In Bed With a Stranger (11 page)

That was a matter of opinion, thought Kit, remembering the photographs Juliet had shown him chronicling Leo’s decline.

‘Thanks,’ he said brusquely, impatient to end the call. Outside the sky had darkened menacingly and the seagulls
were being thrown off course by the wind. Sophie didn’t have a coat. She was going to get soaked.

Bringing the conversation to a swift close, he put down the phone and strode to the door. He went down the back stairs, kicking off his shoes and grabbing one of the many waterproofs that hung in the boot room before going out through the east-gate door. From this side of the castle a steep path cut through the dune grass down to the beach. Dark purple clouds moved in from the south like an invading army and the first drops of rain were already falling.

He began to run. Up ahead, in the distance he could see that Sophie had turned and was beginning to make her way back. She broke into a run but at that moment the clouds unleashed the full force of their fury.

It felt like standing beneath a hail of bullets. In a matter of seconds Kit was drenched, as was the waterproof he carried. Not that it would do much good now anyway, but he ran on, his feet pounding against the hard sand. As they got closer to each other he heard Sophie’s whoop of exhilaration and saw that she was laughing.

His weary heart soared. Suddenly nothing mattered—not the whole legal mess or Alnburgh or the money or anything. Not even the future. Nothing existed beyond that moment on the empty, rain-lashed beach, the water running down his face and sticking his clothes to his skin, the woman he loved running towards him, laughing.

‘It’s
insane
!’ she cried, throwing her arms out wide and turning round, tipping her face up to the deluge.

Barely breaking his stride, he caught hold of her waist and scooped her up into his arms. The wind took her shriek of joy, tossing it up to the angry sky. Her body was warm and pliant, her heart beating hard against his ribs.

‘We might as well give in to it and just get wet,’ she gasped. ‘It’s miles back to the castle—even
you
can’t possibly run all the way back carrying me.’
‘I’m not even going to try.’

He had turned his back on the sea and was heading up the beach, his pace slowing as he reached the softer, deeper sand at the top. The rain fell more heavily than ever. It ran down his face, blurring his vision. He shook his head to clear the water from his eyes so that he could see the narrow path through the marram grass, leading up over the dunes.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see.’

It was steeper than he remembered and the sand slipped away beneath his feet, but the need to get out of the rain and peel the wet clothes from Sophie’s delicious body gave him superhuman strength. In seconds they had crested the dune.

The farmhouse was right in front of them, just as he’d remembered it.

‘Oh, what a gorgeous house!’ She almost had to shout to be heard above the noise of the downpour. ‘Do you know the people who own it?’

‘Yes.’

Pushing open the little wooden gate, he strode up the path, hoisting Sophie harder against him while he freed a hand to key in the code. He sent up a wry prayer of thanks for the lack of imagination and security-consciousness that had made Ralph choose Tatiana’s birth-date as the access code for the entire estate.

‘You can put me down, you know …’ Sophie murmured, catching a raindrop that was running down his cheek with her tongue.

‘Uh-uh. Not yet. I’m not letting you go.’

The door swung open and he carried her over the threshold, his heart twisting as he was hit by the symbolism of the gesture. Kicking the door shut behind them, abruptly silencing the noise of the rain, he gently set Sophie down.

She turned, leaning her back against him as she looked around the large, low-beamed farmhouse kitchen.

‘I feel like Goldilocks,’ she said wonderingly, taking his hand and pulling him across to the table so she could peer into the basket that had been left there. ‘So who does own this?’

Kit could feel the warmth of her skin through their wet clothes, the rounded firmness of her bottom. His voice was gruff with suppressed desire as he replied.

‘The estate.’

She picked up a bottle of wine from the basket, a packet of biscuits. ‘So that means you, Lord Fitzroy.’ She turned to kiss him lightly on the mouth. ‘Can I look around?’

‘Be my guest.’

Still with her fingers laced through his, she led him out of the kitchen, their sandy feet making no sound on the stone flags. Beyond it there was a square hallway with a stately old staircase going up, doors leading through to other rooms. Sophie opened one, and breathed in the scent of woodsmoke as she looked into a long room with a fireplace. A huge bay window that flooded the room with rain-soaked light and looked out onto the beach.

There was an odd feeling in her chest as they went quickly on, through rooms that felt as if they were holding their breaths. Waiting for her. Upstairs she opened the door into a child’s room, with a little bed covered by a blue quilt with ducks on it, and a cot. Through the streaming rain on the window she could see a swing in the garden below.

Her whole body throbbed with yearning. Stricken, she turned to Kit, opening her mouth to say something, but the words stuck in her swollen throat.

Gently he pulled her back towards the door.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to move the tour on at this point,’ he said huskily, brushing the side of her neck with his lips in the way that always made her instantly boneless with need. ‘Allow me to show you the master bedroom …’

When she broke away from kissing him and opened her
eyes again Sophie found herself in a large, low room with a pretty fireplace and a window like the one in the sitting room downstairs. A window seat was set into it.

As she looked Kit was very slowly turning her round so he could undo the zip on her dripping dress. Rain rattled against the window, and longing beat within her with the same relentless insistence. For him; but not just for the quick, exhilarating release of making love.

For more.

For all of him—body and soul. Head and heart. For always.

Her dress fell to the floor. She stood before him, naked and trembling, and for the first time ever she didn’t reach to tear his clothes off, rushing and fumbling.

They gazed at each other for a long moment. His silver eyes were hooded. The bruising on his face was gone now, the cuts healed, though the small scars they left would always be there. Mutely she reached up to run her fingers over them. He caught her hand, pressing it to his cheek for a second, then drawing her gently over to the bed. In one deft movement he folded down the covers, then picked her up and laid her onto the cool sheets.

She lay still as he peeled off his T-shirt and reached for the buckle of his belt. Her need for him was as strong as ever—stronger if anything—but it was as if something had shifted inside her; something to do with the quiet bedroom with the uneven walls and slightly sloping floor in this old farmhouse. It was as if she had been running for a long time, hurrying to get somewhere, and at last she had arrived. There was no need to rush any more.

His naked body was so beautiful. Her breath hitched in her throat as he lowered himself onto the bed beside her and, pulling the covers over them both, folded her gently into his arms.

After the rain the sky was washed out and new. The sun reappeared, making the raindrops on the window sparkle like
crystals. Like the tears on Sophie’s lashes. The intensity of their lovemaking had shaken them both.

‘I
like
this house,’ she said softly now, breaking the silence that had wrapped itself around them since the sobbing cries of her orgasm had faded.

‘Do you come here a lot?’

‘I used to call in a lot when I was a kid,’ he said gravely. ‘But I have to say that this is the first time I’ve actually come here.’

He’d said it in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere a little and banish the mood of wistfulness that seemed to have stolen the laughter from Sophie’s lips and the sparkle from her eyes as they’d looked round the house. It worked. She gave one of her breathy giggles. ‘Don’t be silly. You know what I mean.’

Smiling, he kissed the top of her head. ‘OK. I used to walk down here when I was home from school for the holidays, after Jasper was born. It was a working farm then; the people who lived here were called Mr and Mrs Prior. They were good to me. Probably because they felt sorry for me—it must have been obvious to everyone that I was surplus to requirement after Ralph remarried and Jasper arrived. They let me help out on the farm when I was old enough.’

He’d often eaten with them too; food he could still remember, that was nothing like the bland boarding-school stodge or the fussy, formal meals served up in the Alnburgh dining room, accompanied by acerbic asides from Ralph. It was here that he’d learned for the first time what ‘home’ could mean, and understood why some boys cried in the dark for the first few nights of term.

‘They sound lovely,’ Sophie said. ‘What happened to them?’

‘They went the same way as all the other tenants when Tatiana decided she’d like a little project and turned all the estate cottages into holiday lets. It wasn’t too bad for them—they were looking to retire anyway—but a lot of local people lost homes their families had lived in for generations. The idea was she was going to be completely in charge of managing them all, but of course the moment the fun decorating bit was done she got bored and handed it all over to an agency.’

‘Ah.’ It was a soft sigh of disappointment. ‘So it’s still being let? I was hoping we could stay.’ She sat up suddenly, clutching the duvet against her breasts. ‘Wait a minute—the basket on the table—does that mean people are going to be arriving today? Now I really do feel like Goldilocks—any minute someone’s going to appear and shout, “Who’s been shagging in my bed?”’

Kit smiled. He couldn’t help it.

‘Changeover day is usually Friday, so we should be safe. We can use the stuff the agency have left and I’ll replace it tomorrow. Shall we open the wine?’

It was almost a rhetorical question, since Sophie had never been known to refuse wine before, but she hesitated for a second, then sank down beside him again, not meeting his eye.

‘No, but I’d kill for a cup of tea. How much does it cost to stay here? I’m seriously thinking of booking it for as long as I can afford.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
OPHIE
slipped down beneath the warm fragrant water and, sighing, closed her eyes.

She was having a bath in Tatiana’s bathroom because it was by far the most comfortable one at Alnburgh, having been updated by her interior designer with no regard for expense. Or, unfortunately, for taste. Even behind her closed lids Sophie was still dazzled by the glare of about a hundred spotlights glinting off polished marble, gold-plated taps and wall-to-wall mirrors.

Alnburgh was all about extremes. Half of it hadn’t been touched in a hundred years, and the other half had been tarted up to look like Selfridges’ window at Christmastime. Neither half was particularly attractive or comfortable to live in. Wistfully Sophie let her mind drift back to that afternoon at the farmhouse.

When Kit was downstairs making the tea she had got up and stripped the bed, then set about clumsily remaking it with fresh sheets she’d found in the linen cupboard. She could hear him moving about in the kitchen below, and the sense of his presence near her in the house, the simple domesticity of the task, had given her an absurd sense of satisfaction.

The skies had cleared and the beach had been bathed in golden sunlight as they’d walked back, but the castle had loomed blackly ahead of them, looking so like a picture of a
haunted house in a cartoon that Sophie had almost expected to see a flash of forked lightning above the battlements and hear the sound of evil laughter.

Even the sand beneath her feet had felt cold in the shadow of Alnburgh, and with every step she had almost been able to feel Kit slipping away from her again. She had a sudden vision of the castle as a rival—the Other Woman, so much more sophisticated and enthralling than her. Or maybe she was the impostor? The mistress who would never quite win Kit back from his demanding, capricious wife.

She hauled herself up out of the water and reached for a towel. She wanted to be his wife, she thought sadly. She wanted normality, a kitchen that wasn’t in a dungeon, a swing in the garden and a cot in the bedroom upstairs. And a baby … Oh, please, God,
a baby
…

The Dark Star glinted in the spotlights as she wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out of the bath, and out of the warm water she was aware of a dragging pain in her stomach. Reaching down to dry herself, she felt a thud of foreboding and looked down at the damp red stain on the pale blue bath towel.

A sob rose in her throat.

There was no baby.

‘That’s great news, Randall.’

Kit slumped against the desk in the library, squeezing his eyes shut as he processed the latest information on Lewis’s progress and fighting against the now-familiar onslaught of guilt and relief.

‘Isn’t it?’ From the other end of the phone, in the Birmingham hospital, Randall sounded so positive it was almost infectious. ‘Of course the fact that Lewis is a young, fit guy has definitely been on his side in helping him recover physically, and this baby arriving in the next few weeks has
given him a real goal to work towards in terms of getting out of hospital. Hopefully he should make it in time for the birth.’

‘How’s his family coping?’ Standing up, Kit went to the window. The view was entirely different from the one he’d seen earlier; the distant sea was quiet and the expanse of sand was wide and flat and clean now the storm had passed.

‘His family are rallying round, and so are their entire neighbourhood and all his mates, planning a big party for when he gets home.’ Randall paused before adding tersely, ‘The girlfriend is less of a support. I wouldn’t put money on her sticking with him long term. I just hope she has the decency to stay with him until he’s back on his feet again, however long it takes.’

Kit kept his voice deliberately neutral and his eyes fixed on the distant place where the sea met the sky. ‘I don’t suppose it’s easy for her either, you know. She’s just a kid too. She didn’t exactly sign up for any of this when she started going out with him.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Randall sighed. ‘Sorry. It’s been a long shift and I’ve lost perspective a bit. Anyway, how are you?’

As he spoke movement out of the corner of Kit’s eye made him turn his head. His heart crashed as icy sweat drenched his body and his palms burned. A man with a metal detector was making his way slowly over the sand and for a moment Kit was back in uniform, watching his team mates inch up a dusty road, looking for mines.

‘Kit?’

Randall’s voice made the nightmarish vision fade again. Kit squeezed his eyes tightly shut for a second. ‘Sorry. I’m fine.’ His left hand hung at his side and he stretched and squeezed his numb fingers. ‘Tell Lewis I’ll come and see him tomorrow.’

‘I’m here if you need me, remember,’ Randall prompted gently.

‘I’ll bear it in mind. Thanks.’

His hand was shaking as he hung up.

He didn’t want to know, he told himself angrily. There was no need.

Quickly he crossed the room and headed for the stairs to find Sophie. Suddenly he had the terrible, crushing insight that every hour, every second with her was precious because there might only be a finite number of them …

The bedroom door was shut. He stopped outside it, leaning his head against it for a moment, breathing hard, reining back his thoughts before they raced away, completely out of control. God. And he’d always been so rigidly in command—of himself and everything else. So rational. So unemotional.

He barely recognised that man any more. The good soldier. The strong leader. The man who cared about little and had even less to lose.

Now he cared so much it was killing him. And he had everything to lose.

Gently he knocked and pushed open the door. Wrapped in a light blue bath towel, Sophie was sitting at the little oak console table she had brought up to use as a dressing table, brushing her hair. The pink-tinged evening light made her bare skin look as soft and tempting as a marshmallow. Kit’s stomach muscles tightened as if against a punch.

He went to stand behind her. She didn’t stop brushing, or raise her eyes to meet his in the mirror. Its age-mottled glass gave her face a timeless, ethereal beauty that seemed to place her somewhere just beyond his reach. He needed to reassure himself that she was there, that she was his, and he lifted his hand to sweep the heavy fall of her hair sideways and bent to kiss the nape of her neck.

She was the only thing that anchored him to sanity, the only way he knew of keeping the demons at bay. He breathed in her scent, and was aware of the fizzing in his fingers subsiding as they met her warm flesh.

‘Did you ring the hospital?’ she said in a low voice, bowing her head forwards as he kissed her neck.

‘Um-hm.’ Preoccupied, Kit didn’t lift his head.

‘How’s Lewis?’

‘Better.’

She leaned forwards, stiffening a little and moving away from him. ‘What does that mean? Better as in “completely recovered and going home”? Or better as in “off the critical list”?’

He didn’t want to think about it. Her skin was like velvet against his lips, and he put his arms around her to peel away the towel.

‘Somewhere between the two.’

Her hands came up to cover his and his first thought was that, as so often, she had read his mind, but then he felt her getting to her feet and pushing his hands away.

‘Kit, stop.’

Instantly he jerked upright and took a step back. Pulling the towel more tightly around herself, Sophie sank down onto the little rosewood chair again, her head lowered so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘What’s wrong?’

She gave a slight shrug, but didn’t look up. ‘You tell me.’

He sighed, dragging a hand impatiently over his eyes, a feeling of unease prickling at the back of his neck. ‘Sorry, I don’t get it. Is this going to be one of those cryptic conversations in which I have to guess what’s going on in your head?’

‘Maybe. At least then you’d know what it’s like for me.’

Her voice was low, but the edge of bitterness in it was unmistakable. Unease turned to alarm, making him speak more coldly than he’d intended.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means I can’t go on letting you push me away and shut me out.’
Kit gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Forgive me for being pedantic, but weren’t you the one who just pushed me away?’

‘That’s
sex
, Kit! I’m talking about intimacy.
Talking
.’ Her voice trembled with emotion, and as she raised her head he saw her face properly.

‘You’ve been crying. Sophie, what’s wrong?’

Shock hit him hard, like a punch to the solar plexus. She never cried—except when she saw a spider, or in the aftermath of their lovemaking when she collapsed, gasping and sobbing, onto his chest. Bewildered, he paced across the floor, his mind going back over the afternoon as he tried to think what could possibly have brought this on.

‘Look, if you hate it here that much …’

She shook her head, quickly rubbing the tears away with the back of her hand. ‘It’s not that. Not really. I mean, it’s not what I would have chosen, but I’d happily live in a cave as long as I was with you.’

‘You
are
with me.’

‘No. I’m not.’ She looked up again, and her eyes met his in the mirror. They shimmered with tears and were filled with an aching sadness. ‘We sleep together, Kit. We have sex—a lot of sex. Sometimes we have breakfast together the morning after, but we don’t talk. Not about anything that matters.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like about the future.’ She took a quick breath, in and out. ‘Or the past for that matter. Like what the hell happened to you while you were away.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Gritting his teeth, he spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘Things happen all the time out there. Bloody awful things that would drive you crazy if you let yourself dwell on them. But you don’t. You leave them there and you come home and forget.’

‘OK. I get it. You don’t want to talk to me.’ She gave a crooked smile that was unbearably poignant. ‘But I need to
talk to you. Five months is a long time and stuff happened here that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about.’

‘What stuff?’ His blood ran to ice.

‘Nothing terrible. But we do need to discuss it. I did as you said and went to see a doctor. About my periods.’

‘Aand?’

‘It’s endometriosis.’ She looked down at the hairbrush in her hand, turning it over and over. ‘No surprises there, but he warned me that getting pregnant might be difficult. He told me not to leave it too long before trying to start a family and—’

‘Sophie—’

She ignored the warning in his tone, looking straight at him with a mixture of resignation and defiance. ‘I stopped taking the pill immediately.’

Kit spun away from her. It was as if a switch had been flicked inside his body, shutting off all function, all feeling for a few seconds, while his brain spun into freefall.
Ten per cent of cases.
He raised his hands to his head as the implications hit.

‘And that was before I got home?’ he rasped. ‘So for the last
two weeks
we’ve—’

‘I’m not pregnant.’

The bald, emotionless statement stilled the panic in his head.

He dropped his hands to his sides again. Acid fizzed beneath his skin, burning and throbbing in the pulse points on his wrists just as horror beat inside him at the realisation that keeping his fears to himself could have had such far-reaching consequences. But more immediate than that was relief.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning to face her, but his voice was hoarse and unconvincing even to his ears.

‘Are you?’
Sophie stood up, stepping out from behind the dressing table chair and turning to him with eyes that blazed with fury. ‘Because for a moment there I could have sworn
that sorry was the last thing you were. In fact, “hugely relieved” might be a better way of describing your reaction.’ She held up her hands as if to push him back. ‘I wouldn’t bother to deny it, Kit. There’s really no point. I’m not even surprised, since it’s been getting increasingly obvious that there’s no future for us. Tell me, were you waiting out of kindness to let me down gently, or were you just going to shut me out a bit more every day in the hope that eventually I’d go of my own accord, and leave you free to mingle your exclusive Fitzroy genes with someone of the right pedigree?’

Every barbed word tore into him, but he knew he had brought the pain on himself. He gritted his teeth and steeled himself for more.

‘No.’

Tossing her hair back, she laughed, but it came out more like a sob. It hurt him even more than her anger and her inaccurate accusations. ‘Oh, dear. You’ll have to do better than that, Kit,’ she said. ‘This is the part where you’re supposed to take me in your arms and tell me I’ve got it all wrong and promise that one day we’ll have a family of our own—or didn’t you read the script?’

It took all his strength, all his courage to meet her eyes. He felt as if he’d swallowed arsenic.

‘I can’t do that. I’m sorry.’

Darkness gathered behind Sophie’s eyes. Her head was filled with a strange buzzing sound, and for a moment she actually thought she was going to faint. Kit’s face swam in front of her, as hard and blank as if it had been carved from stone.

‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

His emotionless voice reached her from a long distance away. He turned away from her then, and she was grateful that he couldn’t see her grabbing hold of the chest of drawers for support as she fought to drag in a breath. Her stomach cramped.

It was hardly a bolt from the blue. She had seen it coming since the morning after their dinner at Villa Luana. She had to hold onto her dignity.

‘It’s OK,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘You don’t have to explain. I understand already. When you asked me to marry you, all this wasn’t part of the deal.’ She made a gesture with her hand that inadequately indicated the vast castle that stretched all around them. ‘I know things have changed since then.’

‘Yes. Things have changed.’ Kit sounded so infinitely weary that for a moment she almost felt sorry for him. ‘But it’s nothing to do with Alnburgh. It’s me. I’ve changed.’