she looked. It really was the most severely unflattering garment imaginable, falling in a plain, narrow, sleeveless tube from her collarbones to her ankles. A slit up one side at least meant that she could walk without affecting tiny geishalike steps, but she felt as if she were wrapped in a roll of wartime blackout fabric.
‘That’s good,’ she said out loud, giving herself a severe look in the little mirror above the sink. Her reflection stared back at her, face pale against the bright mass of her hair. She’d washed it and, gleaming under the overhead light, the colour now seemed more garish than ever. Grabbing a few pins, she stuck them in her mouth, then pulled her hair back and twisted it tightly at the back of her neck.
Standing back again, she pulled a face.
There. Disfiguring dress and headmistress hair. Jasper’s dull girlfriend was ready for her public, although at least Sophie had the private satisfaction of knowing that she was also wearing very naughty underwear and what Jasper fondly called her ‘shag-me’ shoes. Twisting round, she tried to check the back view of the dress, and gave a snort of laughter as she noticed the price ticket hanging down between her shoulder blades.
Classy and expensive was always going to be a hard look for the girl who used to live on a bus to pull off, as Olympia Rothwell-Hyde and her cronies had never stopped reminding her. Attempting to do it with a label on her back announcing just how little she’d paid for the blackout dress would make it damned impossible.
She gave it a yank and winced as the plastic cut into her fingers. Another try confirmed that it was definitely a job for scissors. Which she didn’t have.
She bit her lip. Jasper had already gone down, telling her to join them in the drawing room as soon as she was ready, but there was no way she could face Tatiana, who would no doubt be decked out in designer finery and dripping with diamonds, with her knock-down price ticket on display. She’d just have to slip down to the kitchens and see if the terrifying Mrs Daniels—or Mrs Danvers as she’d privately named her when Jasper had introduced her this morning—had some.
The layout of the castle was more familiar now and Sophie headed for the main stairs as quickly as the narrow dress would allow. The castle felt very different this evening from the cavernous, shadowy place at which she’d arrived last night. Now the stone walls seemed to resonate with a hum of activity as teams of caterers and waiting-on staff made final preparations in the staterooms below.
It was still freezing, though. In the portrait hall the smell of woodsmoke drifted through the air, carried on icy gusts of wind that the huge fires banked in every grate couldn’t seem to thaw. It mingled with the scent of hothouse flowers, which stood on every table and window ledge.
Sophie hitched up the narrow skirt of her dress and went more carefully down the narrow back stairs to the kitchens. It was noticeably warmer down here, the vaulted ceilings holding the heat from the ovens. A central stone-flagged passageway stretched beyond a row of Victorian windows in the kitchen wall, into the dimly lit distance. To the dungeons, Jasper had teased her earlier.
The dungeons, where Kit probably locked up two-timing girlfriends, she thought grimly, shivering in spite of the relative warmth. The noise of her heels echoed loudly off the stone walls. The glass between the corridor and the kitchen was clouded with steam, but through it Sophie could see that Mrs Daniels’ domain had been taken over by legions of uniformed chefs.
Of course. Jasper had mentioned that both she and Thomas the butler had been given the night off. Well, there was no way she was going in there. Turning on her high heel, she hitched up her skirt and was hurrying back in the direction she’d just come when a voice behind her stopped her in her tracks.
‘Are you looking for something?’
Her heart leapt into her throat and she spun round. Kit had emerged from one of the many small rooms that led off the passageway, his shoulders, in a perfectly cut black dinner suit, seeming almost to fill the narrow space. Their eyes met, and in the harsh overhead bulk light Sophie saw him recoil slightly as a flicker of some emotion—shock, or was it distaste?—passed across his face.
‘I was l-looking for M-Mrs Daniels,’ she said in a strangled voice, feeling inexplicably as if he’d caught her doing something wrong again. God, no wonder he had risen so far up the ranks in the army. She’d bet he could reduce insubordinate squaddies to snivelling babies with a single glacial glare. She coughed, and continued more determinedly. ‘I wanted to borrow some scissors.’
‘That’s a relief.’ His smile was almost imperceptible. ‘I assume it means I don’t have to tell you that you have a price ticket hanging down your back.’
Heat prickled through her, rising up her neck in a tide of uncharacteristic shyness.
Quickly she cleared her throat again. ‘No.’
‘Perhaps I could help? Follow me.’
Sophie was glad of the ringing echo of her shoes on the stone floor as it masked the frantic thud of her heart. He had to duck his head to get through the low doorway and she followed him into a vaulted cellar, the brick walls of which were lined with racks of bottles that gleamed dully in the low light. There was a table on which more bottles stood, alongside a knife and stained cloth like a consumptive’s handkerchief. Kit picked up the knife.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’
Hypnotised, she watched him wipe the blade of the knife on the cloth.
‘Decanting port.’
‘What for?’ she rasped, desperately trying to make some attempt at sensible conversation. Snatches of the article in the newspaper kept coming back to her, making it impossible to think clearly. Heart-throb hero. Unflinching bravery. Extreme personal risk. It was as if someone had taken her jigsaw puzzle image of him and broken it to bits, so the pieces made quite a different picture now.
His lips twitched into the faint half-smile she’d come to recognise, but his hooded eyes held her gravely. The coolness was still there, but they’d lost their sharp contempt.
‘To get rid of the sediment. The bottle I’ve just opened last saw daylight over eighty years ago.’
Sophie gave a little laugh, squirming slightly under his scrutiny. ‘Isn’t it a bit past its sell-by date?’
‘Like lots of things, it improves with age,’ he said dryly, taking hold of her shoulders with surprising gentleness and turning her round. ‘Would you like to try some?’
‘Isn’t it very expensive?’
What was it about an absence of hostility that actually made it feel like kindness? Sophie felt the hair rise on the back of her neck as his fingers brushed her bare skin. She held herself very rigid for a second, determined not to give in to the helpless shudder of desire that threatened to shake her whole body as he bent over her. Her breasts tingled, and beneath the severe lines of the dress her nipples pressed against the tight fabric.
‘Put it this way, you could get several dresses like that for the price of a bottle,’ he murmured, and Sophie could feel the warm whisper of his breath on her neck as he spoke. She closed her eyes, wanting the moment to stretch for ever, but then she heard the snap of plastic as he cut through the tag and he was pulling back, leaving her feeling shaky and on edge.
‘To be honest, that doesn’t say much about your port,’ she joked weakly.
‘No.’ He went back over
