Faith was standing back in the shadows. I love you, I love you, I love you, she thought desperately. But please stop hurting me.
‘You can have the Kentucky prize money,’ she said quietly.
It took Rory a moment to register what she was talking about. ‘I don’t want your money.’
‘You don’t?’ She hugged herself tightly.
‘I want to win the best prize of them all, Faith.’ He suddenly slipped off the bench and knelt in the shrubbery. Then looked down in horror. ‘Fuck – I’ve dropped it.’
Faith didn’t care what he’d dropped, apart from clangers. She knew what he was trying to say in his drunken, roundabout way. He’d just won Kentucky and Badminton. He had the best back-up team in Europe waiting for him and the best horses to take there, including hers. He deserved this break. She couldn’t stand in his way.
‘Go to France,’ she whispered.
Rory gave up scrabbling in the undergrowth for his signet ring and straightened up, pressing one fist to his chest as he peered into her shadowy lair.
‘Are you still there?’ He squinted into the darkness.
‘Win the Grand Slam.’ She took another step back. ‘You’re two-thirds of the way there,’ she said as she prepared to turn and flee.
Rory wished his surroundings weren’t spinning quite so quickly as he needed to concentrate. He closed his eyes, determined to say his piece, ring or no ring. ‘Did I ever tell you Dillon told me to win the Grand Slam when he first bought me horses, and he knows fuckall about eventing? But he knew you were a good thing from the start. He told me you’d step from the shadows one day, and he was right. You are my shining light, Faith. I’ll win the Grand Slam for you, but you are the prize I want most of all.’
When he opened his eyes again the shadows were still, apart from a few rose petals still drifting to the ground.
She had already gone.
Rory groped his way back onto the seat behind him.
‘Oh fuckety fuck.’ He pressed his hands to his face and slumped back in despair, forgetting yet again that there was no back to the bench so he landed with a thud among the familiar thorns and stared up at the sky, where stars crowded to watch his fall from grace.
The same stars would be looking down on him from France, he realised groggily. At least there he had someone backing him all the way. Nobody here seemed to care.
As soon as Lough arrived at the party Tash was aware of him, like a hot rash that moved around her body as he moved around the room. Huge amounts of lovemaking with Hugo in the past forty-eight hours had done nothing to stop her wretched, disloyal heart beating with giddy-making irregularity whenever Lough was near. All her erogenous zones, freshly heightened, throbbed for the thrill of that new, unfamiliar touch. Any rapprochement with Hugo was far from done and dusted while she still had no idea who V was.
She drifted through the party in a daze, talking to friends without really taking in what was being said, eyes drawn to Hugo to check if he was flirting but her heart disloyally beating a drum call for Lough. She couldn’t stop it hammering out louder and harder whenever he came close, like a Geiger counter sensing radioactivity.
As the evening wore on it was inevitable they’d knock together, like two boats roped to a harbour wall in a rising squall. When it
happened, however, the encounter was more
Upstairs, Downstairs
than
Titanic
. Tash was bearing a half-empty tray of sausage rolls back towards the kitchen along the narrow rear lobby when he emerged around the corner, carrying fresh supplies of wine.
Don’t look him in the eye, she told herself. Don’t look him in the eye, don’t look him in the—
She looked him in the eye.
Her stomach seemed to drop six inches towards her pelvis and then, like loose electricity cables, set it alight.
He was equally frozen to the spot, dark eyes eating hers.
‘Step aside, Lough,’ a voice spoke quietly behind Tash.
Lifting his chin, Lough glared at Hugo and didn’t move.
Tash’s tray wobbled so much that three sausage rolls toppled off. Appearing from nowhere, the Bitches of Eastwick devoured them.
Still Lough stood firm, his eyes not leaving Tash’s face, although she was feigning interest in one of the lobby’s portraits. The hall was the traditional hanging-place for Hugo’s uglier relatives, and this one – a great-great-aunt with a face like a walrus’s – was particularly hideous, she noted, hoping Cora hadn’t inherited any of those Beauchamp genes.
Realising that this was ludicrous – she and Lough facing one another bearing trays and wine like a couple of inefficient banqueting waiters while Hugo the butler sniped at them – Tash marched forwards and managed to squeeze past Lough and into the kitchen.
Busying herself by assembling a cheese board, she heard raised voices echoing along the lobby.
Wearily, she set aside a slab of cheddar and waded back in.
They were going hammer and tongs, arguing about Badminton.
‘Someone took a knife to Gal’s boot-straps and Cub’s girths yesterday,’ Hugo was raging.
‘What exactly are you saying, Hugo?’
‘You know damned well what went on.’
‘I had
nothing
to do with it.’
‘Like hell!’
Tash could see both men’s knuckles whitening as they edged closer, veins rising on wrists and necks.
‘Stop this!’ she shouted now.
‘Shut up, darling,’ Hugo snapped.
‘Don’t tell her to shut up,’ Lough rounded on him.
‘She’s my wife.’
‘She’s nobody’s property.’
‘Which is why you think you have a right to try to get in her knickers, I suppose?’
‘Stop this!’ Tash pleaded.
They ignored her.
‘Don’t fucking lower this to biology, Hugo.’
‘You’ve been trying to slip her one every time my back’s turned, Lough!’
‘Please stop it!’
‘I love her!’ Lough raged.
For a moment both Hugo and Tash were silenced, rocked back on their heels by the reality of what was happening.
Then Lough’s huge, coal-furnace eyes fixed on Hugo. ‘You told me to take her, remember? You said I was “welcome to her”.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Tash bleated, looking from one to the other.
Without another word, Hugo marched along the corridor, straight past Lough and Tash, so that for a crazy moment she thought he was going to walk out of the house for good. She glanced across at Lough and was hopelessly lost in his eyes for a second, before ripping her gaze away.
He stepped towards her, but she bolted back, taking cover in the shadow of the kitchen door.
Her voice sounded horribly strangled when she spoke. ‘What d’you mean, Hugo said “you’re welcome to her”? Was he talking about me?’
Before he could answer, footsteps marched back across the kitchen and Tash turned to see Hugo returning with a shotgun. She screamed.
Lifting the barrels to point at Lough, he asked him very politely to leave his property straight away.
Equally civil, Lough nodded and, his eyes not leaving Tash’s face as he walked along the corridor towards her, he paused briefly at her side.
‘Come with me.’
Tash turned away from him, her heart bursting from her chest with shame and pity. ‘I can’t, Lough. I can’t leave my children. Hugo. My life.’
Nodding courteously, he left without another word.
Emotions churning through her, Tash was distraught.
To make matters worse, Hugo took his gun back to lock it in the cabinet, fetched a bottle of scotch and proceeded to get blind drink, which meant she couldn’t get a straight answer out of him.
She was too angry and humiliated by Hugo’s actions to know if she ever wanted to talk to him again. Any rapprochement seemed totally undermined by his lack of trust and his utter hypocrisy.
Having gathered at the far end of the lobby to witness the high drama, the majority of the Beauchamps’ guests agreed that this was the most entertaining post-Badminton party they’d ever been to.
For the next twenty-four hours, the atmosphere at Haydown remained volatile, with Lough’s horses still in situ, like unwitting hostages annexed by a civil war. Lemon arrived to muck out before dawn, pointedly ignoring early-bird Beccy; Lough kept his distance; Hugo’s brooding silence made everyone on the yard cower as he passed.
Gradually, however, as his hangover lifted, so did his mood. He remained snappish and sarcastic but there was no doubt that Lough’s departure had reset the clock on the time bomb – although nobody knew how long it could last.
‘They’ll have to sort something out soon,’ Franny said to Jenny. ‘Lough can’t sleep in his horsebox indefinitely.’
It was the Moncrieffs, so stoic and practical, who came up with a solution. Lough and Lem could relocate to Lime Tree Farm for the short term. There was enough room, and they badly needed the money. Lough’s rent, riding skills and increasing appeal to sponsors and owners was a life-saver for the perennially cash-strapped yard, and it would relieve the impossible situation at Haydown.
‘He’s far too good a rider to lose,’ Penny told Tash when she rang to broach the idea. ‘We know he’s been terribly impetuous, and we adore you and Hugo of course, but Lough deserves a chance to get on with the job for the rest of the season, don’t you think?’
Tash tracked Hugo down to the tack room after Penny had rung off.
‘They’ll only go ahead if we’re absolutely okay about it,’ she told him anxiously.
‘Lime Tree’s hardly out of bloody earshot. Can’t anybody else take him?’ Hugo snapped, making Lough sound like a delinquent in need of foster care. He stalked past her and out on to the yard.
‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer,’ came a voice.
Tash jumped, realising that Beccy was quietly cleaning tack in a corner.
With a worried look, she raced after Hugo.
Beccy was miserable at the thought of losing Lough. She was happy to see the back of Lemon, who had hijacked her body and whose hatred of Hugo had poisoned her mind for so long. She was relieved he’d soon be gone, but Lough was an inspiration. He rode as though the horse was a part of him, like a centaur. He was one of her best-ever daydreams, and losing him refocused her heart painfully and exclusively on Hugo once more.
In all of the recent high drama, nobody had thought to tell Beccy what was going on. When Rory had suddenly loaded four horses into his lorry and driven off that morning, she’d found herself wondering if he was having an affair with Tash, too. It was Jenny who explained that Rory was spending six weeks on the Continent, teaming up with Marie-Clair Tucson’s young protégé, Kevin, to compete at Saumur and Dijon before heading to Germany. It seemed everybody in top-level eventing was aiming for Germany that June, with Kreuth and Luhmühlen three day events running on successive weekends, the European Championships in Aachen straight after that, and Jenny’s wedding to popular German rider Dolf Bauer sandwiched between.
Beccy was dreading Jenny’s departure. The Beauchamps’ jolly headgirl had already begun to hand over her duties to irascible replacement Franny, whose new job had been gifted her more by luck than design since Hugo and Tash hadn’t found time to look for anyone else, and Franny’s dire straits made her the obvious choice because her horse dealer ex had given her marching orders and she had no family to fall back on. Her dedication to Hugo was unquestionable, and her work rate was fearsome. She made even Faith look unproductive.
This left Beccy’s nose thoroughly out of joint. Jenny rarely trusted the capricious Haydown team member with anything much more demanding than a water bucket, which suited Beccy just fine. But Franny gave her tasks of great responsibility and cajoled, bullied, huffed and puffed when she failed to come up to scratch.
With no Lough and with Rory’s easygoing good humour absent too, it seemed the life force was draining from Haydown. And with the summer season really kicking in, and competitions coming in quick succession, the yard would be left with skeleton staff.
Beccy had started to contemplate going AWOL again, this time on a more permanent basis.
But then Tash reappeared in the tack room looking much more buoyant.
‘How would you like to start competing?’ She sat down and steepled her fingers over her nose, her mismatched eyes watching Beccy’s face hopefully.
‘You’re more than ready,’ she went on. ‘I know how much your riding’s improved. We need another work rider now we’ve lost Lough and Rory’s away, so what d’you think?’
For a moment, ten years of Beccy’s life dropped away and she was an eager seventeen-year-old desperate to break into the sport where her hopes and heart lay.
‘What does Hugo say?’ she asked cautiously.
‘He’s willing to give you a trial run at Haddenhill. They know us really well there, so we can swing it with the organisers to let you ride one of ours
hors concours
.’
‘But that’s tomorrow!’ Beccy bleated.
‘Please say yes.’ Tash chewed her lip. ‘I’m not sure I’d be able to talk Hugo into giving it a go another time.’
Suddenly Beccy found herself smiling so much it hurt. This was her chance to prove herself. There was no way she was going to refuse. Perhaps Lough departing had its compensations after all.
The following morning, after the Haydown HGV had departed, Lough moved his horses to Lime Tree Farm, overseen by Franny.
‘She’s like a bloody Rottweiler,’ Lemon complained as Franny frisked his tack boxes to make sure he wasn’t trying to make off with anything of Hugo’s.
Lough said nothing. Looking around the beautiful strawberry-pink yards one last time, he went to say goodbye to Dove’s foal. Tash had named him Liberty, but today didn’t feel like any sort of liberation.
Beccy’s first competition in ten years was at a busy weekday trials just across the Wiltshire border.
Tash put her on a very safe and very classy homebred novice that Beccy knew well and got on with. Their dressage was unremarkable, but Beccy was simply relieved that she didn’t forget her test which she’d learned overnight. An hour later, she just about remembered the show-jumping course to make it round with just one pole on the ground.