‘Wow,’ he agreed, kissing her again just to make sure it really was that magical.
It was.
Then, very slowly and carefully because he didn’t want to damage her already broken body, he kissed his way down her torso
to her shattered pelvis, his lips soothing the bruised skin, exciting long-neglected corners.
‘Tell me I’m dreaming?’ Beccy breathed in wonder.
‘I flew into this continent so buzzed up with love I thought I’d die of it.’ He kissed his way along her inner thighs and calves to her ankles, disappearing out of sight at the end of the bed. ‘It was you. That girl I saved in Melbourne. This unhappy, beautiful creature who talked to me on the phone with a voice like a lover, sent me messages, excited the hell out of me. I believed it was Tash.’
‘But it was me – oh!’ Beccy gasped with delight as he kissed the soles of her feet.
‘It was you,’ he agreed. ‘I thought I’d to come and take up Hugo’s challenge, win the bet.’
He kissed his way back up her ankles and calves so that she could see him again, and she was astounded that somebody so ludicrously handsome could be looking at her, a self-proclaimed nutter and a cripple, with so much unfaltering love – and dropping his head to kiss her mouth again.
What had been saying about a bet? She wondered, and then lost interest as they kissed on into the early hours.
It was only much later that Beccy remembered to ask about the bet. By that point it was mid-morning, and Lough had been introduced to his hosts, who seemed not in the least fazed to find Beccy entertaining an admirer who had climbed in through her balcony, as though it happened all the time. Alexandra and Pascal offered him warm welcomes and fresh coffee. Even her strait-laced mother took it remarkably calmly, barely looking up from the gardening books she’d liberated from Pascal’s study.
‘Hi Lough – lovely you’re here. Have a croissant, though I’m afraid there’s no jam left.’
‘It’s okay.’ Lough looked at Beccy. ‘I never eat jam.’
‘You’re like Beccy then.’
‘But I love stew.’ Beccy smiled into his eyes, suddenly remembering their early texts.
‘I love stew too,’ he nodded.
Then, when Beccy and Lough were dipping pains au chocolat into bowls of café au lait, unable to stop looking at one another and
brimming up with love and happiness like optics refilling in a busy bar, she remembered the bet he’d mentioned the night before.
‘Hugo got really drunk at Blenheim the day you were first supposed to arrive,’ she recalled, ‘and he said he’d “lost” Tash in a wager.’
He closed his eyes, the corner of his mouth curling up as she’d so often seen it do in the past when he was uncomfortable. ‘Hugo took me out for a drink during the Olympics to try to persuade me to ride with him in the UK,’ he told her, reaching for her hands, big eyes already seeking forgiveness. ‘It was the day after the three day event final. I was pretty mean-spirited about losing out to his gold medal, and then when he started to warn me that the authorities were after me in New Zealand for doping racehorses, I thought he was just threatening to shop me. I had no idea he was actually trying to help me. So when we ran into a spot of bother I didn’t behave as honourably as I should. Shit, Beccy, you don’t want to hear this.’
‘It’s okay.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You are talking to the queen of dishonour, remember.’
‘We were in this godforsaken private club someone had recommended, full of businessmen, transvestites and pushers, with a high-class knocking shop upstairs. We must have stood out like sore thumbs. Somebody spiked our drinks – a low-life pimp, trying to get a little extortion on the go. I didn’t drink mine, but Hugo was completely out of it, so I found him a bed out the back with nobody in it and a lock on the door to make sure he’d be safe to sleep it off. But when he woke up in a hooker’s bed with a video camera blinking down on him he thought the worst, and I let him believe it, poor bastard. Tash was going into labour at the time, but he only found that out later. If the press had got hold of it he’d have been lambasted. The truth is, he was no use to anybody that night. The British lion was well and truly sleeping, but he didn’t know that – the nation’s hero, Team GB’s first gold medallist of the games celebrating his victory with a transsexual hooker. Can you imagine? He’d already had a streaker all over him at the medal ceremony. Even Berlusconi couldn’t look that sleazy after three terms in office, and Hugo had managed it in twenty-four hours in the spotlight.’
‘And nobody ever found out?’ Beccy gasped, knowing that if an event rider coughed in Cornwall it was broadcast in
Northumberland seconds later, especially when gossip concerned riders with fresh medals in their pockets.
He shook his head. ‘That’s one night I never mentioned to Lem, thank God. The pimps in the bar had no idea who we really were. I got us out of there with a bunch of lies and cash, and some smart talking. There aren’t a lot of positives about growing up in the slums on the wrong side of the law, but that’s one moment when I was blessed. And Hugo sure as hell appreciated it. He said I could have anything I wanted from home. He meant a horse, of course, but I knew exactly what I wanted … or I thought I did.’
‘Tash?’
He nodded. ‘I asked for a night with Tash.’
She jumped, scalded. ‘Why?’
He reached out and took her hand. ‘I admit I always quite fancied her from afar, but I really only said it because I knew it would piss off Hugo.’
‘Christ. What did he say?’
‘He’d already said that if I could persuade her, we were welcome to each other.’
‘Ohmygod!’ Beccy’s eyes stretched wide. ‘Does she know this?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve thought about telling her so often, but the more I think about what the man said, the more I realise how completely wrong I read it. I thought he was such a heartless bastard at first. I really thought he meant, “take her, old chap, you’re welcome, I don’t want her any more, be my guest” and all that polite British crap because he owed me big time: “You saved my sporting reputation, now have my wife as a gesture of thanks”, you know?’
‘And he didn’t mean that?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s just what I wanted to hear. What he
really
meant was that he trusted her – she would never betray him, never go for it, never fall for me. But if she did, she wasn’t the woman he thought she was and I could keep her.’
Beccy gasped. ‘She almost strayed, didn’t she?’
He shook his head. ‘Not even close.’
She let out a huge breath of relief. Then she saw the look on his face.
‘Try telling that to Hugo.’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘It’s broken between them, and it’s all my fucking fault.’
‘Both our faults.’ She took his hand.
The final run-up to Burghley was fraught with difficulty for the Haydown team, despite the Indian summer that finally took over to dry out the tail end of a soggy August, blanching the grass on the downs from pea green to sage.
Tash couldn’t sleep, and her attempts to talk to Hugo backfired horrendously, winding him up more and more until he moved into the spare bedroom. With Amery waking throughout the night as big molars stabbed their way through his little pink gums, she was like a zombie by day. She knew that she was riding badly and, although she trusted River more than any other horse, she was almost certain that they weren’t yet ready to tackle a big four-star track again.
But at least River was fit to run. Hugo was down to one ride, Oil Tanker being the only sound horse in his top string as niggling injuries plagued the rest.
And the media spotlight was firmly on Haydown. The press were taking sudden interest in Rory because of the very real chance that he was going to scoop the Rolex Grand Slam for only the second time in history. The heroic angle that he was still recovering from a crashing fall which had put him in a coma earlier in the season had caught the imagination of even the most equestrian-phobic tabloids. His opportunity was front-page news.
Yet the lame-horse scenario was bleakest of all for Rory, with two of his three qualified rides dropping out of contention in the preceding fortnight. Competed hard on the continent in early summer, they were leg weary. Snake Charmer had aggravated his old check ligament injury; The Fox hadn’t yet fully recovered from his Aachen fall. Rio was his only hope, but a shadow hung over him as he became increasingly footsore on the hardening ground.
‘He has corns,’ Rory lamented when he and Lough met for a final pre-competition drink in the Olive Branch before the big procession to Lincolnshire.
Lough pressed a hand to his shoulder, knowing how desperate he was to win the Grand Slam, not so much for the huge prize pot or even the kudos, but because he saw it as the way back in to Faith’s heart.
‘She legs it every time I get near,’ Rory said now.
‘She’s running to get fit, taking a leaf out of your books.’
‘Looks suspiciously like she’s just running away from me from where I’m standing. I came through the ford at Fosbourne Abbott yesterday and she was jogging along towards me – the next moment, she’s jumped over a barbed wire fence and scrambled through a hedge to spring off through a field of cows. Now tell me that’s normal?’
At one time, Faith had sent him twenty texts for every one of his, but now the reverse was true; she was definitely avoiding him and he was certain it had to do with that bastard Dillon Rafferty, with his fast cars, fast living and slow-matured cheese. Rory had developed a jealous loathing for the man on whom his livelihood depended. His only solace was that Faith was still wrapping her legs around his old horse every day, if not its owner.
‘I can’t believe she’s seriously planning on taking my knackered chap round Burghley.’
‘You’re taking hers round.’
‘He’s not past it. Whitey’s eighteen now and hasn’t competed at that level for over three years.’
‘And Rio’s got corns like an old biddy.’
‘True.’ Rory looked at him for a moment. ‘Talking of all things corny, are you sure there’s been no sign of Dillon Rafferty at Lime Tree Farm?’
‘None.’ Lough shook his head. ‘She’s been a good girl. In bed by nine every night. Penny says she watches the same old movie in her room every night –
Snowy Mountain
, or something. Oh, but two fantastic looking horses did turn up yesterday and she said they were “presents”, so that might be her rock-star admirer. Penny and Gus were livid.’
‘Fucking hell, he’s giving her expensive horses now,’ Rory groaned, putting his face in hands. ‘What can I give her? Horse muck?’
‘Your heart.’
‘Wizened old bit of gristle.’ He thumped his chest and coughed.
‘Win the Grand Slam.’
He laughed. ‘You won’t be saying that when I’m breathing down your neck next Sunday and you have less than a fence in hand. You’ll want to win at any cost. What’s the latest on the Mogo race? You must be miles ahead.’
‘I’m sure they’ll sign Hugo again.’ Lough shrugged, reaching for his pint of Guinness. ‘They only got me involved to sharpen him up.’
‘Yeah, he’s so sharp right now you get your throat cut just to walk past him.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse. He won’t tolerate anything less than perfection. He keeps sacking Fudge – the working pupil – then has to reinstate her because Franny threatens to walk out if she goes. They’re cousins. Poor Fudge
is
useless, but she’s all we’ve got, apart from the au pair couple who arrived from Poland last week. Bronislaw and Bronislawa, so you can imagine what Hugo makes of that. They’re already threatening to leave. Poor old Tash is run ragged trying to protect them.
Rory noticed that Lough no longer flinched at the mention of her name, although his eyes darkened with concern.
‘How’s Beccy?’ he asked casually.
His face lit up tellingly. ‘On crutches now.’
‘Like most of my Burghley horses,’ Rory sighed.
The atmosphere at Burghley was quite different from that at Badminton, somehow managing to be more relaxed despite the equally grand setting and severity of the test. It helped that the sun was shining from the start and forecast to stay for all four days. Coming so much later in the season, combinations had prepared for longer and knew how well they were going. In some cases this was a great benefit, in others a disaster as horses that had campaigned all season started to feel the strain.
‘Rio’s not a hundred per cent,’ Rory reported on the Tuesday when he came back from hacking around estate to shake off any travelling stiffness.
Haydown’s farrier had come out the previous week to refit his shoes with leather pads underneath to try to relieve the pressure from the corns, but Rory knew that the horse was not right.
‘The course going is fantastic,’ Hugo reassured him, ‘so if he does run, he stands a good chance of completing without injury.’
The old turf had been irrigated, harrowed and aerated so that the cross-country course curled like a lush green snake through the increasingly parched parkland.
‘I don’t think he’ll make it through the first inspection,’ Rory said despondently, seeing all hope of his Grand Slam slipping further and further from his reach.
He’d only seen Faith briefly since arriving, sorting through her trunks outside the temporary stabling, but they’d barely exchanged hellos before she had dashed off on some vague pretext to speak to Gus.
That evening, Rory spurned the traditional first night party, always the most raucous of the lorry-park gatherings, and curtained himself away on the sleeping shelf of the Beauchamps’ lorry with his iPod on, listening to jazz to try to calm his mounting panic that his most valued prize was about to be stolen from him. Dillon had left a text message earlier that day, saying that he was planning to come and watch on cross-country day. Rory had hastily fired back a reply pointing out that he wasn’t even riding one of Dillon’s horses, but that didn’t seemed to put him off. He was certain that the cheesy pop legend was only coming along to claim Faith.
Good luck texts had been arriving all week, to his continued surprise. He hadn’t thought he was especially popular, but his phone was buzzing non-stop with messages, an alarming number of which said ‘We’ll be there to cheer!’ His Aunt Isabel had organised a small army of Oddlode villagers to come and support him through every stage, his mother and sister among them, along with cousin Spurs and Ellen with new baby Biddy; his mate Flipper and girlfriend Trudy with their baby, Alice; Piers and Jemima Cottrell; Giles and Ophelia Horton; and even various members of the rival Wycks and Gates clans, including Castigates and Delegates and newlyweds Saul and Godspell Wyck. He didn’t want to let them down.