by Fiona Walker
‘I risked so much to get you up here, to knock Hugo back down to size. You should have won that Olympic gold and he knows it.’
‘How d’you figure that out?’
‘You’re the better rider. You’re the better man. Hugo needed teaching a lesson.’ He was starting to gibber. ‘All those fucking years of effort. The best horse you’ve ever had and he swans up with all his money and class and glamour and grooms and steals gold from you. And you still bloody liked him! You even sent me over here to this godforsaken country and got yourself arrested so I was stuck here, unable to help you, camped with the enemy!’ He started to cry.
‘Oh shit.’ Lough put a hand on his shaking shoulder, still unable to get through the stable door because Lemon’s body weight was slumped against it, his head in his hands. ‘I had no idea …’
‘I love you!’ he howled. ‘I fucking love you!’
Further along the line a pair of tipsy grooms checking their horses by torchlight started to giggle, and Lough fought an urge to ask Lemon to keep his voice down.
‘Hugo’s like an upper-class rat – everything you throw at him, he survives: bad rumours, falls, brake failure, failed deals, lost sponsorship.’
Lough felt a cold scorpion trail of recognition scuttle up his spine and sting him behind the ear.
‘You were behind that?’
Nodding, Lemon sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. ‘He needed to suffer. I thought I’d die of unhappiness when I realised you were in love with Tash. It took me a while to figure that you chasing his wife would hurt Hugo more than anything I could throw at him, and I was right.’
‘Christ alive,’ Lough breathed. ‘You could have killed him.’
‘Nah. He has nine lives, like a cat. An aristo-cat.’ He laughed that odd, whooping laugh of his, part hyena, part kookaburra.
Lough stood in the darkness, barely able to take it in. He’d always known Lemon was crooked, a shady little horse-handler who had longed to be a jockey and never made the grade, who knew every dirty trick in the book when it came to racing and had no compunction when it came to transferring them to horse trials.
He had been an intrinsic part of the mix that enabled Lough, the poor scholarship boy turned country vet, to succeed against all expectations in a sport where huge financial backing was essential. Lemon’s racing contacts had provided an essential income – highly illegal, deeply regrettable but the only way they could ever cover their costs for long enough to break through to the big time.
To his shame, he had never thought to question why Lemon was so loyal to him, why this little renegade, an Artful Dodger with no close family and no ties, had stuck with him through thick and thin over so many years now. Love would have been one of the last reasons he’d have come up with if asked before now.
‘Neither of us got what we wanted in this fucking country, did we?’ Lemon was muttering bitterly.
‘Maybe we just didn’t know what we wanted when he came here,’ Lough replied carefully, thinking of Beccy.
Lemon’s anger stripped his voice to a croak. ‘Well I’ve had enough, yeah? I’m not staying on after this season.’
‘That’s your choice.’
‘I want to go travelling through Europe.’
‘Sounds a good plan.’
He looked up, eyes still full of tears. ‘You’ll let me go just like that?’ He snapped his fingers.
‘If you want to go I’m not going to stand in your way, Lem. But you owe Hugo an explanation, an apology, before you go.’
‘Fuck. Listen to you! You sound like one of them.’
‘Tell Hugo what you did.’
‘He could have me arrested!’
‘Of course he won’t.’
‘I don’t do all that fucking toadying like you – “I’m terribly sorry I tried get in your wife’s knickers, old man.”’ He laid on his bad cut-glass English accent. ‘“But I tell you what, I’ll take your mad, crippled sister-in-law off your hands and let’s call it quits shall we?”’
‘Take that back!’ Lough snarled, making Toto jump to the back of his box, eyes boggling.
‘I can understand Tash, yeah,’ Lemon ranted on, ‘she’s a fit bird, and funny and a great cook, but Beccy? My cast offs? She’s a spinner. C’mon, Lough, you can do better than that.’
The punch flew out from the black stable so fast Lemon didn’t see it coming. The next thing, he was sprawled on the grass in the moonlight, literally seeing stars.
Letting himself out of the stall, Lough checked that he was conscious.
‘You’d better pack your things and go tonight,’ he told him. ‘I’ll send the rest of your stuff on later.’
‘You can’t sack me in the middle of Burghley!’
‘I just have.’ He reached down and took the photo ID from around Lemon’s neck. ‘You have an hour to leave the site.’
Standing up unsteadily, Lemon glared up at him. ‘You’ll regret this,’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Rory Midwinter won’t win tomorrow, you know, even if you and half the rest of the field withdraws.’
‘We’ll see.’
Rolling his jaw, Lemon narrowed his eyes, aiming a huge bullet of spit at Lough’s feet before walking away.
Sitting down outside Toto’s stable, suddenly drained, Lough pulled his mobile from the pocket of his jeans and phoned Beccy, surprised to find the background noise almost drowning out anything he could hear of her.
‘We’ve only just started pudding,’ she explained. ‘It’s all been very exciting. Tash and Hugo have the most amazing news. Hang on – I’ll put you on hands free so I can use my crutches to get away from the table.’ There was a lot of crackling and rustling. ‘That’s better. God, I wish you were here.’
‘I need to focus,’ he reminded her, adding, ‘and I’m hardly welcome at their table.’
‘Oh, he’s already over it. He’s going to be a father again. Tash’s pregnant!’
‘Christ.’ He felt a blade run through his side. Yet it hurt a lot less than he feared; it was barely even a flesh wound. ‘But she had a bad fall today. Is she okay … the baby?’ Terrible echoes were haunting him.
Despite the hubbub around her, Lough knew that Beccy understood. They’d haunted her too. ‘Both are in great health. The hospital gave them a scan as soon as they found out what was going on. She’s already almost fourteen weeks.’
‘No kidding?’ He tried not to think back to all the desperate, lovelorn lusting he had been doing over Tash while all the time a tiny new life was kicking off inside her.
‘Are you okay about it?’ Beccy asked nervously, having now clearly moved to a quieter spot, her laboured breaths revealing how much pain she was still in when she walked with her crutches.
‘Yeah, I’m great,’ He laughed and realised it really was true. ‘You and me will have lots of babies one day.’
She laughed too, loving how easy he made it sound. ‘You and me might even enjoy lots of sex one day,’ she sighed regretfully. ‘Hugo was right – breaking your pelvis wrecks your love life.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We can figure out ways.’
‘We can,’ she breathed. ‘God, I wish you were here now. Please come.’
He looked at his watch. ‘I can’t really. Toto’s hopping lame and Lem’s gone.’
‘Lem’s gone?’
He explained the little groom’s revelation that he had been behind the accidents surrounding Haydown and the smear campaign against Hugo. ‘I thought Hugo was mad accusing me but he was closer to the truth than I realised.’
‘Oh God.’ Her voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. ‘I knew Lem hated Hugo, but I thought it was all front. I never knew—’ Encroaching tears and panic gagged her.
‘Shh, Beccy. It’s okay. I know you feel bad, but you couldn’t have done anything to stop him, trust me.’
She was still incredibly fragile and he couldn’t wait to embark upon the long, gentle task o
f helping build her back up again, restoring her confidence and sense of self, much of which had been destroyed all those years ago when she had witnessed a sight no child should ever see, far more extreme than any spectacle he had grown up with, even his drunken father’s regular beatings of his mother. He saw Beccy as a nervous, neglected horse, like some of the wrecks he bought off the racetracks for a few dollars and whose lives had been a procession of different yards, owners, trainers and riders, sometimes crossing continents before they settled with him to be patiently given a second chance. He had a lifetime to give Beccy that chance, but he was sure it would take a lot less long than that. Emotionally neglected, over-bright, allowed to develop selfish and dysfunctional behaviour patterns, Beccy had a lot of bad habits and existed in an orbit so far removed from most of her family’s everyday lives that she could be almost impossible to reach. But when someone did reach her she was a unique, bright-burning star of such intensity and radiance it was impossible to forget her. Lough had never met anyone like her in his life. He was almost blind with love. She lived in his mind’s eye everywhere he went, but that was no substitute for the real thing, and being with her in person felt like waking up from a coma.
‘I must see you tonight,’ he realised. ‘I’ll walk over to Stamford once I’ve got Toto comfortable.’
‘We’re not staying here,’ she reminded him. ‘We’re in a golf club hotel near Bourne. I can’t remember its name.’
‘I’ll find it,’ he promised.
Tash and Hugo’s hopes of a quiet, romantic room-service meal eaten naked in bed that night while admiring one another’s bruises had been completely scuppered by so many of their friends and family gathering in a private dining room of the George in Stamford, which Sophia, purportedly wearing her indulgent event horse owner hat, had booked weeks earlier and orchestrated so that the long table was set up like a wedding banquet, with place names hand-written on little cards shaped like cross-country jumps and even themed dishes such as Hurley Burghley Soup and a fish course of Trout Hatchery Mousse.
‘Anyone would think we had won, not been eliminated the day before the show-jumping,’ Tash whispered as her family toasted them and delighted in being gathered together under one roof, chattering and bickering and gossiping like mad.
‘We have won,’ Hugo pointed out, leaning across to press a kiss to her ear.
Tash shivered deliciously as his lips traced the curve of her earlobe.
‘We survived the seven-year itch,’ she giggled.
‘Is that what it was?’
‘Penny says that’s why the seventh wedding anniversary is celebrated with wool, because it makes you itch.’
‘Too right,’ he whispered, his hand resting between her legs beneath the table cloth and starting to stroke her thigh, lifting her skirt to touch bare skin. ‘I’m always itching for you. What’s the next one?’
‘Bronze,’ she said distractedly as his fingers crept higher.
‘Sounds good,’ he breathed in an undertone. ‘I am certainly as hard as—’
‘Are you talking about your wedding anniversary?’ Sophia demanded across the table.
‘Mmm.’ Tash managed a vague nod, reaching down to trap Hugo’s hand before she started to make inappropriate pleasure-noises.
‘Your wedding day was so wonderful,’ Alexandra recalled happily, reaching for a wine glass brimming with Meursault. ‘All those beautiful autumn colours, and so many people at the party. There must have been, what, two or three hundred?’
Henrietta was having terrible trouble keeping a straight face for some reason, Tash noticed.
‘We could have a party this year,’ she suddenly realised, thinking that was just what they all needed after a hellish few months, and it would make up for Hugo’s cancelled fortieth.
But he seemed strangely unenthusiastic. ‘I was thinking of something more intimate,’ he insisted.
She was about to protest, but then his hand closed on hers and slid it from her lap to his, so that she could feel his early bronze anniversary present growing in readiness.
‘I suppose I will be pretty pregnant by then,’ she agreed. ‘It might all be far too exhausting to organise.’
Opposite them, she caught her sister winking at Hugo in a most unSophia-like way and she frowned, wondering if she had somehow missed something. With the high dramas of helicopter and hospital, she had failed to witness Sophia’s strange behaviour that day. She had not seen her sister running around the Burghley site like an overexcited girl guide, cornering event riders and owners, supporters, international regulars and British Eventing stalwarts to issue invitations, check that they knew what was planned and how exactly to spring the surprise of the year.
But Tash was far too excited by their own delicious surprise growing inside her to worry about Sophia’s strange facial tics for long.
Using pregnancy tiredness as an excuse to go to bed early, she dragged an all-too-willing Hugo with her as they left the rest of the family to petit fours and coffee.
‘The pregnant woman can have an unusually high sexual appetite in the first trimester,’ she told him breathlessly as she closed the door behind them and leant against it, licking her lips. ‘And the second, it seems …’
Hugo raised his brows and beckoned her towards him. She shook her head, slowly lifting her hands to her shoulders to edge off the straps of her tea dress. ‘Take your clothes off.’
He shot her a bemused look but did as she urged. Off came the shirt, wrenched over his head, cufflinks falling randomly. Off slid the trousers, kicked aside along with the socks. His erection was already poking from his underpants like a welcoming arm raised through curtains before he tugged them down and let them fall.
Now was the perfect moment for her Meg Ryan Top Gun running jump, Tash realised. It was time to cast aside previous false starts and failures. Tonight it would be perfect.
Flexing up on to the balls of her feet like a gymnast eyeing the vaulting horse, she looked at his true blue eyes, then his beautiful body with its blackening bruises from the fall he had taken, then his amazing, vigorous cock waiting to thrill her.
And then she sprinted faster than a triple jumper, took an elegant bounce into launch position and leaped around him.
‘Jesus!’ Hugo laughed as they tipped back towards the bed, hands on her thighs, his hips clamped between them. Then they landed together and his expression changed from joy to pain.
‘My coccyx!’ he wailed.
‘Oh God, have I hurt it?’ Mishearing him, she looked down and felt his wilting erection with a cautious hand, her probing fingers having an extraordinary analgesic effect on the back pain and a restorative effect on his sexual enthusiasm. ‘Feels incredibly well to me. Shall we test it out?’
‘Better give it a ride just to check,’ he agreed as she angled her hips and mounted.
She leaned down and kissed him, on and on and on, lips as soft as ripe cherry flesh, tongue in his mouth greeting his, hands on his face, hot body sliding closer around his in the most intimate welcome.
The four-poster bed more than earned its keep that night as Tash clung on to each newel post in turn, loving her increased sexual appetite.
*
Downstairs, Sophia gave a brief speech before her troops dispersed, making sure that they had all got their personalised instructions, checklists, guests lists and phone-tree numbers.
‘This time, nothing will go wrong,’ she announced dramatically.
Watching her from the opposite end of the table, Ben Meredith thrilled at the sight of his wife in full flow. His loins tightened hungrily and he made a mental note to fill out the breakfast in bed form as soon as they got to their room.
In a golf hotel near Bourne, Beccy limped to her door, her crutches thumping, to let in Lough. She pressed her finger to her lips and nodded towards a connecting door that led from her little room through to her mother and James. If one were to stay very quiet it was possible to hear James snoring.
They were in
deed quiet, although inside their bodies firework noises raged. Kissing filled their heads with rushing blood, heartbeats in their ears, electric crackles in their groins.
Lough could only stay for half an hour, he explained in a whisper. He had borrowed an ancient scramble bike from a fellow rider, but he had to return it by midnight, like Cinderella’s pumpkin, and check on Toto again.
He wanted to stay so much. He wanted to lie her down and kiss between her thighs again, to part her downy-soft pubic hair and drop kisses there, tease out those silken petals and taste the dew on them.
Instead, they kissed like teenagers on a doorstep, barely moving from the same spot as the room spun around them, the force of the vortex making minutes become blinks of time.
‘Stay,’ she begged, her broken body so alight with love and lust that she couldn’t believe anything this heavenly could lead to pain.
He shook his head, drinking last kisses, backing reluctantly away and opening the door.
‘We have a lifetime,’ he reminded her in a whisper.
Then, unable to stop himself, he walked straight back into the room and shut the door again behind him. ‘That lifetime starts right now.’
Lying alone in the Moncrieffs’ ancient horsebox, Faith fought all her overwhelming urges to run barefoot across the lorry park to Rory’s box and hurl herself on top of him. Instead she listened to Irish jigs on her iPod and started composing a text.
When the phone leaped in her hands, buzzing with a new message before hers was complete, it almost slipped from her grip like a fish and flew through the air.
But it was just Lough, asking her to check on Toto.
Rory knocked on the door of the Moncrieffs’ old Bedford HGV, his heart hammering far harder than his knuckles. But there was no answer. It was in darkness. Faith must be asleep.
He headed to the stables to check on Whitey.
Faith had run all the way to the temporary stabling only to realise that she had left her ID pass behind so ran all the way back for it, detouring via the lorry park marquees where the last dregs of the grooms’ party were still lurching around. She was grateful to see that Rory wasn’t among the staying chasers, although Franny was attached to one of the injured German riders, her catsuit making squeaky noises as they kissed hungrily.