Wicked Secrets: Craving the Forbidden

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.

And want more.

The stiff fabric of the hateful dress felt like armour plating. She pressed herself against him, longing to be free of it, feeling the contours of the hard muscles of his chest through the layers of clothes that separated them. Her want flared, a fire doused with petrol, and as she kissed him back her fingers found the silk bow tie at his throat, tugging at the knot, working the shirt button beneath it free.

And suddenly there was nothing gentle in the way he pulled her against him, nothing languid about the pressure of his mouth or the erotic thrust and dart of his tongue. Sophie’s hands were shaking as she slid them beneath his jacket. She could feel the warmth of his body, the rapid beating of his heart as he gripped her shoulders, pushing her backwards against the ancient oak barrels behind her.

Roughly she pushed his jacket off his shoulders. His hands were at her waist and she yanked at her skirt, pulling it upwards so that he could hitch her onto a barrel. She straddled its curved surface, her hips rising to press against his, her fingers twisting in his shirt front as she struggled to pull it free of his trousers.

She was disorientated with desire. Trembling, shaking, unhinged with an urgency that went beyond anything she’d known before. The need to have him against her and in her.

‘Now … please …’

She gasped as he stepped backwards, tearing his mouth from hers, turning away. A physical sensation of loss swept through her as her hands, still outstretched towards him, reached to pull him back into her. Her breath was coming in ragged, thirsty gasps; she was unable to think of anything beyond satisfying the itch and burn that pulsed through her veins like heroin.

Until he turned back to face her again and her blood froze.

His shirt was open to the third button, his silk tie hanging loose around his neck in the classic, clichéd image from every red-blooded woman’s slickest fantasy. But that was where the dream ended, because his face was like chiselled marble and his hooded eyes were as cold as ice.

And in that second, in a rush of horror and pain, Sophie understood what had just happened. What she had just done. He didn’t need to say anything because his expression—completely deadpan apart from the slight curl of his lip as he looked at her across the space that separated them—said it all.

She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t think. It was pure instinct that propelled her across that space and made her raise her hand to slap his face.

But her instinct was no match for his reflexes. With no apparent effort at all he caught hold of her wrist and held it absolutely still for a heartbeat before letting go.

‘You unutterable bastard,’ she breathed.

She didn’t wait for a response. Somehow she made her trembling legs carry her out of the wine cellar and along the corridor, while her horrified mind struggled to take in the enormity of what had just happened. She had betrayed Jasper and given herself away. She had proved Kit Fitzroy right. She had played straight into his hands and revealed herself as the faithless, worthless gold-digger he’d taken her for all along.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SO IN the end it hadn’t even been as hard as he’d thought it would be.

With one quick, angry movement Kit speared the cork in another dusty bottle and twisted it out with far less care and respect than the vintage deserved.

He hadn’t exactly anticipated she would be a challenge to seduce, but somehow he’d imagined a little more in the way of token resistance; some evidence of a battle with her conscience at least.

But she had responded instantly.

With a passion that matched his own.

His hand shook, and the port he was pouring through the muslin cloth into the decanter dripped like blood over the backs of his fingers. Giving a muttered curse, he put the bottle down and put his hand to his mouth to suck off the drops.

What the hell was the matter with him? His hands were usually steady as a rock—he and his entire team would have been blown to bits long ago if they weren’t. And if he hesitated, or questioned himself as he was doing now …

He had done what he set out to do, and her reaction was exactly what he’d predicted.

But his wasn’t. His wasn’t at all.

Wiping her damp palms down the skirt of the horrible dress, Sophie stood in the middle of the portrait hall, halfway between the staircase and the closed doors to the drawing room. She was still shaking with horror and adrenaline and vile, unwelcome arousal and the urge to run back up to her bedroom, throw her things into her bag and slip quietly out of the servants’ entrance was almost overwhelming. Wasn’t that the way she’d always dealt with things—the way her mother had shown her? When the going got tough you walked away. You told yourself it didn’t matter and you weren’t bothered, and just to show you meant it you packed up and moved on.

The catering staff were putting the finishing touches to the buffet in the dining room, footsteps ringing on the flagstones as they brought up more champagne in ice buckets with which to greet the guests who would start arriving any minute. Sophie hesitated, biting down on her throbbing lip as for a moment she let herself imagine getting on a train and speeding through the darkness back to London, where she’d never have to see Kit Fitzroy again …

She felt a stab of pain beneath her ribs, but at that moment one of the enormous doors to the drawing room opened and Jasper appeared.

‘Ah, there you are, angel! I thought you might have got lost again so I was just coming to see if I could find you.’

He started to come towards her, and Sophie saw his eyes sweep over her, widening along with his smile as he came closer.

‘Saints Alive, Sophie Greenham, that dress …’

‘I know,’ Sophie croaked. ‘Don’t say it. It’s dire.’

‘It’s not.’ Slowly Jasper circled around her, looking her up and down as an incredulous expression spread across his face. ‘How could we have got it so wrong? It might have been cheap as chips and looked like a shroud on the hanger, but on you it’s bloody dynamite.’ He gave a low whistle. ‘Have you seen yourself? No red-blooded, straight male will be able to keep his hands off you.’

She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘Darling, don’t you believe it.’

‘Soph?’ Jasper looked at her in concern. ‘You OK?’

Oh, hell, what was she doing? She’d come here to shield him from the prejudices of his family, and so far she’d only succeeded in making things more awkward for him. The fact that his brother was the kind of cold-blooded, ruthless bastard who would stop at nothing to preserve the purity of the Fitzroy name and reputation was all the more reason she should give this her all.

‘I’m fine.’ Digging her nails into the palms of her hands, she raised her chin and smiled brightly. ‘And you look gorgeous. There’s something about a man in black tie that I find impossible to resist.’

Wasn’t that the truth?

‘Good.’ Jasper pressed a fleeting kiss to her cheek and, taking hold of her hand, pulled her forwards. ‘In that case, let’s get this party started. Personally, I intend to get stuck into the champagne right now, before guests arrive and we have to share it.’

Head down, Kit walked quickly in the direction of the King’s Hall—not because he was in any hurry to get there, but because he knew from long experience that looking purposeful was the best way to avoid getting trapped into conversation.

The last thing he felt like doing was talking to anyone.

As he went up the stairs the music got louder. Obviously keen to recapture his youthful prowess on the dance floor Ralph had hired a swing band, who were energetically working their way through the back catalogue of The Beatles. The strident tones of trumpet and saxophone swelled beneath the vaulted ceiling and reverberated off the walls.

Kit paused at the top of the flight of shallow steps into the huge space. The dance floor was a mass of swirling silks and velvets but even so his gaze was instantly drawn to the girl in the plain, narrow black dress in the midst of the throng. She was dancing with Ralph, Kit noticed, feeling himself tense inexplicably as he saw his father’s large, practised hand splayed across the small of Sophie’s back.

They suited each other very well, he thought with an inward sneer, watching the way the slit in Sophie’s dress opened up as she danced to reveal a seductive glimpse of smooth, pale thigh. Ralph was a lifelong womaniser and philanderer, and Sophie Greenham seemed to be pretty indiscriminate in her favours, so there was no reason why she shouldn’t make it a Fitzroy hat-trick. He turned away in disgust.

‘Kit darling! I thought it must be you—not many people fill a dinner jacket that perfectly, though I must say I’m rather disappointed you’re not in dress uniform tonight.’

Kit’s heart sank as Sally Rothwell-Hyde grasped his shoulders and enveloped him in a cloud of asphyxiating perfume as she stretched up to kiss him on both cheeks. ‘I saw the picture on the front of the paper, you dark horse,’ she went on, giving him a girlish look from beneath spidery eyelashes. ‘You looked utterly mouth-watering, and the medal did rather add to the heroic effect. I was hoping to see it on you.’

‘Medals are only worn on uniform,’ Kit remarked, trying to muster the energy to keep the impatience from his voice. ‘And being in military dress uniform amongst this crowd would have had a slight fancy-dress air about it, don’t you think?’

‘Very dashing fancy dress, though, darling.’ Leaning in close to make herself heard above the noise of the band, Sally fluttered her eyelashes, which were far too thick and lustrous to be anything but fake. ‘Couldn’t you have indulged us ladies?’

Kit’s jaw clenched as he suppressed the urge to swear. To Sally Rothwell-Hyde and her circle of ladies who lunched, his uniform was just a prop from some clichéd fantasy, his medals were nothing more than covetable accessories. He doubted that it had crossed her mind for a moment what he had gone through to get them. The lost lives they represented.

His gaze moved over her sunbed-tanned shoulder as he looked for an escape route, but she wasn’t finished with him yet. ‘Such a shame about you and Alexia,’ she pouted. ‘Olympia said she was absolutely heartbroken, poor thing. She’s taken Lexia skiing this weekend, to cheer her up. Perhaps she’ll meet some hunky instructor and be swept off her skis …’

Kit understood that this comment was intended to make him wild with jealousy, but since it didn’t he could think of nothing to say. Sophie was still dancing with Ralph, but more slowly now, both of his hands gripping her narrow waist while the band, ironically, played ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. She had her back to Kit, so as she inclined her head to catch something his father said Kit could see the creamy skin at the nape of her neck and suddenly remembered the silky, sexy underwear that had spilled out of her broken bag yesterday. He wondered what she was wearing under that sober black dress.

‘Is that her replacement?’

Sally’s slightly acerbic voice cut into his thoughts, which was probably just as well. Standing beside him, she had followed the direction of his stare, and now took a swig of champagne and looked at him pointedly over the rim of her glass.

‘No,’ Kit replied shortly. ‘That’s Jasper’s girlfriend.’

‘Oh! Really?’ Her ruthlessly plucked eyebrows shot up and she turned to look at Sophie again, murmuring, ‘I must say I never really thought there was anything in those rumours.’ Before Kit could ask her what the hell she meant her eyes had narrowed shrewdly. ‘Who is she? She looks vaguely familiar from somewhere.’

‘She’s an actress. Maybe you’ve seen her in something.’ His voice was perfectly steady, though his throat suddenly felt as if he’d swallowed gravel.

‘An actress,’ Sally repeated thoughtfully. ‘Typical Jasper. So, what’s she like?’

Lord, all that champagne and he didn’t have a drink himself. Where the hell were the bloody waiters? Kit looked around as his mind raced, thinking of a suitable answer. She’s an unscrupulous liar and as shallow as a puddle, but on the upside she’s the most alive person I’ve ever met and she kisses like an angel …

‘I’ll get Jasper to introduce you,’ he said blandly, moving away. ‘You can see for yourself.’

Just as Sophie was beginning to suspect that the band were playing the Extended-Groundhog-Club-Remix version of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and that she would be locked for ever in Ralph Fitzroy’s damp and rather-too-intimate clutches, the song came to a merciful end.

She’d been relieved when he’d asked her to dance as it had offered a welcome diversion from the task of Avoiding Kit, which had been the sole focus of her evening until then.

‘Gosh—these shoes are murder to dance in!’ she exclaimed brightly, stepping backwards and forcing Ralph to loosen his death-grip on her waist.

Ralph took a silk handkerchief from the top pocket of his dinner jacket and mopped his brow. Sophie felt a jolt of unease at the veins standing out in his forehead, the dark red flush in his cheeks, and suddenly wondered if it was lechery that had made him cling to her so tightly, or necessity. ‘Darling girl, thank you for the dance,’ he wheezed. ‘You’ve made an old man very happy on his birthday. Look—here’s Jasper to reclaim you.’

Slipping through the people on the dance floor, Jasper raised his hand in greeting. ‘Sorry to break you two up, but I have people demanding to meet you, Soph. Pa, you don’t mind if I snatch her away, do you?’

‘Be my guest. I need a—’ he broke off, swaying slightly, looking around ‘—need to—’

Sophie watched him weave slightly unsteadily through the crowd as Jasper grabbed her hand and started to pull her forwards. ‘Jasper—your father,’ she hissed, casting a worried glance over her shoulder. ‘Is he OK? Maybe you should go with him?’

‘He’s fine,’ Jasper said airily. ‘This is the standard Hawksworth routine. He knocks back the booze, goes and sleeps it off for half an hour, then comes back stronger than ever and out-parties everyone else. Don’t worry. A friend of my mother’s is dying to meet you.’

He ran lightly up the steps and stopped in front of a petite woman in a strapless dress of aquamarine chiffon that showed off both her tan and the impressive diamonds around her crêpey throat. Her eyes were the colour of Bombay Sapphire gin and they swept over Sophie in swift appraisal as Jasper introduced her.

‘Sophie, this is Sally Rothwell-Hyde, bridge partner-in-crime of my mother and all round bad influence. Sally—the girl of my dreams, Sophie—’

An icy wash of panic sluiced through her.

Great. Just perfect. She’d thought that there was no way that an evening that had started so disastrously could get any worse, but it seemed that fate had singled her out to be the victim of not one but several humiliating practical jokes. Just as Olympia Rothwell-Hyde used to do at school.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Sophie cut in quickly before Jasper said her surname.

‘Sophie …’

Sally Rothwell-Hyde’s face bore a look of slight puzzlement as her eyes—so horribly reminiscent of the cold, china-doll blue of her daughter’s—bored into Sophie. ‘I’m trying to place you. Perhaps I know your parents?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Damn, she’d said that far too quickly. Sweat was prickling between her shoulder blades and gathering in the small of her back, and she felt slightly sick. She moistened her lips. Think of it as being onstage, she told herself desperately as the puzzled look was replaced by one of surprise and Sally Rothwell-Hyde gave a tinkling laugh.

‘Gosh—well, if it isn’t that I can’t think what it could be.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You must be about the same age as my daughter. You’re not a friend of Olympia’s, are you?’

Breathe, Sophie told herself. She just had to imagine she was in the audience, watching herself playing the part, delivering the lines. It was a fail-safe way of coping with stage fright. Distance. Calm. Step outside yourself. Inhabit the character. And above all resist the urge to shriek, ‘A friend of that poisonous cow? Are you insane?’

She arranged her face into a thoughtful expression. ‘Olympia Rothwell-Hyde?’ She said the loathed name hesitantly, as if hearing it for the first time, then shook her head, with just a hint of apology. ‘It doesn’t ring any bells. Sorry. Gosh, isn’t it warm in here now? I’m absolutely dying of thirst after all that dancing, so if you’ll excuse me I must just go and find a drink. Isn’t it ironic to be surrounded by champagne when all you want is water?’

She began to move away before she finished speaking, glancing quickly at Jasper in a silent plea for him to rein back his inbred chivalry and keep quiet. He missed it entirely.

‘I’ll get—’

‘No, darling, please. You stay and chat. I’ll be back in a moment.’

She went down the steps again and wove her way quickly through the knots of people at the edge of the dance floor. Along the length of the hall there were sets of double doors out onto the castle walls and someone had opened one of them, letting in a sharp draft of night air. Sophie’s footsteps stalled and she drank it in gratefully. It was silly—she’d spent the twenty-four hours since she’d arrived at Alnburgh freezing half to death and would have found it impossible to imagine being glad of the cold.

But then she’d have found it impossible to imagine a lot of the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

A waiter carrying a tray laden with full glasses was making his way gingerly along the edge of the dance floor. He glanced apologetically at Sophie as she approached. ‘Sorry, madam, I’m afraid this is sparkling water. If you’d like champagne I can—’

‘Nope. Water’s perfect. Thank you.’ She took a glass, downed it in one and took another, hoping it might ease the throbbing in her head. At the top of the steps at the other end of the hall she could see Jasper still talking to Olympia Rothwell-Hyde’s mother, so she turned and kept walking in the opposite direction.

She would explain to Jasper later. Right now the only thing on her mind was escape.

Stepping outside was like slipping into still, clear, icy water. The world was blue and white, lit by a paper-lantern moon hanging high over the beach. The quiet rushed in on her, as sudden and striking an assault on her senses as the breathtaking cold.

Going forwards to lean on the wall, she took in a gulp of air. It was so cold it flayed the inside of her lungs, and she let it go again in a cloud of white as she looked down. Far, far beneath her the rocks were sharp-edged and silvered by moonlight, and she found herself remembering Kit’s voice as he told her about the desperate countess, throwing herself off the walls to her death. Down there? Sophie leaned further over, trying to imagine how things could have possibly been bleak enough for her to resort to such a brutal solution.

‘It’s a long way down.’

Sophie jumped so violently that the glass slipped from her hand and spiralled downwards in a shower of sparkling droplets. Her hand flew to her mouth, but not before she’d sworn, savagely and succinctly. In the small silence that followed she heard the sound of the glass shattering on the rocks below.

Kit Fitzroy came forwards slowly, so she could see the sardonic arch of his dark brows. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

Sophie gave a slightly wild laugh. ‘Really? After what happened earlier, forgive me if I don’t believe that for a second and just assume that’s exactly what you meant to do, probably in the hope that it might result in another “accident” like the one that befell the last unsuitable woman to be brought home by a Fitzroy.’

She was talking too fast, and her heart was still banging against her ribs like a hammer on an anvil. She couldn’t be sure it was still from the fright he’d just given her, though. Kit Fitzroy just seemed to have that effect on her.

‘What a creative imagination you have.’

‘Somehow it doesn’t take too much creativity to imagine that you’d want to get rid of me.’ She turned round, looking out across the beach again, to avoid having to look at him. ‘You went to quite a lot of trouble to set me up and manipulate me earlier, after all.’

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