The Country Escape (47 page)

‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire, Kat.’ He stooped down to pick up the pile of post she’d dropped. ‘He said he came here to slay dragons. Dragons breathe fire, and so does this village.’

Fire is Dougie’s biggest demon, thought
Kat, unhappily.

‘We went to spy on the party at the main house!’ Dawn burst into the Lake Farm kitchen. ‘It’s so funny, Kat, full of hired guests. You okay? Have you been crying?’

Curled up on the sofa with two loudly snoring lurchers and
unopened post scattered around her, Kat was about to sob that, yes, she had been crying her heart out because she knew she was hopelessly hooked on Dougie Everett, who was too busy shagging glamorous Porsche-driving women against windows to give a stuff, when she saw Dair standing behind her friend, flat cap at an unusually jaunty angle.

‘I invited Al back for a coffee.’

‘Al?’ Kat
pressed her palms quickly to her puffy eyes and wandered into the kitchen, where Dawn was fetching mugs down from a shelf and Dair was lounging against a worktop.

‘I like Al,’ he insisted, in a lusty, infatuated way that hinted he’d agree to be called Catkin Bunnywinkle if he thought he might be invited to stay the night.

‘I like Al a lot too,’ Dawn cooed.

Kat felt another
lurch of panic-stricken regret that she had failed to acknowledge her own thunderbolts until they had started to hurt too much to ignore, by which time Zeus had moved on. Now she was cornered in a kitchen with Mr and Ms Pheromone.

Dair glanced at his watch and grimaced. ‘I’ll have a half-cup. I must be away soon. I’m up at the crack of dawn tomorrow.’

‘Is that a promise?’ Dawn giggled.

Listening to their flirty laughter, Kat thought of Russ’s nets and chewed her lip anxiously, busying herself by fetching cat food to put out for the yowling masses in the yard, then went out to check the animals one last time.

Vaughan Everett was blisteringly unsympathetic when his son told him the full truth of what was going on. Feeding pound coins into the slot in the
old-style red call box in Eardisford that was photographed by tourists more than it was used, Dougie tried to ignore the smokers outside the pub peering at him as his father gave him short shrift.

‘Frankly, it’s nothing I hadn’t guessed,’ Vaughan barked. ‘Seth’s probably justified in wanting the Myttons hung out to dry.’ He chuckled at the inadvertent joke. ‘The Everetts weren’t much better
behaved in British India, I fear. They still aren’t, judging from your recent behaviour. What the fuck did you think you were doing taking on a job as a gigolo?’

‘I am not a bloody gigolo!’ Dougie shouted, noticing too late that one of the pub smokers had shuffled up, pretending to read the parish notice-board so he could listen in.

‘You were prepared to marry for money, Dougie,
which, one assumes, includes consummating the union. There are very few degrees of separation between that and tapping on a car windscreen asking for business.’

‘I’d never stoop as low as that!’ raged Dougie, then hung his head as he remembered that, in a previous life, he’d stooped very low indeed, fully prepared to sleep his way to the Hollywood A-list a honeymoon suite at a time. Now
it seemed it was payback time.

‘I suggest you get out as quickly as you can,’ Vaughan advised, in his clipped voice. ‘I’ll get a legal adviser to look at your contract as a matter of urgency. Just keep the family name out of it, whatever you do. In fact, keep your trap shut about everything. This isn’t an anecdote for a chat show.’

‘I can’t leave her here.’

‘I’m sure she can
look after herself. Didn’t you say she was Russian combat-trained? The woman sounds frankly dangerous.’

‘I’m not talking about Dollar. I’m talking about Kat, the girl who runs the sanctuary.’

‘The one you’re supposed to marry? Well, there’s a very obvious solution to that, assuming your contract is as watertight as you say.’

‘What solution?’ he asked desperately, noticing
that a small crowd was looking at the parish notice-board now, feigning fascination with the church cleaning rota.

‘Offer to split the million if she marries you. You can buy yourself out of the contract and she can set up somewhere new. At least you both get something out of it.’

Dougie knew that Kat was unlikely ever to forgive him, let alone play along and split the profits –
she was far too straight and stubborn – but his father’s advice made him see that she deserved his total honesty. If Badger Man still had her heart, he could at least earn her respect.

Watched closely by the crowd, Dougie rang off and flew outside to his car, no longer thinking straight, his head full of apologies, escape plans and blind fury.

He drove straight to Lake Farm, the
Land Rover bouncing crazily over ruts and potholes, Quiver taking refuge in his lap.

When he swung through the gates into the farmyard, he almost drove straight into the back of Dair Armitage’s Range Rover, which was parked outside. Dougie didn’t need to get out of his own car to see the shadow cast from the kitchen window, the silhouette of a couple kissing passionately.

‘Christ,
she has a bloody stable of us on the go,’ he muttered to Quiver, under his breath.

Fury and jealousy burned in his veins as he threw the car straight into reverse.

Hearing a car driving away at speed as she came back from checking the horses in the field, Kat assumed it was Dair leaving, but when she walked around the side of the barn into the farmyard, she saw the Range
Rover still parked there. Dawn and Dair were framed in a curiously old-fashioned Bogart and Bacall clinch in the kitchen window.

She wanted to hang back to give them a little more time together, but the dogs had already rushed inside so there didn’t seem much point in pretending she wasn’t back. She followed them in, grateful that conservative Dair – hugely flustered to be caught kissing
– made lots of throat-clearing I’m-leaving-now noises and put his flat cap back on.

Having waved him off, Dawn bounded inside, sobered up by copious coffees and a breathtaking clinch, eager to dissect the whole whirlwind romance with Kat and to broach an urgent new dilemma. ‘Apparently Seth is hosting two Bollywood parties tomorrow night – the commoners in the tent and a full-on maharaja’s
banquet in the main house with
actual royalty
invited. Oh, Kat, Dair’s asked me to be his guest. Please say if you’d rather I didn’t go. I promise I won’t mind. My loyalty is to you. Oh, God, you’re crying. Really, I won’t go. We’ll have a girls’ night in. Please don’t cry. I’ll stay with you.’

‘It’s not that.’ Kat mopped a stray tear as she moved through the sitting room to the windows
overlooking the lake and stared out at the house, its windows glowing. She was trying very hard not to break down. ‘I went to the mill house earlier tonight. I saw Dougie through the big windows there. He was…’ She screwed up her face with the effort of saying it out loud. ‘He was having sex with Dollar.’

‘The eighties pop duo?’ Dawn was too astonished to stop and think.

‘Dollar
is Seth’s personal assistant.’ Kat swiped away another tear, lower lip trembling. ‘Apparently they’ve been an item all along.’

‘And that’s how big a problem?’ Dawn asked carefully, already guessing the answer. She’d predicted Dougie Everett would be a romantic dilemma long before Kat had.

Kat stared at the lake. ‘If a drip of water is a normal problem, my Dougie problem is that lake.
He’s partying with her up in the big house now.’

‘Gate-crash!’ Dawn urged the old daredevil Kat. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll transform you. You’ll never get in looking like that. We are going to make you look like a million Dollars.’

‘Thanks, but I’m not in a party mood.’ She mustered a brave smile.

‘Of course you are. Fight for him, Kat! Dawn knows best. I swam the lake,
remember, so I’m allowed tell you what to do. Let’s get to my magic makeup kit.’ She headed for the stairs. ‘Follow my lead.’

Kat headed rapidly for the door. ‘You’re right!’

‘What are you doing?’ Dawn squawked. ‘You can’t do this in old jeans.’

‘You’re right again.’ She stripped down to her bra and knickers and ran outside.

‘Oh, fuck, she’s truly lost it now.’ Dawn
hurtled after her, yelling, ‘Kat, do
not
gate-crash that party in your pants!’

Kat ran along the jetty, not allowing herself to think. She was going to conquer the lake. It was as simple as that. This time, she would take on her nemesis and win.

Checking Usha was well out of range, she set her focus on the far bank and imagined Dougie was there, laughing, daring her to do
it. She would swim straight to him, beating her own triathlon personal best, skimming across the lake’s black surface as lightly as a water boatman. When she got there, she would climb out and push the deceitful bastard straight in. He might have her heart on a pike, but she was going to prove she could do this without him.

Taking a deep breath, she dived in with a loud belly-flop.

Igor was enjoying a quiet cigarette on his balcony, staring across the parkland to the magnificent silver crescent of lake and the wooded, moonlit hills beyond, excited by the sport that their dark bulk held in store for the following morning. He spotted a figure moving in the water. Another
rusalka
! He hurried to fetch his binoculars for a better look. This one was a redhead, but
no less glorious than the first. It was an omen, he was certain, an omen that became even more propitious when he turned to listen to a rattling sound coming from beneath one of the huge trees in the park and spotted a stag of near-mythical beauty stepping out into the moonlight and raising his head to display antlers like petrified oak.

He had started to like this estate very much indeed.
If tomorrow’s sport lived up to expectations, he would stop at nothing to add it – and its
rusalki
– to his private collection.

Kat felt empowered with every stroke, the fear pushed ever-further behind her, her anger helping her power through the water. She could hear Dawn whooping behind her as she crossed the lake in less than a minute, her feet finding the solid gravelly base
before she waded out to the grassy bank to do a victory dance and punch the air, so ecstatic she threw in a cartwheel, which pitched off sideways into an ungainly forward roll that left her sitting on the grass, staring across the perfection of the moonlit park.

She gasped in delight as she saw the stag silhouetted against the rising full moon, its magnificent antlers now full-branched.

Super-charged, Kat swam back, not feeling the ache in her muscles or the burning in her lungs. All she was aware of, with every stroke, was the shedding of the fear she’d bolted around herself for so long.

Dawn helped her on to the jetty and hugged her tightly, tearful with pride and relief.

‘Mind your dress – I’m dripping wet.’ Kat warned, her teeth chattering, although she
was laughing too much to notice or care. She pushed her wet hair back from her face. ‘That was the best
craic
ever. Why didn’t you tell me how much fun it was?’

‘I was terrified when I did it,’ Dawn admitted. ‘But you were always the daredevil, Kat. That was bloody fantastic to watch. If the Dougie Everett problem is that lake, you just swam straight through it.’

‘Dougie who?’ Kat
shook back her hair in an arc of drips and headed towards the house.

Dawn could tell she was putting on a brave face, but she loved her spirit. The old Kat she knew and loved was definitely back in business.

‘Dougie,
yaar
! So glad you showed, man!’

It was an unexpectedly warm welcome, given that Dougie had arrived at the party as most of the guests’ cars were streaming away along the parkland drive towards the Hereford road.

Wearing a skinny T-shirt and jeans, his raven hair slicked back and a doe-eyed beauty hanging off his arm, Seth beckoned him through his cathedral arch of a front door, calling off the security guards who had been trying to bar Dougie’s way. ‘I tell you, people have no staying power round here. In Mumbai, we party all night. Come and talk me through the cricket strategy. What’s this I hear
about you disapproving of the guys I brought over?’ Waving the girl away, he thrust out an arm to give his shoulder-dislocating handshake before steering Dougie towards his inner sanctum. They crossed a huge panelled and galleried hall as big as a tennis court, newly restored marble floors gleaming beneath a baronial chandelier, the shipped-in celebrities and society beauties drifting around like
birds of paradise in an aviary. There was, Dougie noted gratefully, no sign of Dollar.

‘Igor has gone to bed,’ Seth told Dougie, with obvious relief, as he led the way along a dark-wood corridor. ‘He takes his hunting seriously. I’m the same about cricket,
yaar
.’ He mimed a few strokes, then swept his hand in front of his chest like an umpire calling a boundary four.

‘You’re in to
bat third on Sunday,’ Dougie said stiffly, finding his bouncy familiarity disconcerting.

‘Great! I’m well out of practice, man, but I was a shit-hot attacking batsman in my day so I hope the old magic’s still there. You heard about my internationals?’

‘I’m well aware of them,’ he said, feeling like Blackadder accompanying an enthusiastic Prince Regent. ‘Are you taking part in the
hunt tomorrow?’

‘No way. I hate early starts,
yaar
. I’ll join them for lunch. I’m sending Doll out with them at dawn. She only needs four hours’ sleep and likes guns, so I’ve packed her off to bed early to mug up on her Russian hunting slang. Man, was she sulky about it. At least I get my morning run this way. Always do ten miles.’

‘You’ll have a beautiful day for it.’ Dougie was
alarmed by his own voice, so obsequiously sardonic-manservant. He’d be whipping out a handkerchief and twirling it with a rakish bow any minute.

‘Can’t stand fresh air. I use a machine. We’ve had part of the cellars converted for a gym. It’s all climate-controlled so I can match it to my optimum atmospheric temperature, humidity and oxygenation.’

‘The fresh air here’s pretty high
grade,’ Dougie assured him. ‘Probably best in small doses, if you’re not used to it. Would you prefer us to move the cricket match indoors?’

Seth shot him a speculative look, aware that he was being teased but enjoying the dry English-butler delivery too much to be annoyed. Then his face split into a wide smile. ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. I’ll try running outside tomorrow. Gotta acclimatize
before the match. What do you think of the old place? Looks like a film set, doesn’t it? It’s not really my thing, but it’s a great weekend party crib for now.’ He looked at the panelling, its edges notched from centuries of servants’ trays bumping against it. ‘Tomorrow night, this place will be full of Indian dancers. I know Dollar put you on the VIP list.’

Relaxed and chatty, he seemed
a million miles from the private and enigmatic power figure Dollar protected so fiercely. He guided Dougie through secret passages of the house – a vision of no-expenses-spared glossy restoration and carefully concealed gadgetry – talking him through the fibre-optic cables, fingerprint recognition and deeply buried eco-heating.

‘It’s stunning.’ Dougie admired discreet control panels disguised
as artwork.

‘Takes ten cleaners to keep it mint. Ridiculous, man. I prefer minimalism. You should see the Mumbai crib – looks like a tower block outside, but inside it’s all straight lines to infinity. Beautiful,
yaar
.’

They swung through a door concealed in the panelling and Dougie found himself in a vast armour-lined dining room dressed with more Civil War heraldry than a lavish
costume drama set, an untouched midnight breakfast laid out along its heavily carved oak sideboards. There were trays of kedgeree, sausages and scrambled egg, croissants and Danish pastries.

‘Help yourself to anything.’ Seth poured himself a coffee.

Dougie’s stomach was churning too much for food, although he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Sounding disappointingly like
his father leaving his cabinet post after the cash-for-questions scandal, he said, ‘I regret to inform you that I wish to tender my resignation.’

Seth ignored the statement, picking up a spoon to study the crest on its handle. ‘The family sold off the Mytton silver just before I got the place – crying shame. I’ve been trying to buy it back, but it’s been divided up and is all over the place.
The same goes for the art and furniture collection. No respect for the past, those kids.’ He looked up at the restored strapwork ceiling with an avuncular sigh, even though the Mytton beneficiaries had been considerably older than his own parents.

‘I wish to terminate my contract,’ Dougie said more forcefully.

Seth turned to him and Dougie was reminded of just how deadly sharp his
eyes were, for all the Bradford-lad camaraderie. ‘Y’know, Constance Mytton-Gough was a bonkers old bird by all accounts but a good custodian of this place. And, man, they loved her round here, didn’t they?’

Dougie nodded. ‘The land and farms would be in as many different hands as the family silver by now if it weren’t for her.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I want to terminate my… contract.’
He omitted ‘fucking’ with great self-control.

‘Is that because Dollar wants you to marry the girl from Lake Farm?’

‘You know about that?’

Seth rolled his dark eyes up to the ornate plaster ceiling again. ‘Of course I bloody know about it. It’s total genius,
yaar
, as so many of Doll’s ideas are. I’d make her my company vice president if ninety-nine per cent of the stuff she
came up with wasn’t illegal or unethical. Plus she’s too violent to risk among my board members. Has she hit you yet?’ He grinned across at Dougie.

‘No.’

‘Good girl. She’s really chilled out, these days. She might even cope with my wedding.’

Dougie thought uncomfortably about that ruby-nailed finger violently stabbing at names on the Brides List.

‘You know, Constance
M-G married to save this place.’ Seth wandered over to admire a suit of armour. ‘I had the history of the house researched when I bought it. There’s a book in the library here full of pictures of her handing out sandwiches to Land Girls during the war.’ He tipped up the helmet visor and peered inside.

‘Her father promised to sign across Eardisford if she rode a famous challenge called the
Bolt.’ Dougie related the story as Kat had told it to him. ‘Constance took it on believing her future was riding on it, but her father broke his word and made her marry.’

‘Hock Mytton was a bastard.’ Seth let the visor drop with a clank.

‘I agree, but his daughter was nothing like him. She had a backbone of iron. That’s why this place still existed in its entirety when you bought
it for your “movie set”, apart from the contents her children flogged to cover death duties. It’s easier to buy silver spoons than to be born with them, these days.’

‘We all have an opportunity to redeem the past, Dougie. My great-grandfather Ram would have been very proud of me. Three generations after his honour was sacrificed for the Mytton name, his descendant has the title deed to
their land holdings.’

Dougie was about to snap that adding it to a goody-bag in an arms deal was hardly an historic redemption, but he bit back the sarcasm. ‘What if the Bolt was ridden again?’

‘You want to try it?’ Seth was admiring the Jacobite weaponry hanging on his lime-washed walls now.

‘Will you terminate my contract if I do?’

‘I’ll let you off marrying the girl.’
He grinned over his shoulder.

‘If I marry her, do I still get a million?’

‘Doll offered you that?’ Seth whistled, picking a claymore sword off the wall. ‘That’s way too much. Then again, she fancies the pants off you, and she always overvalues the things she wants most.’ He swung round with the sword and Dougie ducked just in time to avoid partial decapitation.

‘Sorry, mate.’
Seth laughed, setting the sword down on the gnarled, wicket-long table. ‘It’s seriously heavy,
yaar
. Give me small arms any day. What d’you think of Dollar’s arms? Beautiful.’

Dougie had good jealous-husband instinct. He’d been the clandestine lover enough times to identify a cuckold on the scent. Dollar might not be Seth’s wife, but he definitely wanted ownership, and the arms he was talking
about had been wrapped around both men more than once.

He mustered a charming smile. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a bow and arrow any day.’

‘Except when it comes to entertaining my weekend guests.’ Seth raised one eyebrow to a forty-five-degree black stripe of sarcasm. ‘You’re lucky Dollar likes you so much. You’ve let me down big-time, Dougie.’

Dougie was on high
alert now, smelling danger. No wonder he had been welcomed in so genially. The leopard had come padding into the tracker’s house.

Seth was refuelling his coffee. ‘I don’t want to talk hunting, man. All that tweedy shit is seriously beat. Let’s talk cricket.’ He turned and looked at Dougie, unsmiling, the hey-dude demeanour hiding a cobra. ‘We play it my way.’

If he’d been handed
any other topic, Dougie might have backed down. But this was cricket. ‘I won’t field professionals,’ he said firmly. ‘If you want that, someone else can captain the estate side.’

‘You’re the village hero, Dougie. We need that goodwill.’

He laughed. ‘Not any more, I’m not. Word’s got out I’m your hired groom as well as private huntsman. Some don’t take kindly to that around here.’

‘They can be won round.’ Seth regarded him over his coffee cup. ‘Bowl the maiden over and cover yourself in glory. You can still earn that million.’

‘You’ll pay out if Kat Mason marries?’

‘Everything has a price, Dougie. Even you.’

‘Kat doesn’t.’

‘More fool her.’ Seth looked at him irritably. ‘The deals I do impact directly on the charities I run. This place is
playing its part in something that will change many thousands of lives in India. It’s worth paying top dollar if it’s something that close to your heart.’ The scimitar brows lifted meaningfully as he sucked espresso froth off his upper lip. ‘You come from a long line of political marriages, don’t you, Dougie?’

‘My lot all married up,’ Dougie said distractedly, thinking about his father’s
advice to split the money with Kat for honour and liberty. ‘We’re only a few generations away from merchants and serfs.’

‘I come from a long line of high-caste cavalrymen, but my father was a carpet-fitter.’ Seth’s fingers were drumming on the sideboard behind him. ‘My mother wants me to marry next year. She has a short list drawn up of well-born Sikh girls. I’ve narrowed it down to three.
I have to choose one this weekend.’

Dougie remembered the red nails clawing angrily at the screen, the desperate plan to turn virgin brides into deflowered castoffs. ‘Can you not marry any woman you choose?’

Brows lowering fast, Seth looked set to tell him to sod off and stop prying, but then his eyes fixed on the sword on the table and he pouted thoughtfully. ‘This way has always
worked for my family.’ His fingers drummed again, one eye closing as he played something over in his mind. ‘How did the village find out that you were a “hired groom”?’

‘I told Kat and she told…’ he winced at the memory of Badger Man wrapped around her, worse still big-bore Dair bending her backwards over the kitchen sink ‘. . . others.’

‘Why the fuck did you tell her, man?’

Dougie looked at his hands, turning the signet ring around on his little finger, trying not to dwell upon Kat’s tempestuous love life. ‘I thought she deserved the truth.’

‘Are you in love with her or something?’

‘You can lose the “something”,’ Dougie said quietly.

Seth gave a whoop, slapping his palm on the table victoriously. ‘I bloody
knew
you’d suit one another, man!
That’s why I let this thing roll on when I found out. To be honest, I reckon Doll figured you’d break the girl’s heart and that way she’d bugger off and leave Lake Farm of her own accord. She’s very taken with you, is Dollar. She made me watch the movies you were in so many times it did my head in. Forgive me, but you’re pretty shit in
Dark Knight
after the tenth time – it’s no Oscar winner, is
it? Dollar watched it every night for a month.’ Seth’s nails rattled on the sideboard in an ever-faster bhangra beat. ‘Did she come to see you this evening?’

Dougie remembered her warning not to breathe a word of their conversation. He thought uncomfortably of the brush-off he’d just given her, and wondered if Seth knew they’d been lovers. ‘She’s pretty formidable.’

He laughed. ‘Yeah,
that’s an understatement. She used to be so aggressive I had to give her a rubber stick to bite on in meetings, but she’s calmed down a lot. She’s my beautiful, caged tiger and I throw her more toys to play with, these days.’ He gave Dougie a slow smile, revealing front teeth as white and upright as a cricket eleven in a team shot. ‘She likes playing with you.’

He knows, Dougie realized,
as he flashed his most charming, diffident smile in return, his own cricket eleven drunkenly lopsided but Persil white.

Seth’s eyes belied his fury. ‘If she asks you to run away with her, take my advice and don’t. The last time she did, somebody got killed. Caged tigers aren’t easy to release from captivity. Believe me, I’ve tried. Did she tell you how she got her name?’

‘Yes.’ He
realized his mistake as soon as he said it. Seth’s eyes darkened further. He was now aware that she was intimate enough with Dougie to share such close truths.

‘I’ve told her loads of times she should change it back, but she says it’s a reminder that she still owes me. She’s ferociously intelligent.’ Despite his anger, Seth’s eyes glowed in the same way Dollar’s did when she talked about
him. ‘She’s too clever to be my PA.’