‘Thanks.’ Hugh grinned back.
‘You’re supposed to call him “Master”,’ Gabe whispered in his son’s ear. ‘Or Lord Saxton Brae.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a pompous arse, and he likes it,’ Santiago explained.
Hugh giggled. ‘You said arse.’
‘Don’t tell your mother,’ Santiago and Gabe said in unison.
Finally escaping from Kate’s clutches (Eva knew Seb’s wife meant well, she just wished Kate would stop labouring under the illusion that she, Eva, controlled any aspect of Henry’s behaviour), Eva looked around for Henry in the throng. By now the crowd had grown too big for The Fox’s modest car park and beer garden and was spilling out onto the lane.
The small gaggle of anti-hunt protestors had also grown, although not to the same extent. About twenty people were now rallying behind the vicar, whose reedy voice was magnified by his handheld loudhailer as he preached about St Francis and the importance of protecting all God’s creatures. Seeing that Barney was with them, struggling to control Jeeves who was straining wildly at his leash and looked in imminent danger of garrotting himself, Eva crossed the battle lines and went over to say hello.
‘It’s turning into a nice morning,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.
‘Not for the fox it isn’t,’ Barney said, ungraciously. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how you can fraternize with that lot.’ His eyes narrowed in the general direction of the meet. ‘Bloody Hooray Henrys.’
‘“That lot” includes my fiancé and a number of my friends. And yours, I might add,’ Eva reminded him crossly. ‘I was going to invite you to the drinks we’re having up at the castle this evening, but if you’re going to be grumpy and boring, I’ll leave you to it.’ She turned to go.
‘Sorry,’ said Barney, putting a hand on her arm. ‘I can’t come to a hunt drinks. But it’s sweet of you to ask me, and you’re right, there’s no excuse for grumpiness. I’m afraid I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘Oh? Why not?’ asked Eva.
Barney ran a despairing hand through his hair. ‘Lots of reasons. The book’s a bloody disaster, for one.’
‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ Eva said kindly.
‘It is. It’s haunting me.’
‘Well, if you’re worried, why don’t you show it to somebody? Get some feedback?’
Barney’s eyes widened with horror. ‘Feedback? Are you serious? The state it’s in now, I’d rather stick a hot poker up my arse.’
Eva frowned. Barney did have a way with words, whether his novel was any good or not.
He’d failed to mention the other main reason that he’d slept so poorly, namely the fact that he’d been wracked by erotic dreams about Flora Fitzwilliam. Flora’s American boyfriend, who’d seemed so far off and unreal when Barney first met her, now seemed to be popping up everywhere like some malevolent jack-in-the-box.
‘Flora not with you?’ he couldn’t help himself asking.
‘No. She’s working, as usual. Ever since she came up with the new plans for our party barn, it’s been more full on than ever. I think she knows Henry has mixed feelings about the barn. It’s terribly modern and it’s costing a fortune. I think Flora’s feeling the pressure a bit.’
‘If Henry doesn’t like it, why did he agree to it?’ asked Barney.
‘For me, I think.’ Eva smiled. ‘I love the new barn. I think it’s rather Swedish with all the steel posts and the retractable roof that opens to the night sky. It’s not totally finished yet, but we’re having a drinks party there tonight, to try it out.’
She glanced across at Henry, who was looking even sexier than usual in his hunting gear, his muscular thighs gripping the sides of his horse with languid, effortless grace. Worryingly, though, he appeared to be arguing heatedly with Kate.
Judging from Henry’s hostile body language, Kate must have made the mistake of trying to harangue him the way she’d harangued Eva earlier. She’d picked the wrong day to bend his ear, that was for sure. Henry had been in a foul mood all morning. For some reason Eva couldn’t understand, he’d seemed irritated to learn that Richard and Lucy Smart were both coming out with today’s hunt, even though this was hardly news; the Smarts were West Swell Valley regulars, and Richard was supposed to be Henry’s best friend. But when Eva asked if the two of them had fallen out, Henry bit her head off, snapping angrily, ‘Of course we bloody haven’t. Why on earth would you ask something inane like that?’
Eva hoped the day’s hunting would put him in a better mood, before tonight’s big drinks up at Hanborough. She felt guilty even thinking it around Barney, but she found herself rather hoping today’s quarry didn’t make it. Nothing cheered Henry up quite so much as winning, even if it was against a fox.
Just then, Jeeves triumphantly broke free from Barney’s grip, somehow contriving to slip his wiry head out of his collar like a canine Houdini.
‘Shit,’ muttered Barney. ‘JEEVES!’
Racing across the road like a hairy bullet, the terrier narrowly avoided being trampled to death by one of the huntsmen before launching himself in a frenzy at one of the pack bitches, who promptly turned around and bit him. Within moments it was pandemonium. As various hounds and hunt followers’ dogs piled into the fight, a number of the jumpier horses took fright, including Hugh Baxter’s pony, who reared dangerously, narrowly missing Jen Clempson’s head with its front hooves.
‘Fuck!’ yelled Barney, racing across the road and trying to fight his way through the snarling tangle of hounds and dogs.
‘Jenny!’ The vicar went white and dropped his loudhailer, racing after him.
Laura Baxter, also ashen-faced after the rearing incident, rushed over to Hugh and bravely grabbed hold of his pony’s bridle, doing her best to calm the frightened animal as the noise and mayhem escalated. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ said Hugh. In fact his heart was pounding nineteen to the dozen. Sparky had never reared before. But he knew his mother was looking for any excuse to stop him going out today, and he couldn’t bear to give her one with only minutes to go until the off.
Meanwhile, Barney had finally reached the dog fight. Unfortunately Henry Saxton Brae was a few seconds ahead of him and had already dismounted and plunged into the fray, extracting a wriggling and pugnacious Jeeves roughly by the scruff of the neck.
‘Is this your damned dog?’ Henry glared at Barney accusingly.
‘I’m afraid so. I’m terribly sorry. Thank you for pulling him out of there,’ said Barney, reaching for Jeeves.
‘Don’t thank me,’ Henry snarled, holding the Border terrier further away from his master, dangling him above the barking pack like a tasty morsel of meat. ‘I’ve got a good mind to let them finish him off. Or to throw him into the river. Preferably with a rock tied around his leg. If you can’t control your dog, you shouldn’t bloody be out here in the first place.’
Barney tensed. He’d been quite prepared to apologize, but Henry’s arrogant tone knocked the humility right out of him.
‘You don’t get to say who should and shouldn’t be out here, you arrogant prick. Just because you bought a castle, it doesn’t make you the fucking king.’
‘Really?’ Henry drawled. ‘By that logic, just because you’re Irish, it doesn’t make you a fucking peasant. And yet, apparently, it does.’
‘Give me back my dog,’ Barney said slowly.
‘Or what?’ Henry sneered, an ugly smile forming on his handsome face as he swung a now terrified Jeeves in the air like a Frisbee. ‘You’ll set the vicar on me? I’m quaking in my boots.’
‘Henry,’ Richard Smart said sternly. ‘Stop being a penis. Give the man his dog back.’ Richard and Lucy, both hunt regulars, had ridden over to see what all the trouble was about. Lucy was also looking at Henry with a horrified expression. She’d never seen this ugly, vindictive side of him before. It wasn’t at all pleasant.
‘Here.’ Laughing, Henry threw poor Jeeves at Barney with a
lot more force than was good for him. Only by a miracle did Barney manage to catch the dog without injury. ‘Take him and good riddance.’
Barney stood and glared at Henry. Complete silence had fallen suddenly. You could have cut the tension with a knife. Then a hunting horn rang out and the spell was broken, Seb Saxton Brae wisely taking the opportunity to sound for the off.
‘I hope Eva comes to her senses and leaves you,’ Barney hissed at Henry through gritted teeth, slipping the collar and lead back onto his traumatized terrier.
‘For a penniless pacifist Paddy like you, you mean?’ Henry’s upper lip curled. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
And with that he rode off, but not before stopping in the lane and making a point of bending down low to kiss Eva passionately on the lips. Unable to break through the crowd, she’d missed his big fight with Barney, and couldn’t understand why Barney glowered at her, stomping right past her as Henry rode away, marching back to his cottage with Jeeves without saying a word.
Flora drew her heavy knitted scarf more tightly around her and shivered. She was standing in the party barn at Hanborough, a building that, if only he knew it, Flora had come to hate even more than Henry did, watching the caterers set up for tonight’s ‘casual’ post-hunt drinks. Observing the silver service, white linen tablecloths and immaculately cut crystal glassware all being unpacked, Flora wondered what a formal drinks party might look like in Henry and Eva’s world. Not since last Christmas at Mason’s mother’s house in Connecticut had she witnessed preparations quite so out of proportion to the event planned. But Eva was so excited at the idea of entertaining as Hanborough’s chatelaine, it was hard to begrudge her the extravagance. Especially as burning money was apparently Henry’s latest craze.
The barn Flora was standing in, and that Henry in no sense wanted or needed, had cost him a cool million pounds to build so far, and it wasn’t even finished yet. Despite the fact that she had designed every inch of it, and had persuaded Eva to adopt the plans, Flora was not at all keen on the structure. She’d conceived the plans for it purely to satisfy Graydon James, who had no thought in his head beyond satisfying the International Designer of the Year award committee. To Flora the new plans were overly modernist, full of gimmicks, ludicrously expensive, and not in keeping with the history, majesty and simplicity of Hanborough Castle. But Eva had loved the changes. For some inexplicable reason, the new designs reminded her of home, although Flora could think of no example of Swedish architecture that looked remotely like this.
Eva floated in just as Flora was directing a man with a vanload of trestle tables to the back of the barn.
‘How was the big meet?’ Flora asked, trying to muster some enthusiasm. She felt so tired and depleted – ever since Mason had gone home she’d barely slept and found it hard to focus on anything except work.
‘It was fine. Very busy,’ said Eva, idly picking up a hydrangea stem from one of the flower arrangements and stripping away a dead leaf. ‘You need to eat more, you know.’
Eva had noticed that Flora’s weight seemed to fluctuate markedly depending on her mood. Thinner tended to mean more unhappy. Today Flora’s skinnier than usual frame was drowning in an oversized Guernsey sweater that Barney Griffith had given her after the first frost.
Barney was becoming a good friend, and one of the few people Flora could really relax around. He walked Jeeves past Peony Cottage most days, often stopping for a chat when Flora was just getting home from Hanborough. Thankfully he’d given up badgering her about starting her own business, or asking how things were going with Penny de la Cruz’s London gallery. They weren’t going, and if the current rate of progress at Hanborough was anything to go by, they never would be.
‘You’re not exactly Rosie O’Donnell yourself,’ Flora replied good-naturedly. ‘So who was there?’
‘Oh, pretty much everybody,’ said Eva. ‘Seb and Kate, obviously. Penny and her husband. I must say he’s very good-looking in an older man sort of way.’
‘Santiago?’ said Flora. ‘I suppose so. I think his friend Gabriel Baxter is a lot handsomer.’
‘He was there too, out with one of his little boys. They looked adorable together,’ said Eva. ‘Who else? The Smarts. Henry’s been in a very odd mood with them lately, have you noticed? He’s been avoiding Richard like the plague.’
‘Has he?’ Flora flushed guiltily, feigning innocence. She hated being complicit in Henry’s dirty secrets, but what could she do?
On the plus side, Henry’s affair with Lucy did seem to have cooled. Flora hadn’t seen them together in weeks, although she got the sense it was Lucy who was keeping her distance, rather than Henry. She hoped he hadn’t fallen seriously for his best friend’s wife. Sometimes working at Hanborough and being around Henry and Eva was like watching a train crash in slow motion. Little by little, inch by inch, they were sliding off the rails, and poor Eva seemed to have no idea.
‘The vicar and his wife were funny,’ she babbled on, oblivious to Flora’s worries. ‘She was on our side, at the meet, while poor Bill was over on the village green with Barney and a few other stragglers, chanting “save the fox”. I did feel sorry for him. Anyway, I’ve invited them both tonight. I do hope they come, although I daresay the vicar might feel it’s against his principles. Do you think he will? Barney’s already said no.’
‘Oh,’ said Flora, disappointed. Barney’s presence was the only thing that would have made coming out tonight bearable. She was just wondering how offended Eva would be if she pleaded tiredness and ducked out too, when Eva shocked her by announcing baldly, ‘You do realize he’s in love with you?’
‘Barney?’ Flora laughed nervously. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘He asked about you today,’ said Eva. ‘He always asks about you.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said Flora. ‘We’re friends.’
‘So are we,’ said Eva, raising an eyebrow, ‘but he doesn’t buy me sweaters.’
‘Only because he knows you already have a closet full of Chanel ones. I have lower standards.’ Flora stroked her navy blue Guernsey appreciatively.
‘You know I’m right,’ said Eva, refusing to let it go. ‘Just be careful, that’s all. He’s a nice guy.’
Flora stood there dumbfounded.
I know he’s a nice guy, she wanted to say. I’m a nice girl. But there is nothing – nothing – going on between me and Barney Griffith!
But by the time the words had made it from her brain to her lips, Eva was already gone, off to catch up with the hunt and see if she could get a glimpse of Henry in action.
‘Candles?’ Another delivery man tapped Flora on the shoulder.
‘Hmm?’ Flora turned around, distracted.
‘Candles. Where should I put ’em?’
‘Wherever you like,’ Flora said wearily. ‘Mrs French, the PA, should be around here somewhere. Small, efficient, almost certainly wearing tweed. Ask her. I’m going home.’
Eva reached for her Ray-Ban aviators as a dazzling ray of winter sun burst through the windscreen of her Range Rover, blinding her. Despite Henry’s grumpy mood this morning, she felt profoundly happy. The scenery might have had something to do with it. The Swell Valley looked magnificent in winter, its frosty fields glittering beneath cloudless blue skies and its ancient woodlands starkly beautiful, stripped of their leaves. The River Swell, ice cold and crystal clear, was running high after the heavy autumn rains, and even the cold, shrill wind felt welcome, blasting away all that was old and rotten and overblown and heralding a new, uncluttered day.
It felt like a new day for Eva, too. As if, at long last, the disparate pieces of her life were starting to come together. Having just shot her first L’Oréal campaign, the holy grail of beauty endorsements and a game-changer financially, her career was at an all-time high. She was going back to her native Sweden for Christmas, something she could hardly contain her excitement about. Yet, at the same time, she was finally starting to feel settled here in the English coun
tryside, with friends like Barney and Flora and Penny and even Jen Clempson making her feel less like an appendage of Henry’s and more like a person in her own right. Thanks to Flora, she now had a real say in the works at Hanborough too, which made the castle feel like her home for the first time, and not just Henry’s.
Last but not least, there was Henry himself.
Something had changed between them. Something good, notwithstanding his occasional moodiness. The tide was turning in their romance; in little ways, like him driving to the airport to meet her, or the way he’d kissed her at the meet today; and in big ways, such as deferring to Eva on the new barn. That was huge. A year ago there would have been no way Henry would have done that: let Eva have something truly her own, at Hanborough, even though it wasn’t to his taste.
He’d changed. Matured. Grown less selfish.
He was starting to think of them, not just of him.
He’s trying to learn how to be married, Eva thought happily.
Not before time, of course. But better late than never.
Once they were married, Eva felt sure he would open up to her more. This thing with Richard Smart, for example. Whatever was bothering Henry about Rich, he would share it with her eventually. Loving a man like Henry took an immense amount of patience. But Eva did love him, deeply. She understood that wounds received in childhood could take a very, very long time to heal. And when someone like Henry did confide in you, when they did make an effort to love, and trust and give, it felt more wonderful and precious than anything else on earth.
When Eva had tried to explain this to Barney Griffith the other day, he’d told her she sounded like a battered wife.
‘It’s so good when he stops punching me in the face! It almost feels like a massage!’ Barney had teased her, in his appalling attempt at a Swedish accent. Eva had laughed it off at the time, but afterwards Barney’s words had stung. Who the hell was he to offer advice about romance anyway, never mind to preach to others from on high? Eva hadn’t noticed any rings on his fingers. Just a mooning, love-struck fascination with Flora, a woman as utterly unavailable to Barney as she was.
The Bachelor Page 17