“Are you all right?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Fine.”
She forced a smile. Beneath the perfectly coiffed, politician exterior, Teddy could see how tired she looked. Alexia had been in her midtwenties when they met and her late twenties when they married, in a small Catholic chapel off Cadogan Street. Back in those days she was a raving beauty in the classic seventies mold. Very slender, with long, coltish legs and a mane of straggly blond hair that streamed behind her like the tail of a comet when she moved. But she was ambitious even then, and she’d changed very quickly, cutting her hair and adopting a more sober, suit-and-heels dress sense when she ran for her first London constituency seat. Mrs. Thatcher had been elected leader a few years before Alexia De Vere became an MP, but the British Conservative Party remained a hostile place for a woman, especially one from a lower-middle-class background. Marriage to a British aristocrat had certainly helped Alexia’s chances. Teddy had relinquished his peerage so that his young wife could have a shot at the Commons, but Alexia remained a De Vere, and De Veres had been part of the Tory establishment since time immemorial.
Teddy wasn’t stupid. He was well aware that his name and his money and his family connections were a big part of the attraction for his brilliant, beautiful, pushy young bride. But he admired Alexia, and he loved her, and he was more than willing to offer up all that he had on the altar of her career. Before they met, Teddy De Vere’s life had been grand, privileged, and deathly dull. Marriage to Alexia Parker had made it an adventure.
Sitting at her desk tonight, Alexia looked every inch the powerful, competent, wildly successful woman that she had become. From her subtle Daniel Galvin highlights, to her immaculately cut couture suit, to the diamonds glinting discreetly at her fingers, ears, and neck, Teddy De Vere’s wife was a woman to be reckoned with. Watching her, Teddy could have burst with pride.
Home secretary. That was quite something.
We did it, my darling. We proved them all wrong.
Of course, the De Veres had had their fair share of trial and of tragedy, both as a couple and as a family. Teddy was intelligent enough to realize that the relationship between Alexia and Roxie would probably never recover, any more than his darling daughter’s shattered legs. It had started so long ago, almost as soon as Roxie entered her teens, but of course that awful business with the Beesley boy had made it a thousand times worse. And Alexia had never been the touchy-feely type, the sort of mother who could give her daughter a hug and say “there, there.” Teddy also knew that Alexia spoiled Michael rotten, partly in compensation for all that she’d lost with Roxanne. It drove him mad sometimes, but he understood. Teddy De Vere prided himself on the fact that he had always understood his wife. They were two sides of the same coin, he and Alexia. He loved her deeply.
“We missed you at dinner.”
“Did you? I couldn’t tell for all the yelling.”
Walking up behind her, Teddy rubbed her shoulders. “I’m sorry things got so heated. Where did you disappear to?”
“Someone was at the gate, asking to see me. Jennings didn’t like the look of them, but by the time I got there, they’d gone.”
Teddy scowled. “I don’t like the way these loonies keep following you around.”
“We don’t know it was a loony. It could have been anyone . . . a constituent, a reporter.”
“Did you get him on tape?”
Alexia didn’t blink. “No. The CCTV was acting up.”
“Again?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“For God’s sake. What is wrong with that damn system? Can’t you get MI5 to keep an eye on things, now that you’re running the bloody country?”
Alexia stood up and kissed him. “Relax, darling. It was nothing. I’m sure I’ll be given all the security I need, but we don’t want to live like prisoners, do we?”
“Well, no.”
“Good, then. Now, about Michael leaving Balliol.”
Teddy held up his hands for silence. Few people could stop Alexia De Vere midsentence, but her husband was one of them. “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “We are not talking about either of the children anymore tonight. This was supposed to be your night. Let’s go to bed and you can tell me everything about your first day in delicious, minute detail. Home Secretary.” He gave her bottom a playful squeeze.
Alexia laughed. “All right. Bed it is.”
Not for the first time, she thanked her lucky stars that she had such a wonderful, supportive husband.
If only I didn’t have to lie to him.
The CCTV footage was poor quality. But it wasn’t blank.
Tomorrow she would show the tape to Edward Manning.
Edward would know what to do.
Chapter Ten
Sir Edward Manning was excited.
“Put your face on the table, you little bitch.”
Having sex in the House of Lords always turned him on. There was something so deliciously illicit about having his way with the pliable, young serving staff in such an ancient, august setting. Tonight’s twenty-year-old Romanian had been particularly accommodating, locking the door and stripping off to order as soon as the dinner was finished and the dull Chinese diplomatic party had returned to the embassy.
“Spread your legs.”
Fine Waterford crystal wine goblets etched with House of Lords shook perilously on the table as it rocked back and forth. Sir Edward Manning, his trousers around his ankles but his black tie still perfect, thrust harder and faster till wet patches appeared through his starched dress shirt.
“Not so rough, Edward, please! It hurts.”
“ ‘Sir Edward’ to you, my dear. And I want it to hurt. That’s the whole point.”
Pushing the young Romanian farther onto the table, Edward hoisted himself up onto the polished wood, squatting over his lover like a toad as he forced himself inside the deliciously soft, twenty-year-old body. Sir Edward Manning didn’t pine for his own youth, but he still appreciated the delights of youthful flesh, especially when it was so freely offered. A crystal goblet fell and shattered loudly on the parquet floor. Then another. Sir Edward quickened his pace. It was one in the morning and the door was locked, but they didn’t want to be disturbed.
At last, with a stifled cry of pleasure, he came, liberally spilling semen all over the Romanian’s smooth bare buttocks before sliding off onto the floor. Pulling up his trousers and straightening his hair, he admired his conquest, still spread-eagled on the table.
“Don’t worry about sweeping up the mess, Sergei. The stewards will do it in the morning.”
Sergei Milescu turned and looked up at the old man he’d just serviced. Sergei Milescu hated Sir Edward Manning with a burning, murderous intensity. But he hated himself more for the huge erection between his legs. The things the Englishman did to him were disgusting and painful and shaming. But Sergei had come to enjoy them almost as much as his abuser did.
Not that he was with Sir Edward Manning for the sex. Manning was a powerful man with powerful contacts. He was also wealthy, wealthy beyond Sergei Milescu’s wildest dreams. One day Manning would pay for the humiliation he’d inflicted on Sergei over the last six months, for the bruises and tears to his body that would never fully heal.
“Come here.”
Sir Edward Manning stroked his hair, petting him like a dog, his bony, old man’s fingers tracing languid lines along Sergei’s smooth cheeks.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
Sergei nodded. “You know I did. But must it always be in here, where I work? Can’t we go to your place sometimes? I feel like such a . . .”
“Such a what?” Sir Edward purred, his hand reaching down for the boy’s rock-hard cock.
“You know what,” Sergei moaned. “A whore.”
“Ah, but my dear boy, that is the whole point of the matter. You are my little whore.”
I hate you, thought Sergei, twitching against his lover’s fingers.
He was on the point of orgasm when, without warning, Sir Edward Manning released him.
“All right,” he said, to Sergei’s surprise. “If it makes you happy. Next time we’ll do it at mine.”
It does make me happy. Very happy indeed.
“Really?”
“Really.” Sir Edward blew him a kiss. “Don’t forget to turn the lights out when you leave.”
Later that morning, rested and showered and smelling of Floris aftershave, Sir Edward Manning sat at his desk rereading his new boss’s file.
Alexia De Vere (née Parker), MP North Oxfordshire. Born April 8, 1954. Married 1982 Lord Edward, Stanley, Ridgemont De Vere. (Title renounced 1986.) 2 children, Roxanne Emily (1983), Michael Edward Ridgemont (1985). 6 years Trade and Industry. 2009–present, Junior Minister for Prisons.
There was little in the new home secretary’s file to excite interest. But that was exactly what interested Sir Edward Manning. By the time somebody arrived in his office (like all senior civil servants, Sir Edward Manning considered the Home Office to be his fiefdom. Ministers came and went, but Sir Edward and his staff remained permanent fixtures. It was they who actually ran the country), they usually had an MI5 file as thick as the Koran and a lot more salacious. Sir Edward had served under five home secretaries, Labour and Conservative, and all five had had more rattling skeletons in their closets than in the average London plague pit. Nothing had ever been proven against any of them, of course. It was Sir Edward Manning’s job to see that it wasn’t, one of the few areas in which his interests and those of his political masters were aligned. In Westminster’s version of Snakes and Ladders, only the snakes got to the top, men and women who sloughed off scandal effortlessly like eels in a sea of oil.