Nights in White Satin: A Loveswept Classic Romance (2 page)

“Don’t stand there gaping! I haven’t died and come back from the dead. I just look that way.”

Rick Kitteridge stared at his American grandmother, who looked impeccable, as always. Her soft pink lightweight wool suit was unwrinkled, and not a single silver hair was out of place. Tall as she was, she barely had to reach up to kiss his cheek, then she swept past him into the house.
His
house, his Devil’s Hall and farm in the heart of England.

“Wha …” He swallowed back his astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

“Your father wasn’t home,” Lettice replied matter-of-factly. She dropped her purse on the entry-hall table. “Where are your parents anyway? And why are you covered in curly hair and what is that awful smell?”

“Sheep dip,” Rick said. “We’ve been shearing sheep. And my parents are in Moscow—”

“Moscow! But he can’t be in Moscow!” shrieked a voice from behind him.

Rick whipped around to find a second woman on his threshold, which was open to the fine
spring morning. If his grandmother had surprised him, this woman took his breath.

Her eyes were the color of the sea. Beneath their agitation, they held the promise of sensuality. She was tall and slim, and her features were fine-boned, not perfect, yet put together in a way that drew a second look … and a third. Her skin was pale, but flawless. Her dark brown hair was pulled back from her face in an all-American ponytail, making her look like a teenager, though he guessed she was in her mid-twenties. Her simple denim skirt and checked blouse barely revealed her slender curves, and he found himself staring at the touch of lace just visible at the second opened button of her blouse. It taunted him with what was hidden underneath. Silk and satin. Innocent and bewitching.

His grandmother might have popped up on his doorstep unannounced, but she hadn’t come empty-handed. Who was this lovely woman, and why was she so interested in where his father was?

“Oh, silly me,” Lettice said, startling him from his mesmerized trance. She put a finger to her cheek in an enlightened gesture. “I completely forgot your father was going on that economic summit, and your mother with him. Is it this week, Rick?”

“This entire month. Grandmother, you know—”

“Month!” The sexy Madonna looked stricken at the thought. She staggered over to a carved paneled chest and collapsed onto it. “I think I’m going to faint—or throw up.”

Any fantasies Rick had burst faster than a zeppelin. He glanced around the foyer and handed
her the first thing that looked accommodating—after yanking out its contents. “Here.”

“You want me to throw up in the umbrella stand?” she asked dryly, looking at the tall brass cylinder stamped with grapevines.

He shrugged, still holding the umbrellas. “It always looked nauseating to me.”

“I told you to eat on the plane, Jill,” Lettice said. “Get her legs higher than her head, Rick, so she doesn’t faint.”

Lettice’s innocent words evoked a very uninnocent image in Rick’s mind. “What do you propose I do?” he asked, forcing the image away. “Stand her upside down?”

“Please, I’m woozy enough,” Jill said. She groaned and closed her eyes. “It’s just jet lag.”

Rick gazed at her, captivated by the slight arch of her brows and the way her lashes fringed her cheekbones. He resisted the urge to trace the softened lines of her face, to feel if her pale skin was as smooth as porcelain.

He remembered she was feeling “woozy” and berated himself for what he was thinking. “Are you ill?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him as if he had grown two heads. He admitted he couldn’t have asked a more inane question if he tried. The smell of sheep dip probably wasn’t helping matters either.

“Not yet.”

“There’s a loo opposite the stairs.” He pointed to the right end of the foyer, then realized he was still holding the umbrellas. Feeling like an idiot, he set them against the wall.

“Thanks,” Jill said. “I won’t have to completely humiliate myself. I must have been insane to come here on a moment’s notice with you, Lettice. Now what?”

“All is not lost,” Lettice said with her usual indefatigable determination. “Rick, this is Jill Daneforth. I don’t think you ever met her on one of your rare visits to the States. You didn’t even come for your sister’s wedding, for which I still haven’t forgiven you. Say hello to Rick, Jill.”

“Hello,” Jill said.

Her low voice sent a shiver of expectation down Rick’s spine, and he wished he had changed from the threadbare corduroys and tweed jacket he was wearing. He also wished he’d gone to the States a little more often, seeing it contained women like Jill. Realizing he’d been completely sidetracked from the main issue, he mumbled, “Delighted to meet you,” to Jill, then he turned back to Lettice. “Grandmother, what
are
you doing here?”

Lettice gave him the “regal eye”, as her stern look was known in the family. “We came to England. What do you think? Jill is exhausted, and seven hours on a plane is enough to age me ten years, which I certainly can’t afford to lose, let alone the ride here—”

“We must have gone around every single roundabout between here and London ten times,” Jill broke in, “because your grandmother couldn’t make up her mind which road to take.” She covered her eyes and shuddered.

“You drove?” Rick exclaimed.

“It wasn’t Whistler’s mother behind the wheel,” Jill muttered.

His home in the Cotswolds of Gloucestershire
was a nearly three-hour drive northwest from Heathrow Airport, practically halfway to Wales. And everything was completely opposite for her with the left-hand driving. It was a miracle they hadn’t killed themselves. “You must be insane.”

She smiled wryly, giving him a glimpse of hidden vibrancy. “I see you’ve driven with your grandmother before.”

“Now, Jill,” Lettice said. “I just wanted to be sure we were on the right road. Don’t worry. Rick will put us up.”

“Put you up!” Rick stared at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had company other than his parents. He didn’t even know what condition the other rooms in the house were in. A thousand panicked thoughts jumbled through his head. The foremost was that Jill Daneforth would be in proximity twenty-four hours a day. He wasn’t sure if that was a heaven or a hell.

“Be a good host, Rick,” his grandmother commanded, “and go get the bags from the car, while I show Jill up to one of the rooms.”

“The hell I will!” Rick bellowed in complete frustration. His peaceful existence had been shattered the moment his grandmother had walked in the door. He sensed she was up to something that involved her lovely companion. He knew he was being rude, but he wanted answers, and he wanted them now.

“All them bleedin’ public schools,” a loud voice interrupted, “and not a lick of manners learned!”

Rick groaned as a large bald man strode into the entry hall.

“Jeeves must be turning over in his grave at
your attitude,” Rick said to his majordomo. Grahame Sulford merely raised his eyebrows.

“Jeeves was bleedin’ lucky to have an idiot wastrel to watch over and not you.” Grahame beamed at Lettice and took her hand. “Madam, what a pleasure to see you again. And who is this charming creature with you?”

“Jill Daneforth,” Lettice said, smiling in pleasure. “Jill, this is Grahame Sulford. He works for Rick, although I don’t know what he does exactly.”

“Neither do I,” Rick muttered, running his fingers through his hair. He was getting nowhere fast with this crowd.

“The lad couldn’t live without me.” Grahame took Jill’s hand and kissed it in a flourish of chivalry. “This hall has never been graced with such beauty before.”

Jill smiled, a slight rosiness returning to her wan complexion. An odd envy shot through Rick at the other man’s action.

“By the way,” Grahame added, turning to Rick, “that bleedin’ idiot of a farm manager just rang up. The fancy tractor’s broke down again. Nobody never needed more than a scythe and a hand plow for centuries around here.”

“Great,” Rick said. Just what he needed, another crisis. In spite of Grahame’s comment about manners, he would never turn his grandmother out. And Jill clearly needed to rest from the trip. It had been years since he’d had real company; he was making up for it now with a vengeance. “Grahame, we have guests, so get the bags from the car and show the ladies to their rooms.”

“What do I look like? A bleedin’ servant?”

Rick grinned. “That’s what a majordomo is and what you hired on for.”

“Fool that I was.”

Grahame retrieved the car keys from Jill and stomped out the open door.

Rick was about to demand explanations from his grandmother again, when he noticed Jill lean back against the wall and close her eyes. Her face was once more the color of eggshells, and she looked as if she could break apart just as easily. He sensed it was more than exhaustion upsetting her. Something else had drained her, and he was eager to find out what it was.

Realizing the path his thoughts were taking, Rick abruptly stepped back. Jill Daneforth was a tempting distraction, but he had a working farm to run. He didn’t have time to be distracted.

“If you will excuse me,” he said, nodding to his grandmother. “I have an emergency to attend to. You and I will catch up later, Grandmother.”

Lettice smiled, looking just like a cat who had swallowed a canary.

Rick grimaced. He had no idea why his grandmother seemed so smug, or why the lovely Jill Daneforth was so hot to see his father, but he was damn well going to find out.

“Well, plan A just got tossed out the window,” Jill said to herself. A few hours ago she would have killed for a bath and a bed, and now that she had had the first and was in the second, she couldn’t relax.

“No wonder,” she muttered, tossing back the covers and sitting up. In her job, she’d always
advised people to stay awake on their first day in a foreign country, to adjust more quickly to the time difference. She might as well follow her own advice, though her head was spinning from the lack of sleep. It had been days since she’d slept for more than an hour or two at a stretch.

Lettice had suggested they fly immediately to London to talk with her son, Edward, so Jill would be right on the spot for whatever authorities he dug up to help her. She hadn’t given a thought to whether Lettice had discussed the matter with him. At transatlantic distances, who the heck wouldn’t? Lettice obviously. It had been a nightmare arriving at the former ambassador’s locked and empty house in Wimbledon early that morning, then discovering no hotel rooms were available in the height of the tourist season—at least none Lettice would deign to stay in. There had been the further nightmare of getting to a car rental and driving to her grandson’s house. Three hours. Jill shuddered. Good thing she had done some driving in England before, otherwise they’d be sleeping on a bench outside Buckingham Palace. After driving with Lettice as navigator, that still sounded like the better deal.

She shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Moscow!”

Her short talk with Lettice after they’d come upstairs hadn’t reassured her, despite the older woman’s promise that she would call Moscow and get some long-distance help—even if her son had to be dragged out of his summit meeting.

All Jill had had before was hope; now all she had was helplessness. What would she do for a month, until Lettice’s son returned to London?
She only had six weeks before her new job started.

Dammit! she thought, lightly pounding the bed. There they were in Fitchworth-Leeds country, and she had no way of retrieving the necklace and extracting justice. She could only hope Lattice’s son could help her long-distance.

Her head was clearing, and she stood up, slipping a cotton robe over her nightgown. Grahame thoughtfully had brought up a pot of weak tea and some biscuits after showing her to her room. She took a bite of a biscuit, then walked over to the window and unlatched the intricate wrought-iron clasp. Leaning out, she let the afternoon breeze cool her perspiring skin.

This beat the heck out of her Rittenhouse condo, she admitted, taking a deep breath. Devil’s Hall was a small cozy mansion, built of gray Cotswold stone, with tall, narrow windows. She remembered her glimpse, before her personal chaos had erupted, of the huge nail-studded door and the tricolored shingled roof, its peak running from side to side. Real sheep nibbled the front lawn, keeping it as trim as any modern lawnmower. Devil’s Hall was about as undevilish as it could get.

In the distance, she could see the little village of Winchcombe nestled in the center dip of a circle of hills. Hedgerows everywhere squared off the slopes, with the occasional low stone wall thrown in for good measure. Sheep and cattle dotted the verdant pastures. The scene was soothing, but it reminded her of who had the view every day.

Rick Kitteridge.

When Lettice had mentioned her grandson, Jill
hadn’t thought of a virile man in his prime mid-thirties. She wished she had. Then she might have been better prepared.

Her first glimpse of him was still indelibly etched in her mind. He was tall and fit, though not bulky with muscles. He had the lean compact frame of a tennis player. His features were sharply defined, and his face was deeply bronzed, affirming how much his work kept him outdoors. Sun-streaked brown hair curved over his collar, clearly two weeks behind in a visit to the barber. Somehow, his shabby clothes and the odor of animal hadn’t detracted from his commanding presence. Rick Kitteridge wore his clothes, they didn’t wear him.

It had been his eyes, though—blue-green like his grandmother’s, and yet not like them at all — that had kept her spellbound in those first moments of meeting. His gaze held an intensity that made her feel vulnerable, all her secrets unsafe yet all her desires fulfilled. Her heart had slowed and her blood had pulsed through her veins like hot lava. She had forgotten everything in that moment. Yep, he was definitely a far cry from the paunchy nearing-forty grandson she’d envisioned.

She must have looked like a jerk, she thought ruefully, hanging on to that umbrella stand for dear life while shock and jet lag took their tolls. She had tried for a little poise and some normal conversation. A humiliating flush heated her cheeks as she remembered how close she’d come to throwing up. And now she was in his house, in his bedroom. Well, one of his bedrooms, she amended, thinking of the flower-print curtains
and spread, with the reverse pattern on the wallpaper. Hardly a man’s room—especially a man like Rick Kitteridge.