Wicked Secrets

‘Oops.’ Jasper took another sip of coffee while he digested this information. ‘OK, well, that is a bit unfortunate, but don’t worry—we still have time to turn it around at the party tonight. You’ll be every man’s idea of the perfect girlfriend.’

Sophie raised an eyebrow. ‘In public? In front of your parents? From my experience of what men consider the perfect girlfriend, that wouldn’t be wise.’

‘Wicked girl,’ Jasper scolded. ‘I meant demure, devoted, hanging on my every word—that sort of thing. What did you bring to wear?’

‘My Chinese silk dress.’

With a firm shake of his head Jasper put down his mug. ‘Absolutely not. Far too sexy. No, what we need is something a little more … understated. A little more modest.’

Sophie narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean frumpy, don’t you? Do you have something in mind?’

Getting up, Jasper went over to the window and drew back the curtains with a theatrical flourish. ‘Not something, somewhere. Get up, Cinderella, and let’s hit the shops of Hawksworth.’

Jasper drove Ralph’s four-by-four along roads that had been turned into ice rinks. It was a deceptively beautiful day. The sun shone in a sky of bright, hard blue and made the fields and hedgerows glitter as if each twig and blade of grass was encrusted with Swarovski crystals. He had pinched a navy-blue quilted jacket of Tatiana’s to lend to Sophie, instead of the military-style overcoat of which Kit had been so scathing. Squinting at her barefaced reflection in the drop-down mirror on the sun visor, she remarked that all that was missing was a silk headscarf and her new posh-girl image would be complete. Jasper leaned over and pulled one out of the glove compartment. She tied it under her chin and they roared with laughter.

They parked in the market square in the centre of a town that looked as if it hadn’t altered much in the last seventy years. Crunching over gritted cobblestones, Jasper led her past greengrocers, butchers and shops selling gate hinges and sheep dip, to an ornately fronted department store. Mannequins wearing bad blonde wigs modelled twinsets and patterned shirtwaister dresses in the windows.

‘Braithwaite’s—the fashion centre of the North since 1908’ read the painted sign above the door. Sophie wondered if it was meant to be ironic.

‘After you, madam,’ said Jasper with a completely straight face, holding the door open for her. ‘Evening wear. First floor.’

Sophie stifled a giggle. ‘I love vintage clothing, as you know, but—’

‘No buts,’ said Jasper airily, striding past racks of raincoats towards a sweeping staircase in the centre of the store. ‘Just think of it as dressing for a part. Tonight, Ms Greenham, you are not going to be your gorgeous, individual but—let’s face it—slightly eccentric self. You are going to be perfect Fitzroy-fiancée material. And that means Dull.’

At the top of the creaking staircase Sophie caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror. In jeans and Tatiana’s jacket, the silk scarf still knotted around her neck a lurid splash of colour against her un-made-up face, dull was exactly the word. Still, if dull was what was required to slip beneath Kit Fitzroy’s radar that had to be a good thing.

Didn’t it?

She hesitated for a second, staring into her own wide eyes, thinking of last night and the shower of shooting stars that had exploded inside her when he’d touched her wrist; the static that had seemed to make the air between them vibrate as they’d stood in the dark corridor. The blankness of his expression, but the way it managed to convey more vividly than a thousand well-chosen words his utter contempt …

‘What do you think?’

Yes. Dull was good. The duller the better.

‘Hello-o?’

Pasting on a smile, she turned to Jasper, who had picked out the most hideous concoction of ruffles and ruches in the kind of royal blue frequently used for school uniforms. Sophie waved her hand dismissively.

‘Strictly Come Drag Queen. I thought we were going for dull—that’s attention-grabbing for all the wrong reasons. No—we have to find something really boring …’ She began rifling through rails of pastel polyester. ‘We have to find the closest thing The Fashion Capital of the North has to a shroud … Here. How about this?’

Triumphantly she pulled out something in stiff black fabric—long, straight and completely unadorned. The neck was cut straight across in a way that she could imagine would make her breasts look like a sort of solid, matronly shelf, and the price tag was testament to the garment’s extreme lack of appeal. It had been marked down three times already and was now almost being given away.

‘Looks good to me.’ Jasper flipped the hanger around, scrutinising the dress with narrowed eyes. ‘Would madam like to try it on?’

‘Nope. It’s my size, it’s horrible and it’s far too cold to get undressed. Let’s just buy it and go to the pub. As your fiancée I think I deserve an enormous and extremely calorific lunch.’

Jasper grinned and kissed her swiftly on the cheek. ‘You’re on.’

The Bull in Hawksworth was the quintessential English pub: the walls were yellow with pre-smoking-ban nicotine, a scarred dartboard hung on the wall beside an age-spotted etching of Alnburgh Castle and horse brasses were nailed to the blackened beams. Sophie slid behind a table in the corner by the fire while Jasper went to the bar. He came back with a pint of lager and a glass of red wine, and a newspaper folded under his arm.

‘Food won’t be a minute,’ he said, taking a sip of lager, which left a froth of white on his upper lip. ‘Would you mind if I gave Sergio a quick call? I brought you this to read.’ He threw down the newspaper and gave her an apologetic look as he took out his phone. ‘It’s just it’s almost impossible to get a bloody signal at Alnburgh, and I’m always terrified of being overheard anyway.’

Sophie shrugged. ‘No problem. Go ahead.’

‘Is there a “but” there?’

Taking a sip of her wine, she shook her head. ‘No, of course not.’ She put her glass down, turning the stem between her fingers. In the warmth of the fire and Jasper’s familiar company she felt herself relaxing more than she had done in the last twenty-four hours. ‘Except,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘perhaps that I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier if you came clean about all this.’

‘Came out, you mean?’ Jasper said with sudden weariness. ‘Well, it wouldn’t. It’s easier just to live my own life, far away from here, without having to deal with the fallout of knowing I’ve let my whole family down. My father might be seventy, but he still prides himself on the reputation as a ladies’ man he’s spent his entire adult life building. He sees flirting with anything in a skirt as a mark of sophisticated social inter-action—as you may have noticed last night. Homosexuality is utterly alien to him, so he thinks it’s unnatural full stop.’ With an agitated movement of his hand he knocked his pint glass so that beer splashed onto the table. ‘Honestly, it would finish him off. And as for Kit—’

‘Yes, well, I don’t know what gives Kit the right to go around passing judgment on everyone else, like he’s something special,’ Sophie snapped, unfolding the paper as she moved it away from the puddle of lager on the table. ‘It’s not as if he’s better than you because he’s straight, or me because he’s posh—’

‘Holy cow,’ spluttered Jasper, grasping her arm.

Breaking off, she followed his astonished gaze and felt the rest of the rant dissolve on her tongue. For there, on the front of the newspaper—in grainy black and white, but no less arresting for it—was Kit. Beneath the headline Heroes Honoured a photograph showed him in half profile, his expression characteristically blank above his dress uniform with its impressive line of medals.

Quickly, incredulously, Jasper began to read out the accompanying article.

‘Major Kit Fitzroy, known as “the heart-throb hero”, was awarded the George Medal for his “dedication to duty and calm, unflinching bravery in the face of extreme personal risk”. Major Fitzroy has been responsible for making safe over 100 improvised explosive devices, potentially saving the lives of numerous troops and civilians, a feat which he describes as “nothing remarkable”.’

For long moments neither of them spoke. Sophie felt as if she’d swallowed a firework, which was now fizzing inside her. The barmaid brought over plates of lasagne and chips and retreated again. Sophie’s appetite seemed to have mysteriously deserted her.

‘I suppose that does give him the right to act like he’s a bit special, and slightly better than you and me,’ she admitted shakily. ‘Did you know anything about this?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘But wouldn’t your father want to know? Wouldn’t he be pleased?’

Jasper shrugged. ‘He’s always been rather sneery about Kit’s army career, maybe because he’s of the opinion people of our class don’t work, apart from in pointless, arty jobs like mine.’ Picking up his pint, he frowned. ‘It might also have something to do with the fact his older brother was killed in the Falklands, but I don’t know. That’s one of those Things We definitely Do Not Mention.’

There seemed to be quite a lot of those in the Fitzroy family, Sophie thought. She couldn’t stop looking at the photograph of Kit, even though she wanted to. Or help thinking how attractive he was, even though she didn’t want to.

It had been easy to write him off as an obnoxious, arrogant control-freak but what Jasper had said about his mother last night, and now this, made her see him, reluctantly, in a different light.

What was worse, it made her see herself in a different light too. Having been on the receiving end of ignorant prejudice, Sophie liked to think she would never rush to make ill-informed snap judgments about people, but she had to admit that maybe, just maybe, in this instance she had.

But so had he, she reminded herself defiantly. He had dismissed her as a shallow, tarty gold-digger when that most definitely wasn’t true. The gold-digger part, anyway. Hopefully tonight, with the aid of the nunlike dress and a few pithy comments on current affairs and international politics, she’d make him see he’d been wrong about the rest too.

For Jasper’s sake, obviously.

As they left she picked up the newspaper. ‘Do you think they’d mind if I took this?’

‘What for?’ Jasper asked in surprise. ‘D’you want to sleep with the heart-throb hero under your pillow?’

‘No!’ Annoyingly Sophie felt herself blush. ‘I want to swot up on the headlines so I can make intelligent conversation tonight.’

Jasper laughed all the way back to the car.

Ralph adjusted his bow tie in the mirror above the drawing room fireplace and smoothed a hand over his brushed-back hair.

‘I must say, Kit, I find your insistence on bringing up the subject of my death in rather poor taste,’ he said in an aggrieved tone. ‘Tonight of all nights. A milestone birthday like this is depressing enough without you reminding me constantly that the clock is ticking.’

‘It’s not personal,’ Kit drawled, mentally noting that he’d do well to remember that himself. ‘And it is boring, but the fact remains that Alnburgh won’t survive the inheritance tax it’ll owe on your death unless you’ve transferred the ownership of the estate to someone else. Seven years is the—’

Ralph cut him off with a bitter, blustering laugh. ‘By someone else, I suppose you mean you? What about Jasper?’

Alnburgh is yours, Kit. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not.

In the pockets of his dinner-suit trousers Kit’s hands were bunched into fists. Experience had taught him that when Ralph was in this kind of punchy, belligerent mood the best way to respond was with total detachment. He wondered fleetingly if that was where he first picked up the habit.

‘Jasper isn’t the logical heir,’ he said, very evenly.

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Ralph replied with unpleasant, mock joviality. ‘Let’s look at it this way—Jasper is probably going to live another sixty or seventy years, and, believe me, I have every intention of lasting a lot more than seven years. Given your job I’d say you’re the one who’s pushing your luck in that department, don’t you think? Remember what happened to my dear brother Leo. Never came back from the Falklands. Very nasty business.’

Ralph’s eyes met Kit’s in the mirror and slid away. He was already well on the way to being drunk, Kit realised wearily, and that meant that any further attempt at persuasion on his part would only be counterproductive.

‘Transfer it to Jasper if you want.’ He shrugged, picking up the newspaper that lay folded on a coffee table. ‘That would certainly be better than doing nothing, though I’m not sure he’d thank you for it since he hates being here as much as Tatiana does. It might also put him at further risk from ruthless gold-diggers like the one he’s brought up this weekend.’

The medals ceremony he’d attended yesterday was front-page news. Idly he wondered whether Ralph had seen it and chosen not to say anything.

‘Sophie?’ Ralph turned round, putting his hands into his pockets and rocking back on the heels of his patent shoes. ‘I thought she was quite charming. Gorgeous little thing, too. Good old Jasper, eh? He’s got a cracker there.’

‘Except for the fact that she couldn’t give a toss about him,’ Kit commented dryly, putting down the paper.

‘Jealous, Kit?’ Ralph said, and there was real malice in his tone. His eyes were narrowed, his face suddenly flushed. ‘You think you’re the one who should get all the good-looking girls, don’t you? I’d say you want her for yourself, just like—’

At that moment the strange outburst was interrupted by Jasper coming in. Ralph broke off and turned abruptly away.

‘Just like what?’ Kit said softly.

‘Nothing.’ Ralph pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. As he turned to Jasper his face lost all its hostility. ‘We were just talking about you—and Sophie.’

Heading to the drinks tray, Jasper grinned. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t she? And really clever and talented too. Great actress.’

In his dinner suit and with his hair wet from the shower Jasper looked about fifteen, Kit thought, his heart darkening against Sophie Greenham.

‘So I noticed,’ he said blandly, going to the door. He turned to Ralph. ‘Think about what I said about the estate transfer. Oh, and I promised Thomas I’d see to the port tonight. Any preference?’

Ralph seemed to have recovered his composure. ‘There’s an excellent ‘29. Though, on second thoughts, open some ‘71.’ His smile held a hint of challenge. ‘Let’s keep the really good stuff for my hundredth, since I fully intend to be around to celebrate it.’

Crossing the portrait hall in rapid, furious strides, Kit swore with such viciousness a passing waiter shot behind a large display of flowers. So he’d failed to make Ralph see sense about the estate. He’d just have to make sure he was more successful when it came to Sophie Greenham.

It was just as well she hadn’t eaten all that lasagne at lunchtime, Sophie reflected grimly, tugging at the zip on the side of the black dress. Obviously, with hindsight, trying it on in the shop would have been wise—all the croissants and baguettes in Paris must have taken more of a toll than she’d realised. Oh, well—if it didn’t fit she’d just have to wear the Chinese silk that Jasper had decreed was too sexy …

Hope flared inside her. Instantly she stamped it out.

No. Tonight was not about being sexy, or having fun, she told herself sternly. Tonight was about supporting Jasper and showing Kit that she wasn’t the wanton trollop he had her down as.

She thought again of the photo in the paper—unsmiling, remote, heroic—and her insides quivered a little. Because, she realised with a pang of surprise, she actually didn’t want him to think that about her.

With renewed effort she gave the zip another furious tug. It shot up and she let out the lungful of air she’d been holding, looking down at the dress with a sinking heart. Her cell-like bedroom didn’t boast anything as luxurious as a full-length mirror, but she didn’t need to see her whole reflection to know how awful she looked. It really was the most severely unflattering garment imaginable, falling in a plain, narrow, sleeveless tube from her collarbones to her ankles. A slit up one side at least meant that she could walk without affecting tiny geishalike steps, but she felt as if she were wrapped in a roll of wartime blackout fabric.

‘That’s good,’ she said out loud, giving herself a severe look in the little mirror above the sink. Her reflection stared back at her, face pale against the bright mass of her hair. She’d washed it and, gleaming under the overhead light, the colour now seemed more garish than ever. Grabbing a few pins, she stuck them in her mouth, then pulled her hair back and twisted it tightly at the back of her neck.

Standing back again, she pulled a face.

There. Disfiguring dress and headmistress hair. Jasper’s dull girlfriend was ready for her public, although at least Sophie had the private satisfaction of knowing that she was also wearing very naughty underwear and what Jasper fondly called her ‘shag-me’ shoes. Twisting round, she tried to check the back view of the dress, and gave a snort of laughter as she noticed the price ticket hanging down between her shoulder blades.

Classy and expensive was always going to be a hard look for the girl who used to live on a bus to pull off, as Olympia Rothwell-Hyde and her cronies had never stopped reminding her. Attempting to do it with a label on her back announcing just how little she’d paid for the blackout dress would make it damned impossible.

She gave it a yank and winced as the plastic cut into her fingers. Another try confirmed that it was definitely a job for scissors. Which she didn’t have.

She bit her lip. Jasper had already gone down, telling her to join them in the drawing room as soon as she was ready, but there was no way she could face Tatiana, who would no doubt be decked out in designer finery and dripping with diamonds, with her knock-down price ticket on display. She’d just have to slip down to the kitchens and see if the terrifying Mrs Daniels—or Mrs Danvers as she’d privately named her when Jasper had introduced her this morning—had some.

The layout of the castle was more familiar now and Sophie headed for the main stairs as quickly as the narrow dress would allow. The castle felt very different this evening from the cavernous, shadowy place at which she’d arrived last night. Now the stone walls seemed to resonate with a hum of activity as teams of caterers and waiting-on staff made final preparations in the staterooms below.

It was still freezing, though. In the portrait hall the smell of woodsmoke drifted through the air, carried on icy gusts of wind that the huge fires banked in every grate couldn’t seem to thaw. It mingled with the scent of hothouse flowers, which stood on every table and window ledge.

Sophie hitched up the narrow skirt of her dress and went more carefully down the narrow back stairs to the kitchens. It was noticeably warmer down here, the vaulted ceilings holding the heat from the ovens. A central stone-flagged passageway stretched beyond a row of Victorian windows in the kitchen wall, into the dimly lit distance. To the dungeons, Jasper had teased her earlier.

The dungeons, where Kit probably locked up two-timing girlfriends, she thought grimly, shivering in spite of the relative warmth. The noise of her heels echoed loudly off the stone walls. The glass between the corridor and the kitchen was clouded with steam, but through it Sophie could see that Mrs Daniels’ domain had been taken over by legions of uniformed chefs.

Of course. Jasper had mentioned that both she and Thomas the butler had been given the night off. Well, there was no way she was going in there. Turning on her high heel, she hitched up her skirt and was hurrying back in the direction she’d just come when a voice behind her stopped her in her tracks.

‘Are you looking for something?’

Her heart leapt into her throat and she spun round. Kit had emerged from one of the many small rooms that led off the passageway, his shoulders, in a perfectly cut black dinner suit, seeming almost to fill the narrow space. Their eyes met, and in the harsh overhead bulk light Sophie saw him recoil slightly as a flicker of some emotion—shock, or was it distaste?—passed across his face.

‘I was l-looking for M-Mrs Daniels,’ she said in a strangled voice, feeling inexplicably as if he’d caught her doing something wrong again. God, no wonder he had risen so far up the ranks in the army. She’d bet he could reduce insubordinate squaddies to snivelling babies with a single glacial glare. She coughed, and continued more determinedly. ‘I wanted to borrow some scissors.’

‘That’s a relief.’ His smile was almost imperceptible. ‘I assume it means I don’t have to tell you that you have a price ticket hanging down your back.’

Heat prickled through her, rising up her neck in a tide of uncharacteristic shyness.

Quickly she cleared her throat again. ‘No.’

‘Perhaps I could help? Follow me.’

Sophie was glad of the ringing echo of her shoes on the stone floor as it masked the frantic thud of her heart. He had to duck his head to get through the low doorway and she followed him into a vaulted cellar, the brick walls of which were lined with racks of bottles that gleamed dully in the low light. There was a table on which more bottles stood, alongside a knife and stained cloth like a consumptive’s handkerchief. Kit picked up the knife.

‘Wh-what are you doing?’

Hypnotised, she watched him wipe the blade of the knife on the cloth.

‘Decanting port.’

‘What for?’ she rasped, desperately trying to make some attempt at sensible conversation. Snatches of the article in the newspaper kept coming back to her, making it impossible to think clearly. Heart-throb hero. Unflinching bravery. Extreme personal risk. It was as if someone had taken her jigsaw puzzle image of him and broken it to bits, so the pieces made quite a different picture now.

His lips twitched into the faint half-smile she’d come to recognise, but his hooded eyes held her gravely. The coolness was still there, but they’d lost their sharp contempt.

‘To get rid of the sediment. The bottle I’ve just opened last saw daylight over eighty years ago.’

Sophie gave a little laugh, squirming slightly under his scrutiny. ‘Isn’t it a bit past its sell-by date?’

‘Like lots of things, it improves with age,’ he said dryly, taking hold of her shoulders with surprising gentleness and turning her round. ‘Would you like to try some?’

‘Isn’t it very expensive?’

What was it about an absence of hostility that actually made it feel like kindness? Sophie felt the hair rise on the back of her neck as his fingers brushed her bare skin. She held herself very rigid for a second, determined not to give in to the helpless shudder of desire that threatened to shake her whole body as he bent over her. Her breasts tingled, and beneath the severe lines of the dress her nipples pressed against the tight fabric.

‘Put it this way, you could get several dresses like that for the price of a bottle,’ he murmured, and Sophie could feel the warm whisper of his breath on her neck as he spoke. She closed her eyes, wanting the moment to stretch for ever, but then she heard the snap of plastic as he cut through the tag and he was pulling back, leaving her feeling shaky and on edge.

‘To be honest, that doesn’t say much about your port,’ she joked weakly.

‘No.’ He went back over to the table and picked up a bottle, holding it up to the light for a second before pouring a little of the dark red liquid into a slender, teardrop-shaped decanter. ‘It’s a great dress. It suits you.’

His voice was offhand. So why did it make goosebumps rise on her skin?

‘It’s a very cheap dress.’ She laughed again, awkwardly, crossing her arms across her chest to hide the obvious outline of her nipples, which had to be glaringly obvious against the plainness of the dress. ‘Or is that what you meant by it suiting me?’