He took a deep breath. ‘All right. Talk to one of my girlfriends. Treat her with respect. Listen to her advice,’ he said as if he was repeating a lesson. ‘Come with me to my home.’
‘What?’
He looked away with a little laugh. ‘Don’t like it, do you? That was me saying what I mean without diplomacy.’
Kit turned to face him. Her eyes were green as the spring this morning, he thought. And very serious.
‘You want me to come away with you? Why?’
He spread his hands. ‘To talk. To be together. I’ve got to go anyway. There’s so much to do and I’ve neglected it for months. It would be the ideal opportunity to show you who I am. To see—’
He broke off, slamming a fist into the palm of his other hand. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, uncontrolled and almost violent. She watched it without comment.
‘Oh, this is stupid. Why would you go away with me? Even if I were the right age for you, you and I have nothing in common. As it is, I’m an old bore who can’t see straight.’
He had not been referring to his eyesight but she said swiftly, ‘Are you driving home?’
‘What?’ He was disconcerted. It took him a moment to understand the practical question she was asking. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve arranged to pick up a car today. If I go.’
She said coolly, ‘Should you be driving with one eye unreliable?’
He had not thought of that. He had not been thinking of anything but her for days now, it seemed.
‘Oh, damn,’ he said as the reason for her question hit him.
She said clearly, ‘You need a back-up driver.’
Philip stared.
Kit smiled. She had stopped shaking at last, she realised.
‘I won’t come with you as a stand-in mistress,’ she told him clearly.
‘Kit!’
‘But I will come as a co-driver and temporary assistant. You’ll have a proper contract with my employer and you’ll keep your hands off me. And we’ll talk.’
Philip looked at her for a long moment. Then a light began to gleam in his eyes.
‘You drive a hard bargain.’
Kit lifted her chin.
‘Take it or leave it.’
‘I’ll take it,’ said Philip hastily. ‘Believe me, I’ll take whatever I can get.’
She held him to their bargain. A bemused Helen Ludwig completed the contract form and pushed it across the desk. Philip signed without reading it. He looked at Kit, his eyes full of affectionate amusement.
‘Satisfied?’
‘I feel reasonably in control now,’ she agreed serenely.
Secretly she was hugging herself. No more Miss Wimp who was too sensitive for her own good, she thought. This was Kit Romaine, asserting herself. And proving she could take on the best and win!
It was a long drive. He offered her the chance to take the wheel but Kit was gracious about refusing. She was not about to tell him that she had held a driving licence for less than a week. She knew she was a good driver but she lacked experience, especially of driving with a passenger who had haunted her dreams for months. She did not want her first shunt to be in a hired limousine either.
So she said firmly, ‘I’m the back-up. If your eyes give you trouble, I’ll take over. Otherwise you’re on your own.’
‘Very decisive,’ he murmured, his lips twitching.
It was a long, long journey. And not just in the miles they covered to his Devon mansion.
‘How did you get into the peace-negotiation business?’ asked Kit.
‘By accident. International service was a compromise. My father was a soldier. Our whole family were. Dad wanted me to follow him into the Brigade. But my mother hated the idea. When he was away she used to go mad, expecting to hear that he’d been killed. When he was home she spent her whole time waiting for him to be posted again.’
‘Sounds like a great marriage,’ said Kit drily.
‘It had its moments,’ agreed Philip.
‘They’re still together?’
‘Dead,’ he said. ‘Accident, five years ago. That’s when Ashbarrow started on the slide. I hadn’t expected to inherit so soon. And I just haven’t had the time to get to grips with it.’
He sounded so cool. Kit hesitated, then said carefully, ‘Do you still miss them?’
Philip looked surprised. ‘You must understand, I never saw that much of them. I was at school, they were abroad. I saw more of my grandparents. My grandfather was always saying I couldn’t expect to absorb my parents’ time. They had higher duties. He was strong on duty, my grandfather.’ He smiled reminiscently.
Not a hint of bitterness, thought Kit, amazed. She gave a little shiver. ‘Sounds grim.’
‘Does it?’ He was surprised. ‘But I had so many privileges. If you’re given a lot, you owe a lot.’
Kit found her throat was tight for some reason. ‘Not your whole life,’ she said disagreeably.
She wanted to put her arms round him and cradle his head against her breast. Crazy. When he was not asking for sympathy. And was driving, to boot!
He was unaware. ‘No,’ he said ruefully. ‘I was the one who put my whole life into my job. Sheer vanity, I’m afraid. I like to be the best.’
‘Yes,’ said Kit, she could see that.
He glanced at her sideways. ‘So goodbye to the private life. The technical expression is crowded out.’
She nearly asked about Soralaya Khan. So nearly. But he was talking about his job and the moment passed.
‘And, of course, the professional scepticism did not help.’
She did not understand. ‘Professional?’ she echoed, puzzled.
‘Taking the heat out of dramatic feelings. That’s what I do for a living. Never respond in anger. Never react. That’s a killer when it comes to personal relationships.’
Kit could not believe it. ‘You’re never angry?’
He shrugged. ‘Can’t afford it. Besides, it might just tip the scales if someone was thinking of coming after me.’
‘Coming after you?’ Kit realised what he was talking about with horror. ‘Are you a target, then?’
‘Let’s say I could be a useful bargaining counter,’ Philip said levelly. He was putting the car through the leafy lanes of England in spring as if they were in a time capsule and he could say all the things he had hardly dared to admit, even to himself, and they would all dissolve as if he had never said them once they got out of the car.
Kit felt her heart twist with anger and pity. ‘How can you be so calm about it?’
‘I really don’t think there’s much to worry about. But I like to be prepared. When I’m not, something irritating tends to happen.’
He was so unmoved. ‘I see,’ said Kit. She was depressed by this further evidence of how different they were.
‘For example, that night we went up to look at the waterfall—strictly speaking, I should have checked in with my minder before I took you up there.’
Kit sat in silence for a bit.
Then she said slowly, ‘You blame yourself for that, don’t you? That General Whatsisname tracking us down? You think you shouldn’t have let it happen.’
‘I shouldn’t have put someone else in danger,’ said Philip with finality.
Last time he had said that it was unforgivable that he had put her in danger, thought Kit with a little catch of the heart. Now it was just someone else. If only he saw me, she thought.
She said slowly, ‘Do you have to check with some sort of security person every time you do anything on your own?’
‘When we’re on a mission we’re supposed to, yes.’
‘And when you’re not?’
‘You leave your itinerary. Just in case.’
She pulled a face. ‘Sounds like a real pain.’
‘It certainly limits the ability to involve anyone else very deeply in one’s life,’ said Philip carefully.
She looked at him under her lashes. He was studying the sun-dappled road but his profile was as har
sh as if it had been chipped out of marble.
She said recklessly, ‘Is that a coded message?’
His mouth thinned but he did not answer.
‘Solution: don’t get serious about me because I can’t commit. Is that it?’
He said evenly, ‘I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.’
‘Very good of you,’ said Kit. She was simmering with anger. ‘Well, neither do I. I’m here as your gopher. Neither more nor less than that.’
He said distantly, ‘Of course.’
She swung round in her seat to look at that chiselled profile.
‘And if you want any more,’ she said with determination, ‘I’m telling you now, you’re going to have to work really, really hard to persuade me.’
The chiselled profile dissolved into pure appreciation.
‘You’re on,’ said Philip.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE BEGAN his campaign, if campaign it was, as soon as they came in sight of Ashbarrow. Kit saw the signposts. The lanes got narrower. And then they were on the crown of a hill, looking down into a secret valley.
‘Oh—’ she said on a long note of discovery.
The house was part castle, part Elizabethan manor house, set in the middle of a lake. In the spring sun it glowed as if there was light inside it. The castle part was stone, massive and butter coloured. The manor was darker brick, rosy in the sun, interspersed with dark beams and leaded windows.
The lake shifted gently. There were willows along its banks. Their yellow-green branches wafted like fairies’ hair in the light breeze. Ducks paddled and dived busily. Irises waved among the rushes at the margin. The greensward outside the castle gates was studded with daisies like jewels.
It was perfect. Kit stared and stared.
‘How could you ever bear to leave this place?’ she said on a long breath.
Philip looked down at her, surprised. The green eyes were as bright as the young leaves. They sparkled with tears.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, ‘it’s only bricks and mortar.’
‘But it’s your home.’ She sounded choked.
He could not resist it. He put his arm around her.
Kit was shaken. ‘You gave up so much, didn’t you? Not just all the travelling and the lack of friends. You went into exile from paradise.’
Soft blonde strands blew against his lips. Philip breathed in cleanliness and spring flowers and the soft warmth of a woman.
‘Perhaps I did,’ he said, shaken in his turn.
They did not speak as he drove them slowly down to the house.
As soon as they arrived Kit jumped out of the car. She still felt unaccountably tearful. She had to be careful, or this highly charged atmosphere would get to her, she thought. So she did not wait for him to open the car door for her. And she stood well out of range of that sustaining arm.
‘Right,’ she said with creditable briskness. ‘What do you want me to do?’
He appeared amused. ‘Settle in?’ he suggested mildly.
‘I’m here to work,’ Kit scolded. ‘Don’t forget that. Where shall I start? Make up beds? Prepare a meal?’
He looked even more amused. ‘I think the housekeeper will have done that.’
She sucked her teeth, trying not to wince. Of course there was a housekeeper. There was bound to be a housekeeper.
It was going to be like France all over again. She had rattled round in her brother-in-law’s family château, making social gaffe after social gaffe. This was where it started all over again.
‘I give you fair warning,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I’m not grand enough for this place.’
Philip was leafing through some letters on the hall table but he looked up at that.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
The table was a great slab of oak. Thirty monks could dine off it if they had to, thought Kit, and probably had in their day. It was polished until you could see your face in it. Philip paid it no more attention than if it had been a supermarket check-out counter.
‘Look at you,’ she said, waving a hand at the ripped envelope. ‘You’re making a garbage pile out of an antique.’
He was laughing at her. ‘So? It will all get tidied up in time.’
‘Don’t tell me. By the housekeeper,’ she said gloomily. ‘What am I doing here?’
‘Giving me advice,’ he retorted. Adding mischievously, ‘And making me work really, really hard to persuade you to like me.’
Kit flushed, suddenly uncertain. He was laughing. But his eyes…his eyes were not laughing. His eyes were very, very serious. She felt heat flood through her.
And then a heavy door from another part of the house opened and the housekeeper arrived.
The housekeeper was a shock. This was not the tight-lipped gorgon with standards that Kit had expected. She was not much older than Kit and she was wearing jeans and an orange sweatshirt. And she did not curtsey to Philip either.
‘Oh, hi, Phil. Thought I heard your car,’ she said casually.
‘Hello, Sandy. This is Kit.’
The housekeeper stripped off a bright yellow rubber glove and shook hands enthusiastically. ‘Great to see you. I really hope you’re comfortable. I’ve made up the Queen’s Room, like you said, Phil. But that old bed doesn’t have any springs, you know. It’s beautiful but you might have trouble sleeping,’ she told Kit frankly.
There were so many answers to that—and all of them equivocal in one way or another—that Kit was silenced.
She avoided Philip’s eyes as he said blandly, ‘We’ll see. Anyway, I can deal with that when the time comes.’
He took Kit’s hand unselfconsciously. ‘Let me show you to your room.’
She went with him, trying hard to look as if she held hands with tall, dark, handsome aristocrats every day of the week. And hoping that her ears weren’t as pink as she thought they were.
But when they got to the Queen’s Room she forgot embarrassment in simple wonder.
The room was dominated by a massive tester bed. The canopy was hung with curtains of velvet as green as all the spring loveliness outside. And the coverlet was like liquid sunshine.
‘Cloth of gold,’ said Philip, seeing the direction of her gaze. ‘Looks wonderful. Scratches like the devil.’
Kit put a hand on it very gently, as if she thought it was a mirage that might dissolve.
He said lightly, ‘You know, from the first day I saw you I thought that you were meant for this room.’
She looked up at him, startled.
‘But now,’ said Philip softly, ‘I see I was wrong.’
Kit was shocked at how that stabbed. She turned away.
‘Of course,’ she said in a brittle voice. ‘I told you I wasn’t grand enough for this place.’
‘I wanted to see you lying on that coverlet,’ he went on as if she had not spoken. ‘But, of course, it’s out of the question. You’d have to keep your clothes on or get scratched to pieces.’
‘Oh!’ said Kit in quite a different voice.
‘And if I persuade you I’m nice enough to take you to bed,’ said Philip, his voice suddenly ragged, ‘you sure as hell aren’t doing it with your clothes on.’
Kit felt her eyes widening and widening. Not just her ears, her whole body must be pink, she thought. Her heart sang. But her brain said, Hang on. This is where you go marching up the path into uncharted territory. You made a complete pig’s ear of it last time. It’s only fair to tell him what he’s tangling with.
‘Say something,’ he teased, his eyes on her mouth. ‘If it’s only “Dream on!”’
Kit gulped. ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’ Her voice sounded strange. ‘But—’
Philip cocked a wicked eyebrow. ‘I haven’t worked really, really hard enough yet?’
‘No, you haven’t,’ said Kit with some return of spirit. ‘But I wasn’t going to say that either. It’s—’
‘You have a prejudice against housekeepers. Don’t worry. Sandy goes ho
me at five.’
‘Stop it,’ said Kit fiercely. ‘I’ve told you before about finishing my sentences.’
He flung his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
She pulled herself together, marshalling her thoughts with difficulty.
‘Look,’ she said at last. ‘You don’t know as much about me as you think you do. There’s something I ought to tell you.’
‘You’re married with four children?’ Philip’s eyes were alight with laughter.
It was difficult to resist the temptation to laugh back. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Anything else I can handle,’ he said superbly.
Kit smiled. ‘Maybe you can. Let me tell you first.’
‘Tell me anything you want.’ He held out his hand. ‘Let me take you round my castle and you can tell me the terrible truth.’
It was amazingly difficult. Kit had not talked about it for so long, she had forgotten how, she thought. And of course for some of it she had no words, because she had never talked at all.
In the end she stopped dead in front of a picture of a lot of mediaeval people scampering about a forest and stared at it unseeingly.
‘The Utrillo,’ said Philip, pleased. ‘You like that?’
Kit nodded, not attending.
‘I know what you think of me,’ she told the unicorn, dancing through the midnight trees. Somehow it was easier not to look at him while she told him her secrets. ‘You think I’m young and innocent and sensitive.’
‘And sexy as hell. Don’t forget that.’
‘Thank you.’ She couldn’t look at him even more after that. ‘But I’m not innocent. Not in the way you think I am.’
‘Are you trying to tell me you slept with the boy who was not in love with you?’ he said gently.
Kit jumped. She had forgotten she had told him that.
‘You’re an adult,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Sexual experience goes with the territory.’ His eyes glinted down at her. ‘It’s probably one of the few things we have in common.’
She smiled but she shook her head. ‘I’m not making a sexual confession. It’s about me, the mess I made—I—Oh, dammit.’ She swung round on him as if he was an enemy. ‘I was anorexic,’ she blurted. ‘Before I was a teenager. Oh, I got better. Lisa helped. Then Johnny didn’t want me and—well, something else happened too. And I just fell apart. The whole thing started again. Hating myself. Not looking in mirrors. Not wanting anyone to look at me.’
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