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‘It was a lucky coincidence that we were sitting in the same carriage. It gave us a chance to … get to know each other a little before we got here.’
Ouch.
Only Sophie could have understood the meaning behind the polite words or picked up the faint note of menace beneath the blandness of his tone.
He’s really got it in for me, she realised with a shiver. Suddenly she felt very tired, very alone, and even Jasper’s hand around hers couldn’t dispel the chilly unease that had settled in the pit of her stomach.
‘Great.’ Oblivious to the tension that crackled like static in the air, Jasper pulled her impatiently forwards. ‘Come and meet Ma and Pa. I haven’t stopped talking about you since I got here yesterday, so they’re dying to see what all the fuss is about.’
And suddenly panic swelled inside her—churning, black and horribly familiar. The fear of being looked at. Scrutinised. Judged. That people would see through the layers of her disguise, the veils of evasion, to the real girl beneath. As Jasper led her towards the doors at the far end of the hall she was shaking, assailed by the same doubts and insecurities that had paralysed her the only time she’d done live theatre, in the seconds before she went onstage. What if she couldn’t do it? What if the lines wouldn’t come and she was left just being herself? Acting had been a way of life long before it became a way of making a living, and playing a part was second nature to her. But now … here …
‘Jasper,’ she croaked, pulling back. ‘Please—wait.’
‘Sophie? What’s the matter?’
His kind face was a picture of concern. The animal heads glared down at her, as well as a puffy-eyed Fitzroy ancestor with a froth of white lace around his neck.
And that was the problem. Jasper was her closest friend and she would do anything for him, but when she’d offered to help him out she hadn’t reckoned on all this. Alnburgh Castle, with its history and its million symbols of wealth and status and belonging, was exactly the kind of place that unnerved her most.
‘I can’t go in there. Not dressed like this, I mean. I—I came straight from the casting for the vampire thing and I meant to get changed on the train, but I …’
She opened her coat and Jasper gave a low whistle.
‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘Here, let me take your coat and you can put this on, otherwise you’ll freeze.’ Quickly he peeled off the black cashmere jumper and handed it to her, then tossed her coat over the horns of a nearby stuffed stag. ‘They’re going to love you whatever you’re wearing. Particularly Pa—you’re the perfect birthday present. Come on, they’re waiting in the drawing room. At least it’s warm in there.’
With Kit’s eyes boring into her back Sophie had no choice but to let Jasper lead her towards the huge double doors at the far end of the hall.
Vampire thing, Kit thought scornfully. Since when had the legend of the undead mentioned dressing like an escort in some private men’s club? He wondered if it was going to be the kind of film the boys in his unit sometimes brought back from leave to enjoy with a lot of beer in rest periods in camp.
The thought was oddly unsettling.
Tiredness pulled at him like lead weights. He couldn’t face seeing his father and stepmother just yet. Going through the hallway in the direction of the stairs, he passed the place where the portrait of his mother used to hang, before Ralph had replaced it, appropriately, with a seven-foot-high oil of Tatiana in plunging blue satin and the Cartier diamonds he had given her on their wedding day.
Jasper was right, Kit mused. If there was anyone who would appreciate Sophie Greenham’s get-up it was Ralph Fitzroy. Like vampires, his father’s enthusiasm for obvious women was legendary.
Jasper’s, however, was not. And that was what worried him. Even if he hadn’t overheard her conversation on the phone, even if he hadn’t felt himself the white-hot sexuality she exuded, you only had to look at the two of them together to know that, vampire or not, the girl was going to break the poor bastard’s heart and eat it for breakfast.
The room Jasper led her into was as big as the last, but stuffed with furniture and blazing with light from silk-shaded lamps on every table, a chandelier the size of a spaceship hovering above a pair of gargantuan sofas and a fire roaring in the fireplace.
It was Ralph Fitzroy who stepped forwards first. Sophie was surprised by how old he was, which she realised was ridiculous considering the reason she had come up this weekend was to attend his seventieth birthday party. His grey hair was brushed back from a florid, fleshy face and as he took Sophie’s hand his eyes almost disappeared in a fan of laughter lines as they travelled down her body. And up again, but only as far as her chest.
‘Sophie. Marvellous to meet you,’ he said, in the kind of upper-class accent that Sophie had thought had become extinct after the war.
‘And you, sir.’
Oh, for God’s sake—sir? Where had that come from? She’d be bobbing curtsies next. She was supposed to be playing the part of Jasper’s girlfriend, not the parlourmaid in some nineteen-thirties below-stairs drama. Not that Ralph seemed to mind. He was still clasping her hand, looking at her with a kind of speculative interest, as if she were a piece of art he was thinking of buying.
Suddenly she remembered Jean-Claude’s ‘Nude with Lilies’ and felt pins and needles of embarrassment prickle her whole body. Luckily distraction came in the form of a woman unfolding herself from one of the overstuffed sofas and coming forwards. She was dressed immaculately in a clinging off-white angora dress that was cleverly designed to showcase her blonde hair and peachy skin, as well as her enviable figure and the triple string of pearls around her neck. Taking hold of Sophie’s shoulders, she leaned forwards in a waft of expensive perfume and, in a silent and elaborate pantomime, kissed the air beside first one cheek and then the other.
‘Sophie, how good of you to come all this way to join us. Did you have a dreadful journey?’
Her voice still bore the unmistakable traces of a Russian accent, but her English was so precise that Sophie felt more than ever that they were onstage and reciting lines from a script. Tatiana Fitzroy was playing the part of the gracious hostess, thrilled to be meeting her adored son’s girlfriend for the first time. The problem was she wasn’t that great at acting.
‘No, not at all.’
‘But you came by train?’ Tatiana shuddered slightly. ‘Trains are always so overcrowded these days. They make one feel slightly grubby, don’t you think?’
No, Sophie wanted to say. Trains didn’t make her feel remotely grubby. However, the blatant disapproval in Kit Fitzroy’s cool glare—now that had definitely left her feeling in need of a scrub down in a hot shower.
‘Come on, darling,’ Ralph joked. ‘When was the last time you went on a train?’
‘First Class isn’t too bad,’ Sophie said, attempting to sound as if she would never consider venturing into standard.
‘Not really enough legroom,’ said a grave voice behind her. Sophie whipped her head round. Kit was standing in the doorway, holding a bundle of envelopes, which he was scanning through as he spoke.
The fire crackled merrily away, but Sophie was aware that the temperature seemed to have fallen a couple of degrees. For a split second no one moved, but then Tatiana was moving forwards, as if the offstage prompt had just reminded her of her cue.
‘Kit. Welcome back to Alnburgh.’
So, she wasn’t the only one who found him impossible, Sophie thought, noticing the distinct coolness in Tatiana’s tone. As she reached up to kiss his cheek Kit didn’t incline his head even a fraction to make it easier for her to reach, and his inscrutable expression didn’t alter at all.
‘Tatiana. You’re looking well,’ Kit drawled, barely glancing at her as he continued to look through the sheaf of letters in his hand. He seemed to have been built on a different scale from Jasper and Ralph, Sophie thought, taking in his height and the breadth of his chest. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled back to reveal tanned forearms, corded with muscle.
She looked resolutely away.
Ralph went over to a tray crowded with cut-glass decanters on a nearby table and sloshed some more whisky into a glass that wasn’t quite empty. Sophie heard the rattle of glass against glass, but when he turned round to face his eldest son his bland smile was perfectly in place.
‘Kit.’
‘Father.’
Kit’s voice was perfectly neutral, but Ralph seemed to flinch slightly. He covered it by taking a large slug of whisky. ‘Good of you to come, what with flights being cancelled and so on. The invitation was …’ he hesitated ‘… a courtesy. I know how busy you are. Hope you didn’t feel obliged to accept.’
‘Not at all.’ Kit’s eyes glittered, as cold as moonlight on frost. ‘I’ve been away too long. And there are things we need to discuss.’
Ralph laughed, but Sophie could see the colour rising in his florid cheeks. It was fascinating—like being at a particularly tense tennis match.
‘For God’s sake, Kit, you’re not still persisting with that—’
As he spoke the double doors opened and a thin, elderly man appeared between them and nodded, almost imperceptibly, at Tatiana. Swiftly she crossed the Turkish silk rug in a waft of Chanel No 5 and slipped a hand through her husband’s arm, cutting him off mid-sentence.
‘Thank you, Thomas. Dinner is ready. Now that everyone’s here, shall we go through?’
CHAPTER FOUR
DINNER was about as enjoyable and relaxing as being stripped naked and whipped with birch twigs.
When she was little, Sophie had dreamed wistfully about being part of the kind of family who gathered around a big table to eat together every evening. If she’d known this was what it was like she would have stuck to the fantasies about having a pony or being picked to star in a new film version of The Little House on the Prairie.
The dining room was huge and gloomy, its high, green damask-covered walls hung with yet more Fitzroy ancestors. They were an unattractive bunch, Sophie thought with a shiver. The handsomeness so generously bestowed on Jasper and Kit must be a relatively recent addition to the gene pool. Only one—a woman in blush-pink silk with roses woven into her extravagantly piled up hair and a secretive smile on her lips—held any indication of the good looks that were the Fitzroy hallmark now.
Thomas, the butler who had announced dinner, dished up watery consommé, followed by tiny rectangles of grey fish on something that looked like spinach and smelled like boiled socks. No wonder Tatiana was so thin.
‘This looks delicious,’ Sophie lied brightly.
‘Thank you,’ Tatiana cooed, in a way that suggested she’d cooked it herself. ‘It has taken years to get Mrs Daniels to cook things other than steak and kidney pudding and roast beef, but finally she seems to understand the meaning of low-fat.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Kit murmured.
Ignoring him, Ralph reached for the dusty bottle of Chateau Marbuzet and splashed a liberal amount into his glass before turning to fill up Sophie’s.
‘So, Jasper said you’ve been in Paris? Acting in some film or other?’
Sophie, who had just taken a mouthful of fish, could only nod.
‘Fascinating,’ said Tatiana doubtfully. ‘What was it about?’
Sophie covered her mouth with her hand to hide the grimace as she swallowed the fish. ‘It’s about British Special Agents and the French Resistance in the Second World War,’ she said, wondering if she could hide the rest of the fish under the spinach as she used to do at boarding school. ‘It’s set in Montmartre, against a community of painters and poets.’
‘And what part did you play?’
Sophie groaned inwardly. It would have to be Kit who asked that. Ever since she sat down she’d been aware of his eyes on her. More than aware of it—it felt as if there were a laser trained on her skin.
She cleared her throat. ‘Just a tiny role, really,’ she said with an air of finality.
‘As?’
He didn’t give up, did he? Why didn’t he just go the whole hog and whip out a megawatt torch to shine in her face while he interrogated her? Not that those silvery eyes weren’t hard enough to look into already.
‘A prostitute called Claudine who inadvertently betrays her Resistance lover to the SS.’
Kit’s smile was as faint as it was fleeting. He had a way of making her feel like a third year who’d been caught showing her knickers behind the bike sheds and hauled into the headmaster’s office. She took a swig of wine.
‘You must meet such fascinating people,’ Tatiana said.
‘Oh, yes. Well, I mean, sometimes. Actors can be a pretty self-obsessed bunch. They’re not always a laugh a minute to be around.’
‘Not as bad as artists,’ Jasper chipped in absently as he concentrated on extracting a bone from his fish. ‘They hired a few painters to produce the pictures that featured in the film, and they turned out to be such prima donnas they made the actors look very down-to-earth, didn’t they, Soph?’
Somewhere in the back of Sophie’s mind an alarm bell had started drilling. She looked up, desperately trying to telegraph warning signals across the table to Jasper, but he was still absorbed in exhuming the skeleton of the poor fish. Sophie’s lips parted in wordless panic as she desperately tried to think of something to say to steer the subject onto safer ground …
Too late.
‘One of them became completely obsessed with painting Sophie,’ Jasper continued. ‘He came over to her in the bar one evening when I was there and spent about two hours gazing at her with his eyes narrowed as he muttered about lilies.’
Sophie felt as if she’d been struck by lightning, a terrible rictus smile still fixed to her face. She didn’t dare look at Kit. She didn’t need to—she could feel the disapproval and hostility radiating from him like a force field. Through her despair she was aware of the woman with the roses in her hair staring down at her from the portrait. Now the smile didn’t look secretive so much as if she was trying not to laugh.
‘If I thought the result would have been as lovely as that I would have accepted like a shot,’ she said in a strangled voice, gesturing up at the portrait. ‘Who is she?’
Ralph followed her gaze. ‘Ah—that’s Lady Caroline, wife of the fourth Earl and one of the more flamboyant Fitzroys. She was a girl of somewhat uncertain provenance who had been a music hall singer—definitely not countess material. Christopher Fitzroy was twenty years younger than her, but from the moment he met her he was quite besotted and, much to the horror of polite society, married her.’
‘That was pretty brave of him,’ Sophie said, relief at having successfully moved the conversation on clearly audible in her voice.
The sound Kit made was unmistakably derisive. ‘Brave, or stupid?’
Their eyes met. Suddenly the room seemed very quiet. The arctic air was charged with electricity, so that the candle flames flickered for a second.
‘Brave,’ she retorted, raising her chin a little. ‘It can’t have been easy, going against his family and society, but if he loved her it would have been worth the sacrifice.’
‘Not if she wasn’t worth the sacrifice.’
The candle flames danced in a halo of red mist before Sophie’s eyes, and before she could stop herself she heard herself give a taut, brittle laugh and say, ‘Why? Because she was too common?’
‘Not at all.’ Kit looked at her steadily, his haughty face impassive. ‘She wasn’t worth it because she didn’t love him back.’
‘How do you know she didn’t?’
Oh, jeez, what was she doing? She was supposed to be here to impress Jasper’s family, not pick fights with them. No matter how insufferable they were.
‘Well …’ Kit said thoughtfully. ‘The fact that she slept with countless other men during their marriage is a bit of a clue, wouldn’t you say? Her lovers included several footmen and stable lads and even the French artist who painted that portrait.’
He was still looking at her. His voice held that now-familiar note of scorn, but was so soft that for a moment Sophie was hypnotised. The candlelight cast shadows under his angular cheekbones and brought warmth to his skin, but nothing could melt the ice chips in his eyes.
Sophie jumped slightly as Ralph cut in.
‘French? Thought the chap was Italian?’
Kit looked away. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said blandly. ‘I must be getting my facts mixed up.’
Bastard, thought Sophie. He knew that all along, and he was just trying to wind her up. Raising her chin and summoning a smile to show she wouldn’t be wound, she said, ‘So—what happened to her?’
‘She came to a sticky end, I’m afraid. Not nice,’ Ralph answered, topping up his glass again and emptying the remains of the bottle into Sophie’s. Despite the cold his cheeks were flushed a deep, mottled purple.
‘How?’ Her mind flashed back to the swords and muskets in the entrance hall, the animal heads on the wall. You messed with a Fitzroy—or his brother—and a sticky end was pretty inevitable.
‘She got pregnant,’ Kit said matter-of-factly, picking up the knife on his side-plate and examining the tarnished silver blade for a second before polishing it with his damask napkin. ‘The Earl, poor bastard, was delighted. At last, a long-awaited heir for Alnburgh.’
Sophie took another mouthful of velvety wine, watching his mouth as he spoke. And then found that she couldn’t stop watching it. And wondering what it would look like if he smiled—really smiled. Or laughed. What it would feel like if he kissed her—
No. Stop. She shouldn’t have let Ralph give her the rest of that wine. Hastily she put her glass down and tucked her hands under her thighs.
‘But of course, she knew that it was extremely unlikely the kid was his,’ Kit was saying in his low, slightly scornful voice. ‘And though he was too besotted to see what was going on, the rest of his family certainly weren’t. She must have realised that she’d reached a dead end, and also that the child was likely to be born with the rampant syphilis that was already devouring her.’
Sophie swallowed. ‘What did she do?’
Kit laid the knife down and looked straight at her. ‘In the last few weeks of her pregnancy, she threw herself off the battlements in the East Tower.’
She wouldn’t let him see that he’d shocked her. Wouldn’t let the sickening feeling she had in the pit of her stomach show on her face. Luckily at that moment Jasper spoke, his cheerful voice breaking the tension that seemed to shiver in the icy air.
‘Poor old Caroline, eh? What a price to pay for all that fun.’ He leaned forwards, dropping his voice theatrically. ‘It’s said that on cold winter nights her ghost walks the walls, half mad with guilt. Or maybe it’s the syphilis—that’s supposed to make you go mad, isn’t it?’
‘Really, Jasper. I think we’ve heard enough about Fitzroys.’ Tatiana laid down her napkin with a little pout as Thomas reappeared to collect up the plates. ‘So, Sophie—tell us about your family. Where do your people come from?’
People? Her people? She made it sound as if everyone had estates and villages and hordes of peasants at their command. From behind Tatiana’s head Caroline the feckless countess looked at Sophie with amused pity. Get yourself out of this one, she seemed to say.
‘Oh. Um, down in the south of England,’ Sophie muttered vaguely, glancing at Jasper for help. ‘We travelled around a lot, actually.’
‘And your parents—what do they do?’
‘My mother is an astronomer.’
It was hardly a lie, more a slip of the tongue. Astronomy/astrology … people got them mixed up all the time anyway.
‘And your—’
Jasper came swiftly to the rescue.
‘Talking of stars, how did your big charity auction go last week, Ma? I keep meaning to ask you who won the premiere tickets I donated.’
It wasn’t the most subtle of conversational diversions, but it did the trick so Sophie was too relieved to care. As the discussion moved on and Thomas reappeared to clear the table she slumped back in her chair and breathed out slowly, waiting for her heartbeat to steady and her fight-or-flight response to subside. With any luck that was the subject of her family dealt with and now she could relax for the rest of the weekend.
If it were possible to relax with Kit Fitzroy around.
Before she was aware it was happening or could stop it her gaze had slid back to where he sat, leaning back in his chair, his broad shoulders and long body making the antique rosewood look as fussy and flimsy as doll’s-house furniture. His face was shuttered, his hooded eyes downcast, so that for the first time since the train she was able to look at him properly.
A shiver of sexual awareness shimmered down her spine and spread heat into her pelvis.
Sophie had an unfortunate attraction to men who were bad news. Men who didn’t roll over and beg to be patted. But even she had to draw a line somewhere, and ‘emotion-bypass’ was probably a good place. And after the carnage of her so-called casual fling with Jean-Claude, this was probably a good time.
‘… really fabulous turnout. People were so generous,’ Tatiana was saying in her guttural purr, the diamonds in her rings glittering in the candlelight as she folded her hands together and rested her chin on them. ‘And so good to catch up with all the people I don’t see, stuck out here. As a matter of fact, Kit—your name came up over dinner. A girlfriend of mine said you have broken the heart of a friend of her daughter’s.’
Kit looked up.
‘Without the name of the friend, her daughter or her daughter’s friend I can’t really confirm or deny that.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Tatiana said with a brittle, tinkling laugh. ‘How many hearts have you broken recently? I’m talking about Alexia. According to Sally Rothwell-Hyde, the poor girl is terribly upset.’
‘I’m sure Sally Rothwell-Hyde is exaggerating,’ Kit said in a bored voice. ‘Alexia was well aware from the start it was nothing serious. It seems that Jasper will be providing Alnburgh heirs a lot sooner than I will.’
He looked across at Sophie, wondering what smart response she would think up to that, but she said nothing. She was sitting very straight, very still. Against the vivid red of her hair, her face was the same colour as the wax that had dripped onto the table in front of her.
‘Something wrong?’ he challenged quietly.
She looked at him, and for a second the expression in her eyes was one of blank horror. But then she blinked, and seemed to rouse herself.
‘I’m sorry. What was that?’ With an unsteady hand she stroked her hair back from her face. It was still as pale as milk, apart from a blossoming of red on each cheekbone.
‘Soph?’ Jasper got to his feet. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m absolutely fine.’ She made an attempt at a laugh, but Kit could hear the raw edge in it. ‘Just tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day.’
‘Then you must get to bed,’ Tatiana spoke with an air of finality, as if she was dismissing her. ‘Jasper, show Sophie to her room. I’m sure she’ll feel much better after a good night’s sleep.’
Kit watched Jasper put his arm round her and lead her to the door, remembering the two hours of catatonic sleep she’d had on the train. Picking up his wine glass, he drained it thoughtfully.
It certainly wasn’t tiredness that had drained her face of colour like that, which meant it must have been the idea of producing heirs.
It looked as if she was beginning to get an idea of what she’d got herself into. And she was even flakier than he’d first thought.
CHAPTER FIVE
ROTHWELL-HYDE.
Wordlessly Sophie let Jasper lead her up the widest staircase she’d ever seen. It was probably a really common surname, she thought numbly. The phone book must contain millions of Rothwell-Hydes. Or several anyway, in smart places all over the country. Because surely no one who lived up here would send their daughter to school down in Kent?