‘Happens to us all, especially if we ride as fast and strong as you do.’
She felt as though her saddle was inflating and she was riding
high, thrilled by the compliment; Franny just yelled at her non-stop for being slapdash.
‘I watched you at Milton Keynes last week,’ he told her as they reached the fork. ‘You’re good. Very good. Keep it up.’ With a nod, he trotted on.
No mention of Tash whatsoever, Beccy realised, heading up on to the wide verge to canter up the hill to Haydown like a balloon floating on an almighty high.
She was so happy when she got back to the yard that she quite forgot about Rory in Germany, anchoring the shaky team and chasing his first individual medal. An astonished Franny watched as Beccy marched straight past the live coverage to swap saddles, saying that she was going to school all her horses until dusk.
Rory was in total disarray. His love affair with Marie-Clair was over, as of three days ago, when he’d caught her in bed with fellow rider, Kevin.
In many ways, it was a relief. For the first time in his life, he had fallen completely out of love. Easy come, easy go Rory had a terrible reputation with women, but in fact he had never ended a relationship until now. In his early twenties he’d lurched between crushing rejections as he gave his heart away too freely. Since then, one-night stands and convenient short affairs, mostly with older, married women like MC, had filled the gaps, but he didn’t really trust love as an emotion and was frightened of his over-zealous heart. He was no good at romance. He was better at riding, and it was the one relationship he had stuck with, increasingly successfully this year as he cut out the drinking that had always blotted out the lost love.
He knew that MC had never pretended to be anything other than a passing trainer, in sex and horses, but of course he had loved her in his impetuous, imperfect way and to lose that love left him more homesick than ever. She’d taught him that if he was prepared to raise his game and give more he would get so much back. Over recent weeks, he’d repaid her instruction by riding better than ever and making love like never before, but he was increasingly pining for what he had left behind.
In his heart, he knew that his tempestuous French siren, who was so dominating and certain and driven, was just an echo of what he
really needed. What he needed had been there all along. There was a love that had been bowled at him too often to be ignored, but which he was now almost too frightened of hitting straight into another’s hands to begin to walk to the crease to strike it. He had to earn it first.
At Aachen Rory was determined to prove himself worthy as he prepared to ride across country. He knew she’d be watching. His dressage had been superb. He was the young pretender in pole position for the Championship gold, with his nation’s pride riding on his big white shoulder protectors and his horse’s gleaming chestnut back. He wanted to return home a hero and sweep her off her feet.
He’d texted Faith an hour before his start time.
Wish me luck. Can
I buy you supper if I win?
He was still waiting for a reply when he was finally forced to hand his phone down to his groom as the starter counted him down.
On the tight, twisting course, the fences came up thick and fast with not much thinking time in between. It was not a course for a man with his mind elsewhere.
All alone in the Lime Tree Farm sitting room, Faith pulled a cushion on to her lap and chewed its rim as Rory started. One of the host country’s individual riders was on the course and the patriotic German production team kept cutting away to show him just as Rory was approaching a fence, making her moan with frustration.
Then the German finished and the television cameras focused on Rory, who was by now half way round the course. He was clear so far and on target for time, riding more determinedly than Faith had ever seen. Fox looked magnificent, his chestnut coat like hot toffee, his ears flicking backwards and forwards, listening to his rider and assessing the task as he prepared for each fence. They were a true partnership now, Faith realised. Being with Marie-Clair these past weeks had really improved Rory’s technique; he was calmer and more accurate, less cocky and devil-may-care.
But then, as they approached the Sunken Road, it all went wrong. It was as though Rory lost all concentration. Coming in too fast, he gave Fox no time to find a stride on his way out and the horse tripped up the step. He lurched towards the jump and made an almighty, honest leap to try to clear it, twisting as he hit it with his stifle before crashing down on top of Rory.
‘No.’ Faith felt terror scour her skin. ‘No, no, no, no!’
The Fox scrabbled upright, his hooves inches from his rider’s body. Rory didn’t move.
‘No,’ Faith breathed, her throat cramping. ‘Please be all right. Please be all right.’
Penny was in the doorway, having rushed in from the office to watch. ‘It’s okay – look. He’s getting up.’
Faith let out a gasp of relief as Rory slowly knelt, before being helped to his feet by a steward. Paramedics were rushing towards him but he waved them away. Smiling ruefully, he reclaimed his horse and patted him apologetically, hooking the reins back over Fox’s neck and stooping down to check his legs. Moments later, Rory collapsed. This time he didn’t get up again. The television cameras cut away to some picturesque shots of the showground.
Pressing her hands to her temples, Faith let out a scream of such terrifying dismay all the dogs around her scrabbled from the room in a panic and Gus rushed in from the yard thinking somebody was being murdered.
Rory would often thank his lucky stars for the superb Teutonic efficiency that had him in a bright yellow ambulance hurtling towards a specialist injury unit within minutes of falling.
At the time he knew nothing; he was unconscious for almost two days. His brain had started to swell badly, he was told afterwards, and he had been put in an induced coma to control it.
‘Good job it washn’t that big in the firsht place,’ he joked when he finally regained consciousness.
His speech had been affected by the fall, which the doctors assured him was probably only short-term. He now sounded permanently drunk, which frustrated him enormously as he struggled to be understood. The irony was not lost on him.
‘I ushed to shound like this all the time when I hit the shcotch,’ he complained. ‘Now I don’t drink and I shtill shodding well shound plastered.’
But he was left in no doubt how close to death he had come, and he was continually told that he was very lucky not to be embarking upon a long battle to learn to walk again. Sounding like Sylvester the Cat for a few weeks was a small price to pay; in all other ways he was remarkably unscathed.
He was in hospital in Germany for almost a week before being deemed stable enough for transfer to Oxford, where his family and friends could visit him more easily.
Faith was among the first to arrive at his bedside, loaded with eventing DVDs and digital photos of his horses.
‘Oh Faith, I do love you.’ He patted her hand and fell asleep.
‘Common side-effect of a head injury,’ one of the nurses told Faith calmly when she pressed the panic button, certain that he had slipped into a coma again.
‘Declaring love or falling asleep?’ Faith asked.
‘Both,’ the nurse said, pretending not to notice that Rory had one eye open and was watching Faith closely.
‘Your horses are fine,’ she told him and the eye snapped shut as she turned to look at him and take his hand, chattering away as she’d been told to by the nurses. ‘I check them every day after work, and Franny is looking after them fantastically. Tash is riding them like you wanted – just ticking over to let them recover from all that hammering you did on the Continent. She’s such a brilliant horsewoman, although they definitely miss you in the saddle,’ she added quickly. ‘But everybody says you’ll be back for Burghley and the Grand Slam chance, even though you might miss out on the British Open this year. You’re still top of the FEI Classics race, you know, with Lough snapping at your heels. God, he’s a pain in the arse to work with. He drives me mad.’
She loved the way he smiled in his sleep.
‘You’re lucky to be away from it all,’ she went on. ‘The atmosphere at Haydown is really weird and Hugo’s always so bad tempered. Beccy says he and Tash are trying to patch things up, so I hope it improves. Not that it’s much better at Lime Tree Farm. It’s so obvious Gus is shagging Lucy Field, but nobody is saying anything and they just carry on like nothing is happening, which is just mad. If I was Penny I’d castrate him. Men are such bastards sometimes.’
Rory stopped smiling in his sleep.
As she left, she took advantage of his unconscious state to drop a small kiss on his lips, trying not to dwell on the fact that the only times she had ever kissed him seemed to be was when he was comatose.
‘You are awful,’ a nurse told him afterwards when he sprang up
out of bed to find a power point for the portable DVD player that Faith had thoughtfully brought in. ‘You’re not even supposed to be in bed at this time. Why d’you pretend to sleep?’
‘Becaush I’m madly in love with her,’ – he looked up at her through his long, sooty lashes – ‘and that meansh I get completely tongue-tied when she’sh around. My brain starts shwelling up all over again whenever I shee her.’
‘Ah!’ All the nurses were very fond of him, and that news would go down better than a box of chocolates in the staff room.
‘And other parts of me shwell up,’ he added, still smiling sweetly.
The nurse decided to save that comment for the pub after work.
Later that day Lough loped into Rory’s hospital room carrying a cactus and bag of sugared almonds.
‘One’s a prickly sod like me, the other’s a hard nut like you,’ he explained, settling in to a chair.
Rory’s pewter eyes regarded Lough as he looked around the room and out towards the corridor. ‘You misshed her by about half an hour.’
‘Who?’ He tried to look baffled.
‘Tash. But you wouldn’t have wanted to be here – the big, bad wolf was with her.’
Lough ducked his head. ‘Sorry mate. I did come to see you, honest …’
‘Forget it.’ Rory grinned, helping himself to an almond.
He was in fact delighted, if rather surprised, to see Lough, who could give him the low down on what Faith had been up to while he was on the Continent. ‘All she ever shaid in her texts was that she was riding non-shtop.’
‘That’s about it,’ Lough confirmed. ‘Especially now, with things so tense at the farm. Gus keeps buggering off without explanation, so Faith’s doing twice the work.’
‘Poor lamb.’ Rory sagged back in his chair, looking suddenly washed out and reminding Lough of just how severe a blow he’d taken.
‘Hey she’s tough,’ he reassured him. ‘She bosses us all about. She told me to come and see you for a start. I’m glad I did; I thought you’d be a lot worse than this – she said you were in and out of consciousness when she visited.’
‘Yeah, miraculoush recovery, huh?’ Rory yawned. ‘They say I can go home next week. I’ll be riding by the end of the month, I reckon.’
‘Surely you need the rest of the season off?’
‘No way – if I’m allowed to compete I’ll be back in the hunt. The doctorsh here aren’t keen, but I think I can talk them round. Beshides, Hugo and Tash need me at Haydown.’
Lough’s eyes flashed. ‘You sure you want to go there?’
‘You think there might be fireworks?’
‘Who knows.’
‘Lough, it’s not for me to take shides or make judgements.’ Rory looked at him wearily. ‘Christ knows, I’ve slept on the wrong side of shomeone else’s marital bed enough times and I like to think I’ve cheered up a few very unhappy wives. But the Beauchamps have stuck by me. They’re a team, and Hugo’s a good friend.’
‘He’s a lousy husband,’ Lough replied with feeling.
Rory closed his eyes, and Lough thought he’d nodded off. But just as he reached the door, he heard him mutter: ‘Back another horse, Lough.’
It was a sociable day for Rory; no sooner had Lough departed than there was a commotion in the car park as the biggest celebrity couple of the moment made their first public appearance in over a month.
Trailing a pack of semi-feral paparazzi in cars and on motorbikes, Dillon and Sylva had just stepped from the dark-windowed cool of their chauffeur-driven car wearing his and hers dark glasses and scowls. Not pausing to acknowledge the shouted questions and pleas to pose, they ran through the hospital entrance while their small army of PAs batted away the chasing cameras.
Rory didn’t think he’d ever seen them so miserable. Dillon was generally quite a grumpy character, but even Sylva’s customary cat that got the cream smile was missing; she looked more like one that had just been wormed against its will.
‘We hate ze paps,’ she complained, sliding her glasses up into her hair as she bent down to kiss Rory’s cheek. ‘We came as soon as we could, darlink. Here – we brought you some goodies. The hamper is from Dillon’s farm shop.’ She plonked it unceremoniously on Rory’s bed, along with a new Nintendo DS, a big bouquet of flowers and some magazines, perching herself beside them. ‘You
look better than I expected. We heard you were practically a wegetable.’
‘I’m sho chuffed you came.’ He scrambled to sit up, noticing that several nurses were peeking around the door to see if the rumours were true that Britain’s most famous engaged couple were in the building.
‘It’s just a flying visit,’ Dillon muttered, chewing at a thumb nail as he sat down in the chair beside Rory’s bed, his eyes already on the clock. He was at least a stone heavier than the last time Rory had seen him, with a bushy beard and the huge rings beneath his eyes darker than the sunglasses he’d been wearing. ‘I’m en route for Birmingham airport. How are you feeling?’
‘Okay,’ he said, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘Who told you I was that bad?’
‘Faith texted me.’
‘I didn’t know you two were closhe.’ Rory didn’t like the thought of Faith having a text life with other men, especially if it involved comparing him to a vegetable.
‘We’re not especially.’ Dillon sprang up again, unable to settle, and walked to the window. ‘Jesus, there must be fifty of them out there. I said we shouldn’t have come here together.’ He turned accusingly to Sylva.