But Faith was going stir-crazy and longed to know what Rory was up to. She checked the internet constantly for updates from Gatcombe, where he was competing in the British Open Championships on Humpty. He was fifth after dressage overnight, which was reassuring and even gave her cause for a small celebratory
drink with Dillon while they lounged on plantation chairs beside the infinity pool, watching the setting sun turn the sea from bright blue to gold like a cooling flame, and waiting while a lavish seafood banquet was whipped up by the team of three chefs.
He was on orange juice as usual, but she decided to counter her edginess with one of the rum cocktails that the butler Orlando was always boasting were the best in the Caribbean.
She chose a piña colada, thinking that, because she had heard of it, it must be safe. It was far from safe. Faith had no head for alcohol, and was steaming after just half a glass.
‘I don’t think Rory will ever love me,’ she sighed.
Dillon, who felt like he had taken Rory from every angle in the past few days and could take no more, closed one eye and tilted his head at her, trying out a line his father would have been proud of. ‘Do you know how beautiful you look tonight?’
‘What?’ She flared a nostril and curled her lip, which admittedly didn’t add a great deal to the overall look, but it wasn’t Faith’s face Dillon was referring to. Her features had always been handsome and unique, like a Modigliani, although veneers had modernised the classical façade. Her body, however, had taken to the Caribbean like a ripening papaya and transformed spectacularly. She might claim to be a fish out of water, or a muddy pike thrown into a tropical tank, but her scales were glistening. With a real sun-kissed glow to her foxglove skin, her hair sun-bleached blonde and heavy with oils that turned the customary frizz to Pre-Raphaelite corkscrews, and her lean, fit body softened by five-star cooking, she was utterly stunning.
Like Faith, Dillon wished Rory was there to appreciate it. But she would have to make do with him, which was no bad thing given her lack of guile.
‘You are a beautiful woman,’ he assured her.
‘Getoutahere.’ She threw the straw from her piña colada at him and turned to look at the sun again as it winked its last red rays over the horizon.
‘You know the key to sexual awareness is self love,’ he said lazily.
She curled her lips. ‘You sound like Beccy reciting her chakra crap.’
‘D’you ever touch yourself?’
‘Now you’re getting creepy.’ She reached for her drink and took
a big gulp. Not a great move. It was like shooting the high grade rum into a vein.
‘Okay. What I’m asking is, how well you know what you actually want?’
‘I want Rory.’
‘Let’s take that as a given. What do you want Rory to
do
?’
‘Kiss me.’
‘And then?’
‘We’d kiss for a long time.’
‘Okay. You kiss for a long time.
Then
?’
‘Make love, of course.’ She went pink beneath her tan, her blushes mercifully spared by the arrival of a troop of waiters laying out their seafood on a nearby table, lighting candles and braziers and then melting away again as efficiently and quickly as scene-changing staff in a theatre.
‘So you make love.’ Dillon settled at the table, opposite her, and cracked open a lobster tail. ‘What do you do?’
Faith picked up a fat prawn, dipped it in spicy mayo and looked at it. Then she looked at him, prawn aloft like the grim reaper’s scythe. She narrowed her eyes. ‘You tell me.’
‘How can I say?’ He popped a sliver of sea urchin in his mouth. ‘I’ve never made love to Rory.’
‘Nor have I.’
‘But you love him, which gives you a head start in the fantasy stakes.’
Faith thrust out her chin rebelliously, but it was just to dart out a very pink tongue on which she landed her fat prawn, like a mahimahi on a jetty, sucking it back in and looking at him quizzically.
Somebody had filled up a champagne glass beside her. She politely took advantage of it to wash down the delicious mouthful, her mind rather disturbingly awash with Rory.
‘You need to shave off your beard,’ she told Dillon.
He laughed. ‘You can shave it off if you like.’
‘I will.’ She reached for a conch fritter.
‘Do you like shaving?’ He was teasing her now, eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement.
‘Now you’re getting creepy again.’ She spoke with her mouth full. ‘I like clipping horses, although it can be a bit itchy when the cuttings get down the back of your neck. But I hate shaving my legs. So boring.’
‘I can tell.’
Faith reached for her glass, amazingly refilled once more. ‘You look at my legs?’
‘I look at all of you, Faith. I’m a man.’
She started digging into a crab. ‘You’re just sex-starved.’
‘Quite probably.’ He delicately fingered a mussel, loosening it from its shell before slipping it into his mouth.
‘I’m not sex-starved.’ She had another swig of champagne. ‘One has to assume a degree of satiation before starvation, after all.’
‘Say again?’
She looked at him over her glass. ‘My entire sexual experience amounts to a drunken snog with Flipper Cottrell and one de-cherrying with a gay friend.’
He raised his eyebrow.
She tilted her head from left to right as she weighed up this sum total. ‘To be honest, the snog was sexier, but I can hardly remember how to do it now.’
‘Didn’t your gay friend oblige?’
‘He doesn’t like kissing much.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘I don’t think he really likes having sex with women either, so I didn’t pick up a lot of expert tips.’ She let out a wistful sigh of breath. ‘All of which makes my Rory kissing plan a bit hit and miss, I know – let alone the making love bit.’
‘It could be tricky,’ Dillon agreed, chewing spicy-mayo-drenched crabmeat.
‘And he is
so
experienced, it terrifies me.’ She reached for the champagne glass again, wondering how it kept refilling when she couldn’t see a bottle or indeed any staff around. ‘You know this MC he’s been shagging?’
‘Rory’s been shagging an emcee?’
‘No, Marie-Clair Tucson – they call her MC Hummer on the circuit because she’s tough, off-road and driven by big dicks.’
Dillon laughed.
Faith didn’t. ‘Rory told me that she has taught him so much about sex that he, I quote “now knows how to pleasure women every which way but up”.’
‘Twat.’ Dillon laughed then, seeing her thunderous face, held up his hands. ‘Sorry. Knowledgeable twat. Knowledgeable
of
twat. Go on …’
‘I have no idea how to pleasure a man.’ Faith laced her fingers together and pressed her hands to her mouth, clever, drunken eyes on his, questioning and anxious.
Very slowly, Dillon laid down the langouste he was holding and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘We’re very simple.’
Faith dared herself, double dared herself and triple dared herself before she lifted her hands from her mouth for a second and blurted, ‘Will
you
show me?’
‘You’re very drunk.’
She lowered her hands carefully to her lap and leaned back in her chair. ‘If I can walk in a straight line along a given trajectory, will you do it?’
He grimaced. ‘I’m not so hot myself, Faith.’
‘You’ve had hundreds of lovers!’
‘Drop a zero from that.’
‘Still ten times more than me.’
He blew out through his lips, shaking his head. ‘I thought I was pretty hot until I met Sylva Frost, but she had me beat.’ He laughed in amazement that he had admitted it out loud. ‘She scared the balls off me.’ He looked up at Faith. ‘The woman knows more about sex than I know about cheese. And I thought I was an aficionado of love and cheese.’
‘You
are
. Nobody sings about love as cheesily as you.’
‘Thanks for that.’
Faith propped a flip-flopped foot on the table edge and tilted her chair back. ‘Rory says that MC feels it’s her duty, as an amazing lover, to pass on tips to every man she beds so that the greater female populace benefits from her experience.’
‘Very noble.’ Dillon made a mental note to Google MC Hummer later and commit her face to memory for self-protection.
‘I think you should feel the same duty,’ Faith challenged him.
It was gradually dawning on Dillon that he was being propositioned although, being Faith, she was issuing it as a challenge.
‘Darling Faith.’ He laid down his fork and looked at her seriously. ‘At one point in my life nothing would have given me greater pleasure, believe me. But I am older and wiser and know what it’s like to live with the consequences of these things.’
‘I’m cool with the consequences.’
‘Well I’m not. I absolutely adore you, but I am much too old.’
‘You’re not much older than Rory.’
‘I have an old soul, unlike Rory, or indeed my dad. The Rockfather might think groupie-shagging in the Virgin Islands rejuvenates the spirit, but this son begs to differ.’
‘I’m no groupie!’ she pointed out hotly, her chair tipping forwards again. ‘I’m your friend. I don’t particularly like your music.’
‘A contradiction I’m now familiar with.’
‘And I’m glad you’re not like your dad,’ she went on furiously. ‘I wouldn’t shag Pete Rafferty in a million years, even if he’s much better at it than you.’
To Dillon, this was a come-on beyond any coy flirtation, but he refused to take the bait. ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad …’
‘Meaning?’ Faith tipped her chair back again and he clearly saw her neat, sculpted inner thighs, curving enticingly towards a picturesque hollow through which her bikini flew its triangular bright turquoise sail. Matching turquoise eyes watched him keenly from between her knees.
‘Just Larkin about.’
‘My mum’s Danish.’ She swapped feet on the table edge as her chair rocked back and forth. ‘She thinks fucking is a very good thing. Healthy, like saunas and massage.’
‘And your dad?’
‘I don’t know my real dad.’
‘Perhaps it’s time you did.’
The chair swung forwards eagerly. ‘D’you think that’s the key to Rory?’
‘No, I think that’s the key to you. Sex is cheating, like picking the lock.’
‘In that case, I want to cheat.’ Faith regarded him between her tanned knees, turquoise sail tacking left then right as both flip-flops paced against the table edge, rocking her chair to its absolute apex. ‘I want to cheat with you.’ With a wide, sexy smile she lost balance and tipped back into a potted palm, feet in the air.
Dillon stood up and, in gentlemanly fashion, set her upright again before dropping a kiss on her head and whispering, ‘If you still want this when sober in the morning, we’ll talk again. For now, sleep.’
Then he went to his suite for a very cold shower.
The next morning, there was a knock at his door just after seven.
Thinking it was his breakfast, Dillon groggily called them in.
‘Aggh!’ he screamed like a girl when Faith straddled him with a razor and a can of shaving foam.
His morning glory, however, rose in a manly salute to lift her off her feet.
‘Ohmygod.’ She looked down in delight. ‘Either Lem was really, really small, or you’re really,
really
huge.’ She started to explore hitherto unchartered territory with her fingertips.
How could a man resist? She wanted to learn and, like the ambitious young rider she was, she insisted on learning from the best.
‘When you touch a man’s balls,’ he gasped as her hands slid everywhere, ‘you must be gentle.’
‘Sorry.’ She paused in her exploration.
‘Don’t stop. Actually, stop!’ He lifted himself up on to his elbows to look at her. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Absolutely.’ She nodded excitedly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all night and you’re right, I do
love
Rory, which means making love with him should be easy. But I don’t know how to make out, so I think you’re the best person to teach me because you’re my friend and you’re handsome and talented and you’ve shagged hundreds – sorry, tens – of women, and you’re ready.’ She looked down. ‘Or is that an illusion?’
He looked down too. ‘It’s not an illusion.’
‘It’s
so
big,’ Faith gasped, wondering how all that would fit into her.
Dillon found it growing all the bigger for that. She was the perfect antidote to Sylva, he realised.
‘
Milujem t’a
.’ He rolled her over to start on some basics.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Slovak for “trust me”.’ He bent his head to start kissing his way around her body.
She sucked her lip guiltily. ‘Did Sylva teach you that?’
‘No – but she did teach me this …’
‘Ohmygod
stop
it!’ she shrieked, wriggling away. ‘If you are going to do that then I’m definitely shaving your beard first …’
Pascal arrived in Maccombe to find the weather as wet as Alexandra had predicted it to be, Haydown House and its downland setting as ridiculously beautiful as he remembered them, and to find Hugo stretched to the limit.
He’d just returned empty-handed from the British Open Championships, where gossip was rife and some spectators had even booed at him as he galloped past. Chinese whispers about the end of his marriage, and the reasons for it, had spread through the sport like swine flu. Infidelity had become sexual assault and then had become rape in just a few short, shocked exchanges at the ringside. His reputation and career were in peril. Several owners had already called to say they were taking horses away, and a key sponsor had that day announced they were pulling out of supporting the Haydown team, without explaining their reasons.
At Gatcombe a great many close friends had vouched for Hugo and supported him, yet an equal number of enemies had cold-shouldered and damned him. He was at a very low ebb and felt like jacking in the rest of the season and going back to America to teach.
Still, he welcomed his French father-in-law with typical good manners, digging out cognac and fresh coffee, sharing cigarettes and asking after the shipping business in his polite, upper-crust way.