Miranda's Mount (15 page)

One phrase kept ringing round her head, even louder than the splintering crash as the boat had ground against the rocks. ‘
You need to take off your knickers, my lovely
.’

It was
horrible. Excruciating. And all the more awful because she still felt turned on now. Every time her head throbbed, she heard him saying it.
Take them off, take them off. My lovely. Lovely Miranda.
She glanced at the clock again. It was only eight. Maybe Fred hadn’t seen the boat yet; he wasn’t due until half past eight. Maybe she still had time to at least rescue the evidence of her and Jago’s personal belongings. She had to try.

She pulled on shorts, a sweatshirt and flip-flops and went down the stairs, ignoring her pounding head. If she could reach the wrecked boat and find anything incriminating, then she could deny all knowledge of the incident. As she walked to the door, there was a knock and a loud voice.

‘Miranda!’

It was Ronnie. Oh God. Ronnie must have found the stuff or maybe she’d already deduced that Miranda and Jago had stolen the boat and was bringing the evidence back before the harbourmaster or one of the staff got to it. A wave of nausea washed over her.

‘Are you OK, hun?’ Ronnie spoke through the cottage door.

Miranda drew back the bolts and opened the door a crack.

Ronnie, her face scrubbed and crisply official in her uniform of black trousers, short-sleeved shirt and tie, loomed in the doorway ‘Gonna let me in?’

Miranda opened the door, blinking as sunlight spilled in.

Ronnie put her hands on her hips. ‘You look like shit.’

Her head throbbed sickeningly. ‘I know I do.’

‘Hangover?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Get it over with. Get it over with. Just tell me you know
…

Ronnie grinned. ‘I take it you haven’t seen the harbour then?’

Miranda swallowed hard. ‘What harbour?’

‘You
are
hungover.
The harbour – the one with the water and little boats in it. Except right now there’s no water and one little boat that shouldn’t be there.’

Miranda now knew how it felt to be in the dock at the Old Bailey. ‘What about the harbour?’ she asked weakly. With every word, she knew she could be digging a deeper hole. Ronnie was trained in interrogation techniques. Ronnie must be able to spot a guilty offender from ten feet. Ronnie must be able to smell her fear. Ronnie sniffed.

‘What’s up?’ asked Miranda, panic rising.

‘Hayfever season.’

Ronnie dug a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose. ‘Anyway, you’ve clearly been comatose since you got home last night otherwise you’d have seen the mess in the harbour. Some total dork stole a rowing boat and ran aground on the rocks out there. Me and Neem thought we heard a noise last night and I phoned Fred this morning as soon as I saw the wreckage, but he’d already spotted it. It’s dangerous, lying there in the entrance to the harbour.’

Miranda felt a glimmer of hope. Ronnie didn’t know it was her and Jago. Yet. ‘Are you sure it was … um … left there last night?’

‘Wasn’t there yesterday evening so it must have been done last night. Total bloody wankers.’ Ronnie stared at her hard. ‘You don’t know anything about it, do you?’

Miranda had to make a call. Fred might have found her purse and shoes since Ronnie had spoken to him but, on the other hand, they might have floated off. She decided to lie and face the consequences if they arose. ‘Why would I know anything about it?’

‘You
must have got home not long after me and might have. I’m assuming you didn’t go home with Theo because I’ve heard from Fred that the lifeboat was on a shout last night.’

So Theo had been risking his life while she and Jago had been playing at pirates. In fact they were lucky that the emergency services hadn’t been called last night. Anyone spotting them capsizing from the shore would probably have dialled 999. ‘No, I didn’t go home with Theo,’ she said.

‘So you walked home? Mmm. You must have cut it fine. Hope you didn’t get wet?

‘Ermm … a bit.’

Ronnie tutted. ‘I knew you should have come with me and Neem. You know it’s not worth wading over here. If anything had happened to you, I’d have blamed myself.’

‘It’s OK. I made it and I didn’t want to cramp your style or play wallflower.’

‘No.’ Ronnie broke into a blissful smile. ‘I can’t tell you what an amazing night I had. As soon as we got through the door of the cottage – well, as soon as Neem had got through it, we couldn’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off. We were at it all night.’

Miranda clamped a hand over her mouth, feeling nauseous.

‘Sorry,
that’s more than you need to know but I thought you might have heard something. Seems like you were dead to the world.’

Miranda managed a nod. All she could hope was that no one had found any evidence in the boat.

‘Well, you look crap. I should go sick for a couple of hours. You’ll scare the visitors in your state.’ Ronnie checked her watch. ‘I have to go. Get some coffee down you and I’ve got some Alka-Seltzer if you need it. Come and have a look at the boat if you can manage it before the harbourmaster shifts it. Bloody total twats to steal a boat and row off. Lucky they didn’t drown’

‘Very.’

‘We’ve had to report the wreckage to the RNLI and the police, of course, but I bet they swam off. Fancy wasting people’s time. I don’t very often go all right wing but in their case, I agree with Fred. They should bring back the birch.’

Miranda coughed and grabbed the doorway for support.

‘Miranda. You’ve gone green. Are you all right?’

Flapping a hand wildly, Miranda staggered through the kitchen for the downstairs loo.

She slammed the door. Above the sound of her retching, she heard Ronnie speaking on the radio. ‘What? Who? You are joking? Well, that figures. I might have bloody well
known
.’

*

A few hours and
several paracetamol later, Miranda dragged herself under the shower, got dressed and slunk out of the cottage. Fred, the harbourmaster, was busy supervising the removal of the boat from the harbour onto a trailer. Thankfully there was no sign of the emergency services. Miranda sneaked up the back path to the castle. Jago was the last person she wanted to see but she needed to find out what he knew about reaction to the wreck. She reached the castle terrace and guessed he must have seen her from the window because he waited at the door to the tower.

‘Come up,’ he said, unshaven and rough but still gorgeous. He shut the door of his study behind her. ‘You look worse than I feel.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And before you say any more, you may as well know I’ve confessed.’

‘Confessed? To wrecking the boat?

‘No. To being Jack the Ripper. What else should I have confessed to?’

Miranda’s head started to pulse again. ‘Why have you told them? Ronnie said Fred didn’t have any idea who’d stolen the boat. I was hoping we could keep it quiet.’

‘No chance, I’m afraid. Fred asked me to go down to the harbour and said he was going to call the emergency services in case, and I quote, “the little bastards were washed up on some rocks somewhere”. I had no choice but to say I’d borrowed the boat to get home, pissed as a newt, which was true, I suppose.’

‘But what about our stuff?’

‘I waited up last night until the tide turned and went down and picked up what I could at dawn. Everything’s ruined, of course, but at least there’s no evidence.’

He held up a plastic Mount St Merryn carrier bag. Water dripped from it onto the Chinese rug. Inside, Miranda saw her sodden purse, covered with mud, and both ballet pumps, now grey and sodden.

Miranda felt an unexpected rush of gratitude towards Jago. If he’d taken the blame for the previous night’s debacle, he’d shot up in her estimation. ‘Thanks for getting these,’ she said, taking the bag. ‘And you definitely didn’t say I was with you?’

‘No.’

‘I
really appreciate you taking the blame and –’ she felt her heart rate quicken ‘– and for not mentioning the other thing.’

He looked annoyed and irritated. ‘The other thing? I’m not sure I understand. Unless you mean us running aground in the boat.’

‘I mean … you know,
the other thing
that happened.’

‘Miranda, I really have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Was he calling her bluff? Joking? Didn’t look like it, he frowned as if he was annoyed with her. ‘So you don’t remember what happened … in the boat?’ she asked, dying of embarrassment.

‘I know that I’d had far too much to drink. We both had, although you were at least compos mentis. I remember the last pint of Tinner’s and, possibly, the double whisky. I remember getting into the boat and hitting the rocks in the harbour.’

Miranda couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing – or rather, wasn’t hearing from him. ‘Nothing else?’

‘What else was there? Look, I was out of my skull. I haven’t had a skinful like that for a long time and … I may have accepted a slight stiffener while I went out for a smoke in the pub garden. Someone from the artist’s loft offered me one of his roll-your-owns. Pretty lethal stuff.’

‘You mean you were high?’

‘Yes, Miranda. I probably was. You should try it some time.’

So
he didn’t remember snogging her? Pushing his hands up her dress? Trailing his tongue down her cleavage? Telling her she was beautiful? Asking her so tenderly to take her knickers off? Making her feel beautiful and wanted and so turned on she almost let him crash the boat just to feel him inside her.

She shuddered, on the verge of throwing up again, as Jago sat down behind his desk, picked up a piece of paper and started to read it. ‘Is there anything else only I need to be at a meeting and I’ve got a head like a bag of shit.’

There came a point, thought Miranda, when you were so mad, so full of conflicting feelings of fury and crashing disappointment that your facial muscles just can’t register how you feel. ‘You know what, my lord?’

He lifted his handsome, hungover, arrogant face towards her. ‘What?’

‘This.’

She raised her middle finger, turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her.

*

Jago
went to the window and watched her. Christ, she was livid with him. Her shoulders, as she stomped along his courtyard, were stiff with fury. Even her arse looked indignant. He would have laughed if he hadn’t felt guilty enough to impale himself on the nearest pikestaff. He waited briefly for her to glance up at the window; when she didn’t, he turned away with a sigh. It was for the best.

Back at the desk, he sat with his head in his hands, massaging his temples. Three of his mother’s prescription co-codamol had failed to shift the monumental hangover or guilt at the previous evening’s disastrous events. And the disaster had nothing to do with wrecking the boat and everything to do with almost wrecking Miranda’s heart.

If they hadn’t crashed, he was sure they’d have woken up in his bed – or hers – and, if he’d slept with her, it would have been ten times harder to sell the Mount and a hundred times harder to leave.

‘Look
at this? It’s disgusting, the things people chuck into the sea.’ Fred the harbourmaster held up a stick in front of Miranda’s nose. A dripping piece of scarlet lace hung from its end, the label faded but clearly bearing the logo of La Senza. ‘It’s disgraceful to pollute the environment like this,’ he grumbled.

‘Dreadful,’ Miranda agreed, having told so many fibs over the past few days that she didn’t care any more. Two days after the wrecked boat had been towed back to the mainland on a trailer – at Jago’s expense, Miranda presumed – the island was still abuzz with gossip. No one actually dared say anything to his lordship’s face of course. On the surface, the island staff maintained a loyal silence, but, in private, there was talk of nothing else. And far from his name being mud, the fact he’d got pissed, nicked a boat and sunk it had only seemed to add to his rakish reputation.

She
was about to change the subject before Fred got onto the subject of young people in hoodies when Jago passed the office.

‘Wait! Lord St Merryn!’ Catching sight of Jago passing the office, Fred waved the stick with its knicker flag in Jago’s direction. The scarlet lace hung limply as Miranda’s cheeks threatened to turn the same colour.

‘Sir, look at what I found washed up on the slipway this morning.’ He shook the pants under Jago’s nose. ‘It’s disgusting, isn’t it? Apart from the threat to marine life, what nice young girl wears drawers like those?’

Miranda stifled a gasp. She didn’t wear drawers! Surely no one had worn drawers since 1950?

Jago tutted loudly. ‘Not one I’d like to associate with, Fred, that’s for sure. But I suppose we have to make allowances for the young. After all –’ he lowered his voice ‘– we all make mistakes, don’t we? High spirits and all that?’

What? So Jago
had
remembered trying to have sex with her and he’d recognised her knickers. Then why had he said he was too spaced out to remember?

A smile spread over Fred’s craggy face and he winked. ‘I see what you mean, my lord.’

‘Boys will be boys, eh?’ said Jago, patting Fred on the back.

‘Yes, they will, sir. Indeed. Enjoyed a few high spirits myself in my younger days, I can tell you. Still do, when off duty, of course.’

She couldn’t hold back. ‘Gah!’

‘Nasty cough, you have, Miranda. Can I offer you a Fisherman’s Friend?’

Fred
waggled his stick and the pants. Miranda caught sight of a figure approaching. ‘It’s Lady St Merryn. At least I
think
it is …’ She had to look twice because the woman walking towards them was wearing an orange and lime green kaftan. Lady St Merryn normally wore a knee-length skirt or a pair of slacks in a discreet taupe or navy. To see her in the flowing cotton garment with its tribal patterns was like spotting Margaret Thatcher in Vivienne Westwood.

Jago stared too. ‘My God.’

Fred flipped the lid of a bin and dumped Miranda’s knickers inside. ‘We can’t have your mother seeing those,’ he said. ‘Not at her stage of life.’ Then he glanced up. ‘Is that her ladyship? Bloody hell.’