Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) by India Grey Page A

cared—his house in Chelsea was conveniently placed for some excellent restaurants, was within easy taxi-hailing range for women he didn’t want to wake up with, and came without ghosts. And yet he did care. Because of the waste and the irresponsibility and the sheer bloody shortsightedness, perhaps? Or because he could still hear his mother’s voice, whispering to him down the years?
    Alnburgh is yours, Kit. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s not.
    It must have been just before she left that she’d said that. When she knew she was going and wanted to assuage her guilt; to feel that she wasn’t leaving him with nothing.
    As if a building could make up for a mother. Particularly a building like Alnburgh. It was an anachronism. As a home it was uncomfortable, impractical and unsustainable. It was also the place where he had been unhappiest. And yet he knew, deep down, that it mattered to him. He felt responsible for it, and he would do all he could to look after it.
    And much as it surprised him to discover, that went for his brother too. Only Jasper wasn’t at risk from dry rot or damp, but the attentions of a particularly brazen redhead.
    Kit wondered if she’d be as difficult to get rid of.
    Sophie opened her eyes.
    It was cold and for a moment her sleep-slow brain groped to work out where she was. It was a familiar feeling—one she’d experienced often as a child when her mother had been in one of her restless phases, but for some reason now it was accompanied by a sinking sensation.
    Putting a hand to her head, she struggled upright. In the corner of the room the television was playing quietly to itself, and Jasper’s body was warm beside her, a T-shirt of Sergio’s clasped in one hand, the half-empty bottle of vodka in the other. He had fallen asleep sprawled diagonally across the bed with his head thrown back, and something about the way the lamplight fell on his face—or maybe the shuttered blankness sleep had lent it—reminded her of Kit.
    Fragments of the evening reassembled themselves in her aching head. She got up, rubbing a hand across her eyes, and carefully removed the bottle from Jasper’s hand. Much as she loved him, right now all she wanted was a bed to herself and a few hours of peaceful oblivion.
    Tiptoeing to the door, she opened it quietly. Out in the corridor the temperature was arctic and the only light came from the moon, lying in bleached slabs on the smooth oak floorboards. Shivering, Sophie hesitated, wondering whether to go back into Jasper’s room after all, but the throbbing in her head was more intense now and she thought longingly of the paracetamol in her washbag.
    There was nothing for it but to brave the cold and the dark.
    Her heart began to pound as she slipped quickly between the squares of silver moonlight, along the corridor and down a spiralling flight of stone stairs. Shadows engulfed her. It was very quiet. Too quiet. To Sophie, used to thin-walled apartments, bed and breakfasts, buses and camper vans on makeshift sites where someone was always strumming a guitar or playing indie-acid-trance, the silence was unnatural. Oppressive. It buzzed in her ears, filling her head with whistling, like interference on a badly tuned radio.
    She stopped, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she looked around.
    Passageways stretched away from her in three directions, but each looked as unfamiliar as the other. Oh, hell. She’d been so traumatised earlier that she hadn’t paid attention to Jasper when he pointed out her room …
    But that could be it, she thought with relief, walking quickly to a door at the end of the short landing to her left. Gingerly she turned the handle and, heart bursting, pushed open the door.
    Moonlight flooded in from behind her, illuminating the ghostly outlines of shrouded furniture. The air was stale with age. The room clearly hadn’t been opened in years.
    This is the part of the castle that’s supposed to be haunted