by Fiona Walker
They wandered outside to find Pete standing back, admiring the house which had been floodlit for the occasion, the flint panels amid its mellow strawberry bricks gleaming like silverwork.
‘Nice gaff, this.’ He chewed the end of his cigar. ‘I might buy it. Make a good wedding gift for Sylva, doncha think?’
Laughing, Dillon shook his head. ‘I knew you’d say that if you came here. I think you’ve got more chance of buying Balmoral.’
‘Fair dos,’ he cackled. ‘In that case, I’ll stick to Plan A and get a big Slovakian castle that the mother-in-law can live in.’
Still inside the marquee, Sylva was eyeing Nell Cottrell’s boyfriend suspiciously. ‘You know you really are the spitting image of Prince Harry, darlink.’
He gave her the ghost of a wink.
Butterflying around the party as she had been all night, bump to the fore, Tash stopped at her brother Matty’s table to catch up and watch the action on the dancefloor. It looked huge fun.
‘I must get Hugo to come and give me a spin.’
‘Are you sure that’s wise in your condition?’ Matty asked piously, sounding like their father.
‘It is my third,’ she countered. ‘And I’m only five months gone. I’m still riding.’
‘You’re not?’ Matty looked appalled.
‘Ignore him – he was like this every time I was pregnant,’ Sally told her. ‘Keep it reel – you dance if you want to.’
‘Why wait for Hugo?’ Niall stood up and took her arm graciously, not noticing that behind his back Zoe and Sally were issuing frantic hand signals for Tash to watch her feet.
Tash was certainly reeling from all the friends and family who greeted her with such affection everywhere she went, never more so than on the dancefloor where she was so elated and dizzy that she hardly noticed Niall stamping all over her flat pumps as she spun between them all, tears of happiness in her eyes.
Then she suddenly found herself standing opposite Hugo, and the lights dimmed as the band struck up a beautiful, mournful bluegrass number.
Tash sank into his arms, breathing in his perfect smell. She rested her cheek in the hollow crook beneath his chin as they started to sway. She was so giddy with euphoria that she didn’t immediately pick up on his tension.
‘Oh that’s so romantic – look at them.’ Henrietta sighed tearfully from the table she was sharing with Alexandra and Pascal, a rather uptight James, Hugo’s mother Alicia and a lovely couple called the Seatons.
‘Hugo and Tash are still so terribly in love, aren’t they?’ Gin Seaton agreed wistfully, glancing at her husband of almost five decades who hadn’t danced with her since their youngest daughter had got married fifteen years earlier.
‘Oh what are they doing?’ Alexandra demanded, unable to see past one of the alarming six-foot cacti that Sophia had posted around the room.
‘Having a bop, obviously,’ James muttered stiffly, wishing Henrietta hadn’t insisted they all stick around together like this. He found sitting with his current wife and ex-wife incredibly awkward.
But Henrietta and Alexandra felt no such embarrassment. Increasingly close these days, they had been chattering away all night; about Lough and Beccy who were currently in New Zealand but due back any day and planning to move in together at the little yard he was renting near Salisbury (‘Beccy said she met his father yesterday, which came as rather a shock because I’m sure Tash told me he was dead’); about Polly, who was scandalising her fashion college (‘She’s so lazy, she stuck two bits of gaffer tape on a model’s nipples for her first design show and was called a genius by someone who’d worked with Gaultier’); about Em’s return to work and Sophia’s plans to start up a three day event at Holdham to follow on the heels of her successful music festival. Most of all, they enthused about Tash and Hugo, and how blissfully happy they were after such a shaky year.
They both took as proof of total marital perfection the fact that the couple had secretly commissioned almost identical anniversary presents for one another – from Hugo a bronze sculpture of Tash’s beloved late stallion Snob, now proudly leaping a brick and flint plinth on the rear lawn, and from Tash a bronze of Hugo’s late, great horse Bodybuilder standing by the gate of Flat Pad where the two horses were buried.
‘How could they afford it?’
‘They each sold a horse to pay for them. Rather ironic, when you think about it.’
‘Oh, what are they doing now?’ Alexandra craned round the cactus.
‘Tash has her arms around his neck,’ Henrietta told her. ‘And he’s muttering sweet nothings in her ear.’
‘How wonderful,’ she sighed.
Tash’s bubble of happiness deflated slightly as a very irritated Hugo told her in a fierce undertone that he didn’t like her dancing with Niall, ‘especially not when you’re pregnant. He’s always had a perverted thing about pregnant women, especially you.’
‘He hasn’t,’ she scoffed as they swayed romantically in the centre of the dance floor.
‘You two practically had phone sex when you were pregnant with Amery,’ he hissed. The deep jealousy about Tash’s ex was hardwired through him.
But he wasn’t the only one who still harboured long-held, badly buried suspicions.
Cocooned by her pregnancy since Burghley, Tash had sat on her fears like a hen on a nest of eggs. In the hectic end of season mélêe, she’d found no more evidence of Hugo’s adultery, but she remained mistrustful. There may have been no incriminating messages stored on his phone when she’d sneaked a look, and there had been no obvious floristry purchases: she’d started shopping in Waitrose again, and the chatty manageress sympathised that romance must have faded a little now that Hugo had stopped buying her flowers each week. Yet Tash couldn’t shake the dread that snaked around her throat late at night, especially when Hugo was away. And tonight it was asphyxiating her. It burst out from nowhere, ransacking her unconscious and charging like a bull from the back of her mind.
‘You can talk,’ she muttered into his chest.
‘I can talk?’ He steered her through the bodies canoodling on the dancefloor.
‘Who exactly is V for a start?’
‘V?’
‘Yes, bloody V,’ she wailed, leaning back to look him in the eye. ‘The V who texts you. The one you meet for secret trysts on cross-country courses all over England.’
One or two couples nearby were starting to look across at them worriedly.
Hugo’s eyes darted. He looked cornered.
‘Is she the one you used to buy flowers for at Waitrose every week?’ Tash demanded, suddenly fighting tears.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ He had stopped dancing.
‘You were spotted!’ she accused, voice rising. ‘The manager told me you were in there most weeks buying flowers.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last year.’
‘Last year?’
She nodded. ‘Just before the Olympics.’
Nobody around them could ignore the fact that they were arguing. The band tried to play louder, but the happy couple were very clearly having a screaming match on the dancefloor.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Dancing into range, the Moncrieffs paused nearby and Gus stepped forward, prodded by Penny. ‘Couldn’t help overhearing. Might be able to help you out on that one.’
Tash and Hugo both turned in surprise, one with tears in her eyes, the other daggers in his.
Gus cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I was the one buying the flowers in Waitrose.’
‘You were?’ Tash and Hugo spoke at once.
‘Yes.’ He hung his head with an apologetic glance at his wife. ‘Manageress there recognised that I was an event rider once – she’d seen something about me in the paper – and started asking a few questions. Put me on the spot. When she asked my name, I said it was Hugo Beauchamp.’
Tash gaped at him. ‘Why?’
He stared at the floor, swallowing unhap
pily.
Penny took Gus’s hand in hers. ‘The flowers weren’t for me, Tash.’
With a mournful groan Gus pulled his wife to his chest and they slowly danced away, lost in their world of slow-release absolution.
Tash’s eyes flooded further as she watched them retreat. Then Hugo suddenly put a firm arm around her shoulder. ‘Walk this way.’
‘What are they doing now?’ Alexandra demanded across the room, while trying to manhandle the cactus out of the way.
‘Walking towards our table,’ Henrietta whispered, agog.
Hugo was as mannerly and charming as always, apologising for the interruption.
‘Gin darling, would you mind if we had a quiet word?’ he asked their table companion.
With a baffled look to the circle around her, Gin Seaton patted bullfrog husband Tony on the knee and followed the Beauchamps out of the marquee into a very chilly starlit night, the light of the near-full moon gleaming off the bronze quarters of the new statue of Tash’s famous stallion on the main stretch of lawn.
Virginia Seaton stood tall between the couple, an elegant sight-hound between two snarling gundogs.
‘This,’ Hugo raised an open palm to her, ‘is “V”.’
‘You’re V?’ Tash had known Gin for over a decade as one of her husband’s stalwart supporters and owners, a great, old-fashioned fan of eventing who continued to champion and rally for Hugo even though the Seatons no longer had any horses competing.
‘My husband doesn’t know I’m still involved,’ she admitted. ‘I bought a half share in Sir Galahad using a legacy my late aunt left me, and then a couple of other legs including Oil Tanker, but he mustn’t know.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Tash looked from one to the other.
‘I swore Hugo to secrecy,’ Gin apologised. ‘Your sister and Ben own the other half of Gal plus an equal share in Tank, and I’m terrified this will get back to Tony. I had no idea you would think our text messages were in any way naughty, although I confess I got a bit nosy when I knew things were bad between you. Hugo has become such a chum, and I adore you both. Gosh, I can’t believe you thought we were having an affair. How thrilling! That really has cheered me up.’
Over seventy, with a body as gangly as a scarecrow’s, hair like a teased-out Brillo Pad and thread veins running through her cheeks and across her chest, she was no great temptress, but when she headed back to the marquee she had a skip and a wiggle in her step as never before.
In the marquee the bluegrass music played on, a dolefully pretty song about a soldier returning from war to find his wife with another man.
Hugo lent back against the bronze horse and eyed Tash warily, uncertain if he’d been forgiven.
‘Why are you so secretive?’ she asked him.
‘I’m not.’
‘Women throw themselves at you.’
‘Quite painful if they land on me at speed.’ His true-blue gaze almost wiped her out with the force of its love. ‘I could never desire another woman as I desire you. Never. I was designed to adore one woman for life, and to my eternal gratitude that’s you, Tash.’
She let out a whimper of delight and, throwing caution to the wind, joined the masses in jumping on him.
She was perfecting her Meg Ryan leap, but it still wasn’t quite there yet, especially when five months pregnant.
He let out a low groan of pain and toppled over backwards, as he usually did when she tried the move. Wife wrapped around him, he landed with a thud on the grass beneath his recently commissioned bronze. Pinned beneath the shadow of the only other arrogant bugger ever to threaten his primacy in Tash’s life, Hugo willingly acquiesced as Tash covered him with kisses.
*
‘What are they doing now?’ Alexandra demanded from inside the marquee, where she was now tethered to the saguaro cactus by her piano shawl, which was caught on a hundred tiny needles. Beside her Henrietta was carefully trying to unpick it without damaging the antique silk.
‘They appear to be copulating on the lawn,’ her ex-husband told her, afforded a clear view through the plastic windows to the floodlit gardens.
‘Oh how lovely,’ she smiled. ‘Do you remember when we used to do that, James?’
There was a loud ripping sound as a silk piano shawl was torn from a giant cactus.
Party organiser Sophia broke the tension by sweeping in along the tented link from the main house and stopping urgently at their table. ‘Has anybody seen Tash and Hugo? Only the caterers are ready to bring the cake through.’
‘I’d tell them to leave it five minutes,’ James said, clearing his throat.
‘Apparently they’re making love outside,’ Alexandra said brightly.
‘They’re just spooning,’ Gin Seaton pointed out, having better eyesight.
‘Bloody typical! We now have to extinguish eight sparklers and forty candles. And what on earth are you doing to that cactus, Mummy? It’s on loan from Kew.’ Sophia swept away again, thriving on the drama.
‘Faith, would you do me the honour …’
In the lodge cottage, where they had escaped from the party for an hour alone, Rory proposed: a full-on, traditional, down-on-one-knee, ring-in-a-box cliché of a proposal that made Faith laugh, cry and nod her head frantically all at the same time.
‘Is that a yes?’ he asked worriedly, still on one knee.
‘It’s a yes!’ she sobbed.
After a great deal of kissing, more sobbing and more laughter, Rory reminded her that, being an old-fashioned sort, he would need to ask her father’s permission.
‘Which one?’ she laughed.
‘I thought it was only fair to ask all of them.’ He kissed her again and then leant back, tracing her jawline wonderingly as he looked at her face. ‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.’
For the first time in her life Faith didn’t deny it. Right now, she felt more beautiful than she had ever imagined possible.
‘Where are we going to live?’ she asked later, after they had made love in front of the open fire, only suffering one small burn from a leaping coal and a minor bite when they rolled on top of Twitch, who had been roasting himself on the hearthrug.
‘Ah.’ He looked down at her anxiously. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Would you mind very much not moving back to the Lodes Valley? Jules has made an offer for the business, and with my Grand Slam money I think we might just about be able to afford a proper yard of our own.’
‘Where were you thinking?’
‘Well I was talking to Stefan and Kirsty earlier and they said they could definitely help us out finding a set-up like theirs, so I was rather thinking—’
‘America?!’ she shrieked.
‘Is that such a bad idea?’ He looked anxious again, but from the way she was pulling him back down on top of her and hooking a long leg around his haunches, drawing him into the most rapturous of long, breathless kisses, he guessed it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Just audible from the lodge cottage, the band in the marquee struck up ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’.
For a moment, Faith stopped kissing him and tilted her head. ‘Oh my God, listen!’
‘Yeah,’ he laughed quietly, ‘that’s pretty appropriate.’
; ‘No – not that, listen to who’s singing.’
Nobody could mistake that trademark gravelly voice ripping every male hormone from the song and punching it out to the audience, instantly turning a John Denver classic into a rock anthem. Harmonising with that, his voice as uniquely melodic and heartbreakingly emotional as his father’s was whisky and smoke, came a lilting descant, another aural curveball that sounded mesmerising.
On stage in a party marquee on the Berkshire downs, for the first time ever, rock legend Pete Rafferty was dueting with his son Dillon, accompanied by a lot of very drunken, crooning event riders.
‘We could ask them to sing that at our wedding.’ Rory smiled down at her, lips diving in.
They kissed through three verses,
rapturous applause and an encore.
When the Denver hit had reached its culmination with another huge, explosive cheer from the marquee, the piano struck up with Dillon still at its keys and his father at the microphone, a song so suited to his sexy timbre that all the hairs in their already goose-bumped bodies stood on end. This time, he was joined in the duet by a female voice of immense, spell-binding power, possibly even more ravaged and sexual than the Rockfather himself.
It was so good that even Faith and Rory had to stop kissing to listen.
‘Who the …?’ Faith laughed in wonder as the woman, her tone so sultry and lived-in that Janis Joplin could have come back to life for one night, told her audience all about making whoopee.
‘Who cares?’ Rory’s lips traced her throat again. ‘You heard the song …’
Watching the couple grouchily from his budged-up spot alongside the warm fender, a stars and stripes handkerchief around his neck as his master’s concession to the hoedown, Twitch crossed his paws in front of him and rested his chin on top of them, unaware that before very much longer he would be swapping the rats and squirrels of West Berkshire for the opossums, raccoons and chipmunks of West Virginia while his master made whoopee a lot.
Hugo and Tash had wandered out of the light spilling from the marquee to the shadows of the gardens, stopping behind every tree to kiss and ending up against the metal rails alongside Flat Pad, where they stopped by the second bronze horse.
‘I think your mother’s singing on stage,’ Tash said, inclining her head to listen to the distant duet.
Not caring, Hugo kissed her again until her ears were muffled by heartbeats. When she resurfaced, the band was playing ‘Wonderful Tonight’.
Slipping his hands to her waist, Hugo lifted his wife aboard the bronze horse, and then hoisted himself up behind her.
‘Want to ride against me?’ he breathed in her ear.
She swivelled around until she was facing him. ‘I’d rather ride with you.’
Epilogue
Pau Three Day Event, a year later
The bay gelding was a notoriously difficult ride, particularly show-jumping. He charged into fences as though he wanted to break through them rather than leap over them, then at the last minute crouched and sprang like a big-cat attack. It was nerve-racking stuff for spectators and jockey alike, particularly with so much riding on it.