Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) (16 page)

‘I know, I know,’ Sophie soothed, glancing back at the church with its dwindling crowd of mourners, and sending up a silent prayer for patience. Or, failing that, forgiveness for putting her hands round Sergio’s elegant, self-absorbed neck and killing him.

What had Kit meant, they needed to talk? And why did bloody Sergio have to choose the very moment when she could have asked him to stage his ridiculous, melodramatic appearance?

‘You don’t,’ Sergio moaned theatrically. ‘Nobody knows.’

‘I know that Jasper’s in despair without you,’ Sophie said with exaggerated patience. ‘I know he misses you every second, but I also know that his mother needs him right now. And he needs to get closure on this before he can be with you properly.’

It was the right thing to say. ‘Closure’ was the kind of psychological pseudoscience that Sergio lapped up.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Sensing victory, Sophie took the bottle out of his hand and began to lead him through the gravestones back in the direction from which he’d just come. ‘And I also think that you’re tired. You’ve had a horrible week and an exhausting journey. The pub in the village has rooms—why don’t we see if they have anything available and I’ll tell Jasper to join you there as soon as he can? It would be better than staying at the castle, just for now.’

Sergio cast a wistful glance up at Alnburgh Castle, its turrets and battlements gilded by the low winter sun. Sophie sensed rebellion brewing and increased her pace, which wasn’t easy with her heels snagging into the frosty grass. ‘Here—I’ll come with you and make sure you’re settled,’ she said firmly. ‘And then I’ll go to Jasper and tell him where you are.’

Sergio took her arm and gave it a brief, hard squeeze, in the manner of a doomed character in a war film. His blue eyes were soulful. ‘Thank you, Sophie, I do as you say. I
trust
you.’

The hallway was filled with the sound of voices and a throng of black-clad people, many of whom had been here only a week earlier for Ralph’s party. After the surreal awfulness of the little scene in the Alnburgh vault Kit felt in desperate need of a stiff drink, but he couldn’t go more than a couple of paces without someone else waylaying him to offer condolences, usually followed by congratulations on the medal.

His replies were bland and automatic, and all the time he was aware of his heart beating slightly too fast and his body vibrating with tension as he surreptitiously looked around for Sophie.

‘Your father must have been immensely proud of you,’ said an elderly cousin of Ralph’s in an even more elderly fur coat. The statement was wrong in so many ways that for a moment Kit couldn’t think what could have prompted her to make it. ‘For the George Medal,’ she prompted, taking a sip of sherry and looking at him expectantly.

It was far too much trouble to explain that such was his father’s indifference that he hadn’t told him. Oh, and that he wasn’t actually his father either. Instead he gave a neutral smile and made a polite reply before excusing himself and moving away.

Conversation was impossible when there was so much that he couldn’t say. To anyone except Sophie.

He had to find her.

‘Kit.’

The voice was familiar, but unexpected. Feeling a hand on his arm, Kit looked around to see a large black hat and, beneath it, looking tanned, beautiful but distinctly uneasy, was Alexia.

‘Darling, I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, holding on to her hat with one hand as she reached to kiss each of his cheeks. ‘Such a shock. You must all be devastated.’

‘Something like that. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’

Kit knew that his voice suggested that the surprise wasn’t entirely a pleasant one, and mentally berated himself. It wasn’t Alexia’s fault he’d seen Sophie falling into the arms of some tosser in a girl’s jacket amongst the headstones, or that she’d subsequently disappeared.

‘Olympia and I were in St Moritz last weekend, but when her mother told us what happened I just wanted to be here. For you, really. I know I wasn’t lucky enough to know your father well, but …’ Beneath her skiing tan her cheeks were pink. ‘I wanted to make sure you’re OK. I still care about you, you know …’

‘Thanks.’

She bent her head slightly, so the brim of her hat hid her face, and said quietly, ‘Kit—it must be a horrible time. Don’t be alone.’

Kit felt a great wave of despair wash over him. What was this, International Irony Day? For just about the first time in his life he didn’t
want
to be alone, but the only person he wanted to be with didn’t seem to share the feeling.

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said wearily, preparing to make his escape. And no doubt he would, but not in the way she meant.

‘Hello, Kit—so sorry about your father.’

If they were standing in the armoury hall, Kit reflected, at this point he would have had difficulty stopping himself grabbing one of the pistols so thoroughly polished by Sophie and putting it against his head. As it was he was left with no choice but to submit to Olympia Rothwell-Hyde’s over-scented embrace and muster a death-row smile.

‘Olympia.’

‘Ma said you were an absolute
god
at the party, when it happened,’ she said, blue eyes wide with what possibly passed for sincerity in the circles she moved in. ‘Real heroic stuff.’

‘Obviously not,’ Kit said coolly, glancing round, ‘since we find ourselves here …’

Olympia, obviously unaware that it was International Irony Day, wasn’t thrown off her stride for a second. Leaning forwards, sheltering beneath the brim of Alexia’s hat like a spy in an Inspector Clousseau film, she lowered her voice to an excited whisper.

‘Darling, I have to ask … That redhead you sat next to in church. She looks terribly like a girl we used to know at school called Summer Greenham, but it
can’t
be—’

Electricity snapped through him, jolting him out of his apathy.

‘Sophie. She’s called
Sophie
Greenham.’

‘Then it
is
her!’ Olympia’s upper-crust voice held a mixture of incredulity and triumph as she looked at Alexia. ‘Who can blame her for ditching that embarrassing drippy hippy name? She should have changed her surname too—apparently it came from the lesbian peace camp place. Anyway, darling, none of that explains what she’s
doing
here. Does she work here, because if so I would
so
keep an eye on the family silver—’

‘She’s Jasper’s girlfriend.’ Maybe if he said it often enough he’d accept it.

‘No way. No.
Way!
Seriously? Ohmigod!’

Kit stood completely still while this pantomime of disbelief was going on, but beneath his implacable exterior icy bursts of adrenaline were pumping through his veins.

‘Meaning?’

Beside Olympia, Alexia shifted uneasily on her designer heels. Olympia ploughed on, too caught up in the thrill of gossip to notice the tension that suddenly seemed to crackle in the air.

‘She came to our school from some filthy traveller camp—an aunt took pity on her and wanted to civilise her before it was too late, or something. Whatevs.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Total waste of money as she was expelled in the end, for stealing.’ She took a sip of champagne before continuing in her confident, bitchy drawl. ‘It was just before the school prom and a friend of ours had been sent some money by her mother to buy a dress. Well, the cash disappeared from the dorm and suddenly—by astonishing coincidence—Miss Greenham-Extremely-Common, who had previously rocked the jumble-sale-reject look, appears with a
very
nice new dress.’

A pulse was throbbing in Kit’s temple. ‘And you put two and two together,’ he said icily.

Olympia looked surprised and slightly indignant. ‘And reached a very obvious four. Her aunt admitted she hadn’t given her any money—I think the fees were quite enough of a stretch for her—and the only explanation Summer could give was that her mother had bought it for her. Her mother who lived on a
bus
, and hadn’t been seen for, like, a
year
or something and so was conveniently unavailable for comment, having nothing as modern as a
telephone
…’

Looking down at the floor, Kit shook his head and gave a soft, humourless laugh. ‘And therefore unavailable to back her up either.’

‘Oh, come on, Kit,’ said Olympia, in the kind of jolly, dismissive tone that suggested they were having a huge joke and he was spoiling it. ‘Sometimes you don’t need
evidence
because the truth is so obvious that everyone can see it. And anyway—’ she gave him a sly smirk from beneath her blonde flicky fringe ‘—if she’s Jasper’s girlfriend, why would she have just been checking into a room in the pub in the village with some bloke? Alexia and I went for a quick drinkie to warm ourselves up after the service and saw her.’ The smirk hardened into a look of grim triumph. ‘Room three, if you don’t believe me.’

If Sophie had known she was going to walk back from the village to the castle in the snow, she would have left the shag-me shoes at home and worn something more sensible.

It was just as well her toes were frozen, since she suspected they’d be even more painful if they weren’t. Unfortunately even the cold couldn’t anaesthetise the raw blisters on her heels and it was only the thought of finding Kit, hearing what it was he had to say that kept her going.

She also had to find Jasper and break the news to him that Sergio had turned up. Having ordered an enormous breakfast for him to mop up some of the vodka and waited to make sure he ate it, she had finally left him crashed out on the bed. He shouldn’t be any trouble for the next hour or so, but now the formal part of the funeral was over she knew that Jasper wouldn’t want to wait to go and see him. And also she was guiltily keen to pass over the responsibility for him to Jasper as soon as possible. Sitting and listening to him endlessly talking about his emotions, analysing every thought that had flickered across his butterfly brain in the last week had made her want to start on the vodka herself. She had found herself thinking wistfully of Kit’s reserve. His understatement. His emotional integrity.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she quickened her steps.

The drive up to the castle was choked with cars. People had obviously decided they were staying for a while, and parked in solid rows, making it impossible for anyone to leave. Weaving through them, Sophie could hear the sound of voices spilling out through the open door and carrying on the frosty air.

Her heart was beating rapidly as she went up the steps, and it was nothing to do with the brisk walk. She paused in the armoury hall, tugging down her jacket and smoothing her skirt with trembling hands, noticing abstractedly that the Sellotaped hem was coming down.

‘Is everything all right, Miss Greenham?’

Thomas was standing in the archway, holding a tray of champagne, looking at her with some concern. Sophie realised what a sight she must look in her sawn-off dress with her face scarlet from cold and exertion, clashing madly with her hair.

‘Oh, yes, thank you. I just walked up from the village, that’s all. Do you know where Jasper is?’

‘Master Jasper went up to his room when he got back from the interment,’ said Thomas, lowering his voice respectfully. ‘I don’t think he’s come down yet.’

‘OK. Thanks. I’ll go up and see if he’s all right.’ She hesitated, feeling a warm blush gather in her already fiery cheeks. ‘Oh, and I don’t suppose you know where I could find Kit, do you?’

‘I believe he’s here somewhere,’ Thomas said, turning round creakily, putting the champagne glasses in peril as he surveyed the packed room behind him. ‘I saw him come in a little while ago. Ah, yes—there he is, talking to the young lady in the large hat.’

Of course, he was so much taller than everyone else so it wasn’t too hard to spot him. He was standing with his back half to her, so she couldn’t see his face properly, only the scimitar curve of one hard cheekbone. A cloud of butterflies rose in her stomach.

And then she saw who he was talking to. And they turned into a writhing mass of snakes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
CHILDHOOD
spent moving around, living in cramped spaces with barely any room for personal possessions, being ready to move on at a moment’s notice, had left its mark on Sophie in many ways. One of them was that she travelled light and rarely unpacked.

Once she’d seen Jasper it didn’t take her long to get her few things together. It took a little longer to get herself together, but after a while she felt strong enough to say goodbye to her little room and slip along the corridor to the back staircase.

It came out in the armoury hall. As she went down the sound of voices rose up to meet her—less subdued and funereal now as champagne was consumed, interspersed with laughter. She found herself listening out for Kit’s voice amongst the others, and realised with a tearing sensation in her side that she’d never heard him laugh. Not really laugh, without irony or bitterness or cynicism.

But maybe he would be laughing now, with Olympia.

She came down the last step. The door was ahead of her, half-open and letting in arctic air and winter sunshine. Determined not to look round in case she lost her nerve, Sophie kept her head down and walked quickly towards it.

The cold air hit her as she stepped outside, making her gasp and bringing a rush of tears to her eyes. She sniffed hard, and brushed them impatiently away with the sleeve of her faithful old coat.

‘So you’re leaving.’

She whirled round. Kit was standing at the top of the steps, in the open doorway. His hands were in his pockets, his top button undone and his tie pulled loose, but despite all that there was still something sinister in his stillness, the rigid blankness of his face.

The last glowing embers of hope in Sophie’s heart went out.

‘Yes.’ She nodded, and even managed a brief smile although meeting his eye was too much to attempt. ‘I saw you talking to Olympia. It’s a small world. I suppose she told you everything.’

‘Yes. Not that it makes any difference. So now you’re going—just like that. Were you going to say goodbye?’

Sophie kept her eyes fixed on the ivy growing up the wall by the steps, twining itself around an old cast-iron down-pipe. Of course it didn’t make any difference, she told herself numbly. He already knew she was nothing. Her voice seemed to come from very far away. ‘I’ll write to Tatiana. She’s surrounded by friends at the moment—I don’t want to barge in.’

‘It was Jasper I was thinking of. What about him?’

Sophie moved her bag from one hand to the other. She was conscious of holding herself very upright, placing her feet carefully together, almost as if if she didn’t take care to do this she might just collapse. She still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

‘He’ll be OK now. He doesn’t need me.’

At the top of the steps Kit made some sudden movement. For a moment she thought he had turned and was going to go inside, but instead he dragged a hand through his hair and swung back to face her again. This time there was no disguising the blistering anger on his face.

‘So, who is he? I mean, he’s obviously pretty special that he’s come all this way to claim you and you can’t even wait until the funeral is over before you go and fall into bed with him. Is it the same one I heard you talking to on the train, or someone else?’

After a moment of confusion it dawned on Sophie that he must have seen her with Sergio. And jumped, instantly, to the wrong conclusion.

Except there wasn’t really such a thing as a wrong conclusion. In her experience ‘wrong conclusion’ tended to mean the same thing as ‘confirmation of existing prejudice’, and she had learned long ago that no amount of logical explanations could alter people’s prejudices. That had to come from within themselves.

‘Someone else.’

‘Do you love him?’ Suddenly the anger that had gripped him seemed to vanish and he just sounded very tired. Defeated almost.

Sophie shook her head. Her knees were shaking, her chest burning with the effort of holding back the sobs that threatened to tear her apart.

‘No.’

‘Then why? Why are you going to him?’

‘Because he’d fight for me.’ She took a deep breath and lifted her head. In a voice that was completely calm, completely steady she said, ‘Because he trusts me.’

And then she turned and began to walk away.

Blindly Kit shouldered his way through the people standing in the hall. Seeing his ashen face and the stricken expression on it, some of them exchanged loaded glances and murmured about grief striking even the strongest.

Reaching the library, he shut the door and leaned against it, breathing hard and fast.

Trust.
That was the last thing he’d expected her to say.

He brought his hands up to his head, sliding his fingers into his hair as his mind raced. He had learned very early on in life that few people could be trusted, and since then he had almost prided himself on his cynicism. It meant he was one step ahead of the game and gave him immunity from the emotional disasters that felled others.

It also meant he had just had to watch the only woman he wanted to be with walk away from him, right into the arms of someone else. Someone who wore designer clothes and left his shirt tails trailing and
trusted
her. Someone who would fight for her.

Well, trust might not be his strong suit, but fighting was something he could do.

He threw open the door, and almost ran straight into the person who was standing right on the other side of it.

‘Alexia, what the—?’

‘I wanted to talk.’ She recovered from her obvious fright pretty quickly, following him as he kept on walking towards the noise of the party. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

‘Now isn’t a good time,’ he said, moving through the groups of people still standing in the portrait hall, gritting his teeth against the need to be far more brutally honest.

‘I know. I’m sorry, but it’s bothered me all these years.’ She caught up with him as he went through the archway into the armoury hall and moved in front of him as he reached the door. ‘That thing that happened at school. It wasn’t Summer, it was Olympia. She set it all up. I mean, Summer—Sophie—did have the dress and I don’t know how she got the money to pay for it, but it certainly wasn’t by stealing it from the dorm. Olympia just said it was.’

‘I know,’ Kit said wearily. ‘I never doubted that bit.’

‘Oh.’ Alexia had taken her hat off now, and without it she looked oddly exposed and slightly crestfallen. ‘I know it’s ages ago and it was just some silly schoolgirl prank, but hearing Olympia say it again like that, I didn’t like it. We’re adults now. I just wanted to make sure you knew the truth.’

‘The truth is slightly irrelevant really. It’s what we’re prepared to believe that matters.’ He hesitated, his throat suddenly feeling as if he’d swallowed arsenic. ‘The other thing—about her checking into the hotel with a man. Was that one of Olympia’s fabrications too?’

‘No, that was true.’ Alexia was looking at him almost imploringly. ‘Kit—are you really OK? Can I help?’

From a great distance he recognised her pain as being similar to his own. It made him speak gently to her.

‘No, I’m not. But you have already.’

He wove his way through the parked cars jamming the courtyard and broke into a run as he reached the tower gate. At the sides of the driveway the snow was still crisp and unmarked, but as he ran down he noticed the prints Sophie’s high-heeled shoes had made and they made her feel closer—as if she hadn’t really gone. When he reached the road through the village they were lost amongst everyone else’s.

The King’s Arms was in the mid-afternoon lull between lunchtime and evening drinkers. The landlord sat behind the bar reading the
Racing Times
, but he got to his feet as Kit appeared.

‘Major Fitzroy. I mean Lord Fitzr—’

Kit cut straight through the etiquette confusion. ‘I’m looking for someone,’ he said harshly. ‘Someone staying here. Room three I believe? I’ll see myself up.’

Without giving the flustered landlord time to respond he headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Room three was at the end of the short corridor. An empty vodka bottle stood outside it. Kit hammered on the door.

‘Sophie!’

Kit listened hard, but the only sounds were muted voices from a television somewhere and the ragged rasp of his own breathing. His tortured mind conjured an image of the man he’d seen earlier pausing as he unzipped Sophie’s dress and her whispering,
Don’t worry—he’ll go away …

But he wouldn’t. Not until he’d seen her.

‘Sophie!’

Clenching his hand into a fist, he was just about to beat on the door again when it opened an inch. A face—puffy-eyed, swarthy, unshaven—peered out at him.

‘She’s not here.’

With a curse of pure rage, Kit put his shoulder to the door. Whoever it was on the other side didn’t put up much resistance and the door opened easily. Glancing at him only long enough to register that he was naked except for a small white towel slung around his hips, Kit pushed past and strode into the room.

In a heartbeat he took in the clothes scattered over the floor—black clothes, like puddles of tar on the cream carpet—the wide bed with its passion-tumbled covers and the room darkened, and he thought he might black out.

‘Kit—’ Jasper leapt out of the bed, dragging the rumpled sheet and pulling it around himself. Blinking, Kit shook his head, trying to reconcile what he was actually seeing with what he had expected.

‘Jasper?’

‘Look, I didn’t want you to find out like this.’ Jasper paused and ducked his head for a moment, but then gathered himself and raised his head again, looking Kit squarely in the eye while the man in the white towel went to his side. ‘But it’s probably time you knew anyway. I can’t go on hiding who I really am just because it doesn’t fit the Fitzroy mould. I love Sergio. And I know what you’re going to say but—’

Kit gave a short, incredulous laugh as relief burst through him. ‘It’s the best news I’ve had for a long time. Really. I can’t tell you how pleased I am.’ He turned and shook hands with the bewildered man in the white towel, and then went over to Jasper and embraced him briefly, hard. ‘Now please—if Sophie’s not here, where the hell is she?’

The smile faded from Jasper’s face. ‘She’s gone. She’s getting the train back to London. Kit, did something happen between you, because—?’

Kit turned away, putting his hands to his head as despair sucked him down. He swore savagely. Twice. And then strode to the door.

‘Yes, something happened between us,’ he said, turning back to Jasper with a suicidal smile. ‘I was just too stupid to understand exactly what it was.’

The good news was that Sophie didn’t have to wait long for a train to come. The bad news was that there was only one straight-through express service to London every day, and that was long gone. The one she boarded was a small, clanking local train that stopped at every miniature village station all along the line and terminated at Newcastle.

The train was warm and virtually empty. Sophie slunk to a seat in the corner and sat with her eyes closed so she didn’t have to look at Alnburgh, transformed by the sinking sun into a golden fairy tale castle from an old-fashioned storybook, get swallowed up by the blue haze.

She was used to this, she told herself over and over. Moving on was what she did best. Hadn’t she always felt panicked by the thought of permanence? She was good at new starts. Reinventing herself.

But until now she hadn’t really known who ‘herself’ was. Sophie Greenham was a construction; a sort of patchwork of bits borrowed from films and books and other people, fragments of fact layered up with wistful half-truths and shameless lies, all carried off with enough chutzpah to make them seem credible.

Beneath Kit’s cool, incisive gaze all the joins had dissolved and the pieces had fallen away. She was left just being herself. A person she didn’t really know, who felt things she didn’t usually feel and needed things she didn’t understand.

As she got further away from Alnburgh her phone came back into signal range and texts began to come in with teeth-grating regularity. Biting her cheeks against each sledgehammer blow of disappointment, Sophie couldn’t stop herself checking every time to see if any were from Kit.

They weren’t.

There were several from her agent. The vampire film people wanted to see her again. The outfit had impressed
them
, at least.

‘Tickets from Alnburgh.’

She opened her eyes. The guard was making his way along the swaying carriage towards her. She sat up, fumbling in her broken bag for her purse as she blinked away the stinging in her eyes.

‘A single to London, please.’

The guard punched numbers into his ticket machine with pudgy fingers. ‘Change at Newcastle,’ he said without looking at her. ‘The London train goes from platform two. It’s a bit of a distance so you’ll need to hurry.’

‘Thank you,’ Sophie muttered, trying to fix those details in her head. Until then she’d only thought as far as getting on this train. Arriving at Newcastle, getting off and taking herself forwards from there felt like stepping into a void.

She dug her nails into her palms and looked unseeingly out of the window as a wave of panic washed over her. Out of nowhere a thought occurred to her.

‘Actually—can you make that two tickets?’

‘Are you with someone?’

For the first time the guard looked at her properly; a glare delivered over the top of his glasses that suggested she was doing something underhand. The reality was she was just trying to put something right.

‘No.’ Sophie heard the break in her voice. ‘No, I’m alone. But let’s just say I had a debt to pay.’

The station at Alnburgh was, unsurprisingly, empty. Kit stood for a moment on the bleak platform, breathing hard from running and looking desperately around, as if in some part of his mind he still thought there was a chance she would be there.

She wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. She had left, with infinite dignity, and for good.

He tipped his head back and breathed in, feeling the throb of blood in his temples, waiting until the urge to punch something had passed.