to work out where she was. It was a familiar feeling—one she’d experienced often as a child when her mother had been in one of her restless phases, but for some reason now it was accompanied by a sinking sensation.
Putting a hand to her head, she struggled upright. In the corner of the room the television was playing quietly to itself, and Jasper’s body was warm beside her, a T-shirt of Sergio’s clasped in one hand, the half-empty bottle of vodka in the other. He had fallen asleep sprawled diagonally across the bed with his head thrown back, and something about the way the lamplight fell on his face—or maybe the shuttered blankness sleep had lent it—reminded her of Kit.
Fragments of the evening reassembled themselves in her aching head. She got up, rubbing a hand across her eyes, and carefully removed the bottle from Jasper’s hand. Much as she loved him, right now all she wanted was a bed to herself and a few hours of peaceful oblivion.
Tiptoeing to the door, she opened it quietly. Out in the corridor the temperature was arctic and the only light came from the moon, lying in bleached slabs on the smooth oak floorboards. Shivering, Sophie hesitated, wondering whether to go back into Jasper’s room after all, but the throbbing in her head was more intense now and she thought longingly of the paracetamol in her washbag.
There was nothing for it but to brave the cold and the dark.
Her heart began to pound as she slipped quickly between the squares of silver moonlight, along the corridor and down a spiralling flight of stone stairs. Shadows engulfed her. It was very quiet. Too quiet. To Sophie, used to thin-walled apartments, bed and breakfasts, buses and camper vans on makeshift sites where someone was always strumming a guitar or playing indie-acid-trance, the silence was unnatural. Oppressive. It buzzed in her ears, filling her head with whistling, like interference on a badly tuned radio.
She stopped, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she looked around.
Passageways stretched away from her in three directions, but each looked as unfamiliar as the other. Oh, hell. She’d been so traumatised earlier that she hadn’t paid attention to Jasper when he pointed out her room …
But that could be it, she thought with relief, walking quickly to a door at the end of the short landing to her left. Gingerly she turned the handle and, heart bursting, pushed open the door.
Moonlight flooded in from behind her, illuminating the ghostly outlines of shrouded furniture. The air was stale with age. The room clearly hadn’t been opened in years.
This is the part of the castle that’s supposed to be haunted by the mad countess’s ghost, you know …
Retreating quickly, she slammed the door and forced herself to exhale slowly. It was fine. No need to panic. Just a question of retracing her steps, thinking about it logically. A veil of cloud slipped over the moon’s pale face and the darkness deepened. Icy drafts eddied around Sophie’s ankles, and the edge of a curtain at one of the stone windows lifted slightly, as if brushed by invisible fingers. The whistling sound was louder now and more distinctive—a sort of keening that was almost human. She couldn’t be sure it was just in her head any more and she broke into a run, glancing back over her shoulder as if she expected to see a swish of pink silk skirt disappearing around the corner.
‘I’m being stupid,’ she whispered desperately, fumbling at the buttons of her mobile phone to make the screen light up and act as a torch. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’ But even as the words formed themselves on her stiff lips horror prickled at the back of her neck.
Footsteps.
She clamped a hand to her mouth to stifle her moan of terror and stood perfectly still. Probably she’d imagined it—or possibly it was just the mad drumming of her heart echoing off the stone walls …
Nope. Definitely footsteps.
Definitely getting nearer.
It was impossible to tell from which direction they were coming. Or maybe if they were ghostly footsteps they weren’t coming from any particular direction, except beyond the grave? It hardly mattered—the main thing was to get away from here and back to Jasper. Back to light and warmth and TV and company. Shaking with fear, she darted back along the corridor, heading for the stairs that she had come down a few moments ago.
And then she gave a whimper of horror, icy adrenaline sluicing through her veins. A dark figure loomed in front of her, only a foot or so away, too close even for her to be aware of anything beyond its height and the frightening breadth of its shoulders. She shrank backwards, bringing her hands up to her face, her mouth opening to let out the scream that was rising in her throat.
‘Oh, no, you don’t …’
Instantly she was pulled against the rock-hard chest and a huge hand was put across her mouth. Fury replaced fear as she realised that this was not the phantom figure of some seventeenth-century suitor looking for the countess, but the all-too-human flesh of Kit Fitzroy.
All of a sudden the idea of being assaulted by a ghost seemed relatively appealing.
‘Get off me!’ she snapped. Or tried to. The sound she actually made was a muffled, undignified squawk, but he must have understood her meaning because he let her go immediately, thrusting her away from his body as if she were contaminated. Shaking back her hair, Sophie glared at him, trying to gather some shreds of dignity. Not easy when she’d just been caught behaving like a histrionic schoolgirl because she thought he was a ghost.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.
His arched brows rose a fraction, but other than that his stony expression didn’t change. ‘I’d have thought it was obvious. Stopping you from screaming and waking up the entire castle,’ he drawled. ‘Is Jasper aware that you’re roaming around the corridors in the middle of the night?’
‘Jasper’s asleep.’
‘Ah. Of course.’ His hooded gaze didn’t leave hers, but she jumped as she felt his fingers close around her wrist, like bands of iron, and he lifted the hand in which her mobile phone was clasped. His touch was as cold and hard as his tone. ‘Don’t tell me, you got lost on the way to the bathroom and you were using the GPS to find it?’
‘No.’ Sophie spoke through clenched teeth. ‘I got lost on the way to my bedroom. Now, if you’d just point me in the right—’
‘Your bedroom?’ He dropped her wrist and stepped away.
‘Well, it definitely won’t be here. The rooms in this part of the castle haven’t been used for years. But why the hell aren’t you sharing with Jasper? Or perhaps you prefer to have your own … privacy?’
He was so tall that she had to tilt her head back to look at his face. The place where they were standing was dark and it was half in shadow, but, even so, she didn’t miss the faint sneer that accompanied the word.
‘I just thought it wouldn’t be appropriate to sleep with Jasper in his parents’ house, that’s all,’ she retorted haughtily. ‘It didn’t feel right.’
‘You do a passable impression of indignant respectability,’ he said in a bored voice, turning round and beginning to walk away from her down the corridor. ‘But unfortunately it’s rather wasted on me. I know exactly why you want your own bedroom, and it has nothing to do with propriety and everything to do with the fact that you’re far from in love with my brother.’
