Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure (2 page)

Orlando hardly noticed the cold as he got out of the car and walked towards the churchyard. Cold seemed to be his natural element these days. Cold, and gathering darkness, of course.

He would. Today was the last time. The anniversary of Felix’s death. He’d come down to his grave early enough to avoid any traffic, taking the private lanes through the estate. At high speed.

The nature of the condition was that his peripheral vision was pretty much unaffected, while his central field of vision was nothing more than a blur—like a dark fingerprint on a camera lens. Getting around wasn’t yet a problem, but it was the finer details that were quickly slipping away from him. He could no longer read faces, recognise people without them announcing themselves, or carry out easily the million small things he had once done without even thinking. Fastening the buttons on a shirt. Making coffee. Reading his mail.

But he would die before he let other people see that. Which was why he had come back to Easton, and solitude.

Pausing in the shelter of the lychgate, he looked up to where a group of rooks circled above the church, their ragged wings black against a grey sky. Everything was fading to the same monochrome, he thought bleakly, screwing up his eyes to scan the churchyard, where the headstones looked bone white against the dark fringe of bare trees and the shadowy bulk of the yew over the Winterton plot.

Something caught the corner of his eye. A flash of red in the gloom. He tilted his head, standing very still as he tried to work out what it was.

A fox? Slinking back to its earth after a night out hunting?

And then he located it again,

A girl. A red-headed girl was sitting on Felix’s grave.

‘I—nothing! I was just…’

She struggled to stand up, but her legs were cramped from sitting on the ground, her feet numb with cold. Instantly she felt his hands close around her arms as he pulled her to her feet. For a moment she was crushed against him, and she felt the wonderful warmth and strength that radiated from his body before he thrust her away. Still keeping his vice-like grip on her upper arm with one hand, he removed the champagne bottle with the other, swilling the contents around as if gauging how much was left.

‘I think that explains it.’ His lip curled in distaste. ‘Isn’t it a little early? Or do you have something particularly pressing to celebrate?’

‘No.’ She gave a short laugh, and had to clap her hand to her mouth as it threatened to turn into a sob. ‘I have absolutely nothing at all to celebrate. I was aiming more for Dutch courage. Or oblivion.’ She could feel embarrassing tears begin to slide down her cold cheeks and gave an apologetic smile, stroking a hand over the weathered stone. ‘Peaceful oblivion. With lovely, heroic Felix here.’

The dark man didn’t return the smile, letting go of her so abruptly that she stumbled backwards and had to lean on the gravestone for support.

‘He’ll be thrilled to know that a little thing like death hasn’t made him lose his touch with women.’

The bitterness etched into the lean planes of his face made Rachel wince. She took in the dark shadows under his slanting eyes, the crease of anguish between his highly arched black brows. Horrified realisation dawned.

‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry…you knew him?’

There was a pause. And then he held out his hand with a bleak smile that briefly illuminated the stark beauty of his face.

‘Orlando Winterton. Felix’s brother.’

She took his hand and, registering the warmth and steadiness of his grip, felt a sudden irrational urge to hold on for dear life. For a brief moment his fingers closed around hers, strong and steady, and she found herself wishing he would never let go.

He withdrew his hand, and she felt the colour surge into her cheeks.

‘I’m Rachel. And I’m sorry…about your brother. Was he a soldier?’

‘Pilot. RAF. Shot down in the Middle East,’ Orlando said tersely.

‘How terrible,’ she said quietly, curling up her fingers. They tingled where his skin had warmed them.

He shrugged. ‘It happens. It’s all part of the job.’

‘You’re a pilot too?’

‘Was.’

‘It must take incredible courage. To know that every day when you go to work you’re staring death in the face.’

He let out a harsh laugh. ‘I think there are worse things to stare at than death.’

Rachel sighed, sinking down onto the dry earth at the foot of the tomb again. ‘Tell me about it.’

Above her, Orlando Winterton and Felix’s angel towered like twin protectors. She leaned her head back against the stone and lifted the bottle towards them before taking a long swig. ‘To courage—the real kind. And to Dutch courage—which isn’t nearly so honourable, but sometimes has to suffice.’

From the edge of his vision Orlando had an impression of dark eyes in a pale face, a generous trembling mouth, a glorious tumble of fiery hair that stirred a memory in the back of his mind and left him with a sudden fierce longing to see her properly. He could sense the despair rising from her like a scent, but whether this was due to the peculiar instinct that had developed as his sight deserted him or because the feeling was so bloody familiar he couldn’t be sure.

She held out the bottle to him. He took it, but didn’t drink, instead setting it down on top of the Winterton tomb. ‘So, Rachel, what’s so bad that you’re reduced to sitting out here in the freezing cold drinking with the dead?’

She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You do
not
want to know.’

She was right. He didn’t. His own suffering was enough to occupy him on a full-time basis. So why did he find himself saying, ‘I usually decide for myself what I want and what I don’t want.’

Rachel looked up at him. He was staring straight ahead, and there was something in the dark stillness of his face that made her want very much to confide in him.

‘I’m getting married,’ she said desolately. ‘Today.’

She saw one dark brow shoot up before his face regained its habitual blankness. ‘Is that all? Congratulations.’

‘Uh-uh. It’s not a “congratulations” situation. It’s…’

Her voice trailed off as she tried to convey the awfulness of what lay ahead. This afternoon, standing in church before people she mostly neither knew nor cared about making vows she didn’t mean…And worse, much worse, knowing that tonight she and Carlos would be man and wife, with all the expectations that carried.

Orlando Winterton shrugged his broad, dark shoulders, his gaze fixed straight ahead. He looked so distant, so controlled, so very, very strong that she felt her chest lurch. How could he understand? She couldn’t imagine that this man had ever bowed to the will of anyone else in his life.

‘Weddings don’t generally happen by accident or without warning. Presumably you had some say in it?’ He levered himself up from the gravestone and, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, began to move away.

‘No,’ she said in a low voice.

There was something in the way that she said it that made Orlando stop, turn, and walk back towards her. His deep-set slanting eyes were the most extraordinary clear green, she noticed, and he had a strange, intense way of looking at her, his head tilted backwards slightly in an attitude of distant hauteur.

‘You’re being forced into this?’

Rachel sighed heavily. ‘Well, there’s no gun against my head…But, yes. Forced pretty much covers it.’

The last thing he wanted to do was get involved, but his sense of duty, dormant for a year beneath self-pity and bitterness, had seemingly chosen this moment to rouse itself. Wearily he rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘In what way?’

‘There’s no way out,’ she said slowly. ‘No Plan B. No choice. This wedding is the culmination of a lifetime of work by my mother.’ She laughed. ‘If I don’t go through with it she’ll probably kill me.’

But that was almost preferable to what Carlos would do to her if she stayed and married him. She knew, because he’d done it to her already.

‘You can’t get married to please your mother.’

The words were laced with scorn, and Rachel felt her head snap back as if she’d just had an ice cube dropped down her spine.

‘You don’t know my mother. She’s…’

She hesitated, shaking her head, trying to find a word for Elizabeth Campion’s single-minded obsession with her daughter’s musical career; the combination of guile and icy manipulation that would have made Machiavelli green with envy, which had enabled her to bring about the ultimate coup in the form of Rachel’s engagement to Carlos Vincente, one of the industry’s most influential conductors.

‘What? A convicted killer?’ Orlando’s voice was hard and mocking. ‘A cold-blooded psychopath? Head of a crack team of hired assassins?’

His cruelty made her gasp. ‘No, of course not. But—’ It was impossible to keep the desperation out of her voice. She so badly wanted to make him see what she was up against, but the words darted around in her head, refusing to be pinned down, while all the time he held her in that cool, detached gaze. ‘Oh, what’s the point? Just forget it. I can’t make you understand, so there’s no point in trying. Please, just leave me alone!’

‘To drink yourself into a stupor? If that’s what you want…’

He turned away, and Rachel felt a surge of panic. She had to grip the stony folds of the angel’s robes to stop herself from reaching out to hold him back. It was ridiculous, of course; he was nothing more than a passing stranger. But something about the intensity in his face, the bleak self-control in his voice, the immense strength in his shoulders, had made her believe for a moment that he could help her.

Rescue her.

‘It’s not what I want, but I have no choice!’

He stopped and slowly faced her again. He seemed to look right past her face and into her soul.

‘Of course you do. You’re young. You’re
alive,
’ he said with ironic emphasis, gesturing with one elegant hand towards his brother’s grave. ‘I’d say you have a choice. What you really lack, Rachel, is courage.’

Rachel felt her mouth open in shock and outrage as she watched him walk away. He moved slowly, almost wearily, in spite of his endlessly long legs and athletic build.

He knew nothing—
nothing
about her. How dared he say she lacked courage?

He was way off the mark. Wasn’t he?

Courage.
Mentally she examined the word. It wasn’t a quality she’d ever been taught to value or develop. Obedience, yes. Discipline, perseverance, patience, selflessness—yes, yes, yes, yes…

Not courage. Courage had always seemed like just another word for selfishness.

Orlando Winterton disappeared from view through the gate to the road, and a moment later she heard the roar of a car engine starting up. Straining forwards, she saw a low dark sports car speed past in a shower of gravel and take the unmarked turning to the left of the churchyard. In the silence following its disappearance she was suddenly aware that she was gripping the carved robes of the angel so hard her short fingernails ached.

She felt bereft.

Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to remember the feeling of his hands on her arms, and the moment when she had been held against his chest. She felt again the roughness of his thick woollen sweater against her cheek, smelled the warm, faint tang of expensive aftershave that had clung to the collar of his long, exquisitely tailored black coat.

In that moment she’d felt as if she was safe. As if she’d come home. As if she’d finally found the shadowy figure she’d spent her childhood yearning for—the one man who would protect her from—

‘
Rachel!
’

Her eyes flew open as she recognised her mother’s voice, and without thinking she darted back into the cover of the yew tree, hiding behind the vast slab of stone beside her. For a moment all was silent as she crouched there, her heart pounding inside her chest, her cheek resting against the chilly stone where Felix Winterton’s name was carved.

‘Rachel!’

The voice was closer now, and Rachel knew only too well its shrill note of exasperation.
I’m twenty-three years old and here I am, hiding from my mother like a naughty child.
She squeezed her eyes shut and suddenly the face of Orlando Winterton swam into focus in the darkness, with that hard, bleak smile of his.

What you really lack is courage.

She hesitated, then stood up slowly.

Dressed in a figure-hugging pink velour tracksuit and last night’s high-heeled mules, Elizabeth Campion was making her way in Rachel’s direction with unerring accuracy, and the expression on her well-maintained face was murderous.

‘I’m here.’

For a wonderful moment Elizabeth was lost for words as she watched her daughter emerge from the shadow of the monument, then the full force of her fury was unleashed.

‘What in heaven’s name are you doing?’

Rachel steeled herself against Elizabeth’s indignant screech, letting her mind return to the last person who had asked her that. Except that Orlando Winterton hadn’t said ‘heaven’. She pictured his dark, tormented expression, concentrated on reproducing in her mind the exact gritty rasp of his voice as he had said ‘hell’.

‘
Well?
I’m waiting!’

With huge effort Rachel dragged herself back to her mother. ‘I went for a walk.’

‘You
went for a walk
?’ repeated Elizabeth, like an apoplectic parrot. ‘Saints preserve us!
Why
do you have to be so selfish, Rachel? Today of all days? Haven’t I got enough to do with all the wedding arrangements, without having to chase around after you as well because you’re just too selfish and immature to get yourself organised? Hmm?’

Reaching the path, Rachel opened her mouth to reply, but her mother had only paused for breath and wasn’t actually expecting an answer.

‘Carlos phoned. I had to tell him you were in the bath. Lord only knows what he’d say if he knew that you’d
gone for a
walk.
’ She made it sound as if Rachel had been skateboarding down the motorway.

‘I thought it was bad luck for the groom to speak to the bride before the wedding?’ said Rachel sarcastically. ‘I’d hate anything to spoil our chances of a wonderful happy-ever-after.’

Her mother threw her a venomous glance. ‘Don’t you dare start all that now, young lady,’ she hissed. ‘You’ll do well to remember how lucky you are to be marrying Carlos.’

Rachel stopped and swung round to face her mother. ‘Rubbish! He couldn’t give a damn about me! He doesn’t love—’

‘Shut up! Just
shut up
!’ Elizabeth’s face was contorted with rage. ‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Well, let me tell you something, Rachel.
Love
is nothing but a silly fantasy. It means nothing.
Nothing!
Your father told me he loved me, and where did that get me? I nearly died giving him a baby he didn’t even stay around to watch grow up.
Love
doesn’t bring you
security.
’