Wicked Secrets: Craving the Forbidden - India Grey

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Please! I didn’t—’

      But it was too late. The train was gathering pace and her voice was lost beneath the rumble of the engine and the squealing of the metal wheels on the track. As she watched the lights of the train melt back into the winter darkness Sophie’s heart was beating hard, anguish knotting inside her at what she’d inadvertently done.

      Stolen something. That was what it amounted to, didn’t it? Travelling on the train without buying a ticket was, in effect, committing a criminal act, as well as a dishonest one.

      An act of theft.

      And that was one thing she would never, ever do.

      The clatter of the train died in the distance and Sophie was aware of the silence folding all around her. Slowly she turned to walk back to pick up her forlorn-looking bag.

      ‘Is there a problem?’

      Her stomach flipped, and then sank like a stone. Great. Captain Disapproval must have heard her shout and come back, thinking she was talking to him. The station light cast dark shadows beneath his cheekbones and made him look more remote than ever. Which was quite something.

      ‘No, no, not at all,’ she said stiffly. ‘Although before you go perhaps you could tell me where I could find a taxi.’

      Kit couldn’t quite stop himself from letting out a bark of laughter. It wasn’t kind, but the idea of a taxi waiting at Alnburgh station was amusingly preposterous.

      ‘You’re not in London now.’ He glanced down the platform to where the Bentley waited, Jensen sitting impassively behind the wheel. For some reason he felt responsible—touched almost—by this girl in her outrageous clothing with the snowflakes catching in her bright hair. ‘Look, you’d better come with me.’

      Her chin shot up half an inch. Her eyes flashed in the station light—the dark green of the stained glass in the Fitzroy family chapel, with the light shining through it.

      ‘No, thanks,’ she said with brittle courtesy. ‘I think I’d rather walk.’

      That really was funny. ‘In those boots?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said haughtily, setting off quickly, if a little unsteadily, along the icy platform. She looked around, pulling her long army overcoat more tightly across her body.

      Catching up with her, Kit arched an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he drawled. ‘You’re going to join your regiment.’

      ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I’m going to stay with my boyfriend, who lives at Alnburgh Castle. So if you could just point me in the right direction …’

      Kit stopped. The laughter of a moment ago evaporated in the arctic air, like the plumes of their breaths. In the distance a sheep bleated mournfully.

      ‘And what is the name of your … boyfriend?’

      Something in the tone of his voice made her stop too, the metallic echo of her stiletto heels fading into silence. When she turned to face him her eyes were wide and black-centred.

      ‘Jasper.’ Her voice was shaky but defiant. ‘Jasper Fitzroy, although I don’t know what it has to do with you.’

      Kit smiled again, but this time it had nothing to do with amusement.

      ‘Well, since Jasper Fitzroy is my brother, I’d say quite a lot,’ he said with sinister softness. ‘You’d better get in the car.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      INSIDE the chauffeur-driven Bentley Sophie blew her cheeks out in a long, silent whistle.

      What was it that horoscope said?

      The car was very warm and very comfortable, but no amount of climate control and expensive upholstery could quite thaw the glacial atmosphere. Apart from a respectfully murmured ‘Good evening, Miss,’ the chauffeur kept his attention very firmly focused on the road. Sophie didn’t blame him. You could cut the tension in the back of the car with a knife.

      Sophie sat very upright, leaving as much seat as possible between her fishnetted thigh and his long, hard flannel-covered one. She didn’t dare look at Jasper’s brother, but was aware of him staring, tense-jawed, out of the window. The village of Alnburgh looked like a scene from a Christmas card as they drove up the main street, past a row of stone houses with low, gabled roofs covered in a crisp meringue-topping of snow, but he didn’t look very pleased to be home.

      Her mind raced as crazily as the white flakes swirling past the car window, the snatches of information Jasper had imparted about his brother over the years whirling through it. Kit Fitzroy was in the army, she knew that much, and he served abroad a lot, which would account for the unseasonal tan. Oh, and Jasper had once described him as having a ‘complete emotion-bypass’. She recalled the closed expression Jasper’s face wore on the rare occasions he mentioned him, the bitter edge his habitual mocking sarcasm took on when he said the words ‘my brother’.

      She was beginning to understand why. She had only known him for a little over three hours—and most of that time she’d been asleep—but it was enough to find it impossible to believe that this man could be related to Jasper. Sweet, warm, funny Jasper, who was her best friend in the world and the closest thing she had to family.

      But the man beside her was his real flesh and blood, so surely that meant he couldn’t be all bad? It also meant that she should make some kind of effort to get on with him, for Jasper’s sake. And her own, since she had to get through an entire weekend in his company.

      ‘So, you must be Kit, then?’ she offered. ‘I’m Sophie. Sophie Greenham.’ She laughed—a habit she had when she was nervous. ‘Bizarre, isn’t it? Whoever would have guessed we were going to the same place?’

      Kit Fitzroy didn’t bother to look at her. ‘Not you, obviously. Have you known my brother long?’

      OK. So she was wrong. He was every bit as bad as she’d first thought. Thinking of the horoscope, she bit back the urge to snap, Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve known your brother for the last seven years, as you would have been very well aware if you took the slightest interest in him, and kept her voice saccharine sweet as she recited the story she and Jasper had hastily come up with last night on the phone when he’d asked her to do this.

      ‘Just since last summer. We met on a film.’

      The last bit at least was true. Jasper was an assistant director and they had met on a dismal film about the Black Death that mercifully had never seen the light of day. Sophie had spent hours in make-up having sores applied to her face and had had one line to say, but had caught Jasper’s eye just as she’d been about to deliver it and noticed that he was shaking with laughter. It had set her off too, and made the next four hours and twenty-two takes extremely challenging, but it had also sealed their friendship, and set its tone. It had been the two of them, united and giggling against the world, ever since.

      He turned his head slightly. ‘You’re an actress?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Damn, why did that come out sounding so defensive? Possibly because he said the word ‘actress’ in the same faintly disdainful tone as other people might say ‘lap dancer’ or ‘shoplifter’. What would he make of the fact that even ‘actress’ was stretching it for the bit parts she did in films and TV series? Clamping her teeth together, she looked away—and gasped.

      Up ahead, lit up in the darkness, cloaked in swirling white like a fairy castle in a child’s snow globe, was Alnburgh Castle.

      She’d seen pictures, obviously. But nothing had prepared her for the scale of the place, or the impact it made on the surrounding landscape. It stood on top of the cliffs, its grey stone walls seeming to rise directly out of them. This was a side of Jasper’s life she knew next to nothing about, and Sophie felt her mouth fall open as she stared in amazement.

      ‘Bloody

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