‘Hello-o?’
Pasting on a smile, she turned to Jasper, who had picked out the most hideous concoction of ruffles and ruches in the kind of royal blue frequently used for school uniforms. Sophie waved her hand dismissively.
‘Strictly Come Drag Queen. I thought we were going for dull—that’s attention-grabbing for all the wrong reasons. No—we have to find something really boring …’ She began rifling through rails of pastel polyester. ‘We have to find the closest thing The Fashion Capital of the North has to a shroud … Here. How about this?’
Triumphantly she pulled out something in stiff black fabric—long, straight and completely unadorned. The neck was cut straight across in a way that she could imagine would make her breasts look like a sort of solid, matronly shelf, and the price tag was testament to the garment’s extreme lack of appeal. It had been marked down three times already and was now almost being given away.
‘Looks good to me.’ Jasper flipped the hanger around, scrutinising the dress with narrowed eyes. ‘Would madam like to try it on?’
‘Nope. It’s my size, it’s horrible and it’s far too cold to get undressed. Let’s just buy it and go to the pub. As your fiancée I think I deserve an enormous and extremely calorific lunch.’
Jasper grinned and kissed her swiftly on the cheek. ‘You’re on.’
The Bull in Hawksworth was the quintessential English pub: the walls were yellow with pre-smoking-ban nicotine, a scarred dartboard hung on the wall beside an age-spotted etching of Alnburgh Castle and horse brasses were nailed to the blackened beams. Sophie slid behind a table in the corner by the fire while Jasper went to the bar. He came back with a pint of lager and a glass of red wine, and a newspaper folded under his arm.
‘Food won’t be a minute,’ he said, taking a sip of lager, which left a froth of white on his upper lip. ‘Would you mind if I gave Sergio a quick call? I brought you this to read.’ He threw down the newspaper and gave her an apologetic look as he took out his phone. ‘It’s just it’s almost impossible to get a bloody signal at Alnburgh, and I’m always terrified of being overheard anyway.’
Sophie shrugged. ‘No problem. Go ahead.’
‘Is there a “but” there?’
Taking a sip of her wine, she shook her head. ‘No, of course not.’ She put her glass down, turning the stem between her fingers. In the warmth of the fire and Jasper’s familiar company she felt herself relaxing more than she had done in the last twenty-four hours. ‘Except,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘perhaps that I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier if you came clean about all this.’
‘Came out, you mean?’ Jasper said with sudden weariness. ‘Well, it wouldn’t. It’s easier just to live my own life, far away from here, without having to deal with the fallout of knowing I’ve let my whole family down. My father might be seventy, but he still prides himself on the reputation as a ladies’ man he’s spent his entire adult life building. He sees flirting with anything in a skirt as a mark of sophisticated social inter-action—as you may have noticed last night. Homosexuality is utterly alien to him, so he thinks it’s unnatural full stop.’ With an agitated movement of his hand he knocked his pint glass so that beer splashed onto the table. ‘Honestly, it would finish him off. And as for Kit—’
‘Yes, well, I don’t know what gives Kit the right to go around passing judgment on everyone else, like he’s something special,’ Sophie snapped, unfolding the paper as she moved it away from the puddle of lager on the table. ‘It’s not as if he’s better than you because he’s straight, or me because he’s posh—’
‘Holy cow,’ spluttered Jasper, grasping her arm.
Breaking off, she followed his astonished gaze and felt the rest of the rant dissolve on her tongue. For there, on the front of the newspaper—in grainy black and white, but no less arresting for it—was Kit. Beneath the headline Heroes Honoured a photograph showed him in half profile, his expression characteristically blank above his dress uniform with its impressive line of medals.
Quickly, incredulously, Jasper began to read out the accompanying article.
‘Major Kit Fitzroy, known as “the heart-throb hero”, was awarded the George Medal for his “dedication to duty and calm, unflinching bravery in the face of extreme personal risk”. Major Fitzroy has been responsible for making safe over 100 improvised explosive devices, potentially saving the lives of numerous troops and civilians, a feat which he describes as “nothing remarkable”.’
For long moments neither of them spoke. Sophie felt as if she’d swallowed a firework, which was now fizzing inside her. The barmaid brought over plates of lasagne and chips and retreated again. Sophie’s appetite seemed to have mysteriously deserted her.
‘I suppose that does give him the right to act like he’s a bit special, and slightly better than you and me,’ she admitted shakily. ‘Did you know anything about this?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘But wouldn’t your father want to know? Wouldn’t he be pleased?’
Jasper shrugged. ‘He’s always been rather sneery about Kit’s army career, maybe because he’s of the opinion people of our class don’t work, apart from in pointless, arty jobs like mine.’ Picking up his pint, he frowned. ‘It might also have something to do with the fact his older brother was killed in the Falklands, but I don’t know. That’s one of those Things We definitely Do Not Mention.’
There seemed to be quite a lot of those in the Fitzroy family, Sophie thought. She couldn’t stop looking at the photograph of Kit, even though she wanted to. Or help thinking how attractive he was, even though she didn’t want to.
It had been easy to write him off as an obnoxious, arrogant control-freak but what Jasper had said about his mother last night, and now this, made her see him, reluctantly, in a different light.
What was worse, it made her see herself in a different light too. Having been on the receiving end of ignorant prejudice, Sophie liked to think she would never rush to make ill-informed snap judgments about people, but she had to admit that maybe, just maybe, in this instance she had.
But so had he, she reminded herself defiantly. He had dismissed her as a shallow, tarty gold-digger when that most definitely wasn’t true. The gold-digger part, anyway. Hopefully tonight, with the aid of the nunlike dress and a few pithy comments on current affairs and international politics, she’d make him see he’d been wrong about the rest too.
For Jasper’s sake, obviously.
As they left she picked up the newspaper. ‘Do you think they’d mind if I took this?’
‘What for?’ Jasper asked in surprise. ‘D’you want to sleep with the heart-throb hero under your pillow?’
‘No!’ Annoyingly Sophie felt herself blush. ‘I want to swot up on the headlines so I can make intelligent conversation tonight.’
Jasper laughed all the way back to the car.
Ralph adjusted his bow tie in the mirror above the drawing room fireplace and smoothed a hand over his brushed-back hair.
‘I must say, Kit, I find your insistence on bringing up the subject of my death in rather poor taste,’ he said in an aggrieved tone. ‘Tonight of all nights. A milestone birthday like this is depressing enough without you reminding me constantly that the clock is ticking.’
‘It’s not personal,’ Kit drawled, mentally noting that he’d do well to remember that himself. ‘And it is boring, but the fact remains that Alnburgh won’t survive the inheritance tax it’ll owe on your death unless you’ve transferred the ownership of the estate to someone else. Seven years is the—’
Ralph cut him off with a bitter, blustering laugh. ‘By someone else, I suppose you mean you? What about Jasper?’
Alnburgh