The Country Escape (30 page)

Ten minutes later, Seth called, his voice raised over a roaring engine. ‘Dougie,
yaar
, how’s it hanging? This cricket thing – love it. House should be done by then, so I might bring some mates, have a party. Do we need to get a team together?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘I’ll make some calls. The Indian international coach is an old mate, so we’re cooking, man.’

‘I don’t think you need to –’

But Seth had already rung off.

‘– field professionals.’

Dougie whistled for Quiver and set out for the pub to break the good news in the Eardisford Arms, calling Dollar back on the way to insist that no Indian fast bowlers
needed to be flown in for the occasion, although a new set of scoring numbers for the pavilion board would be great because somebody had stolen the 4s and 0s a few years earlier to use as a birthday greeting on local roundabouts.

‘It will be arranged.’

‘I take it Seth’s a big cricket fan?’ he asked, realizing he had a useful card up his sleeve.

‘It is his second mistress,’
she said heavily.

‘What’s his first?’

But she had rung off.

Already complaining bad-temperedly that Dougie Everett had turned the village show into a farce, Russ was furious to learn that Kat had agreed to take up his offer of help with her riding: ‘It was probably that idiot shooting arrows
all over the place that frightened the mare in the first place.’

‘She bolted when you started your sound check,’ she pointed out, equally riled that he wouldn’t accept any of the blame.

‘It was
not
the music. You were transferring your fear to her after Dougie Everett frightened you witless.’

‘Thanks for your support on that one,’ she snapped. ‘You were more than happy to
let me stand there once you realized Mags was the alternative.’

‘I knew she’d never hold her nerve like you can,’ he tried to placate her, ‘and she’d probably have punched him. But I wasn’t happy – that bastard could have caused a serious injury.’

‘The arrows had foam tips. Riding Sri past an amp turned up to eleven was much more dangerous, especially in a wonky tiara.’

‘Why
did you let those old witches talk you into riding side-saddle? It’s a symbol of female repression.’

‘That’s not why she ran off. It was you acting like Eardisford’s answer to Brian May.’

‘Rubbish. She respects me. She sees the guitar as an extension of me.’

Later that evening, Russ dragged an amp and guitar outside on an extension lead to set up just inside the gateway
to the horses’ field.

‘What are you doing?’ Kat rushed out from the mesh run where she’d been putting the chickens to bed.

‘Proving my point.’ He plugged in the leads. ‘It’s all about animal communication. They trust me as herd leader.’

The herd, dozing nose to tail in the evening sun, ignored him. Grazing nearby, Sri pricked her curly ears.

‘I really don’t think this
is a good idea.’ Kat panted up to the gate.

He was already looping the guitar strap over his head and striking a pose as he hit the strings with his plectrum and ran through a few arpeggios.

The horses under the tree started in alarm. Closer to, Sri flattened her ears and swung her head towards the noise, blue eyes hardening.

‘An alpha mare will only truly co-operate with
a handler or rider she trusts and respects,’ Russ shouted over the reverb. ‘In the wild, that would be a stallion with which she co-dominates the herd. In captivity, it’s the alpha human.’

Greedy as ever, the bigger Shetland had already trotted across to investigate what was going on, his smaller sidekick trundling up behind him.

‘Russ, I don’t think she wants them near you,’ Kat
said worriedly, as Sri swung her head again, then launched into her floating trot towards them, teeth bared at the little ponies – they ducked their heads and skidded away.

‘She will chase them away from me, but I am perfectly safe,’ he insisted, riffing his way into a few bars of ‘Teenage Kicks’. It was an unfortunate choice as Sri arrived in a cloud of dust, spun promptly around and gave
him both barrels of her hind legs.

The guitar took the brunt. Flattened into the rutted, dry mud by the gateway, Russ tried to maintain his dignity as Kat hauled him out to safety.

‘The village show must have upset her more than I thought,’ he muttered, as he limped back to the house with his broken guitar.

Following behind, coiling up the extension flex, Kat stopped herself
disagreeing, aware that his ego was as bruised as his ribs. She dumped the amp in the kitchen and found the arnica before going back outside to finish shutting away the hens and geese.

Far from looking traumatized, Sri was back at the edge of the lake and leaning over the rails, nose to nose with Usha, alpha mare to buffalo.

Kat was so enchanted that she forgot to check the coop
door was closed properly.

The following morning, the scene of carnage that greeted Kat in the chicken run made her fall to her knees in horror. Every one of the chickens and bantams had been killed, from the fat-bellied proud Buff Orpingtons that laid the best eggs to the small, strutting Pekin bantam and the silkies, which looked like animated white powder puffs. They were all
dead, piled up like abandoned feather dusters.

‘Fox,’ Russ quickly concluded. ‘It’s like laying on a big food bowl when they can get into a run like this.’

Kat was distraught. ‘It’s all my fault. I can’t have turned the hen-house latch.’

Clearing up took them all morning, particularly as Russ insisted on burying the bodies in a communal feathery grave he styled to look like
an ancient burial mound, complete with standing stones hauled from the banks of the stream. Complaining that his ribs were still agony from the kicking he’d taken, he made Kat do most of the digging and lifting, which she felt was a fitting punishment for her fatal neglect, although she was grateful that he laid no blame at her feet, insisting that Nature’s cruelty was ‘ecological karma’. But Kat
could tell that he was as upset and shaken as she was, particularly as they both secretly knew the killer had probably been Heythrop.

When Kat tacked up Sri to hack to the main Eardisford stableyard that evening, she wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be told how to ride by an arrogant show-off. For once, Sri didn’t plant herself in the gateway and refuse to leave Lake Farm. In fact, she
jogged along far faster than Kat was comfortable with, but when she tried to slow her down, the mare let out two huge bucks that propelled her into orbit.

‘I give –’ she wailed, as she watched the ground coming up to meet her ‘– up!’

Sitting dazed on the track, Kat heard Constance’s merry laughter in her head for the first time in weeks.

You’ll never ride the Bolt if you keep
falling off
.
This Dougie chap rides fast and loose, but he knows his stuff. Pick yourself up.

Sri was looking down at her with customary concern. Mood blackening, Kat got back on and they jogged and crabbed the rest of the way to the grand Eardisford stableyard, heeled by the Lake Farm terriers who Kat had brought along for moral support.

It was the first time Kat had seen the historic old yard since the estate had changed hands and she hardly recognized the main courtyard of coach houses, stalls, stables and offices. It was so immaculate it could have been a film
set, its brickwork now re-pointed, the woodwork repainted, the jet-washed cobbles gleaming like mussel shells and not a stray hay stalk in sight. Equally well turned out, Dougie sauntered from the tack room, blond hair swept back, long leather boots shining, handsome face wreathed in smiles. Kat half expected a cameraman to follow him out for his close-up.

‘I always start my lessons with
a question-and-answer session.’ He smiled up at her, eyelashes clustering so darkly around those blue eyes that she wondered if he had them dyed. ‘Hop off. You won’t be riding her this time anyway.’

‘But it’s Sri I have a problem with.’

‘My lesson, my rules.’

He insisted the mare was untacked and put in a stable with a fat net of hay before he led Kat to a tack room lined
with loaded saddle racks; the Indian groom, Gut, was quietly cleaning a bridle hanging from a hook in the central beam. There was a bottle of wine chilling in a cooler on a table in one corner, and he poured her a glass.

‘I’m fine, thanks.’ She held up her hand. ‘I’ll just fall off even more if I drink.’

‘This is a mandatory part of the lesson.’ He stepped closer to hand her the
glass, and she noticed his aftershave, a heady infusion of pepper and citrus. ‘Tell me, how long have you been riding?’

‘Almost two years.’

‘Ever ride as a child?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone middle class.’ She tried the wine, which was so delicious she shivered with pleasure. It was a million miles from reject pub ciders and Bill
Hedges’ home-made grog. It was the taste of special nights with friends and romantic dates. The last time she’d tasted anything so good was on Constance’s ninety-fourth birthday.

She heard her laugh again in her head now, egging her on to bait Dougie, but shook it away.

Dougie was still all smiles. If he’d noticed the dust on her breeches from falling off, he chose not to mention
it. He was looking at her encouragingly, the handsome, flirtatious face intent.

‘So you think you can make me a better rider?’ she asked bullishly.

‘I can’t make you any worse.’ Those predatory blue eyes were positively burning holes in her this evening, she noticed.

She swigged more wine. ‘I want to ride the Bolt.’

‘We can do that.’

Remembering her secret plan
to do some detective work, she crossed her fingers behind her back and launched the big Mason smile in his direction. ‘And hunt.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Hunt?’

‘Frank says I could have a lot of fun out with the Brom and Lem.’

‘You will! Good for you.’ He was clearly delighted.

‘And now there’s going to be an Eardisford pack, perhaps I’ll come out with you next season
too.’

‘It’s a private hunt.’ He took her empty glass to prop in a nearby wall alcove. ‘Invitation only.’

‘How do I get invited?’

‘Do I really need to tell you that?’ He smouldered, the rakish smile pure theatre. For the first time, Kat realized he hadn’t had any wine.

He really was laying it on far too thick, she reflected. The way he flirted was all too slick and off-pat,
and absolutely not her bag. But the wine had gone straight to her head, making her skin flush and her body feel pleasantly languid, and she was no longer spoiling for a fight with man or horse.

‘Let’s get you mounted.’ Dougie led the way back into the yard, where Gut had brought out one of the gleaming new Eardisford hunters, a mountain of a horse whose outrageously feathered legs reminded
Kat of the little dead bantams, a jolt of reality sobering her fast.

‘Meet Worcester, the best of all shires with a dash of sauce,’ he said. ‘We bought him for Rack, the kennel huntsman, who couldn’t sit on a king-size bed across country if you tied him to it, but this chap looks after him, and he’ll look after you. Don’t worry about his size. He’s totally trustworthy. And he’s got a measure
of Thoroughbred in him, so he’s faster than he looks. I’ll give you a leg up.’

While she tried to get used to the thin air so high up, Dougie got on to an eagerly dancing grey.

‘Harvey looks well,’ she said, battling a wave of adrenalin.

‘This is Rose,’ he corrected, and she saw now that this horse was younger, its coat lightly dappled, not flea-bitten, grey. ‘I don’t ride
the old boy any more.’

‘Don’t you miss riding the stunts?’

‘I miss the training side more. I have an amazing young Friesian stallion.’ He reached down to tighten his girth, grinning up at her from beneath his hat brim. ‘You’ll love him when he gets here, but his lungs are still too damaged for him to travel.’

‘How come they’re damaged?’

Just for a moment the big smile
faltered. Saying nothing, he led the way out of the yard through the big coach-house clock-tower arch. But instead of turning left towards the old sand school, as Kat had anticipated, he rode back in the direction of Lake Farm. There was an edge to his voice now, a trace of irritation cut in with the husky flirtation. ‘What’s your boyfriend doing this evening?’

‘If you mean Russ, he’s seeing
a man about a guitar in the pub.’ She told him about Russ’s disastrous gateway serenade to Sri, feeling disloyal as he hooted with laughter. Then she found herself telling him about the chicken massacre.

‘Natural horsemanship and foxes – two of my pet hates.’ They rode on for a full minute before he added, ‘And fire.’

‘Was the fire in LA?’

‘Two months ago.’ When he described
the barn in which he’d stabled his Friesian burning down, he spoke with the tight control Constance had always adopted to remember the most agonizing moments in her life, which she inevitably glossed over quickly to stop the pain penetrating.

‘That must have been so terrifying.’

‘I was too angry to be frightened. They were going to leave the horses to burn to death in there.’

‘You saved them.’

‘Zephyr’s special. He was set to become the best bowman’s horse I’ve ever trained.’

‘Do some people still hunt that way?’ she asked, then cursed herself for prying as he clammed up and adopted a shining suit of fake-charm armour, his voice deepening huskily.

‘Bow-hunting is illegal, but shooting apples from the heads of beautiful girls is a favourite
hobby of mine.’ He was quick to power up the seductive big-screen smile, so charismatic it almost knocked her out of the saddle. ‘I’m training Worcester to do a few tricks.’

She smiled back at full beam, more comfortable engaging in battle from horseback. He might be the better rider, but their big charm weaponry was evenly weighted. And she was determined to gallop.

They rode around
the wooded curve of the lake that skirted Lake Farm land beyond the millstream, taking a little-used track to a big swathe of emerald pasture nicknamed Lush Bottom that lay in the dell between two banks of woodland. Along one side of this hidden meadow, a stream led from the mill race to a nursery lake in which Dair and his team raised young carp.

‘This is truly great turf,’ Dougie told
her, as he kicked his grey into a canter and waved an arm behind him for her to follow suit.

Kat braced herself. Normally at this point when she gave Sri a canter aid, it was like pressing the accelerator on a Corvette in a skidpan. But Worcester surged into a powerful, lolloping canter that was pure Range Rover on Roman road. She couldn’t resist a whoop of laughter as the horse speeded
up in Dougie’s fast-flying wake, leaving the dogs far behind as they sliced through the springboard turf to the nursery lake, pulling up twenty yards short of its edge where an army of new hazel whips had recently been planted, protected by plastic tubes.

‘You don’t need me.’ He turned to her, laughing. ‘You’re fine.’ He seemed genuinely impressed.

‘I couldn’t hope to do that on
the mare.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. You’re a perfectly capable rider and you have pretty much all the skills you need to ride the Bolt, apart from confidence, and that’s a breeze.’ He made it sound as simple as blowing a dandelion clock. ‘Now shorten your stirrups five holes and we’ll go again.’

She found herself practically kneeling on the saddle like a jump jockey. ‘This is
way too short.’

‘To go as fast as you’ll need to, you have to get your weight right off his back. Hold on to the neck-strap while you’re getting used to it. Ready?’ Not waiting for an answer, he turned his grey around and kicked back towards Lake Farm.

Standing up in her stirrups, her weight now pivoted through her knees – it felt weird, but balancing was surprisingly easy with the
neck-strap to grip on to – Kat whooped in his slip-stream again, wind on her face, ducking the divots flying behind him. It was the best fun she’d had in a long time.

Gut had already tacked up Sri when they returned to the main yard, leading her out like a second horse at a hunt as Dougie and Kat clattered back in on Rose and Worcester.

‘Am I galloping Sri now?’ she asked, eager
to go fast again.

‘You’re not ready for that,’ he said crushingly, jumping off and handing the grey mare to Gut before bringing Sri across. ‘We’ll see how you do tomorrow.’

‘I’ll have to check my diary,’ she said loftily, furious that he thought she wasn’t even up to riding her own horse. She tried to dismount with aplomb, but because Worcester was so tall, the ground was a lot further
down than usual and she landed crookedly, lurching off to one side and grabbing Dougie for balance in an unintentional clinch. His body was hard as rock. She backed quickly away and tried to regain her dignity by mounting Sri with super-slick speed, but she overdid her enthusiasm and Dougie was forced to grab her leg to stop her falling straight off the other side.

‘Thanks.’ She tried not
to catch his eye as she struggled back into the saddle.

He helped her find her stirrup, hand still warm on her leg as he looked up at her with the philanderer’s smile, voice as playfully soft as his blue eyes were sexily hard.

‘Until tomorrow.’ He fed Sri one of Harvey’s pink striped mints, which made her curl her lip.

Hacking home, Kat diverted back to Lush Bottom, determined
to gallop Sri. She pulled her stirrups up a few holes, eyed the horizon and urged the mare into action.

Sri planted, refusing to budge. As Kat grew increasingly red-faced and frustrated, legs and elbows working furiously, the mare let out a long sigh and put her head down to graze.

In the tack room, Dougie dialled one of the pre-sets on his satellite phone.

‘How is
it going?’ Dollar demanded. ‘Is she keen?’

‘Eating out of my hand,’ he assured her, throwing the cellophane sweet wrapper into the bin, ‘but I’m not sure the redhead will be quite so easily won.’

‘Is there no chemistry?’ Dollar sounded almost pleased.

‘I couldn’t tell you. I failed all my science exams. I was good at woodwork, and that side won’t be a problem. She’s a lot
of fun. I just don’t think she’s the marrying sort. You know the saying: there are two types of girl, those you want to marry and those you –’

‘Don’t let personal desires get in the way of this, Dougie!’

‘– don’t,’ he finished, hanging up.