AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This so threw Aleksey—the images it conjured in his head—that they were on the sand before he realised that Ben had confused him with a Dutchman.
Nikolas was a pathetic wimp, playing him was humiliating and emasculating, but he wasn’tDutch, for fuck’s sake.
The rain was drumming down now. Aleksey stayed in the shelter of the trees.
He tossed out a muttered, “I do not have a coat,” but then added in Danish, “and if you make one further objection to returning to the house I am going to flatten you to this fucking sand and fucking ram my fist down your fucking throat—or up the other way. Whichever shuts you up!”
Ben turned and began to walk back the way they’d come, an odd little smile at the corner of his lips.
He gave Aleksey a definite glance of amusement.
Aleksey rewound the moment.
He was fairly sure it had been in Danish.
“Can you get round to the other beach?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“I wanted to climb over the rocks, see what it looked like.”
“It also resembles sand.”
“What time are we eating tonight?”
Aleksey turned to him, his expression for once probably betraying his thoughts. Ben apparently saw this and clarified, “No, I’m not hungry, well, not especially. I thought I might come back out if there’s time. For a run. Check it all out. If that’s okay with you. Running I mean. Around your place.”
Aleksey remembered the twenty miles Benjamin Rider claimed he’d done only that morning.
He considered the rain, which had now started to hammer down even through the canopy of the trees.
It was dark enough that all he could really see clearly was the amber light glowing gently from the windows of the warm, comfortable manor house.
At all these contradictory thoughts, Aleksey had one of his most bizarre and uncharacteristic realisations ever. Staring at this man soaking wet from the rain, his hair plastered, his clothes almost melded onto the perfect musculature, Aleksey knew that if his life were as it should be, he too would run through the rain to the beach with Ben Rider.
He would then check out all the things that interested him.
* * *
He was late going down to Philipa’s quaintly named kitchen supper, something she had laid on frequently, apparently, for the heir. When he was home from school. Aleksey didn’t ask.
He’d been lying on his bed, allowing himself one of his rare packs of cigarettes, and thinking about timing.
Making a move on someone, he had discovered in the past, was all about this subtle art. And he didn’t necessarily limit this rule tofuckingmen, either. Killing required just the right moment too. There had been times in prison when men had approached him, and he’d not known which way he was going to be shafted. One way or the other was fairly certain. Very fit for seventeen, he had nevertheless led a life that consisted mainly of school, riding, travel, art, dancing and music lessons, tennis, sailing, swimming, and generally fucking around and enjoying himself. He was a very quick study though, and by the time Gregory had removed him from that environment, he was a different person. A man—and one who knew all about exploiting the moment.
Ben had been in the shower when he’d gone along to the Elizabethan wing to tell him to come down to eat. He could hear the water running.
It had, therefore, been the perfect moment.
But he had not been able to enter the bedroom, let alone the bathroom.
So, lying on his bed, studying the patterns on the ceiling, he’d begun to realise that it wasn’t Ben Rider he couldn’t read, it was himself, and that was intolerable.
When he finally made his way along the stone-flagged hall towards Philipa’s private kitchen, he was greeted by one of the most bizarre sights he’d ever thought to see at Barton Combe.
Philipa and Ben had apparently made a start on supper. The liquid variety. There were three empty wine bottles on the counter and another already well down.
A lot of chopping and mixing was going on, accompanied by off-key wailing to the radio. Both singers appeared to be making up their own and very different lyrics, until they came together for the chorus and warbled in falsetto voices that a good heart was hard to find, true love of the lasting kind…
