‘Not at all.’ Kit’s eyes glittered, as cold as moonlight on frost. ‘I’ve been away too long. And there are things we need to discuss.’
Ralph laughed, but Sophie could see the colour rising in his florid cheeks. It was fascinating—like being at a particularly tense tennis match.
‘For God’s sake, Kit, you’re not still persisting with that—’
As he spoke the double doors opened and a thin, elderly man appeared between them and nodded, almost imperceptibly, at Tatiana. Swiftly she crossed the Turkish silk rug in a waft of Chanel No 5 and slipped a hand through her husband’s arm, cutting him off mid-sentence.
‘Thank you, Thomas. Dinner is ready. Now that everyone’s here, shall we go through?’
CHAPTER FOUR
DINNER was about as enjoyable and relaxing as being stripped naked and whipped with birch twigs.
When she was little, Sophie had dreamed wistfully about being part of the kind of family who gathered around a big table to eat together every evening. If she’d known this was what it was like she would have stuck to the fantasies about having a pony or being picked to star in a new film version of The Little House on the Prairie.
The dining room was huge and gloomy, its high, green damask-covered walls hung with yet more Fitzroy ancestors. They were an unattractive bunch, Sophie thought with a shiver. The handsomeness so generously bestowed on Jasper and Kit must be a relatively recent addition to the gene pool. Only one—a woman in blush-pink silk with roses woven into her extravagantly piled up hair and a secretive smile on her lips—held any indication of the good looks that were the Fitzroy hallmark now.
Thomas, the butler who had announced dinner, dished up watery consommé, followed by tiny rectangles of grey fish on something that looked like spinach and smelled like boiled socks. No wonder Tatiana was so thin.
‘This looks delicious,’ Sophie lied brightly.
‘Thank you,’ Tatiana cooed, in a way that suggested she’d cooked it herself. ‘It has taken years to get Mrs Daniels to cook things other than steak and kidney pudding and roast beef, but finally she seems to understand the meaning of low-fat.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Kit murmured.
Ignoring him, Ralph reached for the dusty bottle of Chateau Marbuzet and splashed a liberal amount into his glass before turning to fill up Sophie’s.
‘So, Jasper said you’ve been in Paris? Acting in some film or other?’
Sophie, who had just taken a mouthful of fish, could only nod.
‘Fascinating,’ said Tatiana doubtfully. ‘What was it about?’
Sophie covered her mouth with her hand to hide the grimace as she swallowed the fish. ‘It’s about British Special Agents and the French Resistance in the Second World War,’ she said, wondering if she could hide the rest of the fish under the spinach as she used to do at boarding school. ‘It’s set in Montmartre, against a community of painters and poets.’
‘And what part did you play?’
Sophie groaned inwardly. It would have to be Kit who asked that. Ever since she sat down she’d been aware of his eyes on her. More than aware of it—it felt as if there were a laser trained on her skin.
She cleared her throat. ‘Just a tiny role, really,’ she said with an air of finality.
‘As?’
He didn’t give up, did he? Why didn’t he just go the whole hog and whip out a megawatt torch to shine in her face while he interrogated her? Not that those silvery eyes weren’t hard enough to look into already.
‘A prostitute called Claudine who inadvertently betrays her Resistance lover to the SS.’
Kit’s smile was as faint as it was fleeting. He had a way of making her feel like a third year who’d been caught showing her knickers behind the bike sheds and hauled into the headmaster’s office. She took a swig of wine.
‘You must meet such fascinating people,’ Tatiana said.
‘Oh, yes. Well, I mean, sometimes. Actors can be a pretty self-obsessed bunch. They’re not always a laugh a minute to be around.’
‘Not as bad as artists,’ Jasper chipped in absently as he concentrated on extracting a bone from his fish. ‘They hired a few painters to produce the pictures that featured in the film, and they turned out to be such prima donnas they made the actors look very down-to-earth, didn’t they, Soph?’
Somewhere in the back of Sophie’s mind an alarm bell had started drilling. She looked up, desperately trying to telegraph warning signals across the table to Jasper, but he was still absorbed in exhuming the skeleton of the poor fish. Sophie’s lips parted in wordless panic as she desperately tried to think of something to say to steer the subject onto safer ground …
Too late.
‘One of them became completely obsessed with painting Sophie,’ Jasper continued. ‘He came over to her in the bar one evening when I was there and spent about two hours gazing at her with his eyes narrowed as he muttered about lilies.’
Sophie felt as if she’d been struck by lightning, a terrible rictus smile still fixed to her face. She didn’t dare look at Kit. She didn’t need to—she could feel the disapproval and hostility radiating from him like a force field. Through her despair she was aware of the woman with the roses in her hair staring down at her from the portrait. Now the smile didn’t look secretive so much as if she was trying not to laugh.
‘If I thought the result would have been as lovely as that I would have accepted like a shot,’ she said in a strangled voice, gesturing up at the portrait. ‘Who is she?’
Ralph followed her gaze. ‘Ah—that’s Lady Caroline, wife of the fourth Earl and one of the more flamboyant Fitzroys. She was a girl of somewhat uncertain provenance who had been a music hall singer—definitely not countess material. Christopher Fitzroy was twenty years younger than her, but from the moment he met her he was quite besotted and, much to the horror of polite society, married her.’
‘That was pretty brave of him,’ Sophie said, relief at having successfully moved the conversation on clearly audible in her voice.
The sound Kit made was unmistakably derisive. ‘Brave, or stupid?’
Their eyes met. Suddenly the room seemed very quiet. The arctic air was charged with electricity, so that the candle flames flickered for a second.
‘Brave,’ she retorted, raising her chin a little. ‘It can’t have been easy, going against his family and society, but if he loved her it would have been worth the sacrifice.’
‘Not if she wasn’t worth the sacrifice.’
The candle flames danced in a halo of red mist before Sophie’s eyes, and before she could stop herself she heard herself give a taut, brittle laugh and say, ‘Why? Because she was too common?’
‘Not at all.’ Kit looked at her steadily, his haughty face impassive. ‘She wasn’t worth it because she didn’t love him back.’
‘How do you know she didn’t?’
Oh, jeez, what was she doing? She was supposed to be here to impress Jasper’s family, not pick fights with them. No matter how insufferable they were.
‘Well …’ Kit said thoughtfully. ‘The fact that she slept with countless other men during their marriage is a bit of a clue, wouldn’t you say? Her lovers included several footmen and stable lads and even