Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) (9 page)

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.’

He came to stand beside her, resting his forearms on the top of the wall.

‘It was no trouble. You were depressingly easy to manipulate.’

His voice was soft, almost intimate, and entirely at odds with the harshness of the words. But he was right, she acknowledged despairingly. She had been a pushover.

‘You put me in an impossible position.’

‘It wasn’t impossible at all,’ he said gravely. ‘It would have been extremely workable,
if
I’d ever intended to let it get that far, which I didn’t. Anyway, you’re right. I do want to get rid of you, but since I’d have to draw the line at murder I’m hoping you’ll leave quietly.’

‘Leave?’ Sophie echoed stupidly. A drumbeat of alarm had started up inside her head, in tandem with the dull throb from earlier. She hadn’t seen this coming, and suddenly she didn’t know what to say any more, how to play it. What had started off as being a bit of a game, a secret joke between her and Jasper, had spun out of control somewhere along the line.

‘Yes. Leave Alnburgh.’

In contrast with the chaotic thoughts that were rushing through her brain, his voice was perfectly emotionless as he straightened up and turned to face her.

‘I gather from Tatiana that Jasper’s planning to stay on for a few days, but I think it would be best if you went back to London as soon as possible. The rail service on Sundays is minimal, but there’s a train to Newcastle at about eleven in the morning and you can get a connection from there. I’ll arrange for Jensen to give you a lift to the station.’

Sophie was glad she had the wall to lean on because she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her up otherwise. She didn’t turn to look at him, but was still aware of his height and the power contained in his lean body. It made her quail inside but it also sent a gush of hot, treacherous longing through her. She laughed awkwardly.

‘Well, Major Fitzroy, you’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? And what about Jasper? Or have you forgotten him?’

‘It’s Jasper I’m thinking of.’

‘Ah.’ Sophie smacked herself comically on the forehead. ‘Silly me, because I thought all this was for your benefit. I thought you wanted me gone because my face and my clothes and my accent don’t fit and because I’m not scared of you like everyone else is. Oh, yes, and also because, no matter how much you’d like to pretend otherwise, you weren’t entirely faking what happened earlier.’

For a second she wondered if she’d gone too far as some emotion she couldn’t quite read flared in the icy fathoms of his eyes, but it was quickly extinguished.

‘No.’ His voice was ominously soft. ‘I want you gone because you’re dangerous.’

The anger that had fuelled her last outburst seemed suddenly to have run out. Now she felt tired and defeated, as the stags on the walls must have felt when the Fitzroy guns had appeared on the horizon.

‘And what am I supposed to tell him?’

Kit shrugged. ‘You’ll think of something, I’m sure. Your remarkable talent for deception should make it easy for you to find a way to let him down gently. Then he can find someone who’ll treat him with the respect he deserves.’

‘Someone who also fits your narrow definition of suitable.’ Sophie gave a painful smile, thinking of Sergio. The irony would have been funny if it hadn’t all got so serious, and so horribly humiliating. ‘Gosh,’ she went on, ‘who would have guessed that under that controlling, joyless exterior beat such a romantic heart?’

‘I’m not romantic.’ Kit turned towards her again, leaning one hip against the wall as he fixed her with his lazy, speculative gaze. ‘I just have this peculiar aversion to unscrupulous social climbers. As things stand at the moment I’m prepared to accept that you’re just a pretty girl with issues around commitment and the word “no”, but if you stay I’ll be forced to take a less charitable view.’

From inside came a sudden chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You.’ Automatically Sophie looked through the window to where everyone had assembled to watch Ralph cut his birthday cake. The light from the huge chandeliers fell on the perma-tanned backs of the women in their evening dresses and made the diamonds at their throats glitter, while amongst them the dinner-suited men could have been the rich and the privileged from any era in the last hundred years.

I really, really do not belong here, Sophie thought.

Part of her wanted to stand up to Kit Fitzroy and challenge his casual, cruel assumptions about her, as her mother would have done, but she knew from bitter experience that there was no point. Inside, through the press of people, she could see Sally Rothwell-Hyde, all gleaming hair and expensive white teeth, as she sang, and suddenly Sophie was sixteen again, standing in the corridor at school with her packed trunk and her hockey stick beside her, watching through the glass doors of the hall as the other girls sang the school hymn and she waited for Aunt Janet to arrive.

She clenched her teeth together to stop them chattering, suddenly realising that she was frozen to the bone. Inside the rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ was coming to an end. If she went in now she could probably slip past unnoticed and reach the staircase while all eyes were focused on the cake.

Lifting her chin, she met Kit Fitzroy’s eyes. They were as cold and silvery as the surface of the moonlit sea.

‘OK. You win. I’ll go.’ She faked a smile. ‘But do me a favour—spend some time with Jasper when I’m gone, would you? You’ll like him when you get to know him.’

She didn’t wait for his reply. Turning on her heel, holding herself very upright, she walked back to the door and pulled it open, stepping into the warmth just as the party-goers finished singing and burst into a noisy round of cheering and applause. Sophie paused as her eyes adjusted to the brightness in the hall. At the top of the steps at the far end an elaborate cake made to look like Alnburgh Castle stood on a damask-covered table, the light from the candles glowing in its battlements briefly illuminating Ralph’s face as he leaned forwards to blow them out.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment, his mouth opening in an O of surprise. And then he was pitching sideways, grasping the tablecloth and pulling it, and the cake, with him as he fell to the floor.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘S
OMEBODY
do
something!’

Tatiana’s voice, shrill with panic, echoed through the sudden silence. Before Sophie had time to process what had happened Kit was pushing past her, shrugging his jacket off as he ran across the hall towards the figure on the floor. The stunned onlookers parted to let him through, recognising by some mutual instinct that he was the person to deal with this shocking turn of events. As the crowd shifted and fell back Sophie caught a glimpse of Ralph’s face. It was the colour of old parchment.

Kit dropped to his knees beside his father, undoing his silk bow tie with swift, deft fingers and working loose the button at his throat.

‘Does anyone know how to do mouth-to-mouth or
CPR
?’ he shouted.

The tense silence was broken only by the shuffling of feet as people looked around hopefully, but no one spoke. Before she could think through the wisdom of what she was doing Sophie found herself moving forwards.

‘
I
do.’

Kit didn’t speak or look up as she knelt down opposite him. Bunching up his dinner jacket, he put it beneath Ralph’s feet.

‘Is he breathing?’ she asked in a low voice.

‘No.’

Tatiana, supported now on each side by male guests, let out a wail of distress.

‘Jasper,’ Kit barked icily, ‘take her to the drawing room. You can phone for an ambulance from there. Tell them the roads are bad and they’ll need to send a helicopter. Do it
now
.’

Bastard, thought Sophie in anguish, glancing round to where Jasper was standing, his face ashen against his black dinner jacket, his eyes wide and glassy with shock. How dared Kit talk to him like that at a time like this? But his voice seemed to snap Jasper out of his trance of shock and he gathered himself, doing as he was told.

‘Breathing or heart?’

He was talking to her, Sophie realised. ‘Breathing,’ she said quickly, and regretted it almost straight away. At the moment she could barely breathe for herself, never mind for Ralph too, but there was no time for second thoughts.

Kit had already pulled his father’s shirt open and started chest compressions, his lips moving silently as he counted. Sophie’s hand shook as she tilted Ralph’s head back and held his jaw. His skin had a clammy chill to it that filled her with dread, but also banished any lingering uncertainty.

OK, so she’d only done this on fellow actors in a TV hospital drama, but she’d been taught the technique by the show’s qualified medical advisor and right now that looked like Ralph’s best hope. She had to do it. And fast.

Kit’s hands stilled. ‘Ready?’

For the briefest second their eyes met, and she felt an electrical current crackle through her, giving her strength. She took in a breath and bent her head, placing her mouth over Ralph’s and exhaling slowly.

The seconds ticked by, measured only by the steady tide of her breath, the rhythmic movement of Kit’s hands. They took it in turns, each acutely aware of the movements of the other. It was like a dance in which she let Kit lead her, watching him for cues, her eyes fixed unwaveringly on his as she waited for his signal. Fifteen rapid compressions. Two long, slow breaths.

And then wait.

Sophie lost track of time. She lost track of everything except Kit’s eyes, his strong, tanned hands locked together on Ralph’s grey chest … the stillness of that chest. Sometimes she thought there were signs of life—too tenuous for her to feel relief, too strong for her to give up, so again and again she bent her head and breathed for Ralph, willing the life and heat and adrenaline of her own body into the inert figure on the floor.

And then at last as she lifted her head she saw Ralph’s chest convulse in a sharp, gasping breath of his own. Her gaze flew to Kit’s face as he looked down at his father, pressing his fingers to Ralph’s neck, waiting to see if a pulse had returned. Except for the small frown of concentration between his brows it was expressionless, but a muscle twitched in his jaw.

And then Ralph breathed again and Kit looked at her.

‘Good girl.’

The sound of running feet echoed through the hall, breaking the spell. Sophie’s head jerked round and she was surprised to see that the guests had all vanished and the huge room was empty now—except for the helicopter paramedics coming towards them, like orange-suited angels from some sci-fi film.

Kit got to his feet in one lithe movement and dragged a hand through his hair. For the first time Sophie saw that he was grey with exhaustion beneath his tan.

‘He’s been unconscious for about seventeen minutes. He’s breathing again. Pulse is weak but present.’

A female paramedic carrying a defibrillator kit glanced at him, then did a classic double take. ‘Well done,’ she said in a tone that bordered on awestruck. ‘That makes our job so much easier.’

‘Come on, sweetheart. We can take over now.’

Sophie jumped. One of the other paramedics was kneeling beside her, gently edging her out of the way as he fitted an oxygen mask over Ralph’s face.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she muttered, attempting to get to her feet. ‘I was miles away … I mean, I wasn’t thinking …’

Her dress was too tight and her legs were numb from kneeling, making it difficult to stand. Somehow Kit was beside her, his hand gripping her elbow as she swayed on her high heels.

‘OK?’

She nodded, suddenly unable to speak for the lump of emotion that had lodged in her throat. Relief, perhaps. Delayed shock. Powerful things that made her want to collapse into his arms and sob like a little girl.

She had no idea why. Even when she was a little girl she couldn’t ever remember sobbing so now was hardly the time to start. And Kit Fitzroy, who not half an hour ago had coldly ordered her to leave his family home, was definitely not the person to start on.

Raising her chin and swallowing hard, she stepped away from him, just as Jasper appeared.

‘Soph—what’s h—?’

He stopped, his reddened eyes widening in horror as the paramedics strapped his father’s body onto the stretcher. Quickly Sophie went to his side, putting her arms around his trembling body.

‘It’s OK,’ she soothed, suddenly poleaxed with exhaustion. ‘He’s alive, he’s breathing and he’s in the very best hands now.’

Briefly he leaned against her and she smelled the booze on his breath and felt his shoulders shake as he sobbed. ‘Sophie, thank God you were here.’ He pulled away, hastily wiping his eyes. ‘I should go. To the hospital, to be with Mum.’

Sophie nodded.

‘I’m afraid there’s only room for one person in the helicopter,’ the pretty blonde paramedic apologised as they lifted the stretcher. ‘The rest of the family will have to follow by car.’

Momentary panic flashed across Jasper’s face as he made a mental calculation of alcohol units.

‘I can’t—’

‘I can.’ Kit stepped forwards. ‘Tatiana can go in the helicopter and I’ll take Jasper.’ His eyes met Sophie’s. ‘Are you coming?’

For a long moment they looked at each other. Blood beat in Sophie’s ears and her heart seemed to swell up, squeezing the air from her lungs. She shook her head.

‘No. No, I’ll stay and make sure everything’s OK here.’

For a few minutes—seventeen apparently, who knew?—they had shared something. A connection. But it was gone again now. She might just have helped to save his father’s life, but that didn’t alter the fact that Kit Fitzroy had made it very clear he wanted her out of Jasper’s. And his. The sooner the better.

Hours later, standing in the softly lit corridor of the private hospital, Kit rubbed a hand over his stinging eyes.

He could defuse a landmine and dismantle the most complex and dangerous IED in extreme heat and under enemy fire, but he couldn’t for the life of him work out how to get a cup of instant coffee from the machine in front of him.

Stabilised by drugs and hooked up to bags of fluid, Ralph was sleeping peacefully now. The hospital staff, hearing that Lord Hawksworth was on his way, had telephoned Ralph’s private physician at home. He had arranged for Ralph to be admitted to the excellently equipped private hospital in Newcastle, which looked like a hotel and had facilities for relatives to stay too. Once she was reassured that her husband wasn’t in any immediate danger Tatiana, claiming exhaustion, had accepted the sleeping pill the nurse offered and retired to the room adjoining Ralph’s. Jasper, who had obviously knocked back enough champagne to float half the British Navy, didn’t need medication to help him sleep and was now snoring softly in the chair beside Ralph’s bed.

Which just left Kit.

He was used to being awake when everyone else was asleep. The silence and stillness of the small hours of the morning were tediously familiar to him, but he had found that the only way of coping with insomnia was to accept it. To relax, even if sleep itself was elusive.

He groaned inwardly. Tonight even that was out of the question.

Back in Ralph’s room a small light was on over the bed, by which Kit could see his father’s skin had lost its bluish tinge. An image floated in front of his eyes of Sophie, lowering her head, her mouth opening to fill Ralph’s lungs with oxygen, again and again.

He closed his eyes momentarily. Details he’d been too focused to take in at the time rising to the surface of his mind. The bumps of her spine standing out beneath the pale skin at the base of her neck. Her green gaze fixing on his in a way that shut out the rest of the world. In a way that showed that she trusted him.

He winced. In view of everything that had taken place between them that evening, that was something of a surprise.

But then there was quite a lot about Sophie Greenham that surprised him, such as her ability to make a cheap dress look like something from a Bond Street boutique. The way she’d stood up to him. Fought back. The fact that she could give the kiss of life well enough to make a dead man breathe again.

And another one feel again.

Rotating his aching shoulders, he paced restlessly over to the window, willing away the throb of arousal that had instantly started up inside him again.

The incident in the wine cellar seemed like days rather than hours ago, and thinking about it now he felt a wave of self-disgust. He had told himself he was acting in Jasper’s best interests, that somehow he was deliberately seducing his brother’s girlfriend
for his benefit
.

Locking his fingers behind his neck, Kit exhaled deeply and made himself confront the unwelcome truth Sophie had flung at him earlier. He had done it to prove himself right, to get some small, petty revenge on his father and score a private victory over the girl who had so unsettled him from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. He had barely thought of Jasper at all.

But he forced himself to look at him now. Slumped in the chair, Jasper slept on, his cheek resting on one hand, his closed eyelids red and puffy from crying. He looked very young and absurdly fragile.

A pickaxe of guilt smashed through Kit’s head.

Always look out for your weakest man
—his army training overruled the natural inclination forged by his family circumstances.
Never exploit that weakness, or take risks with it.
Even when it had irritated the hell out of you for as long as you could remember.

Jasper might lack the steel Kit was used to in the men he served with, but that didn’t give Kit the right to kiss his girlfriend, just to show that he could. And to enjoy kissing her, so much that he had spent the evening thinking of nothing else but kissing her again. Right up until the moment he’d ordered her to leave.

Horrified realisation jolted through him. He swore sharply.

‘Are you OK there?’

Kit spun round.

A plump, homely-looking nurse had appeared on silent feet and was checking the bag of fluid that was dripping into Ralph’s arm. She glanced at Kit.

‘Can I get you anything—coffee perhaps?’

‘No, thanks.’ Picking up his car keys, he headed for the door, his need for caffeine paling into insignificance in the light of this new imperative. To get back to Alnburgh and make sure that Sophie Greenham was still there. And that she would stay. For as long as Jasper needed her.

The red tail lights of the last catering van had disappeared under the archway and the sound of the engines faded into a thick silence that was broken only by the distant hiss of the sea. Shivering with cold and fear, Sophie turned and went back inside, shutting the massive oak door with a creaking sound that came straight from
The Crypt
and sliding the bolts across with clumsy, frozen fingers.

She still felt weak with shock and there was a part of her that wished she were in one of those vans, sweeping down the drive to civilisation and a warm bed in a centrally heated home. Going through the hallway beneath the rows of glassy eyes, she hummed the opening lines of ‘My Favourite Things’, but if anything the eerie echo of her voice through the empty rooms made her feel more freaked out than ever. She shut up again.

Her mind would insist on replaying events from the moment she’d seen Ralph fall, like one of those annoying TV adverts that seemed to be on twice in every break. She found herself hanging on to the memory of Kit’s strength and assurance, his control of the situation. And the way, when her resolve was faltering, he’d wrapped her in his gaze and said ‘good girl’.

Good girl.

He’d also said an awful lot of other things to her tonight, she reminded herself with a sniff, so it was completely illogical that those two should have made such an impression. But he was the kind of stern, upright person from whom you couldn’t help but crave approval, that was why it was such a big deal. And that was the biggest irony of all. Because he was also the kind of person who would never in a million years approve of someone like her.

Miserably she switched the lights out and went into the portrait hall.

Not just the person he thought she was—Jasper’s two-timing girlfriend—but the real Sophie Greenham, the girl who had been haphazardly brought up on a bus, surrounded by an assortment of hippies and dropouts. The girl who had no qualifications, and who’d blown her chance to get any by being expelled from school. The girl whose family tree didn’t even stretch back as far as her own father, and whose surname came—not from William the Conqueror—but from the peace camp where her mother had discovered feminism, cannabis and self-empowerment.