by India Grey
The way he had looked at her—her throat constricted painfully as she remembered the intensity of his stare—the way he’d seemed to look beyond her face and into her soul. Now she understood why. He hadn’t seen her at all.
He’d seen this Arabella. An image of a dark, exotic supermodel swathed in black satin sheets swam into Rachel’s head as she mindlessly held the sleek designer kettle under the tap. She was just adding scarlet lipstick and a bottle of champagne to the image when she jumped back with a howl, as water sprayed copiously all over her.
Suddenly strong hands relieved her of the kettle and turned off the tap. Dripping and miserable, she looked up into Orlando’s darkly scowling face and felt a further twist of pain.
‘I was just going to have a cup of coffee, and then I’ll go,’ she muttered, not meeting his eye.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Go where?’
He seemed distracted. Distracted and angry. And very cold. She felt her bruised heart shrivel a little.
‘I don’t know, exactly, but obviously I’ll find a hotel or something. I have plenty of money…’
‘No. You’re not going any where.’
Orlando said the words as if it hurt him to speak them. It pretty much did. For the sake of his peace of mind he wanted her gone. For the sake of his conscience he needed her to stay. He wasn’t quite sure what she’d meant by saying she’d never wanted sex before last night, but something about it troubled him deeply.
‘But we agreed…It was just for last night.’
Abruptly Orlando moved away, going to stand at the other side of the kitchen with his back to her in a gesture which told her just as plainly as if he’d spoken the words out loud that as far as he was concerned last night was something he didn’t wish to be reminded of.
‘That was the housekeeper’s son on the phone just now. He was ringing to say that Mrs Harper slipped on some ice on her way here this morning and is on her way to hospital now, with a suspected broken ankle and fractured collarbone.’
‘Oh, poor her!’
‘You’re kinder than I am. My first reaction was far less selfless. Today of all bloody days.’
‘The ball…of course.’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t turn round.
He couldn’t bear to look at her this morning, Rachel thought miserably.
‘I want you to stay.’
The words cut through her thoughts, unexpected and shocking.
‘What?’
He sighed, his huge shoulders rising and falling, his head drooping for a moment before he seemed to make a massive effort to conceal his exasperation and repeat the words.
‘I said, I want you to stay.’ He spoke through gritted teeth, with exaggerated patience, as if she were very stupid. ‘I have to work. There’s an incident brewing over border control in the Middle East, and I’m going to be in consultation with Whitehall and the Pentagon for most of the day. I need you…’ He paused to suck in a breath. ‘I need you to help tonight, and with getting everything ready.’
Rachel shook her head in bewilderment, trying to keep a grip on reality. For the briefest second she’d allowed herself to imagine that that pause after I need you meant something—that Orlando Winterton was asking her to stay because he wanted her, not because he was short-staffed.
‘I can’t—you know I can’t! I’d be hopeless, Orlando. You know I’m completely impractical. I’d make a mess of it all, and spill red wine down someone’s priceless designer dress or something…’
He spun round to face her, dragging a hand through his hair. His other hand, the bandaged fingers stained with blood, stayed limp at his side, and the sight of that small vulnerability made her heart skip a beat.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘There’ll be caterers, for God’s sake. I’m not asking you to be a waitress.’
The ice in his wintry eyes extinguished her flicker of compassion and left a smoulder of anger. ‘Then what?’ She raised her chin an inch, staring at him defiantly. ‘If you don’t want me to fill in as a waitress, what do you want, Orlando? A stand-in mistress?’
She stopped abruptly, heat and colour flooding into her cheeks as the absurdity of the word—of the accusation—sounded in her ears. Mistress? She sounded like a prim governess in a Victorian novel.
A smile spread across his face: slow, lazy, dangerously mesmerising.
‘My mistress? No. I can assure you that there will be absolutely no need for you to take your duties that far, thank you. Though maybe it’s just as well you mentioned it, so we can get things absolutely straight. I’m asking you to stay on for purely practical purposes, and whatever happened between us last night is completely irrelevant.’
Rachel bit back her gasp of hurt. ‘And what if I don’t want to stay?’
He shrugged, levering himself upright from where he had been lounging with deceptive indifference against the countertop, and took a couple of steps towards her.
‘Then go. As soon as you’ve decided where. I’m asking for your help, not issuing a prison sentence.’
He was throwing her a lifeline. She knew that. Giving her time. So why was she hesitating?
She looked down at her hands. Subconsciously her fingers were stretching and flexing, getting ready for the two hours of practice she’d put in first thing in the morning in her old life. Her life with Carlos. The life she had run away from yesterday, with no thought of where she was going.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and looked up at Orlando with a small, painful smile. Pride was a luxury she simply couldn’t afford at the moment.
‘Of course I’ll stay,’ she said in a subdued voice. ‘Thank you. I’ll make myself as useful as I can.’
He nodded curtly, his gaze brushing over her for a second, as cold and fleeting as snowflakes on her face. But then he turned and left the room, and it was like being abandoned in Siberia. Naked.
Orlando strode into the library and slammed the door.
The small act of violence made him feel slightly better for a second, before despair closed in on him again, cutting him off from the rest of the world. Like the snow, which was falling again outside in heavy, swirling flakes.
He ought to be proud of himself, he thought mockingly. For the first time in a year he’d done something selfless. Something altruistic. For the first time in the last twelve miserable, desperate, depressing months he had actually done something heroic.
And she’d reacted as if he’d asked her to embrace a boa constrictor.
Walking across to the desk, he felt his face contort into a grimace of self-disgust.
She couldn’t wait to leave this morning. She had nowhere to go, but she was still planning to walk out of there. She could hardly boil a kettle, but she’d still decided she’d rather fend for herself than stay with him. Knives of pain shot through his damaged hand as it tightened convulsively into a fist.
Why?
Last night she had been different. He felt a moan of torment form in his throat as he remembered her softness, her compliance…her gratitude, for heaven’s sake. And at the time he’d felt like the most callous bastard who’d ever walked, because he’d known he was going to have to let her down. This last minute role-reversal was unsettling and bewildering.
What had changed?
A thought crept in to the edge of his mind like a cockroach…unpleasant, and impossible to completely destroy.
Arabella.
Apart from his doctors, she was the only living person to know about his sight.
And she’d spoken to Rachel this morning.
Taking her coffee, Rachel wandered out into the hallway, feeling at a loss. In the distance she could hear the bangs and shouts of the teams of workers clearing the furniture in the long drawing room and setting up the tables in the dining room. The house felt so different today, when it was filled with noise and life. Last night—the moonlight, the silence, the snow—seemed to belong to a dream, unreachable and unreal.
She found hersel
f standing in the doorway of the drawing room, although she couldn’t remember consciously deciding to go there, and watched in a trance as two men with their shirt-sleeves rolled back lifted the last sofa and carried it out of the door at the far end.
The room was bare, except for the rug on the floor where Orlando had laid her, knelt over her as his hands had slipped over her body, trailing ecstasy as the angels above had looked down on them…
‘Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find Mrs Harper, would you?’
Rachel jumped. The voice at her elbow was incredibly well-bred, but decidedly frazzled. Turning round, she found herself looking into the face of a girl not much older than she was, but as different as it was possible to be. Sleek, elegant, sophisticated, she was the sort of girl you expected to see in the champagne bar of Harrods, surrounded by a group of matching friends called Henrietta and Lucinda.
She held out a beautifully manicured hand. ‘Sorry, I’m Lucinda. From Ice and Fire? The party planners?’
‘Oh—of course,’ said Rachel, blushing. For a moment the name of Lucinda’s business had thrown her. ‘I’m Rachel. I’m terribly sorry, but Mrs Harper won’t be coming today. She’s slipped on the ice and broken her ankle.’
In sympathy with Mrs Harper, Lucinda’s face fell. ‘Oh, knickers,’ she wailed. ‘This sodding weather! I was so counting on having someone to help. Half of our office are in bed with hellish flu, which means I’ve come on my own. I had to set off at some perfectly indecent hour, and I’ve had the most nightmarish journey—’
She was interrupted by a loud blast of Handel’s Firework Music from her huge designer handbag, and, glancing apologetically at Rachel, plucked out her mobile. As she turned away to speak into it Rachel had the chance to admire the exquisite cut of her black trouser suit, her shiny pale pink nails with their bright white tips. She looked capable and professional, Rachel thought enviously, pulling the sleeves of her beloved but decidedly distressed cashmere jumper down over her own plain hands.
With a vivid curse that was entirely at odds with the cut-glass tones in which it was spoken, Lucinda threw the phone back into her bag and turned to Rachel. ‘That was the florist,’ she said miserably. ‘All the flights out of the Channel Islands have been grounded this morning, so the flowers won’t be here.’
Rachel’s heart went out to her. ‘What you need is a good strong coffee,’ she said sympathetically, taking Lucinda’s arm. ‘Come with me.’
In the kitchen, Rachel uttered a silent prayer of thanks that she’d watched Orlando fill the kettle earlier and knew how to do it.
‘Thanks,’ said Lucinda gratefully, taking the mug of coffee. ‘You don’t know how much I needed this. You’re a lifesaver.’
Rachel smiled. ‘My pleasure.’ It was true. It was a pleasure to be doing something useful for once. ‘Just tell me what else I can do to help.’
‘Oh, don’t say that or I might just take you up on it,’ groaned Lucinda, reaching into the depths of her bag and pulling out some paracetamol. ‘I feel rotten.’
‘Oh, you poor thing.’ Rachel regarded her sympathetically over the rim of her mug. ‘Are you coming down with the flu, do you think?’
‘Let’s hope not. Or, if I am, let’s hope I can keep it at bay until this party’s in full swing.’ Lucinda suddenly looked a lot less confident, and Rachel could see that much of the glossy sophistication was just a veneer. ‘The thing is,’ she went on miserably, ‘the business is in a spot of bother, and this party could be make or break. I can’t afford to mess this up—it’s the perfect opportunity to get some new clients from amongst all these loaded financiers. That’s why I was banking on the capable Mrs Harper.’
‘I’m afraid I’m hardly capable, but I’ll do whatever I can to help,’ said Rachel apologetically.
Lucinda looked relieved. ‘Would you? I don’t suppose you could find a solution to the flower crisis, could you?’
Outside it had stopped snowing, but the temperature had dropped. Rachel’s feet, in borrowed Wellingtons, hugely too big for her, crunched through a crisp crust of perfect snow as she trudged along an avenue flanked on both side by sculptural pleached limes.
There was something incredibly beautiful about their bare branches against the frozen sky, something poignant about the way their natural forms had been trained into rigidly controlled shape. They reminded her of Orlando, the way he’d appeared in the kitchen last night. Caged. Restrained.
Her arms were full of branches—some bare, some adorned with berries, some still covered in leaves the same coppery colour as her hair—her hands were scratched and torn, but she didn’t care, and her cheeks were flushed with cautious triumph. Following the lime avenue to its end, she’d discovered a gate in the wall and, with difficulty, pushed it open, hoping to find neat borders of well-behaved shrubs. Instead she had found a tangled wilderness.
She’d almost turned back, but the thought of letting Lucinda down, of failing, had made her persevere. She was glad she had.
Ahead of her now, Easton Hall was a picture of English perfection, its ancient brick rosy against the stark, snow covered landscape. It was so beautiful, but there was something sad and empty about it—as if it knew that the best days, the happy times, were gone and there was only darkness ahead. Rachel wondered about all the previous generations of Wintertons who had lived and laughed and loved here; thought of family Christmases and summer afternoons with tea on the lawn, of parties like the one tonight in former years, when all the family would have been gathered…
Now there was just Orlando.
Her heart gave a painful twist inside her chest, as if it had been impaled on one of the thorny branches she carried. He seemed so isolated. She longed to draw him, and this magical house, back into warmth and light.
But of course, she thought sadly, dodging past the caterer’s vans and pushing open the front door with her hip, if anyone was to warm Orlando’s chilly heart or bring the smile back to his beautiful, hard face it wouldn’t be her.
It would be this Arabella.
She paused, struggling to keep hold of all the damp, tangled branches as she kicked off the ridiculous boots. But, though they were far too big for her, they stubbornly refused to come off, so that she was reduced to hopping madly on one foot, desperately shaking her leg in the air while trying not to fall over.
At last the boot flew from her foot and skidded across the tiled floor, coming to rest at the feet of the person standing there. The person she hadn’t noticed. The person who had just watched her stupid, ungainly embarrassing display and not stepped in to help.
Orlando.
‘My God,’ he said, in a cool, mocking voice. ‘Burnham Wood comes to Dunsinane. The question is, why? We have plenty of kindling and firewood in the kitchen yard.’
Scarlet with exertion and embarrassment, Rachel eyed him mutinously through her armful of spiky branches.
‘These are flowers for the tables,’ she said haughtily.
Orlando’s finely arched eyebrows shot up, eloquently communicating his scorn.
‘Really?’
Rachel dropped her gaze. How could anyone manage to get so many syllables out of such a short word? Pig. No wonder he was alone. It was because he was insufferable.
She hesitated for a moment, horribly aware of her mad hair and unmade-up face. Her nose was probably bright red from the cold, and she desperately wanted to blow it. She sniffed, loudly.
‘Yes, really. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’ She took a step forward, intending to sweep past him in an attitude of preoccupation and importance, but she’d forgotten she was still wearing one Wellington, which gave her a madly lopsided gait. She stopped, fury and humiliation warring within her as she had no alternative but to try to lever it off with her other foot.
Orlando took a step towards her, his face perfectly impassive.
‘Can I help?’
It was too much. Desperate to end this humiliating encounter, and get as far away from him as p
ossible, Rachel gave an almighty lunge to try and free her foot. Unfortunately as she did so she failed to step clear of the top of the boot and, unable to put her arms out, overbalanced.
He caught her effortlessly and set her back on her feet again. And then he stood back, snatching his hands away as if, instead of being chilled from the frozen garden, she’d been blistering hot.
‘Thanks,’ Rachel muttered stiffly, and, gathering the branches closer to her, resumed her progress across the hall, choking on the bitterness of the irony.
She had, after all, been the one to bring a smile back to Orlando Winterton’s face. Such a damned shame, she reflected savagely, that it had been one of such complete and utter contempt.
The light was beginning to fade as Rachel finished the last of the arrangements and placed it on the table in the hallway.
Lucinda had brought heavy rectangular glass vases, tall enough to support the height of the branches. They rose starkly out of the glass, and against the opulent grandeur of Easton Hall looked astonishingly sparse and elegant.
Rachel stood back and allowed herself a small moment of satisfaction.
She had tried something new, and she hadn’t failed dismally. With a spring in her step, she went to find Lucinda.
She was in the dining room, talking to one of the hordes of caterers who had been traipsing in and out all day, carrying vast platters of salmon and lobster, endless dishes of salad, and every kind of spectacular pudding imaginable. But, going into the room, Rachel felt her attention drawn away from the array of food laid out on the long tables by the rising hysteria in Lucinda’s voice.
‘I quite specifically asked you to supply the candles. It’s no good telling me now that you haven’t got them!’
‘I’m sorry.’ The caterer’s tone was firm. ‘That wasn’t the message we got. I double-checked myself this morning what we we’d been commissioned to supply, and candles weren’t on the list.’
‘So you’re trying to tell me—?’
Rachel laid a hand on Lucinda’s arm. She could feel her shivering violently.