‘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 to the table and picked up a bottle, holding it up to the light for a second before pouring a little of the dark red liquid into a slender, teardrop-shaped decanter. ‘It’s a great dress. It suits you.’
His voice was offhand. So why did it make goosebumps rise on her skin?
‘It’s a very cheap dress.’ She laughed again, awkwardly, crossing her arms across her chest to hide the obvious outline of her nipples, which had to be glaringly obvious against the plainness of the dress. ‘Or is that what you meant by it suiting me?’
‘No.’
He turned to face her, holding the slim neck of the decanter. She couldn’t take her eyes off his hands. Against the white cuffs of his evening shirt they looked very tanned and she felt her heart twist in her chest, catching her off guard as she thought of what he had done with those hands. And what he had seen with those eyes. And now he was looking at her with that cool, dispassionate stare and she almost couldn’t breathe.
‘I haven’t got a glass, I’m afraid.’ He swirled the port around in the decanter so it gleamed like liquid rubies, and then offered it up to her lips. ‘Take it slowly. Breathe it in first.’
Oh, God.
At that moment she wasn’t sure she was capable of breathing at all, but it was as if he had some kind of hypnotist’s hold over her and somehow she did as he said, her gaze fixed unblinkingly on his as she inhaled.
It was the scent of age and incense and reverence, and instantly she was transported back to the chapel at school, kneeling on scratchy woollen hassocks to sip communion wine and trying to ignore the whispers of Olympia Rothwell-Hyde and her friends, saying that she’d go to hell because everyone knew she hadn’t even been baptised, never mind confirmed. What vicar would christen a child with a name like Summer Greenham?
She pulled away sharply just as the port touched her lips, so that it missed her mouth and dripped down her chin. Kit’s reactions were like lightning—in almost the same second his hand came up to cup her face, catching the drips of priceless liquor on the palm of his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t mean to waste it—’
‘Then let’s not.’
It was just a whisper, and then he was bending his head so that, slowly, softly, his mouth grazed hers. Sophie’s breathing hitched, her world stopped as his lips moved downwards to suck the drips on her chin as her lips parted helplessly and a tidal wave of lust and longing was unleashed inside her. It washed away everything, so that her head was empty of questions, doubts, uncertainties: everything except the dark, swirling whirlpool of need. Her body did the thinking, the deciding for her as it arched towards him, her hands coming up of their own volition to grip his rock-hard shoulders and tangle in his hair.
This was what she knew. This meeting of mouths and bodies, this igniting of pheromones and stoking of fires—these were feelings she understood and could deal with expertly. Familiar territory.
Or, it had been.
Not now.
Not this …
His touch was gentle, languid, but it seared her like a blowtorch, reducing the memory of every man who’d gone before to ashes and dust. One hand rested on her hip, the other cupped her cheek as he kissed her with a skill and a kind of brooding focus that made her tremble and melt.
And want more.
The stiff fabric of the hateful dress felt like armour plating. She pressed herself against him, longing to be free of it, feeling the contours of the hard muscles of his chest through the layers of clothes that separated them. Her want flared, a fire doused with petrol, and as she kissed him back her fingers found the silk bow tie at his throat, tugging at the knot, working the shirt button beneath it free.
And suddenly there was nothing gentle in the way he pulled her against him, nothing languid about the pressure of his mouth or the erotic thrust and dart of his tongue. Sophie’s hands were shaking as she slid them beneath his jacket. She could feel the warmth of his body, the rapid