by India Grey
She hauled herself up out of the water and reached for a towel. She wanted to be his wife, she thought sadly. She wanted normality, a kitchen that wasn’t in a dungeon, a swing in the garden and a cot in the bedroom upstairs. And a baby … Oh, please, God, a baby …
The Dark Star glinted in the spotlights as she wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out of the bath, and out of the warm water she was aware of a dragging pain in her stomach. Reaching down to dry herself, she felt a thud of foreboding and looked down at the damp red stain on the pale blue bath towel.
A sob rose in her throat.
There was no baby.
‘That’s great news, Randall.’
Kit slumped against the desk in the library, squeezing his eyes shut as he processed the latest information on Lewis’s progress and fighting against the now-familiar onslaught of guilt and relief.
‘Isn’t it?’ From the other end of the phone, in the Birmingham hospital, Randall sounded so positive it was almost infectious. ‘Of course the fact that Lewis is a young, fit guy has definitely been on his side in helping him recover physically, and this baby arriving in the next few weeks has
given him a real goal to work towards in terms of getting out of hospital. Hopefully he should make it in time for the birth.’
‘How’s his family coping?’ Standing up, Kit went to the window. The view was entirely different from the one he’d seen earlier; the distant sea was quiet and the expanse of sand was wide and flat and clean now the storm had passed.
‘His family are rallying round, and so are their entire neighbourhood and all his mates, planning a big party for when he gets home.’ Randall paused before adding tersely, ‘The girlfriend is less of a support. I wouldn’t put money on her sticking with him long term. I just hope she has the decency to stay with him until he’s back on his feet again, however long it takes.’
Kit kept his voice deliberately neutral and his eyes fixed on the distant place where the sea met the sky. ‘I don’t suppose it’s easy for her either, you know. She’s just a kid too. She didn’t exactly sign up for any of this when she started going out with him.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ Randall sighed. ‘Sorry. It’s been a long shift and I’ve lost perspective a bit. Anyway, how are you?’
As he spoke movement out of the corner of Kit’s eye made him turn his head. His heart crashed as icy sweat drenched his body and his palms burned. A man with a metal detector was making his way slowly over the sand and for a moment Kit was back in uniform, watching his team mates inch up a dusty road, looking for mines.
‘Kit?’
Randall’s voice made the nightmarish vision fade again. Kit squeezed his eyes tightly shut for a second. ‘Sorry. I’m fine.’ His left hand hung at his side and he stretched and squeezed his numb fingers. ‘Tell Lewis I’ll come and see him tomorrow.’
‘I’m here if you need me, remember,’ Randall prompted gently.
‘I’ll bear it in mind. Thanks.’
His hand was shaking as he hung up.
He didn’t want to know, he told himself angrily. There was no need.
Quickly he crossed the room and headed for the stairs to find Sophie. Suddenly he had the terrible, crushing insight that every hour, every second with her was precious because there might only be a finite number of them …
The bedroom door was shut. He stopped outside it, leaning his head against it for a moment, breathing hard, reining back his thoughts before they raced away, completely out of control. God. And he’d always been so rigidly in command—of himself and everything else. So rational. So unemotional.
He barely recognised that man any more. The good soldier. The strong leader. The man who cared about little and had even less to lose.
Now he cared so much it was killing him. And he had everything to lose.
Gently he knocked and pushed open the door. Wrapped in a light blue bath towel, Sophie was sitting at the little oak console table she had brought up to use as a dressing table, brushing her hair. The pink-tinged evening light made her bare skin look as soft and tempting as a marshmallow. Kit’s stomach muscles tightened as if against a punch.
He went to stand behind her. She didn’t stop brushing, or raise her eyes to meet his in the mirror. Its age-mottled glass gave her face a timeless, ethereal beauty that seemed to place her somewhere just beyond his reach. He needed to reassure himself that she was there, that she was his, and he lifted his hand to sweep the heavy fall of her hair sideways and bent to kiss the nape of her neck.
She was the only thing that anchored him to sanity, the only way he knew of keeping the demons at bay. He breathed in her scent, and was aware of the fizzing in his fingers subsiding as they met her warm flesh.
‘Did you ring the hospital?’ she said in a low voice, bowing her head forwards as he kissed her neck.
‘Um-hm.’ Preoccupied, Kit didn’t lift his head.
‘How’s Lewis?’
‘Better.’
She leaned forwards, stiffening a little and moving away from him. ‘What does that mean? Better as in “completely recovered and going home”? Or better as in “off the critical list”?’
He didn’t want to think about it. Her skin was like velvet against his lips, and he put his arms around her to peel away the towel.
‘Somewhere between the two.’
Her hands came up to cover his and his first thought was that, as so often, she had read his mind, but then he felt her getting to her feet and pushing his hands away.
‘Kit, stop.’
Instantly he jerked upright and took a step back. Pulling the towel more tightly around herself, Sophie sank down onto the little rosewood chair again, her head lowered so that he couldn’t see her face.
‘What’s wrong?’
She gave a slight shrug, but didn’t look up. ‘You tell me.’
He sighed, dragging a hand impatiently over his eyes, a feeling of unease prickling at the back of his neck. ‘Sorry, I don’t get it. Is this going to be one of those cryptic conversations in which I have to guess what’s going on in your head?’
‘Maybe. At least then you’d know what it’s like for me.’
Her voice was low, but the edge of bitterness in it was unmistakable. Unease turned to alarm, making him speak more coldly than he’d intended.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means I can’t go on letting you push me away and shut me out.’
Kit gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Forgive me for being pedantic, but weren’t you the one who just pushed me away?’
‘That’s sex, Kit! I’m talking about intimacy. Talking.’ Her voice trembled with emotion, and as she raised her head he saw her face properly.
‘You’ve been crying. Sophie, what’s wrong?’
Shock hit him hard, like a punch to the solar plexus. She never cried—except when she saw a spider, or in the aftermath of their lovemaking when she collapsed, gasping and sobbing, onto his chest. Bewildered, he paced across the floor, his mind going back over the afternoon as he tried to think what could possibly have brought this on.
‘Look, if you hate it here that much …’
She shook her head, quickly rubbing the tears away with the back of her hand. ‘It’s not that. Not really. I mean, it’s not what I would have chosen, but I’d happily live in a cave as long as I was with you.’
‘You are with me.’
‘No. I’m not.’ She looked up again, and her eyes met his in the mirror. They shimmered with tears and were filled with an aching sadness. ‘We sleep together, Kit. We have sex—a lot of sex. Sometimes we have breakfast together the morning after, but we don’t talk. Not about anything that matters.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like about the future.’ She took a quick breath, in and out. ‘Or the past for that matter. Like what the hell happened to you while you were away.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Gritting his teeth, he spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘T
hings happen all the time out there. Bloody awful things that would drive you crazy if you let yourself dwell on them. But you don’t. You leave them there and you come home and forget.’
‘OK. I get it. You don’t want to talk to me.’ She gave a crooked smile that was unbearably poignant. ‘But I need to
talk to you. Five months is a long time and stuff happened here that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about.’
‘What stuff?’ His blood ran to ice.
‘Nothing terrible. But we do need to discuss it. I did as you said and went to see a doctor. About my periods.’
‘Aand?’
‘It’s endometriosis.’ She looked down at the hairbrush in her hand, turning it over and over. ‘No surprises there, but he warned me that getting pregnant might be difficult. He told me not to leave it too long before trying to start a family and—’
‘Sophie—’
She ignored the warning in his tone, looking straight at him with a mixture of resignation and defiance. ‘I stopped taking the pill immediately.’
Kit spun away from her. It was as if a switch had been flicked inside his body, shutting off all function, all feeling for a few seconds, while his brain spun into freefall. Ten per cent of cases. He raised his hands to his head as the implications hit.
‘And that was before I got home?’ he rasped. ‘So for the last two weeks we’ve—’
‘I’m not pregnant.’
The bald, emotionless statement stilled the panic in his head.
He dropped his hands to his sides again. Acid fizzed beneath his skin, burning and throbbing in the pulse points on his wrists just as horror beat inside him at the realisation that keeping his fears to himself could have had such far-reaching consequences. But more immediate than that was relief.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning to face her, but his voice was hoarse and unconvincing even to his ears.
‘Are you?’ Sophie stood up, stepping out from behind the dressing table chair and turning to him with eyes that blazed with fury. ‘Because for a moment there I could have sworn
that sorry was the last thing you were. In fact, “hugely relieved” might be a better way of describing your reaction.’ She held up her hands as if to push him back. ‘I wouldn’t bother to deny it, Kit. There’s really no point. I’m not even surprised, since it’s been getting increasingly obvious that there’s no future for us. Tell me, were you waiting out of kindness to let me down gently, or were you just going to shut me out a bit more every day in the hope that eventually I’d go of my own accord, and leave you free to mingle your exclusive Fitzroy genes with someone of the right pedigree?’
Every barbed word tore into him, but he knew he had brought the pain on himself. He gritted his teeth and steeled himself for more.
‘No.’
Tossing her hair back, she laughed, but it came out more like a sob. It hurt him even more than her anger and her inaccurate accusations. ‘Oh, dear. You’ll have to do better than that, Kit,’ she said. ‘This is the part where you’re supposed to take me in your arms and tell me I’ve got it all wrong and promise that one day we’ll have a family of our own—or didn’t you read the script?’
It took all his strength, all his courage to meet her eyes. He felt as if he’d swallowed arsenic.
‘I can’t do that. I’m sorry.’
Darkness gathered behind Sophie’s eyes. Her head was filled with a strange buzzing sound, and for a moment she actually thought she was going to faint. Kit’s face swam in front of her, as hard and blank as if it had been carved from stone.
‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
His emotionless voice reached her from a long distance away. He turned away from her then, and she was grateful that he couldn’t see her grabbing hold of the chest of drawers for support as she fought to drag in a breath. Her stomach cramped.
It was hardly a bolt from the blue. She had seen it coming since the morning after their dinner at Villa Luana. She had to hold onto her dignity.
‘It’s OK,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘You don’t have to explain. I understand already. When you asked me to marry you, all this wasn’t part of the deal.’ She made a gesture with her hand that inadequately indicated the vast castle that stretched all around them. ‘I know things have changed since then.’
‘Yes. Things have changed.’ Kit sounded so infinitely weary that for a moment she almost felt sorry for him. ‘But it’s nothing to do with Alnburgh. It’s me. I’ve changed.’
‘Oh, God.’ She actually managed a genuine laugh then, albeit a slightly hysterical one. ‘“It’s not you, it’s me.” That’s such an old line, Kit.’
He didn’t smile. Standing in front of the window with another spectacular Alnburgh sunset spreading its glories across the sky behind him, he looked as stern and beautiful as a painted saint in the Sistine Chapel.
‘It’s true. I wish it wasn’t but it is. I’m not the person—the hero …’ his mouth twisted bleakly ‘… you think I am.’
Sophie was distantly aware that she was shivering. She should put some clothes on, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it in front of him now. He was suddenly a stranger to her.
‘You remember the incident that happened out there on the day I came back …’ Kit bowed his head briefly ‘… the one that left a nineteen-year-old boy in Intensive Care with bullets in his head and back? I should have been looking after him, just like you said, but what happened to him was my fault. All. My. Fault.’
His voice dripped ice down her spine. He was standing against the window, his face in shadow, but his eyes burned with a peculiar intensity that made her breath catch and her heart ache with compassion and fear.
‘That can’t be true. Surely in an explosion—’
‘He wasn’t hurt in the explosion,’ he said with exaggerated patience that sounded almost like scorn. ‘He was hurt before the bomb went off, by enemy fire.’
‘How can that be your fault?’
‘Because he was one of the infantry team covering my back while I defused the device,’ he said in a low, mocking voice. Turning round, he gripped the window sill and looked out over the beach, though Sophie had a feeling he wasn’t seeing the tranquil sweep of Northumberland sand at all. ‘We’d been called to a bridge over one of the main routes into a town notorious for its insurgent activity. The bomb was underneath it, but the whole situation was a nightmare. The site was visible for miles around, from hundreds of rooftops and windows and balconies. We can clear the area immediately around the device on the ground, but it’s impossible to make a site like that safe. The only thing to do is to go in there and do the job quickly.’
Sophie was transfixed, standing shivering in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself because she couldn’t wrap them around him. Everything about him told her to keep away, from his white-knuckled grip on the window sill to the bunched muscles across his shoulders.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said bitterly. ‘I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t feel my fingers properly. My hands were shaking. I dropped the wire cutters, and all I could think about was you.’ He paused, letting his head drop for a moment and exhaling a ragged breath. ‘That was when the shooting started and I knew we were screwed. There was nothing to do but get out fast. I was running back to the vehicle when the bomb went off, but Lewis had already been hit.’
‘Oh, Kit …’ Like a sleepwalker, Sophie moved towards him, unable to stop herself from reaching out and touching him. ‘It wasn’t your fault—you have to believe that. It was an impossible situation. It could have happened to anyone.’
Slowly, levering himself away from the window sill, he turned to face her. His mouth was curved into a bleak parody of a smile that made her insides freeze.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Everything made sense when my mother mentioned Leo’s illness.’ The smile twisted. ‘You thought it was bad enough that I inherited Alnburg
h from him, but I’m afraid it looks like that might be the least of my problems. At least I could walk away from Alnburgh.’
‘You think you have the same thing he had?’
Sophie’s voice was a cracked whisper. By contrast his was cold, flat, utterly matter-of-fact.
‘I checked with a friend who’s a doctor. The early signs are clumsiness and loss of sensation in the hands. According to Juliet, there’s a hereditary factor in ten per cent of cases. And that’s why I’m glad you’re not pregnant.’
Instinctively Sophie went towards him, wanting only to take him in her arms. A cautious hope was beginning to steal through her combined with relief that at last she understood. He had finally opened up to her, and now she knew what the problem was it was a case of dealing with it, one thing at a time.
‘You have to see someone,’ she said gently, wrapping her arms around him. ‘Find out for sure.’
‘Do I?’
She wasn’t sure which was worse, his laconic drawl or his rigid, unyielding body. She drew sharply away from him.
‘Of course—the sooner we know the better, and then whatever the facts are we can deal with them.’ She swallowed hard, her heart pounding, an icy avalanche of dread smashing away the hope and relief. ‘Toge ther. Whatever it is, we’ll—’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
Sophie’s hand flew to her mouth, stopping the sob that
swelled in her throat. Kit sighed, looking at her with an unflinching, silvery gaze.
‘If I have what my f-father had …’ his eyelids flickered as he stumbled over the word ‘father’, but his tone was colder, harder than ever as he continued ‘… I won’t sentence you to that slow death with me. I’d have to let you go.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘You can’t mean that. You wouldn’t throw away what we have because—’
‘Yes.’ His voice held a terrifying note of finality. ‘I spoke to Juliet. I know what it would mean. If I have this illness, there’s no way I can marry you, Sophie. I’m sorry.’
Sophie stepped backwards, fighting for air. She felt dizzy and disorientated, as if she’d just stepped off some kind of extreme fairground ride.