Acquainted With the Night (9781101546000) (9 page)

She opened the door wider. He stepped past her and she caught the scent of his cologne again. Handsome men made her nervous, but Jude also looked as if he could defend himself in a pub brawl.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked. “There's wine in the mini fridge.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Not much of a choice, I'm afraid.” She knelt beside the icebox. Bottles clinked as she pulled out a Chablis. She tipped the bottle over two glasses and handed one to him. “Cheers,” he said.

She raised her glass and repeated Uncle Nigel's favorite toast: “Here's mud in your eye.”

After she took a sip, she set her glass on the desk and picked up the letters. “Why were you using an alias?”

“I didn't want to be found.” He stared down into his wineglass.

“Why not?” She sat on the edge of the chair and tucked her feet around the rungs.

“Long story.” He tossed down the wine and grimaced. “Several things happened. Including a broken romance.”

A romance. Not surprising. Had it broken from Jude's end or the woman's? And why was he bringing it up? To show that he wasn't a pervert? Or unattached? No little wife waiting for him in Switzerland?

Caro set down the letters. “Uncle Nigel had a heart condition. Did your article concern cardiac issues?”

“No, genetics.”

“Why would my uncle be interested in that?” She lifted her glass and drained it.

“I was hoping you could tell me.” He nodded at her glass. “I'm empty, too. Shall I open another bottle?”

“Open two, if you don't mind. Not that I'm a sot. The bottles are awfully tiny.”

“Indeed they are.” He walked to the fridge.

“Do you have any idea why my uncle wanted us to meet?” she asked.

“I assumed you were a biochemist, too,” Jude said.

“Nothing of the sort.” Her voice sounded too cheerful, and she cringed. Dammit, the wine had fizzed straight to her brain, making her unnaturally chatty. Worse, she couldn't control it. “I was a Ph.D. candidate, but I quit. Now I'm a tour guide.”

“A Ph.D.” His eyebrows went up a little, as if he hadn't expected her to be a scholar. “What did you study?”

“History. Specifically heretics in the medieval church.”

He fell silent as he opened another bottle of Chablis. “Why did you give it up?”

She shrugged, as if she were always going off on tangents. The truth was scarier. She wasn't free-spirited or capricious. She was so vigilant her motto was
semper para-tus
, always prepared.

Jude handed her a swaying glass of Chablis, and his shirtsleeve pulled back slightly, revealing a sturdy wrist. He stepped back to the wall, reestablishing the neutral space between them.

“I'm sure you're a fantastic guide,” he said. “I can see you wearing pearls and escorting groups through Windsor Castle.”

“Quite the opposite.” She lifted her free hand and rubbed her forehead, trying to smooth out her thoughts. The Chablis had loosened her up, and in a bad way. She squashed an impulse to tell him about her secret specialty: wicked history, the smuttier the better. Once she got going, she'd never shut up. Lecturing this man about Catherine the Great's sexual preferences would be grossly uncouth, wouldn't it?

He smiled, as if he'd heard her thoughts. “When you aren't leading tourists through the Tate, what do you do?” he asked.

She shrugged. Better not mention her daily walks to the bakery, followed by evenings alone in the flat, eating treacle tarts and watching old movies, most recently Bogie and Bacall in
To Have and Have Not
.

He took a sip of wine, and she tried not to stare at his hands. They would have fascinated a medieval sculptor. She wasn't drawn to perfect men, but now that she'd had a chance to study him, she noticed that his right eye was rounder than the left. The disparity gave depth and expression to his face. So did the brown dots in his left eye, which were scattered like ground nutmeg.

She squirmed in her chair, trying to ignore the slight scratchy sound that his hand made as it slipped into the front pocket of his faded jeans. She imagined him clutching a pen, writing equations and notes on a yellow legal pad, adjusting dials on a microscope. Then she imagined his fingertips on her body.

“I read the letters,” she said.

“What did you make of them?”

“Not much.” They'd told more about him than her uncle's secret plan. Jude had grown up in the north country. The land of plucky orphans. Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, and Mary Lenox. “You're from York?” she asked.

“Ripon. North of Harrogate.”

“I've been there. Ripon is a cathedral city, right?”

“Yes.” A smile—or was it a frown?—tugged at the edges of his lips. “There's a line in
Jane Eyre
that refers to our old pile of rocks. Everyone thinks it's about the Norton-Conyers house, but it refers to Dalgliesh Castle.”

Keeping her eyes on him, Caro reached for her glass. Had the wine made him loquacious or was he boasting? She tried to look suitably impressed. “You lived in a castle?”

“I wasn't there often. My father sent me to boarding school.”

“And your family is old and stodgy?”

“Old enough.”

“Dalgliesh sounds familiar.”

“It's popular with tourists. After my father died, Lady Patricia couldn't afford a new roof. It was a positively astronomical sum. Over a million pounds. Lady Patricia had to prostitute the home-place.”

“Lady Patricia is your stepmum?”

“Yes.” His voice held no inflection and his face was unreadable.

Caro rubbed her temple. She was on the edge of remembering something about the castle. “Does Dalgliesh have a tree in the dungeon?”

“We don't have a dungeon. But there's a hawthorn tree in the cellar. Lady Patricia turned the area into a gift shop.”

“That's where I bought my luggage.” She pointed to the plaid duffel bag.

“Here's to small worlds.” He lifted his glass.

And huge houses.
Caro tried to imagine a much younger Jude playing in the garden maze or running into the moor with friends named Dickon and Colin. They'd play hide-and-seek in the turrets, overturn tea tables, smash priceless Staffordshire figurines, kick balls into the knot gardens, and attack Lady Patricia's roses with clippers.

“The castle had four Scottish terriers,” she said, hoping he'd elaborate. When he didn't, she added, “Tourists were lined up, snapping their pictures. They were well behaved—the dogs, not the tourists.”

“They're Lady Patricia's,” Jude said. “They know the sound of her car, and they form a greeting party at the end of the lane. At least, they used to. I haven't been home in years.”

“Because you don't get on with Lady Patricia?”

“I'm quite fond of her.”

So, his stepmother wasn't wicked. And he was from a powerful Yorkshire family. Why was he living in Switzerland if everything was so cozy? Caro felt more confused than ever, and she was smashed. The alcohol had dissolved the last vestiges of civility. “Why did you leave Ripon and move to Switzerland?”

“I like to move around.”

“That's why you followed me to Bulgaria?”

“I was hoping you could interpret Sir Nigel's letters.”

“That's only part of it, isn't it?” She leaned forward. “Why are you here? Morbid curiosity?”

“No, indeed not.” His eyebrows angled up. “I was intrigued by the letters.”

“Why fly from London to Bulgaria to hand them over? You could've given them to me at the airport. I would have called you.”

“I told you before, I don't have a phone.”

She swallowed the rest of her wine. “Would you open another bottle?”

He hesitated, but only for a moment, and then he stepped over to the fridge, grabbed a bottle, and peeled back the foil. Once again she found herself looking at his hands. His face was interesting, too, changing from second to second, mainly because of his eyebrows—they seemed to have a language all their own, moving when he talked, and even when he was silent.

An intense sexual desire rippled through her, and she didn't have the decency to blush, much less look away. His blue gaze was both appealing and unsettling, and that smile always flickered at the edges of his mouth. Probably because she couldn't stop staring. She hadn't traveled to Kardzhali to have a fling. She was here for the saddest of reasons: to bring her uncle home. The backs of her eyes burned, and she turned away.

“Are you all right?” Jude asked.

She started to tell him she was fine, just fine, but her lips were stuck to her teeth. She couldn't explain that the house on Norham Gardens filled her with an odd blend of homesickness and despair. Their housekeeper, Mrs. Turner, would urge Caro to empty her uncle's closets, to pack away the Harris Tweed jackets that always smelled of tobacco, whiskey, and chalk dust. She would sort through his desk while the cat, Dinah, stretched on the floor, sunning herself on the oriental rug. Without Uncle Nigel's vigorous presence, the house would be cold and empty.

She blinked, and tears ran down her cheeks. The air stirred as Jude knelt beside her. “It's all right, lass,” he said. “It's all right.”

Her head tipped forward and landed on his shoulder. She breathed in the aromas of cologne, leather, wine, and soap. There was a sturdiness to him, a fixed strength, reminding her of a house on a damp evening, a light glowing behind diamond-paned windows.

“There, there,” he said, almost a whisper. “No tears before bedtime.”

What a strange coincidence that Jude would use the same words to soothe her that Uncle Nigel had. She wiped her eyes and leaned back. His eyes were so blue, she wanted to jump into them.

His fingers grazed her chin. “Better?” he asked.

His hand fell to his side, and he stood. “I should go, shouldn't I?”

“Please don't.” She got to her feet and stepped closer. She wanted to touch him, to press her face against his face and feel the weight of his body, the whole length of him pushing her down into a warm place. It felt wrong somehow to be consumed by these feelings in the wake of her uncle's death, and yet it somehow seemed right. She wanted Jude to take her out of all that, to distract her and make her feel something other than the immense pain and loneliness that had surrounded her since that horrible phone call.

She stood on her toes and pressed her lips against his, tasting wine and salt. His tongue pressed against hers, lightly at first, but the delicate dance quickly morphed into something more urgent. Her knees began to shake. She wanted more than a kiss, and she wanted it now. She slid her hands up his chest, brushing over the smooth cotton, feeling the hard curve of his muscles.

Still kissing him, her fingers grazed his collar. As she undid the top button, her hand froze. What was wrong with her? How could she feel pleasure amid so much emotional pain?

No, she couldn't do this. She broke the kiss and stepped backward. “I'm sorry.”

His eyebrows came together. “What for?”

She felt dizzy and put a steadying hand on the desk. Better not get into that kiss. Better to tell a plausible lie. “I'm just exhausted,” she said. “Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Of course.” He walked to the door and opened it, then he turned back. “Are you certain you're all right?”

She almost told him to whistle. It had worked for Bacall and Bogie, but it wouldn't work for her. So she just nodded.

“Well, good-bye, then.” Jude stepped into the hall. The door clicked shut behind him, a hard, final sound. Now that he was really gone, she was sorry. There was still time to call him back, wasn't there?

No, of course not. She flopped onto the bed. She'd saved herself a world of embarrassment. Him, too. Especially him. She pushed the pillow over her head. Drunken idiot. But not so drunk that she'd slept with him. That really would've taken the biscuit.

Daylight blazed through the curtain, shining into Caro's eyes. It felt rather pleasant until she tried to sit up, and then pain shot through her head. God, how much had she drunk last night? She wasn't in the habit of kissing strange men—not because she was a prude, but because she was a cynic. The London dating scene was flooded with married men and players. Without exception, she'd been drawn to commitment-phobic chaps. In fact, she'd compiled a list of her failed relationships, which she privately referred to as the Lost Boys.

Her first beau, a thirteen-year-old football player, had shattered her bedroom window with a rock, only to later claim temporary insanity after Uncle Nigel had charged the lad with vandalism. Her big love was a college boy who'd almost gotten into her knickers, but Uncle Nigel's relentless hoovering in the next room had quashed that romantic interlude. That particular boy dropped her for a girl who didn't have a nosy, and noisy, uncle. The lovebirds had gotten married and now raised show-quality dachshunds.

The most cringeworthy entry in the list was her engagement to an Oxford banker named Robert Thaxton. Their romance was one of those sad tales that tour guides love to embellish on castle tours, but in her case it was true.

Caro had still been living with her uncle when Robert had proposed. Uncle Nigel had wanted to make a huge fuss, so he'd arranged a lavish party at Danesfield House, near Marlow-on-Thames. Then he'd taken her shopping at Harrods, and she'd picked out a gray-blue silk dress went nicely with her eyes. The night of the party, she fashioned her frizzy hair into a sleek chignon. Uncle Nigel looked smashing in his ancient tuxedo. They stepped into the Oak Room, arm in arm, and greeted their guests.