Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) (15 page)

Her eyes opened slowly, and the smile she gave him was infinitely sad.

‘Nothing,’ she said softly. ‘Nothing.’

After he’d gone Sophie rolled over and let the tears spill down her cheeks.

He had slept with her because he’d finally found a get-out clause in his moral rule book. He no longer had a duty to Jasper, and that made it OK for him. But what about her?

Last night she thought he understood, without making her spell it out, that she wasn’t betraying Jasper by sleeping with him.

It seemed he didn’t.

She hadn’t expected for ever. She hadn’t expected declarations of undying love. Only for him to trust her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘T
HE
cars are here, madam.’

Thomas appeared in the hallway, his face rigidly blank as he made his announcement. But Sophie heard the slight break in his voice and felt the lump of emotion in her throat swell a little.

She mustn’t cry. Not when Tatiana was holding herself together with such dignity. Getting into the gleaming black Bentley, she was the picture of sober elegance in a narrow-fitting black skirt and jacket, her eyes hidden by a hat with a tiny black net veil. Jasper got in beside her. He was grey-faced, hollow-cheeked, a ghost of the languid, laughing boy she knew in London. She noticed his throat working as he glanced at the hearse in front, where Ralph’s polished coffin lay decked in white flowers, and as he settled himself in the back of the car he had to twist his hands together to stop them shaking.

Poor Jasper. She had to stay strong for him. Today was going to be such an ordeal, and his grief was so much more profound than anything she’d ever experienced. She dug her nails into her palm. And anyway, what did she have to cry about? She’d hardly known Ralph. And it was stupid,
stupid
to be upset over a one-night stand with a man she wasn’t going to see again after today.

‘After you.’

She looked up and felt her knees buckle a little. Kit was standing behind her on the steps to the castle, his perfectly tailored black suit and tie cruelly highlighting his austere beauty. His face was completely expressionless, and his silver eyes barely flickered over her as he spoke.

His indifference was like knives in her flesh. It was as if last night had never happened.

‘Oh. I’m not sure I should go in the official car,’ she stammered, looking down at her shoes. ‘I’m not family or anything.’

‘That makes two of us,’ he murmured acidly. ‘You’re Jasper’s girlfriend, that’s close enough. Just get in—unless you’re planning to walk in those heels.’

She did as she was told, but without any of the grace with which Tatiana had performed the manoeuvre, and was aware that Kit would have got a very unflattering view of her bottom in the tight black dress. She wondered if he’d seen that the hem was stuck up with Sellotape where she’d hurriedly cut it off at the knee this morning and hadn’t had time to sew it.

Further evidence of her lack of class. Another reason for him to put her in the category of ‘Women to Sleep With’ (subsection: Once) rather than ‘Women to Date’.

He got in beside her and an undertaker with a permanent expression of compassionate respect shut the door. Sophie found herself huddling close to Jasper so she could leave an inch of cream leather seat between her leg and Kit’s. As the car moved silently beneath the arched gateway she bit her lip and kept her head turned away from him, her gaze fixed out of the window. But she could still catch the faint dry, delicious scent of his skin and that was enough to make the memories of last night come flooding back. She wished she could switch them off, as Thomas had switched off the water supply when the pipe had burst. But even if she could, she thought sadly, her body would still remember and still throb with longing for him.

The rose-pink sunrise had delivered a beautiful winter’s day for Ralph’s send-off—crisp, cold and glittering, just like the day of his party. The leaden clouds of the last grim week had lifted to reveal a sky of clean, clear blue.

Outside the church of St John the Baptist people stood in groups, stamping their feet to keep warm as they talked. Some were smartly dressed in black, but most of them wore everyday outdoor gear, and Sophie realised they must be local people, drawn by the social spectacle rather than grief. They fell silent and turned sombre, curious faces towards them as the cars turned into the churchyard.

‘I forgot to bring the monkey nuts,’ muttered Jasper with uncharacteristic bitchiness.

‘People are curious,’ said Tatiana in a flat, cold voice. ‘They want to see if we feel things differently from them. We don’t, of course. The difference is we don’t show our feelings.’

Sophie bit her lip. She was one of those people, with her cheap dress and her Sellotaped hem. She wasn’t part of the ‘we’ that Tatiana talked about. She wasn’t even Jasper’s girlfriend, for pity’s sake. As they got out of the car and Jasper took his mother’s arm to escort her into the church, Sophie tried to slip to the back, looking for Thomas and Mrs Daniels to sit with. A firm hand gripped her arm.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Kit grimly.

He kept hold of her arm as they progressed slowly down the aisle of the packed church, behind Tatiana and Jasper and the coffin. Torn between heaven and hell at his closeness, Sophie was aware of people’s heads turning, curious eyes sweeping over her beneath the brims of countless black hats, no doubt wondering who she was and what right she had to be there. She felt a barb of anguish as she realised people must think she was with Kit.

If only.

‘I am the resurrection and the life …’

Beside her Kit’s hands were perfectly steady as he held his service sheet without looking at it. Sophie didn’t allow herself to glance at him, but even so she knew that his gaze was fixed straight ahead and that his silver eyes would be hard and dry, because it was as if she had developed some supernatural power that made her absolutely instinctively aware of everything about him.

Was that what loving someone did to you?

She lifted her head and looked up at the stained-glass window above the altar. The winter sunlight was shining through it, illuminating the jewel-bright colours and making the saints’ faces positively glow with righteousness. She smiled weakly to herself. It’s divine retribution, isn’t it? she thought. My punishment for playing fast and loose with the affections of Jean-Claude and countless others. For thinking I was above it all and being scornful about love …

There was a shuffling of feet as the organ started and the congregation stood up. Sophie hastily followed suit, turning over her service sheet and trying to work out where the words to the hymn were. She was aware of Kit, towering above her like some dark angel, as he handed her an open hymn book, tapping the right page with a finger.

‘I vow to thee my country …’

It was a hymn about sacrifice. Numbly Kit registered the familiar lines about laying down your life for your nation and wondered what the hell Ralph knew about any of that. As far as Kit knew, Ralph had never put his own needs, his own desires anything but first. He had lived for pleasure. He had died, the centre of attention at his own lavish party, not alone and thousands of miles from home on some hot, dusty roadside.

He would never have sacrificed his happiness for the sake of his brother.

Was that yet another item on his list of character flaws, or evidence that he was a hell of a lot cleverer than Kit after all?

Kit let the hymn book in his hands drop and closed his eyes as the hymn reached its stirring climax. Everyone sat down again, and as Sophie moved beside him he caught a breath of her perfume and the warmth of her body on the arctic air.

Want whiplashed through him, so that he had to grip the back of the pew in front to steady himself. Kit had attended too many funerals, carried too many flag-draped coffins onto bleak airfields to be unaware that life was short. Rules and principles didn’t help when you were dead.

Joy should be seized. Nights like the one he’d just spent with Sophie should be celebrated.

Shouldn’t they?

In the elaborately carved pulpit supplied by another long-gone Fitzroy, the vicar cleared his throat and prepared to start his address. Kit forced himself to drag his attention away from Sophie’s hands, resting in her lap. The skin was translucent pale against her black dress. They looked cold. He wanted to warm them, as she’d warmed him last night.

‘We come together today to celebrate the life of Ralph Fitzroy, who to those gathered here was not just the Earl of Hawksworth, but a husband, father and friend.’

It was just sex.
That was what she’d said on the phone the first time he’d seen her, wasn’t it? Just sex. He had to forget it. Especially now, in the middle of a funeral …

‘Let’s just take a few moments of silent reflection,’ the vicar encouraged, ‘to enjoy some personal memories of Lord

Fitzroy, and reflect on the many ways in which he touched our lives …’

Ye Gods, thought Kit despairingly, rubbing at the tense muscles across his forehead. In his case, remembering the ways in which Ralph had touched his life really wasn’t such a good idea. All around him he was aware of people reaching for tissues, sliding arms around each other in mutual support while he sat locked in the private dungeon of his own bitterness. Alone.

And then, very gently Sophie put her hand over his, lacing her cold fingers through his, caressing the back of his hand with her thumb with a touch that had nothing to do with sex, but was about comfort and understanding.

And he wasn’t alone any more.

‘Lovely service,’ people murmured, dabbing their eyes as they filed out into the sharp sunlight to the strains of The Beatles singing ‘In My Life’. That had been Jasper’s idea.

‘You OK?’ Sophie asked him, slipping her arm through his as Tatiana was swept up in a subdued round of air-kissing and clashing hat brims.

‘Bearing up.’ He gave her a bleak smile. ‘I need a drink.’

‘What happens now?’

‘We go back for the interment.’ He shuddered. ‘There’s a Fitzroy family vault at Alnburgh, below the old chapel in the North Gate. It’s tiny, and just like the location for a low-budget horror film, so I’ll spare you that grisly little scene. Mum and I, and the vicar—and Kit too, I suppose—will do the honours, by which time everyone should have made their way back up to the castle for the drinks. Would you mind staying here and sort of shepherding them in the right direction?’

In spite of the sunshine the wind sweeping the exposed clifftop was like sharpened razor blades. Jasper was rigid with cold and spoke through clenched teeth to stop them chattering. Weight had dropped off him in the last week, Sophie noticed, but whether it was from pining for his father or for Sergio she wasn’t sure. Reaching up, she pressed a kiss on his frozen cheek.

‘Of course I will. Go and say your goodbyes.’

He got into the car beside Tatiana. ‘Save a drink for me,’ he said dismally. ‘Don’t let the hordes drink us dry.’

Sophie bent to look at him through the open door. ‘Of course I will.’

She turned round. Kit was standing behind her, obviously waiting to get into the car, his eyes fixed on some point in the far distance rather than at her rear.

‘Sorry.’ Hastily Sophie stepped out of the way. ‘Are you going to the interment too?’ she added in a low voice.

A muscle twitched in his cheek. ‘Yes. For appearance’s sake. At some point Jasper and I need to have a proper talk, but today isn’t the right time.’ He looked at her, almost reluctantly, with eyes that were as bleak as the snow-covered Cheviots stretching away behind him. ‘At some point you and I should probably talk too.’

An icy gust of wind whipped a strand of hair across Sophie’s face. Moving her head to flick it out of the way again, a movement in the distance caught her eye. Someone was vaulting over the low wall that separated the graveyard from the road, loping towards them between the frosty headstones.

Oh, no … Oh, please, no … Not now …

Sophie felt the blood drain from her head. It was a familiar enough figure, although incongruous in this setting. A bottle of vodka swung from one hand.

‘Today might not be the best time for that either,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest to steady herself. ‘You should go—I think they’re waiting.’

It was an answer of sorts, Kit thought blackly as he lowered himself into the Bentley and slammed the door. Just not the one he’d hoped for.

As the car began to move slowly away in the wake of the hearse Kit watched her take a few steps backwards, and then turn and slip into the cluster of people left behind outside the church. He lost sight of her for a few seconds, but then caught a glimpse of her hair, fiery against the monochrome landscape. She was hurrying in the direction of someone walking through the churchyard.

‘Such a lot of people,’ said Tatiana vaguely, pulling her black gloves off. ‘Your father had so many friends.’

Jasper put an arm around her. ‘It was a great service. Even Dad, who hated church, would have enjoyed it.’

Kit turned his face to the window.

The man’s clothes marked him out as being separate from the funeral-goers. He was dressed neither as a mourner nor in the waterproofs and walking boots of the locals, but in skintight jeans, some kind of on-trend, tailored jacket with his shirt tails hanging down beneath it. Urban clothes. There was a kind of defiant swagger to the man’s posture and movements, as if he was doing something reckless but didn’t care, and as the car waited to pull out onto the main road Kit watched in the wing mirror as Sophie approached him, shaking her head. It looked as if she was pleading with him.

The car moved again, and for a few seconds the view in the wing mirror was a blur of hedge and empty sky. Kit stared straight ahead. His hands were clenched into fists, his heart beating heavily in his chest.

He waited, counting the beats. And then, just before the bend in the road when the church would be out of sight, he turned and looked back in time to see her put her arms around him.

When she’d taken his hand in church like that, it had changed something. Or maybe that was wrong—maybe it hadn’t changed, so much as shown him what was there before that he hadn’t wanted to admit.

That possibly what he wanted from her—with her—wasn’t just sex. And the hope that, at some point, when she had settled things with Jasper, she might want that too.

It looked as if he’d been wrong.

‘Please, Sergio. It won’t be for long. A couple of hours—maybe three, just until the funeral is over.’

Sergio twitched impatiently out of her embrace. ‘Three hours,’ he sneered. ‘You make it sound like nothing, but every hour is like a month. I’ve waited over a week already and I’ve just spent all day on a stupid train. I
need
him, Sophie. And he needs me.’