Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

back. ‘Please—wait.’
    ‘Sophie? What’s the matter?’
    His kind face was a picture of concern. The animal heads glared down at her, as well as a puffy-eyed Fitzroy ancestor with a froth of white lace around his neck.
    And that was the problem. Jasper was her closest friend and she would do anything for him, but when she’d offered to help him out she hadn’t reckoned on all this. Alnburgh Castle, with its history and its million symbols of wealth and status and belonging , was exactly the kind of place that unnerved her most.
    ‘I can’t go in there. Not dressed like this, I mean. I—I came straight from the casting for the vampire thing and I meant to get changed on the train, but I …’
    She opened her coat and Jasper gave a low whistle.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘Here, let me take your coat and you can put this on, otherwise you’ll freeze.’ Quickly he peeled off the black cashmere jumper and handed it to her, then tossed her coat over the horns of a nearby stuffed stag. ‘They’re going to love you whatever you’re wearing. Particularly Pa—you’re the perfect birthday present. Come on, they’re waiting in the drawing room. At least it’s warm in there.’
    With Kit’s eyes boring into her back Sophie had no choice but to let Jasper lead her towards the huge double doors at the far end of the hall.
    Vampire thing , Kit thought scornfully. Since when had the legend of the undead mentioned dressing like an escort in some private men’s club? He wondered if it was going to be the kind of film the boys in his unit sometimes brought back from leave to enjoy with a lot of beer in rest periods in camp.
    The thought was oddly unsettling.
    Tiredness pulled at him like lead weights. He couldn’t face seeing his father and stepmother just yet. Going through the hallway in the direction of the stairs, he passed the place where the portrait of his mother used to hang, before Ralph had replaced it, appropriately, with a seven-foot-high oil of Tatiana in plunging blue satin and the Cartier diamonds he had given her on their wedding day.
    Jasper was right, Kit mused. If there was anyone who would appreciate Sophie Greenham’s get-up it was Ralph Fitzroy. Like vampires, his father’s enthusiasm for obvious women was legendary.
    Jasper’s, however, was not. And that was what worried him. Even if he hadn’t overheard her conversation on the phone, even if he hadn’t felt himself the white-hot sexuality she exuded, you only had to look at the two of them together to know that, vampire or not, the girl was going to break the poor bastard’s heart and eat it for breakfast.
    The room Jasper led her into was as big as the last, but stuffed with furniture and blazing with light from silk-shaded lamps on every table, a chandelier the size of a spaceship hovering above a pair of gargantuan sofas and a fire roaring in the fireplace.
    It was Ralph Fitzroy who stepped forwards first. Sophie was surprised by how old he was, which she realised was ridiculous considering the reason she had come up this weekend was to attend his seventieth birthday party. His grey hair was brushed back from a florid, fleshy face and as he took Sophie’s hand his eyes almost disappeared in a fan of laughter lines as they travelled down her body. And up again, but only as far as her chest.
    ‘Sophie. Marvellous to meet you,’ he said, in the kind of upper-class accent that Sophie had thought had become extinct after the war.
    ‘And you, sir.’
    Oh, for God’s sake— sir ? Where had that come from? She’d be bobbing curtsies next. She was supposed to be playing the part of Jasper’s girlfriend, not the parlourmaid in some nineteen-thirties below-stairs drama. Not that Ralph seemed to mind. He was still clasping her hand, looking at her with a kind of speculative interest, as if she were a piece of art he was thinking of buying.
    Suddenly she remembered Jean-Claude’s ‘Nude with Lilies’ and felt pins and needles of