“Anything will be grand, thanks. Terrible, really, to have come in on you this way. I thought it was vacant.”
“It was until a few hours ago.”
“Did you get the sudden urge to visit the lodge after speaking of it to me?”
“No, my father got the sudden urge to get my arse out of London after, ahem, the ridiculous spectacle I’ve made of myself.”
“It isn’t your fault Magnus is such an indiscreet rotter.”
“No, but it’s my fault I…you’ll love this one…dropped my kit for a lad’s magazine.”
“You have? Which one?” He said with interest as she led him to the salon.
“I haven’t. I did the Vanity Fair interview and my parents actually accused me of taking illicit drugs and descending into a life in pornography. It was appalling.”
He seemed at a loss for words.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to tell Chambers you’re staying. Have a drink.” She nodded to the decanters arrayed on a table.
When she returned, she looked him over.
Droplets of water scattered from his curls, his hair tousled and damp. She licked her lips.
“You’re wet.”
“It’s raining.” He said.
“Is it? I suppose you’re right. Then I know what we’ll do. You need a proper cup of Pembroke tea. Brewed just the way my grandmother taught me.”
“Oh Lord is this the bit where you show off your immaculate pouring skills learnt at your smart finishing school?”
“Yes, of course.” She said and scampered out again.
Lizzy came back with a loaded tray.
“Here we are. Loose tea leaves, the very hottest water. Your tea must be drunk with two cubes of sugar and a finger of brandy to ward off the chill.”
“I haven’t caught a chill.”
“Cheeky boy. Be glad I haven’t Pemmy’s jeweled cane to rap your knees with for being impudent. Drink your tea.” She laughed and he obeyed.
“Talking to you about moving out to the country for a few weeks got me thinking it was time and past it if I want to send in the draft to my agent before the campaigning starts in earnest. I was at a loose end after I dropped you off so I called in at work and gathered all my research. Here I am.”
“Here we are. Could you do with a bit of cheering up still?”
“I suppose I could. But I don’t want to interfere with your holiday or depress you further. I’ll leave you to it.” He rose, setting his teacup aside.
“It’s not a holiday. My father tried to send me to Sandringham and I refused. I said I’d come here instead.”
“I see.”
“What now?”
“Only that you don’t seem all that interested in doing what your parents want. So why go where they tell you to go and when?”
“I reckon I wanted to come here. See the horses and have some quiet, mayhap I shall even consider growing up. You’re a bit hard on me, though. Worse than my own brothers.”
“I’m not one of your brothers. Good night, Lizzy.” He said.
Mrs. Chambers appeared at the door with her almost preternatural sense of timing and showed him to a room. Lizzy retired to read and wonder what the hell had happened to Phillip, who wasn’t the way he was supposed to be at all.
Chapter Seven
She spent time in the stables in the mornings, had a swim in the cool lake and went back to her room to read or Instagram photos of pastoral views with vintage and sepia filters. She lolled about that way for days, seeing Phillip at meals, hearing about his views on alternative energy sources and describing the plot of the latest mystery she was reading. It was a comfortable routine, but after a week the sameness began to grow stale. Phillip knocked on her door. She had been near to figuring out who the murderer was in a novel and the sound of his fist at the door startled her. She opened the door and found him a bit disheveled. His shirt was half untucked, his usually combed curls askew as if he’d been tugging at them. She marveled at how interesting he looked in disorder, how unlike the polite houseguest she’d seen so little of.
“I’m at the end of my outline and I need human company. I have to get out of this house for a while. Want to know a secret?”
“Always.” She said.
“I’ll tell you one if you’ll go for a walk with me. As it turns out, dilettante environmentalists could use fresh air and conversation to keep their sanity.”
“If that’s the secret, I’ll go back to my book.”
“No, get your shoes.”
They went out the kitchen stairs and into the gravel path among the flowerbeds. His hands were clasped behind his back and he paced a bit ahead of her, looking like a barrister summing up.
“Look at these roses. They’re called Jude the Obscure. Aren’t they the loveliest thing?”
“Better than the novel they’re named for. Anyhow, if you can leave the flowers alone and give me your attention…It’s a family secret. Are you sure you can keep it quiet? No tweeting it and spoiling my reputation.”
“I promise. Do tell.”
“You’ve never been to my parents’, have you? In the lounge, every piece has been sourced right from the Tottenham Road. You might find the Heal’s sticker still on some of our ‘heirlooms’ thanks to Mother. Among the swish articles of perfect taste, is an old barrel.”
“Why?” Lizzy said.
“Mother tells everyone who visits that it’s a sentimental piece for my dad. It’s one of the genuine oak barrels used to age the wine at our family’s vineyard in Tuscany.”
“Do you have a vineyard? I didn’t know that.”
“We haven’t. Mother made it up. She tells people it passed out of the family due to the exploits of a careless younger son, and that my father was terribly attached to the place before his uncle lost it. In fact, it’s a barrel my grandfather made. Our surname was not always Rhys-Cooper. My mother added the hyphenate for prestige. It’s Cooper as in a chap who soaks wood to make a barrel.”
“Ooh, so you’re barrel-makers? I love that. Did anyone know when you were at school?”
“No, thankfully. But when you meet my parents, I’ll want you to be on the lookout for that barrel. Get my mum to tell you the story. Occasionally she’ll produce a hankie and dab at her eye from the loss of the imaginary vineyard.”
“I can’t imagine I’ll have much occasion to be at your ancestral home, but I’ll keep it in mind if I chance to be there. Wait—does this mean that the cufflinks you asked me to hold whilst you pounded Magnus were not heirlooms at all?”
“Hardly. My uncle gave them to me as a wedding present, in fact. I ought to have returned them, I suppose, but I’m fond of them despite the association.”
“You were going to pummel someone while I guarded a fake heirloom? Now I’ll have to give you a family secret in turn. Let me think.”
“Don’t go giving away sensitive government information, Lizzy.”
“I used to make Edward pretend to be a horse.”
“You rode on his back? That’s hardly uncommon.”
“Not when I was tiny, no, I mean when I was seven or eight I’d make him pretend to be an Arabian with a tendon injury and I’d do surgery on him with a pretty little fish fork I smuggled from the silver room.”
“Did you want to be a veterinarian then?”
“I fancied horses and I liked performing surgery on him. He made the most theatrical moans of pain from the treatment. You should ask him when he’s in his cups…he can do quite an agonized whinny. The only bad bit—“
“Apart from pretending to torture animals?”
“I was helping animals! The bad bit was when the fish fork was discovered missing and it was evidently part of Queen Victoria’s jubilee set of silver and rather valuable and a pair of housemaids were turned out over it. Kimpton, the housekeeper at the time, was convinced they’d purloined a costly, irreplaceable fork.”
“Did you confess?”
“Of course I did! I returned the fork t
o Kimpton directly and she turned me over to my father who promptly had Nanny switch me soundly.”
“It’s like something out of Dickens, you noble little thief. I’m for the footnotes now. If you want to have anything pierced or inked, don’t forget to include me.”
“Wait! I’ve been doing a bit of reading myself, more than mysteries, in fact. I looked up physiotherapy courses on how to become a hippo-therapist.”
“Are the population of hippopotami in need of counseling?”
“It’s equine therapy, adaptive riding. It can do wondrous things for people who struggle with mental illness or autism or physical injuries. You can train retired racehorses to do it instead of putting them out to pasture at the end of their careers. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Yes. Are you going to do it, then?”
“Right. I can imagine the response--Oh, look, Lizzy’s lost the plot and wants to play with ponies now.”
“What does it matter if people say that?”
“It matters. It would be one more stupid thing I’ve done.”
“Isn’t it better to try and see if it suits you? I would wager that if you got out of your own way, you could be tremendous at this.”
“Would you go riding with me tomorrow? Early?”
“I reckon I can.”
The following morning, Lizzy went out to the stables, her pocket full of sugar cubes. It had been near on a year since she’d stayed any length of time at the lodge, but this was where she boarded her private horses, the ones that were hers alone. She went first to Ginger’s stall to pet her. Next she gave a sugar cube to Perla, her dappled gray Andalusian. She crooned to her in Spanish as she led her out of the stall, chose tack and saddled the horse.
Perla was sixteen hands high, so Lizzy had to use a block to mount. When she wheeled the horse round to head off down the back roads, she saw Phillip swing onto the back of the gleaming Arabian. He wore tall boots, dark jeans, a wool jumper. The sight of him in the cold foggy morning, the puff of his breath hanging in the air as he rode toward her, moved her. She had thought he would have a lie in and forget all about their ride. No reason, after all, for a man on holiday to awake early on account of her whim.
“Good morning.” He said.
“Pembroke looks well on you.” She said.
“I might say the same of yourself. Which way shall we go?”
“Lacking any of your ancestral barrels to use for a race, we might do some sightseeing. Pembroke boasts several breeds of sheep, a few outbuildings in various states of disrepair.”
They rode along in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“There’s a fine prospect from that spot by the old watchtower. The path’s a bit narrow for the horses, but we could chance it. I’d love to show it to you.”
“I’m for walking it.” Phillip said.
They dismounted and started up the brow of the hill. The path was littered with loose gravel in places. She reached for his arm to steady herself and he caught her eye.
“Just along here it’s a bit dodgy.” She said.
Phillip took her hand and drew her along behind him where the path narrowed. They reached the ruin that was once a watchtower. She climbed up onto a pile of tumbled stones and pointed to the reddening eastern sky.
“We’re just in time.”
Down below them stretched a patchwork of fields with the bluish mist hanging low across them, lit by the sunrise.
“D’you like it then?” She said.
It was in that instant she noticed that he wasn’t looking at the sky at all. She felt herself flush under the silent intensity of his gaze.
“God, Lizzy. It’s possible to believe you’re made of stardust.”
“What’s this to do with the stars?”
“Everything.” He said.
One instant, he was a few feet away, and then he was kissing her. He swept back her hair and cupped her face in his hand and put his mouth on hers. Her lips clung to his, parted for him, and her tongue quested for his. She clutched at the front of his shirt, rose up, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. When his tongue pushed into her mouth, she swayed against him, feeling like a brushfire just ignited. Her breathing was ragged and the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to stop kissing her.
He pushed up her shirt. The heat of his hands on her sides, roaming her bare stomach and back made her shiver. She started rucking up his jumper. Some primitive instinct had taken over. It occurred to her to rip his jumper so she could rub up against his naked chest and possibly lick his tattoo. He grazed her bottom lip with his teeth and she made a soft sound in the back of her throat. She pushed his sweater over his head, her hands on the hard heat of his back. She set her mouth on the dark ink of that tree tattoo, his hand in her hair.
“Lizzy,” He said in that low sexy voice that was all Phillip.
Phillip. Hearing his voice broke the spell and there she was with her old mate Phillip, with his hand up her shirt, scandalizing nearby sheep. She and looked at him, her cheeks flaming with shame. She wanted to take it back, to tell him that she didn’t want to wreck the best thing in her life right now, their friendship, by fucking him in a field. That he was far and away the best kisser of her whole life and that was damned inconvenient since she never intended to kiss him again. She laid one hand over his heart, over that stupid tree tattoo.
“I can’t. Forgive me.” She said.
Phillip didn’t say that he forgave her. He raked a hand through his hair and looked out over the ground below. The wind ruffled his dark curls and she stared at his profile, faintly Roman in the sunrise. The sight of him struck her palpably. He was so familiar yet it was like she’d never seen him before. Lizzy could imagine him as one of the ancients, a Roman philosopher, an Epicurean perhaps, reclining at table after a feast. His white shirt unlaced, open. His dark curls loose and dark eyes flashing.
She groaned inwardly. That elite education she’d received predisposed her to be pretentious even in her fantasies. He didn’t look like an ancient philosopher at a bacchanal. He looked fit and desirable, like sex on legs. Like Ioan Gruffaud or that American, Mark Ruffalo. Dark, intense, alluring. Not at all like whom she’d thought he was all these years.
“I was brought up to believe a man should always apologize for discomfiting a woman. So I’m about to be very rude. I’m not sorry. I liked kissing you, Lizzy, and I plan to do it again as soon as possible.”
She gaped at him.
“You see, I’ve spent thirty-odd years letting things happen to me. I haven’t taken much initiative. For the first time, that seems like disaster, because you’re not going to happen to me. You’d drift off and never think of kissing me again, and I’d brood on it my whole life. So I’m going to happen to you, Lizzy.”
She had no idea how to answer such a statement. She hadn’t expected Phillip to be bold. It was one more bloody thing about him that was too complicated now that she knew him better.
“What am I supposed to say to that?” She said.
“I reckon I’d hoped you’d say that you plan to happen to me, too.”
“I currently have no plans of happening to you, Phillip.” She said.
“Then I’ll convince you to change your plans.” He said.
“You could’ve shagged me at the dirty thirty, when I found out about Magnus’ article. Why didn’t you just get it out of your system then, when I was sad and drinking?”
“Because I have no intention of being someone who shagged you once when you had a bad night. You’re more to me than that.”
“Well, fuck.”
“You’re giving me very little to work with conversationally. I suspect it’s because you’ve never had a man want you before and say it openly. You’ve chased boys and it was a bit of fun, but this isn’t any game you know. I’m a grown man and I can be patient, but I want you, Lizzy, and I mean to have you. I’m not shy about saying so.”
“God, could you quit saying so for a second? It’s a bit much.�
� She said. “If you go on I’ll need a Pembroke tea. This isn’t who you are at all. If I had introduced you at a party, I would have said I’d known you twenty years, but I’m not sure I knew you at all.”
“I think you woke me. At the benefit, when you danced with me and you were so unhappy, I wanted to do something about it. It was the first time in weeks I’d thought of anything but what a sad bastard I was, being jilted. Then you took me out to have a tattoo and you changed everything.”
“So I got you out of the beans on toast phase by giving you alcohol at a tattoo shop. That’s hardly life affirming. It’s more of being a bad influence.”
“You brought me to life. Now tell me properly how you feel.”
“I’m torn because I think it might be fun to have an affair with you while we’re at Pembroke, but it would fuck things up after that because it feels too serious. One or both of us would wind up hurting and cross, and we’d never be friends again. So I think I’ll opt out, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. It’s not a bit of fun with us.”
“It doesn’t have to be the end of the world, either, Phillip.”
“It is definitely the end of the world.”
“I can’t lose you.” She said.
“Whoever said anything about losing me, silly girl. I want to be your lover, not the ruin of you.”
“I think you’ve a fair chance at both.” She said. “This scares me worse than anything--except not trying to be with you. Not trying might be the worst thing, because, you said I’d never think of it again, that you’d brood on it for the rest of your life. That was a mistake. Because I’m not likely to forget you at all.”
“I’ve no intention of leaving off and making you comfortable again. I am in love with you and since you don’t seem to know what to do with a proper, old-fashioned declaration, I’ll have to show you.”
A sizzle went through her at the very thought. Phillip kissed her full on the mouth. Something about it--the gentle insistence, the shockingly good way he nipped at her lips—made her want to moan right out loud. She melted into him, swaying against his chest.
The Princess Royal (Royal Romances Book 2) Page 9