d shared that night when he’d given her the ring had begun to fade again, almost from the moment he’d put it on her finger. During the days that followed Kit had been busy seeing solicitors, accountants, surveyors; picking his way through the legal tangle surrounding Leo’s will and trying to organise the work that was needed immediately to keep the castle—long neglected by Ralph—standing.
In the evenings they ate, usually in front of the fire in the drawing room, or walked on the beach. They talked, of course, about the work that needed doing, but it was more about Alnburgh’s future than their own. In fact, the most in-depth conversation she’d had about that was in a twenty-five-minute phone call with Jasper over a faint line to LA. As she’d predicted, the latest unforeseen development in the drama of Alnburgh’s ownership had come as a huge relief to him, but his happiness was tempered with concern for her.
‘It’s hardly a cosy love nest to start married life in,’ he’d sighed, with his usual ability to voice her own thoughts.
Her initial hope that their stay at Alnburgh might just be a brief one had faded as the days slipped past and Kit got more deeply involved in the business of the estate. Sophie could see how much he cared about it, and it was clear he had no plans to return to London. For his sake she would just have to try to get used to thinking of Alnburgh as home.
Her pace had got slower the nearer she got to the castle, and going from the buttery sunshine into the armoury hall was like stepping into a crypt. She walked quickly through the long gallery, steadfastly refusing to let herself look up at the animal heads to see if their eyes were following her as she went, and down the steps into the kitchen.
It was an enormous, gloomy room with a vaulted ceiling and a Victorian cast-iron range built into one end. The rest of it wasn’t much more contemporary, and the only light came from rows of windows set high up in the stone walls, and a nineteen-thirties enamel lamp that hung over the enormous table. It was a far cry from the sunny, friendly kitchen she had half imagined when she’d told Jasper that she was ready for a home.
Sophie put the shopping onto
the table and went in search of a vase for the flowers. She had discovered a whole room further along the corridor entirely devoted to china of all sorts—tureens, coffee pots, rose bowls and no doubt a large selection of vases too—but she didn’t dare take anything from there in case it turned out to be too rare and valuable for Mr Watts’s chrysanthemums. Instead she took a plain cream jug from the dresser and filled it with water.
In an attempt to bridge the gap between herself and Kit, she’d decided to cook properly tonight, and lay the table in the dining room for the first time since they’d been at Alnburgh. She’d spent what seemed to her to be a ridiculous amount of money on a fillet of venison from the tiny butcher’s shop in
the village, mainly because it sounded appropriately posh to be dished up in such formal surroundings.
She picked up the jug with the flowers in and carried it back upstairs to the dining room. It was pitch black, the tall windows hidden by shutters and heavy velvet curtains. The urge to go and throw them both open was almost overwhelming, but Sophie resisted. She had made that mistake on the first day as she’d gone around trying to lighten the oppressive gloom that filled the rooms, but Kit had told her that light was bad for the paintings, and that the Victorian curtains couldn’t withstand being opened and closed too often.
Instead she flicked the light switch, and the gigantic chandelier over the table came on, along with the brass lights above the biggest portraits. Sophie put the jug of flowers on the table and stood back, hands on her hips, to look at it.
A great wave of misery and despair crashed over her.
It was hopeless, she realised. Mr Watts’s chrysanthemums might be his pride and joy, but they certainly wouldn’t win her any prizes for interior-design flair. Beside the other flowers standing in the buckets outside the village shop their mop-heads had seemed huge, but here in the cavernous dining room they looked insignificant and lost.
Like her at Alnburgh.
All her efforts to make a difference, to put her mark on the place and make it feel like home, were utterly futile, she thought, blinking back tears. What was the use of lighting scented candles in the hall when nothing could ever shift the smell of cold stone, damp earth and age? What was the point of trying to make Alnburgh feel like hers when she was reminded of its previous occupants at every turn?
