and his infuriating, undeniable sexual magnetism. Now something snapped inside her.
‘No. You’re wrong,’ she spat.
‘Really?’ he drawled, turning to go back along the passageway down which she’d just come.
‘Yes!’
Who the hell was he to judge? If it wasn’t for him Jasper wouldn’t have had to ask her here in the first place, to make himself look ‘acceptable’ in the contemptuous eyes of his brother.
Well, she couldn’t explain anything without giving Jasper away, but she didn’t have to take it either. Following him she could feel the pulse jumping in her wrist, in the place where his fingers had touched her, as fresh adrenaline scorched through her veins.
‘I know you think the worst of me and I can understand why, but I just want to say that it wasn’t—isn’t—what you think. I would never hurt Jasper, or mess him around. He’s the person I care most about in the world.’
He went up a short flight of steps into the corridor Sophie now remembered, and stopped in front of the door at the end.
‘You have a funny way of showing it,’ he said, very softly. ‘By sleeping with another man.’
He opened the door and stood back for her to pass. She didn’t move. ‘It’s not like that,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You don’t know the whole story.’
Kit shook his head. ‘I don’t need to.’
Because what was there to know? He’d seen it all countless times before—men returning back to base from leave, white-lipped and silent as they pulled down pictures of smiling wives or girlfriends from their lockers. Wives they thought they could trust while they were away. Girlfriends they thought would wait for them. Behind every betrayal there was a story, but in the end it was still a betrayal.
Folding her arms tightly across her body, she walked past him into the small room and stood by the bed with her back to him. Her hair was tangled, reminding him that she’d just left his brother’s bed. In the thin, cold moonlight it gleamed like hot embers beneath the ashes of a dying fire.
‘Is it common practice in the army to condemn without trial and without knowing the facts?’ she asked, turning round to face him. ‘You barely even know Jasper. You did your best to deny his existence when he was growing up, and you’re not exactly going out of your way to make up for it now, so please don’t lecture me about not loving him.’
‘That’s enough.’
The words were raw, razor-sharp, spoken in the split second before his automatic defences kicked in and the shutters came down on his emotions. Deliberately Kit unfurled his fists and kept his breathing steady.
‘If you think finding your way around the castle is confusing I wouldn’t even try to unravel the relationships within this family if I were you,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t get involved in things you don’t need to understand.’
‘Why? Because I won’t be around long enough?’ she demanded, coming closer to him again.
Kit stiffened as he caught the scent of her again—warm, spicy, delicious. He turned away, reaching for the door handle. ‘Goodnight. I hope you have everything you need.’
He shut the door and stood back from it, waiting for the adrenaline rush to subside a little. Funny how he could work a field strewn with hidden mines, approach a car loaded with explosives and not feel anything, and yet five feet five of lying redhead had almost made him lose control.
He hated deception—too much of his childhood had been spent not knowing what to believe or who to trust—and as an actress, he supposed, Sophie Greenham was quite literally a professional in the art.
But unluckily for her he was a professional too, and there was more than one way of making safe an incendiary device. Sometimes you had to approach the problem laterally. If she wouldn’t admit that her feelings for Jasper were a sham, he’d just have to prove it another way.
CHAPTER SIX
SOPHIE felt as if she’d only just fallen asleep when a knock at the door jolted her awake again. Jasper appeared, grinning sheepishly and carrying a plate of toast in one hand and two mugs of coffee in the other, some of which slopped onto the carpet as he elbowed the door shut again.
‘What time is it?’ she moaned, dropping back onto the pillows.
Jasper put the mugs down on the bedside table and perched on the bed beside her. ‘Nearly ten. Kit said he’d bumped into you in the middle of the night trying to find your room, so I thought I’d better not wake you. You’ve slept for Britain.’
Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d been awake most of the night, partly because she’d been frozen, partly because she’d been so hyped up with indignation and fury and the after-effects of what felt like an explosion in the sexual-chemistry lab that sleep had been a very long time coming.
He picked up a mug and looked at her through the wreaths of steam that were curling through the frigid air. ‘Sorry for leaving you to wander like that. Just as well you bumped into Kit.’
Sophie grunted crossly. ‘Do you think so? I thought he was the ghost of the nymphomaniac countess. No such luck.’
Jasper winced. ‘He didn’t give you a hard time, did he?’
‘He thought it was extremely odd that we weren’t sharing a room.’ Sophie reached for a coffee, more to warm her hands on than anything. ‘I’m not exactly convincing him in my role as your girlfriend, you know. The thing is, he overheard me talking to Jean-Claude on the train and now he thinks I’m a two-timing trollop.’
‘Oops.’ Jasper took another sip of coffee while he digested this information. ‘OK, well, that is a bit unfortunate, but don’t worry—we still have time to turn it around at the party tonight. You’ll be every man’s idea of the perfect girlfriend.’
Sophie raised an eyebrow. ‘In public? In front of your parents? From my experience of what men consider the perfect girlfriend, that wouldn’t be wise.’
‘Wicked girl,’ Jasper scolded. ‘I meant demure, devoted, hanging on my every word—that sort of thing. What did you bring to wear?’
‘My Chinese silk dress.’
With a firm shake of his head Jasper put down his mug. ‘Absolutely not. Far too sexy. No, what we need is something a little more … understated. A little more modest.’
Sophie narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean frumpy, don’t you? Do you have something in mind?’
Getting up, Jasper went over to the window and drew back the curtains with a theatrical flourish. ‘Not something, somewhere. Get up, Cinderella, and let’s hit the shops of Hawksworth.’
Jasper drove Ralph’s four-by-four along roads that had been turned into ice rinks. It was a deceptively beautiful day. The sun shone in a sky of bright, hard blue and made the fields and hedgerows glitter as if each twig and blade of grass was encrusted with Swarovski crystals. He had pinched a navy-blue
