India Grey - Wicked Secrets

‘So she abandoned him to go off with another man?’

Sophie’s own upbringing had been unconventional enough for her not to be easily shocked. But a mother leaving her child …

‘Pretty much. So I guess you can understand why he ended up being like he is. Ah, look—that’s better.’

He stood back, hands on hips, his face bathed in orange as the flames took hold. ‘Right—let’s find that bottle and get under the duvet. You can tell me all about Paris and how you managed to escape the clutches of that lunatic painter, and in turn I’m going to bore you senseless talking about Sergio. Do you know,’ he sighed happily, ‘he’s having a tally of the days we’re apart tattooed on his chest?’

The ancient stones on top of the parapet were worn smooth by salt wind and wild weather, and the moonlight turned them to beaten silver. Kit exhaled a cloud of frozen air, propping his elbows on the stone and looking out across the battlements to the empty beach beyond.

There was no point in even trying to get to sleep tonight, he knew that. His insomnia was always at its worst when he’d just come back from a period of active duty and his body hadn’t learned to switch off from its state of high alert. The fact that he was also back at Alnburgh made sleep doubly unlikely.

He straightened up, shoving his frozen fingers into his pockets. The tide was out and pools of water on the sand gleamed like mercury. In the distance the moon was reflected without a ripple in the dark surface of the sea.

It was bitterly cold.

Long months in the desert halfway across the world had made him forget the aching cold here. Sometimes, working in temperatures of fifty degrees wearing eighty pounds of explosive-proof kit, he would try to recapture the sensation, but out there cold became an abstract concept. Something you knew about in theory, but couldn’t imagine actually feeling .

But it was real enough now, as was the complicated mix of emotions he always experienced when he returned. He did one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet without feeling anything, and yet when he came back to the place he’d grown up in it was as if he’d had a layer of skin removed. Here it was impossible to forget the mother who had left him, or forgive the studied indifference of the father who had been left to bring him up. Here everything was magnified: bitterness, anger, frustration …

Desire .

The thought crept up on him and he shoved it away. Sophie Greenham was hardly his type, although he had to admit that doing battle with her at dinner had livened up what would otherwise have been a dismal evening. And at least her presence had meant that he didn’t feel like the only outsider.

It had also provided a distraction from the tension between him and his father. But only temporarily. Ralph was right—Kit hadn’t come up here because the party invitation was too thrilling to refuse, but Ralph’s seventieth birthday seemed like a good time to remind his father that if he didn’t transfer the ownership of Alnburgh into Kit’s name soon, it would be too late. The estate couldn’t possibly survive the inheritance tax that would be liable on it after Ralph’s death, and would no doubt have to be sold.

Kit felt fresh anger bloom inside him. He wasn’t sure why he cared—his house in Chelsea was conveniently placed for some excellent restaurants, was within easy taxi-hailing range for women he didn’t want to wake up with, and came without ghosts. And yet he did care. Because of the waste and the irresponsibility and the sheer bloody shortsightedness, perhaps? Or because he could still hear his mother’s voice, whispering to him down the years?

Alnburgh is yours, Kit. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s not .

It must have been just before she left that she’d said that. When she knew she was going and wanted to assuage her guilt; to feel that she wasn’t leaving him with nothing.

As if a building could make up for a mother. Particularly a building like Alnburgh. It was an anachronism. As a home it was uncomfortable, impractical and unsustainable. It was also the place where he had been unhappiest. And yet he knew, deep down, that it mattered to him. He felt responsible for it, and he would do all he could to look after it.

And much as it surprised him to discover, that went for his brother too. Only Jasper wasn’t at risk from dry rot or damp, but the attentions of a particularly brazen redhead.

Kit wondered if she’d be as difficult to get rid of.

Sophie opened her eyes.

It was cold and for a moment her sleep-slow brain groped 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.