Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) (7 page)

‘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 …

Hope flared inside her. Instantly she stamped it out.

No. Tonight was not about being sexy, or having fun, she told herself sternly. Tonight was about supporting Jasper and showing Kit that she wasn’t the wanton trollop he had her down as.

She thought again of the photo in the paper—unsmiling, remote, heroic—and her insides quivered a little. Because, she realised with a pang of surprise, she actually didn’t want him to think that about her.

With renewed effort she gave the zip another furious tug. It shot up and she let out the lungful of air she’d been holding, looking down at the dress with a sinking heart. Her cell-like bedroom didn’t boast anything as luxurious as a full-length mirror, but she didn’t need to see her whole reflection to know how awful she looked. It really was the most severely unflattering garment imaginable, falling in a plain, narrow, sleeveless tube from her collarbones to her ankles. A slit up one side at least meant that she could walk without affecting tiny geishalike steps, but she felt as if she were wrapped in a roll of wartime blackout fabric.

‘That’s
good
,’ she said out loud, giving herself a severe look in the little mirror above the sink. Her reflection stared back at her, face pale against the bright mass of her hair. She’d washed it and, gleaming under the overhead light, the colour now seemed more garish than ever. Grabbing a few pins, she stuck them in her mouth, then pulled her hair back and twisted it tightly at the back of her neck.

Standing back again, she pulled a face.

There. Disfiguring dress and headmistress hair. Jasper’s dull girlfriend was ready for her public, although at least Sophie had the private satisfaction of knowing that she was also wearing very naughty underwear and what Jasper fondly called her ‘shag-me’ shoes. Twisting round, she tried to check the back view of the dress, and gave a snort of laughter as she noticed the price ticket hanging down between her shoulder blades.

Classy and expensive was always going to be a hard look for the girl who used to live on a bus to pull off, as Olympia Rothwell-Hyde and her cronies had never stopped reminding her. Attempting to do it with a label on her back announcing just how little she’d paid for the blackout dress would make it damned impossible.

She gave it a yank and winced as the plastic cut into her fingers. Another try confirmed that it was definitely a job for scissors. Which she didn’t have.

She bit her lip. Jasper had already gone down, telling her to join them in the drawing room as soon as she was ready, but there was no way she could face Tatiana, who would no doubt be decked out in designer finery and dripping with diamonds, with her knock-down price ticket on display. She’d just have to slip down to the kitchens and see if the terrifying Mrs Daniels—or Mrs Danvers as she’d privately named her when Jasper had introduced her this morning—had some.

The layout of the castle was more familiar now and Sophie headed for the main stairs as quickly as the narrow dress would allow. The castle felt very different this evening from the cavernous, shadowy place at which she’d arrived last night. Now the stone walls seemed to resonate with a hum of activity as teams of caterers and waiting-on staff made final preparations in the staterooms below.

It was still freezing, though. In the portrait hall the smell of woodsmoke drifted through the air, carried on icy gusts of wind that the huge fires banked in every grate couldn’t seem to thaw. It mingled with the scent of hothouse flowers, which stood on every table and window ledge.

Sophie hitched up the narrow skirt of her dress and went more carefully down the narrow back stairs to the kitchens. It was noticeably warmer down here, the vaulted ceilings holding the heat from the ovens. A central stone-flagged passageway stretched beyond a row of Victorian windows in the kitchen wall, into the dimly lit distance. To the dungeons, Jasper had teased her earlier.

The dungeons, where Kit probably locked up two-timing girlfriends, she thought grimly, shivering in spite of the relative warmth. The noise of her heels echoed loudly off the stone walls. The glass between the corridor and the kitchen was clouded with steam, but through it Sophie could see that Mrs Daniels’ domain had been taken over by legions of uniformed chefs.

Of course. Jasper had mentioned that both she and Thomas the butler had been given the night off. Well, there was no way she was going in there. Turning on her high heel, she hitched up her skirt and was hurrying back in the direction she’d just come when a voice behind her stopped her in her tracks.

‘Are you looking for something?’

Her heart leapt into her throat and she spun round. Kit had emerged from one of the many small rooms that led off the passageway, his shoulders, in a perfectly cut black dinner suit, seeming almost to fill the narrow space. Their eyes met, and in the harsh overhead bulk light Sophie saw him recoil slightly as a flicker of some emotion—shock, or was it distaste?—passed across his face.

‘I was l-looking for M-Mrs Daniels,’ she said in a strangled voice, feeling inexplicably as if he’d caught her doing something wrong again. God, no wonder he had risen so far up the ranks in the army. She’d bet he could reduce insubordinate squaddies to snivelling babies with a single glacial glare. She coughed, and continued more determinedly. ‘I wanted to borrow some scissors.’

‘That’s a relief.’ His smile was almost imperceptible. ‘I assume it means I don’t have to tell you that you have a price ticket hanging down your back.’

Heat prickled through her, rising up her neck in a tide of uncharacteristic shyness.

Quickly she cleared her throat again. ‘No.’

‘Perhaps I could help? Follow me.’

Sophie was glad of the ringing echo of her shoes on the stone floor as it masked the frantic thud of her heart. He had to duck his head to get through the low doorway and she followed him into a vaulted cellar, the brick walls of which were lined with racks of bottles that gleamed dully in the low light. There was a table on which more bottles stood, alongside a knife and stained cloth like a consumptive’s handkerchief. Kit picked up the knife.

‘Wh-what are you doing?’

Hypnotised, she watched him wipe the blade of the knife on the cloth.

‘Decanting port.’

‘What for?’ she rasped, desperately trying to make some attempt at sensible conversation. Snatches of the article in the newspaper kept coming back to her, making it impossible to think clearly.
Heart-throb hero. Unflinching bravery. Extreme personal risk.
It was as if someone had taken her jigsaw puzzle image of him and broken it to bits, so the pieces made quite a different picture now.

His lips twitched into the faint half-smile she’d come to recognise, but his hooded eyes held her gravely. The coolness was still there, but they’d lost their sharp contempt.

‘To get rid of the sediment. The bottle I’ve just opened last saw daylight over eighty years ago.’

Sophie gave a little laugh, squirming slightly under his scrutiny. ‘Isn’t it a bit past its sell-by date?’

‘Like lots of things, it improves with age,’ he said dryly, taking hold of her shoulders with surprising gentleness and turning her round. ‘Would you like to try some?’

‘Isn’t it very expensive?’

What was it about an absence of hostility that actually made it feel like kindness? Sophie felt the hair rise on the back of her neck as his fingers brushed her bare skin. She held herself very rigid for a second, determined not to give in to the helpless shudder of desire that threatened to shake her whole body as he bent over her. Her breasts tingled, and beneath the severe lines of the dress her nipples pressed against the tight fabric.

‘Put it this way, you could get several dresses like that for the price of a bottle,’ he murmured, and Sophie could feel the warm whisper of his breath on her neck as he spoke. She closed her eyes, wanting the moment to stretch for ever, but then she heard the snap of plastic as he cut through the tag and he was pulling back, leaving her feeling shaky and on edge.

‘To be honest, that doesn’t say much about your port,’ she joked weakly.

‘No.’ He went back over to the table and picked up a bottle, holding it up to the light for a second before pouring a little of the dark red liquid into a slender, teardrop-shaped decanter. ‘It’s a great dress. It suits you.’

His voice was offhand. So why did it make goosebumps rise on her skin?

‘It’s a very
cheap
dress.’ She laughed again, awkwardly, crossing her arms across her chest to hide the obvious outline of her nipples, which had to be glaringly obvious against the plainness of the dress. ‘Or is that what you meant by it suiting me?’

‘No.’

He turned to face her, holding the slim neck of the decanter. She couldn’t take her eyes off his hands. Against the white cuffs of his evening shirt they looked very tanned and she felt her heart twist in her chest, catching her off guard as she thought of what he had done with those hands. And what he had seen with those eyes. And now he was looking at her with that cool, dispassionate stare and she almost couldn’t breathe.

‘I haven’t got a glass, I’m afraid.’ He swirled the port around in the decanter so it gleamed like liquid rubies, and then offered it up to her lips. ‘Take it slowly. Breathe it in first.’

Oh, God.

At that moment she wasn’t sure she was capable of breathing at all, but it was as if he had some kind of hypnotist’s hold over her and somehow she did as he said, her gaze fixed un-blinkingly on his as she inhaled.

It was the scent of age and incense and reverence, and instantly she was transported back to the chapel at school, kneeling on scratchy woollen hassocks to sip communion wine and trying to ignore the whispers of Olympia Rothwell-Hyde and her friends, saying that she’d go to hell because everyone knew she hadn’t even been baptised, never mind confirmed. What vicar would christen a child with a name like Summer Greenham?

She pulled away sharply just as the port touched her lips, so that it missed her mouth and dripped down her chin. Kit’s reactions were like lightning—in almost the same second his hand came up to cup her face, catching the drips of priceless liquor on the palm of his hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t mean to waste it—’

‘Then let’s not.’

It was just a whisper, and then he was bending his head so that, slowly, softly, his mouth grazed hers. Sophie’s breathing hitched, her world stopped as his lips moved downwards to suck the drips on her chin as her lips parted helplessly and a tidal wave of lust and longing was unleashed inside her. It washed away everything, so that her head was empty of questions, doubts, uncertainties: everything except the dark, swirling whirlpool of need. Her body did the thinking, the deciding for her as it arched towards him, her hands coming up of their own volition to grip his rock-hard shoulders and tangle in his hair.

This was what she knew. This meeting of mouths and bodies, this igniting of pheromones and stoking of fires—these were feelings she understood and could deal with expertly. Familiar territory.

Or, it had been.

Not now.

Not
this
…

His touch was gentle, languid, but it seared her like a blowtorch, reducing the memory of every man who’d gone before to ashes and dust. One hand rested on her hip, the other cupped her cheek as he kissed her with a skill and a kind of brooding focus that made her tremble and melt.