Page 21 of Duke It Out
How’s it going?
Any news?
Have you been abducted en route?
I scroll through Anna’s string of messages and tap out a reply.
It’s absolutely awful.
No idea how I’m going to survive it.
I’m taking a photo of the view from my bed when Anna’s slightlyschadenfreuderesponse comes shooting straight back.
Oh no, poor you. I guess that’s the risk of taking a job sight unseen.
I watch the three little dots dancing on the screen as she composes a reply to the photo of the pale grey curtains which hang in luxuriant swags from the enormous, white-painted windows that look out over Loch Morven. It’s an image which says it all. This place is insanely luxurious, and for once in my life I’ve fallen on my feet.
I love Anna, but she’s fiercely competitive – it goes with her job, I think. I can almost hear her teeth gritting.
Oh… very nice.
Don’t forget your rent next Monday
she adds, a second or two later. There’s something cool in the way she says it. No kiss, no emoji. Just a crisp reminder.
I get up and wander over to the window, watching the light dancing on the water of the loch below.
In the distance, there’s a stone boathouse, and beyond it, Ican just make out a little wooden rowing boat with a lone figure at the oars. It all feels so far from anything familiar.
I start unpacking, placing my bits and pieces on the dressing table where they look small and a little cheap against the polished wood. At the bottom of my bag, I find my lucky copy ofPride and Prejudice– battered and faded, its corners soft from years of reading and re-reading. I won it in a school writing competition when I was twelve; it was my Jane Austen gateway drug.
And now, somehow, I’ve ended up in my own version of Pemberley.
I flip through the pages, and a pressed marigold slips out, landing softly in my lap.
I pick it up, remembering the day it was given to me by Grandma Rose, on the front step of our little house near Edinburgh. She wasn’t a gardener, but bright yellow marigolds sprouted up through the weedy scrub of rocks by the gate and she’d handed me one, telling me they symbolised determination.
“And you’ll need that,” she’d said grimly. A year later she was dead, and I was finished university and all alone in the world. I left Scotland then, heading to London because I thought it was the place where everything happened. It turned out it did, only not always to me.
The strange thing is that as soon as I got off the plane in Inverness, my heart felt at home in a way that doesn’t make sense. Maybe Scotland is in my blood, after all.
I finish unpacking, lie down and close my eyes for a five-minute nap.
I wake up an hour later and pour a glass of water from the fridge, wandering through to stare at my reflection in the bathroom. Oh my god, I can’t believe I look so shit. I can’tbelieve I look so shitin the house of the hottest man I ever met in my lifewho just happens to be a fucking billionaire duke who lives in a castle. And I’m dressed in a horrendous grey suit that makes me look like cabin crew for a really shit airline with my hair scraped back from my face so I look like a giant sweaty moon with a halo of orange fuzz. I need to work out what I’m supposed to wear to dinner. And then what to wear for the next three months. I need to look simultaneously effortlessly chic and writerly and also like I don’t give a damn what he thinks of me.
I strip off, throwing my hideous outfit on the chair which sits by the roll-top bath, and untie my hair to shake it loose. There’s a massive walk-in shower in the corner – one with a rainfall head and a bonus hand-held jet for dealing with the frustration that builds up when you arrive to do a job and discover the man you’ve been trying not to think about for the last three months is your new boss, seemingly loathes you on sight, and your body hasn’t got the memo. Right then, I feel a jolt of longing between my legs and press my thighs together as if to contain it, somehow.
I turn on the shower and let it run for a moment before I step onto the pale grey tiles, feeling the needles of water soak my hair and run down my body. The shower gel is thick and luxurious. I rub into my skin, washing away the metallic odour of airports and plane seats and sweating in badly chosen clothes. Slowly and deliberately, I massage my scalp with the shampoo as the rosemary and lavender scented steam fills the room, clouding the mirror opposite so my body is a hazy shape. Water runs in rivulets down my shoulders, and I try to stop myself thinking about Rory.
It’s impossible. He’s an entitled, dismissive control freak who expects people to jump the second he snaps his fingers.Do not think about his fingers, Edie. Do not think about the way they slowly and relentlessly stabbed inside you, your breath hitching as his tongue met your core?—
One hand reaches as if on autopilot for the handheld jet and I switch it on. I cup one breast in my hand, grazing my nipple with a thumb as I let the spray play on the soft curves of my stomach for a moment before I surrender and focus the jet between my legs. I picture the fury in his eyes as I walked into the study earlier and his brusque anger as he spoke, and at the same time I can see him standing naked with his thick cock in his hand, those same eyes meeting mine. I feel the heat gathering at my core and my legs quiver as I pinch my nipple hard.
Oh god. I buck against the cool tiled wall as I come almost instantly, with no sense of restraint whatsoever.
For fucks sake, Jones.
I finish up in the shower, wrap myself in a towel, and give myself a stern talking to as I get dressed. That was an aberration. I’m a serious and professional writer here to fulfil a contract and from now on I’m going to focus on work and work only. I’m never going to make it up the publishing ladder if I don’t keep my eyes on the prize.
