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 hell,’ she breathed.
It was the first genuine reaction he’d seen her display, Kit thought sardonically, watching her. And it spoke volumes.
Sympathy wasn’t an emotion he was used to experiencing in relation to Jasper, but at that moment he certainly felt something like it now. His brother must be pretty keen on this girl to invite her up here for Ralph Fitzroy’s seventieth birthday party, but from what Kit had seen on the train it was obvious the feeling wasn’t remotely mutual.
No prizes for guessing what the attraction was for Sophie Greenham.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he remarked acidly.
In the dimly lit interior of the car her eyes gleamed darkly like moonlit pools as she turned to face him. Her voice was breathless, so that she sounded almost intimidated.
‘It’s incredible. I had no idea …’
‘What, that your boyfriend just happened to be the son of the Earl of Hawksworth?’ Kit murmured sardonically. ‘Of course. You were probably too busy discussing your mutual love of art-house cinema to get round to such mundane subjects as family background.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘Of course I knew about Jasper’s background—and his family.’
She said that last bit with a kind of defiant venom that was clearly meant to let him know that Jasper hadn’t given him a good press. He wondered if she thought for a moment that he’d care. It was hardly a well-kept secret that there was no love lost between him and his brother—the spoiled, pampered golden boy. Ralph’s second and favourite son.
The noise of the Bentley’s engine echoed off the walls of the clock tower as they passed through the arch beneath it. The headlights illuminated the stone walls, dripping with damp, the iron-studded door that led down to the former dungeon that now housed Ralph’s wine cellar. Kit felt the invisible iron-hard bands of tension around his chest and his forehead tighten a couple of notches.
It was funny, he spent much of his time in the most dangerous conflict zones on the globe, but in none of them did he ever feel a fraction as isolated or exposed as he did here. When he was working he had his team behind him. Men he could trust.
Trust wasn’t something he’d ever associated with home life at Alnburgh, where people told lies and kept secrets and made promises they didn’t keep.
He glanced across at the woman sitting beside him, and felt his lip curl. Jasper’s new girlfriend was going to fit in very well.
Sophie didn’t wait until the chauffeur came round to open the door for her. The moment the car came to a standstill she reached for the handle and threw the door open, desperate to be out of the confined space with Kit Fitzroy.
A gust of salt-scented, ice-edged wind cleared her head but nearly knocked her sideways, whipping her hair across her face. Impatiently she brushed it away again. Alnburgh Castle loomed ahead of her. And above her and around her too, she thought weakly, turning to look at the fortress-thick walls that stretched into the darkness all around her, rising into huge, imposing buildings and jagged towers.
There was nothing remotely welcoming or inviting about it. Everything about the place was designed to scare people off and keep them out.
Sophie could see that Jasper’s brother would be right at home here.
‘Thanks, Jensen. I can manage the bags from here.’
‘If you’re sure, sir …’
Sophie turned in time to see Kit take her
