by Fiona Walker
‘You will call me,’ she insisted now, pressing a card into his palm. ‘We should be allies.’
He nodded, hastily pocketing the card while Nell was looking away before politely standing to take part in the procession of kisses that accompanied Sylva’s departure. Moving in beside him, Nell calmly reached into his pocket, took out the card and flicked it behind her into the open fire. ‘We should have spent the day with your father.’ Her eyes narrowed as she watched Sylva Frost politely kissing her hosts at the door. Another card was pressed into Hugo’s palm as she did so.
Dillon saw it too and smiled to himself before turning to kiss Nell firmly on the mouth. ‘Thank you for putting up with today,’ he breathed into her ear, ‘I know it wasn’t your thing.’
She touched the Tiffany heart at her throat and felt somewhat cheered. At least his children had stayed well out of the way, and she hadn’t had to see any of his horses, especially the one she’d injured.
‘Is Rory not here?’ Dillon double-checked as they prepared to leave, making Nell hold her breath.
Tash shook her head apologetically. ‘You’ll probably pass him on the way home.’
Beccy tracked down Lemon and Faith to the stables, where they were skipping out the furthest row of boxes. Flushed pink from kitchen heat and whisky macs, delighted to be a part of the inner circle as opposed to the stable hands, she couldn’t wait to impart all her news.
‘Lough is so scary!’ she gasped, making Lemon turn even paler. ‘You should have heard him shouting at Tash. I’m sure he made her cry. Hugo’s spitting tacks about it all in there and is dying to take him on, so there’ll be fireworks soon!’
‘Can’t wait,’ Lemon said faintly, guessing that he would personally be tacked to the Catherine wheel.
‘You never said how goddamned sexy he is!’ Beccy was too tight to censor herself much. ‘He’s so hot the water troughs bubble like Rotorua when he walks past. Even the horses were batting their eyelashes at him.’ She was still thrilled he hadn’t recognised her, imagining their slate wiped clean and ready to be written upon again.
‘Oh, he’s sexy all right.’ Lemon sighed sadly. ‘But too hot to handle, trust me.’
Beccy felt the familiar mix of fear, shame and excitement curdle in her belly and knew that she was willing to give it a try. If any man could exorcise her crush on Hugo, then surely Lough was the one. She couldn’t wait to see them square up to each other.
‘Has Rory called at all?’ Faith was asking.
‘Oh, put him back in your doll’s house, Faith!’ Lem suddenly snapped.
‘What?’
‘You’re so pathetic, chasing after him all the time, worrying about him. You’re like a fucking stalker. No wonder the poor guy wants some distance.’
‘How dare you!’
But all the pent-up anxiety, fear and frustration that Lemon had been suppressing about Lough’s return was bursting out and needed a target.
‘You need to grow up, girl,’ he snarled at Faith, marching out of the stable. ‘Get real and see that Rory does not and will never fancy you. You’re. Just. Not. His. Type. He told me so himself, that night he brought me home from the club.’
Faith was a fighter and, attacked on any other topic, would have held her ground, but this had always been a subject she was too sensitive to take. Throwing down her shavings fork and turning on her heel she sprinted through the snow, sending up great puffs of flakes in her wake as she headed for her car, already an indistinguishable mound of white. Scraping the windscreen with her sleeve, she jumped in and started the engine before reversing with an even bigger puff of snow and slithering from the yard, headlights swivelling.
‘Shouldn’t you have tried to stop her?’ Beccy asked impassively.
‘Shouldn’t you?’ he snapped back.
‘Not my fight. I hope she doesn’t get stuck.’
‘She’s only going as far as Lime Tree Farm,’ Lemon muttered. ‘Anyway, she’s still got her Christmas present in the back – she’s safe with that.’
‘Don’t tell me, she got a toboggan?’
‘Close.’ Lemon stared past Faith’s black tyre tracks to the darkened Lodge Cottage. ‘Was he really mad when he arrived?’
‘Spitting.’ Beccy shivered with an almost sexual tingle at the memory.
‘Christ.’
In the back of her chauffeur-driven Cayenne, which cut an easy swathe through the snow, Sylva curled up deliciously against the heated leather upholstery and rang Mama.
‘Did it work, maika?’ her mother demanded breathlessly as soon as she picked up.
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘When are you meeting again?’
‘It will take a little more time for that, I think.’
‘You did something wrong then!’
‘No … no, but it’s complicated.’
Mama wouldn’t listen, launching into a tirade of Slovakian as she always did when she was upset, insisting that Sylva should have tried harder.
Holding the phone away from her ear, Sylva decided that now was not the time to mention that she didn’t really fancy Dillon very much. Mama would insist that was totally irrelevant. This was business, after all.
Sylva was far more attracted to men like Hugo, who had so much energy and willpower, and who was so overwhelmingly male. Metrosexual family guys really didn’t do it for her. She’d rather have a woman.
Mama had fallen silent at last. With a few soothing words and a promise that she would try harder next time, Sylva rang off and texted Castigates to suggest a snowy meeting the following day, but the reply that came back was wholly dissatisfying: For pity’s sake, leave me alone at Christmas.
Irritated, Sylva deleted the message. She had nobody to play with. Perhaps coming back to Haydown on New Years’ Eve was not such a bad idea after all.
Not a single strand of Lough’s intricate body art was visible as he knocked at the back door of Haydown later that evening. Dressed in a thick black Merino sweater, suede Puffa, cream jeans and brown boots, he was a picture of country respectability. When Sophia answered, she positively shivered with delight.
‘You must be Lough. Come in out of the cold. Did you have a good sleep?’ Today was turning out to be such fun – first dishy Dillon, who was gloriously rock and roll meets Roquefort and organic bread roll, and now luscious Lough, who was a heavenly mix of Kiwi and Byron.
‘Tash and Daddy are propped up together in the snug, snoring away like troopers,’ she announced as she showed him in, ‘but Hugo’s around somewhere. Drink?’
Having followed her through the warren of old domestic rooms to that big kitchen again – bigger than the courtyard of his old stable block at home – Lough found a glass of white wine being pressed in his hand.
‘Cloudy Bay – thought you’d appreciate it.’ Sophia eyed him excitedly. She was exquisitely beautiful, with Tash’s bone structure and colouring in a finer, more symmetrical package.
‘Thanks.’ He forced a smile, although he was more of a beer man.
‘Tash tells us you were terribly delayed?’
To Sophia’s mounting excitement, Lough’s deep, deep voice was hypnotic and too bad-boy for words. ‘There was a bit of a mix-up and I found myself behind bars for a while.’
‘In a Hong Kong hotel, yes, so Tash said – thank goodness for those bars, eh? They serve some terribly good cocktails out there. Must make spending Christmas in transit a little less wretched.’
He regarded her for a moment, eyebrows aloft, then those big black thunder eyes softened to teak brown.
‘Didn’t it just?’ He raised his glass and smiled at her, revealing a gold crown just behind one canine tooth.
Sophia tingled and belted off in search of Hugo, grateful that Ben had fallen asleep in front of Lawrence of Arabia.
Lough looked around the kitchen, at the many framed photographs and portraits – horses, family, friends, mostly in that familiar style he recognised from the painting in his room. It astonished him that a roo
m so big could be so filled with life, with a family’s identity and style stamped everywhere – and it smelled just delicious. The rest of the house, so huge and so historic, intrigued him now, and he could only guess at its matching warmth and flair. He’d imagined that Haydown would be a cavernous mausoleum housing the empty heartache of a failed marriage, but if first impressions were anything to go on it was overwhelmingly welcoming. A part of him wanted to run away, but his taniwha heart kept him standing still, waiting, knowing that the wave would come to sweep fate his way.
He stepped closer to a photograph of Tash and Hugo on their wedding day, hung at an angle above a long bookcase crammed with cook books. Tash looked smoky-eyed, tousle-haired, excited and beautiful – like a top-class mare who had run wild all her life only to find herself coralled, broken in, mounted and ridden away just in time for the annual fiesta parade.
‘Seven years ago,’ a voice drawled behind him, ‘and no itch yet apart from the willingness to scratch each other’s backs. Lough.’ Hugo held out his hand and shook Lough’s firmly, his own grip an equal match to the Strachan crunch. He’d just fired his first warning shot. ‘Welcome to Berkshire. And Merry Christmas. Your horses had a great pipe-opener this morning.’
‘You could have asked.’ Lough kept his tone light, but both men’s grips tightened. ‘I always ask permission before I take things that don’t belong to me.’
Hugo’s blue eyes frosted and for a moment he looked as though he was going to hit him, but he had better manners than to flatten a guest the moment he walked through his door, however unwelcome they might be. ‘You could have rung ahead to let us know you were arriving two months late.’
‘I’ve been delayed,’ Lough apologised far from humbly.
‘Understatement.’ Hugo turned away to fetch the wine bottle from the fridge. ‘In fact, better never than late.’
Lough didn’t hear, and Tash suddenly appeared in the room.
Having just awoken at Sophia’s prodding insistence with such a cramp in her foot that her limping entrance was reminiscent of Sarah Bernhardt late for her cue, Tash was groggy, sticky-eyed and bad tempered.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ she asked rather brusquely, blinking madly because a contact lens appeared to be dangling from her eyelashes and she could only see half the kitchen in focus – the half in which Hugo was scowling and stalking around as opposed to the half containing the brooding Lough Strachan. But she didn’t have to see him to know that he was truly the most devastating package; Sophia was behind her, panting like an eager Labrador.
‘Do stay,’ she echoed Tash more winningly. ‘There’s Tash’s famous blue cheese and walnut risotto, lashings of rare beef fillet and winter salad, and honey-glazed figs for pud.’
Tash glanced over her shoulder at her sister in alarm, wondering where she’d whipped that fantasy from (although it had admittedly been on her original written list for the day, still pinned to the fridge door). There was shooting lunch leftovers.
But Lough was already shaking his head, staring at Tash with those molten dark-chocolate eyes. ‘I just came to the house to apologise for my behaviour earlier. I was sore-headed and I was mean to you. I’m sorry.’
‘Forgiven.’ Tash smiled kindly, closing one eye and trying to focus on him without looking too much like a winky perv. No wonder Sophia was like a cat with its tail up, and still ogling his dangle-from-me shoulders and his wrap-your-thighs-around-me hips from over her shoulder. He was ravishing. She could feel her sister’s hot breath on the back of her neck.
‘So what, exactly, kept you?’ Hugo enunciated carefully.
‘I was arrested boarding the plane in September,’ he spoke matter-of-factly. ‘And I’ve been in and out of custody for almost two months. They finally let me go last month, but I had no home and no passport and they wouldn’t let me leave New Zealand until this week.’
There was a shocked silence.
Sophia, ever the social butterfly, attempted to find a positive angle first: ‘Gosh, how dreadful. I remember when my darling interior designer was caught in a similar pickle coming back from St Petersburg with a few knick-knacks that turned out to be priceless icons. He was detained for yonks – missed the Caledonian Ball and two weddings. What on earth did they try to pin on you?’
‘Murder.’ He drained his glass. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I must go and talk to Lem.’
As he walked out, leaving Sophia open-mouthed with shock, the phone rang out. Tash answered it. A moment later, she was sobbing the happiest of tears.
‘Mummy! Happy Christmas. Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. Where are you?’ Suddenly she started to laugh. ‘New Zealand! Now there’s a coincidence …’
Chapter 42
Faith didn’t drive to Lime Tree Farm. Instead, blind with tears and anger, she drove almost a third of the way back to the Cotswolds without thinking. It wasn’t until she was crawling along the A34 in nose-to-tail traffic, accidents in front and behind, severe weather warnings on the radio, that she wondered what in hell she was doing.
She couldn’t pull up or turn around – there was nowhere to go – but the longer she inched forwards at a snails’ pace, the sillier she felt for running home to Mummy and the angrier she felt with Lemon.
Yet she knew he was right. Dillon had said as much six months ago, at her birthday party, and how much had she learned since then?
Faith closed her eyes and groaned as she realised that she had missed seeing Dillon at Haydown – one of those rare moments when their paths crossed and she could remind herself she had friends with influence, and ones that she really liked. She had thought that Lemon was her friend, had started to think of him as her very best friend, but now all that had been shattered.
Her mobile phone rang deep in her Puffa jacket. No doubt it would be Lemon with an apology. She scrabbled for the hands-free earpiece.
‘Faith?’ The voice was very muffled, the signal appalling.
Faith was edging towards the exit for West Ilsley, where she knew that she could cross back over the flyover and start the arduous task of crawling back to Maccombe.
‘’s me,’ the voice croaked. ‘Promised I’d call.’
‘Rory?’
‘Yup.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Not sure. Snowed onmycar.’ He sounded very drunk.
‘You’re not with your sister?’
‘Godno. SheshwithAmosshorrible family. Ishaw Aunt Bell and SpursandEllen andwhatever their babieshcalled butithinkthey wantedmetogo, so I drove here to pick up your present, but Jules wassnthere and then I drove into a tree.’
‘You did what?’
‘Droveintoatree.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Stay right there,’ she ordered, cancelling her indicators in a cacophony of car horns as she swung back out from the slip road. ‘I’m coming to get you.’
When Faith got to the outskirts of Upper Springlode she tried Rory’s number again, but it was going straight to voicemail.
She pulled up in a gateway opposite the Prattle, away from the drifts, wondering what to do. It was pitch dark and, although it had stopped snowing, the wind was whipping the fallen snow around and the landscape was uniform white with just a few brave tyre tracks crimping the thick covering on the lanes. No snowploughs or gritters would pass through a backwater like Upper Springlode for hours, if at all. She had no idea where Rory was.
She had almost come off the road several times, and was tired and over-emotional. She thought about calling her mother to beg for help. Graham would launch a search party, and Magnus and Dilly were still around, both of whom had an army of local friends to call upon.
Then she remembered Jules at the stables, and she set the car in first gear to make her way to Rory’s yard by the white lanes.
The driveway up to the yard was so deep in drift that she was forced to leave her car behind and wade through by torchlight, the snow biting far above her wellington boots as
she stepped into it, her jeans soon soaked. Again she cursed her mother for not giving her the waterproof trousers she’d wanted for Christmas.
At last she reached the cottage, stooping beneath the fruit tree branches that were usually high overhead and now, weighed down with snow, created an alien landscape of white arms stretching out to bar her way.
The cottage was locked up and in darkness.
Fighting her way back through the garden, her legs now sodden, chilled and numb, she made it into the American barn where the warm air was infused with familiar scents that soothed Faith – hay, straw, shavings and warm horse.
There was no sign of human life.
Outside again, she suddenly noticed that the static caravan, unoccupied for several years, was glowing away cheerfully beyond the high stack of glossy black haylage bales.
Crunching forwards through another drift, she got within a few feet before stopping in her tracks and backing away. Two figures inside were doing nefarious things up against a mock-teak cabinet. Neither was Rory.
She stepped back further and jumped as an indignant yelp rang out.
Spinning around, Faith saw a small, dark shape in the snow by her feet.
‘Twitch!’
Rory’s nervy little Jack Russell terrier writhed with joy, wagging his stumpy tail so vigorously that his whole body waved from side to side in the deep snow and created a small clearing.
Faith stooped to pick him up. He was freezing cold, like a little hairy block of ice. She unzipped her coat and tucked him inside to warm him up.
‘Where’s your master?’
He inserted a very cold, wet nose beneath her jumper neck.
She checked underfoot with her torch beam.
Apart from her own footprints, the only obvious tracks in the drifting snow were those of Twitch.