The Country Escape

by Fiona Walker

  Kat made her way towards them, marvelling that his speckled coat looked the most sensational shade of oyster pink in the sunlight. She had no idea where he had come from, but he seemed very affable, enduring a pompous display of alpha one-upmanship from Sri’s deputy, the larger Shetland, before turning to nuzzle Kat when she approached. From the deep hollows above his wise limpid eyes and the low sag of his belly, she guessed he was close to twenty, an elderly ambassador in horse years.

  ‘You poor old boy.’ She rubbed his withers and glanced towards the lake, amazed Sri hadn’t smelt the newbie and thundered back, teeth bared, to see him off. But she was turning a blind eye, gazing towards the house, as she often did, as though Constance was giving her a pep talk: Stop being so disagreeable with poor Katherine and take her on the Bolt.

  The old horse had rested his drooping chin on Kat’s shoulder now, heavy as a sandbag, and let out an indulgent sigh.

  Somebody must have brought him here while she was away at the show, she thought, turning to head back to the yard to fetch a head collar, anger flaring at the selfishness of whoever it was for abandoning him. He couldn’t stay in the field with the others: not only would Sri and her evil Shetland henchman try to kill him sooner or later, but he might have worms or, worse, a virus he could pass on.

  But when she came back, the flea-bitten horse had no intention of being caught, trotting calmly away every time she approached. She tried rattling a bucket of feed, but one of the Shetlands immediately charged her from one direction while his sidekick took her legs out from the other. The grey gave her a sympathetic look before trotting off to chat to the hunter and Sid. After a frustrating half-hour of trying to corner him, watching him trot away whenever she got close, Kat was at her wits’ end.

  ‘He’ll come straight away if you offer him a mint,’ called a familiar, huskily clipped voice from the gate. ‘Berwick Cockles are his favourite.’

  Shielding her eyes from the lowering sun, Kat saw a glint of blond hair and looked quickly away before the blue eyes could trap her.

  This was stooping too low, she decided angrily. Planting a poor old horse deliberately as an excuse to come here on his disturbing charm offensive was too much. ‘You have to take him back,’ she shouted across the field. ‘You can’t just dump him with me.’

  ‘I thought you were dedicated to looking after old animals.’

  ‘We can’t afford to look after everyone’s rejects.’ It came out far harsher than she had intended. ‘Sorry,’ she told the grey.

  ‘Harvey came here of his own volition today.’ Dougie was crossing the field towards them. ‘He’s always been a bit of a wanderer. He no doubt thinks the sanctuary would be the perfect spot for him after all he’s been through in the past year.’ He smiled, looking across at the lake. ‘I know how he feels.’

  ‘You need a sanctuary?’ she asked, remembering the Hedges girls saying something about a broken engagement.

  He kicked at a clump of dock with his toe. ‘I neglected poor Harv horribly when I was in LA. When things went wrong there, he was good enough to forgive me. He even came to the States to find me. I didn’t deserve it.’

  She was surprised by his honesty. She was equally surprised that he wasn’t looking at her – no flirty eyes, no high-grade smile.

  ‘In the past when I’ve fucked up, I’ve always jumped on Harv and galloped off into the sunset like a good lonesome cowboy should.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’

  ‘The sunset’s certainly here,’ he turned to squint across the lake at the red glow, ‘but old Harv doesn’t do galloping any more. Turns out he has a severe heart murmur. Only found out a couple of weeks ago. Hard for him to understand why he can’t come out and play, poor chap. It’s why he keeps going walkabout. It’ll break his heart when the hounds set off without him.’

  Without the smile in place, Dougie’s face was quite different. It was an open book, the glitzy cover that had promised racy, sexy fun briefly cast aside to reveal a far more complicated subtext.

  Looking at him, Kat registered a sharp edge of sadness behind the charm. His frustration was as belligerently, high-spiritedly hidden as Harvey’s. ‘So instead of galloping off into the sunset to join the French Foreign Legion, you came here to be a billionaire’s personal huntsman?’

  ‘I’m his equerry,’ he corrected.

  ‘Yeah, and I’m his lady-in-waiting.’

  He looked at her, eyes hardening. ‘“They also serve who only stand and wait.” What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I’m here for the animals.’

  He looked at Harvey. ‘Touché.’

  ‘I thought you’d been hired to chase and kill animals.’

  Dougie let out a weary sigh and turned to look at Lake Farm’s ramshackle buildings in the near distance. ‘This place was a hunting lodge long before the formal stableyard was built,’ he told her. ‘Centuries before the Brom and Lem was formed, the Mytton family kept a private pack. Lots of old grand families had them, a mixture of sight hounds for coursing, and running hounds to follow scent. They were kennelled behind the stables, and looked after by a veneur and his page.’

  ‘If that’s what Seth’s trying to re-create now, somebody should tell him this is the twenty-first century.’

  ‘The history of this place is amazing – there are archives dating back to the fifteen hundreds. Not many houses stay in the same family’s hands so long. Mytton men were always obsessed with hunting.’

  ‘As well as racing, card-playing, cock-fighting, shooting, drinking, whoring, religion, politics and warfare.’

  He laughed. ‘Sounds like my father’s entry in Debrett’s.’

  ‘Constance warned me about Mytton men.’

  He turned to look at her again, voice adopting a teasing chill. ‘Are any still hanging around we should know about?’

  ‘She said their ghosts gallop alongside when one rides the Bolt.’

  ‘What’s the Bolt?’

  Kat crossed her arms and lifted her chin, trying to remember the adrenalin surge of the first arrow coming at her earlier, before she’d known it had a sponge tip. She needed that daring. If she told Dougie Everett about Constance’s challenge, it would be another step towards doing it.

  She chewed her lip, glancing across the fields at the infuriating mare standing on the banks of the lake. ‘Promise not to laugh?’

  ‘Depends how funny you are.’ He raised an eyebrow.

  Dougie laughed uproariously when Kat confided her goal to ride from Duke’s Wood to the Hereford road between the church clock quarter bells on a Marwari horse, swimming the lake, jumping the haha and galloping into the grand vaulted hall.

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Constance dared me to.’

  Dougie stopped laughing when he saw that she was serious, and gutsy enough to take it on. ‘You’d do it for a dare?’

  ‘Yes.’ The green eyes brightened.

  ‘That’s why you let me shoot the apple from your head. It was because I dared you.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s a bit of an Achilles heel, really.’

  He smiled, whistling for Harvey, who threw up his head before ambling over, a Shetland snapping at his rump. ‘I’m sure Tina’s a fine teacher, but you’ll never crack the Mytton Bolt in rising trot. I could have you galloping flat out with no reins like a Cossack in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Kat snorted disbelievingly, remembering him making her ride a pony on the lead rein, followed by that day’s disastrous side-saddle dash.

  His big, charming smile wrapped its way around the handsome face. ‘What if I dare you?’

  Kat growled as her Achilles heel throbbed and she looked away before his eyes could trap hers in their merry dance. ‘Don’t you dare dare me.’

  ‘There’s nothing else for it, Harv.’ Dougie gave a barely perceptible clicking sound and the old horse looked up. ‘You’ll have to get down on one knee, mate.’

  With a long-suffering groan
, Harvey folded one flea-bitten leg under him, touched his muzzle on the ground and bowed on one knee in front of Kat.

  She laughed in amazement. ‘How do you train a horse to do something like that?’

  ‘Told you he’ll do anything for a Berwick Cockle.’ Whistling for Harvey to stand up again, he reached in his pocket for a sweet as reward. The horse rubbed his long, freckled face against his master’s side before resting his chin on Dougie’s shoulder, still crunching his mint, eyes contentedly half closed.

  ‘How could any woman resist a proposal like that?’ Kat patted Harvey, who lifted his head to give her a whiskery, sweet-smelling nudge.

  She knew there was a lot more to it than bribery. The bond between man and horse was so absolute. She longed to have even a tiny bit of that total trust relationship with Sri, but the mare was always leader, and Tina was clearly running out of ideas. Her instructor had urged her to get more help and Kat badly needed more control to have any chance of riding the Bolt. Training with a top stunt rider would be a huge advantage, she realized, even if he was an incorrigible flirt. If she was clever, she could even do some detective work about the mysterious Seth and the estate’s future plans. She just had to remember not to look him in the eye. Being shot at was far easier than being seduced, and she had no intention of letting either happen when she had her goal in her sights.

  ‘You really think you can teach me to gallop in a fortnight?’

  ‘We guarantee it, don’t we, Harv?’ He rubbed a knuckle on the freckled neck and the horse nodded. ‘He’d shake your hand farewell and kiss your cheek, but he always saves that for a second date.’

  Harvey’s ears pricked as a spluttering car engine came roaring over the potholes towards the yard.

  ‘That’s Mags’s car.’ Kat started towards the yard. Behind her, the old grey horse followed Dougie out of the field with no need for a head collar and rope.

  ‘Are you still surviving with no bath?’ Dougie asked, as he closed the gate behind them.

  ‘Tina lent us her kids’ paddling pool.’

  ‘You bath in that?’

  ‘It’s for the ducklings.’

  Unloading his guitar and amp boxes from the old Citroën, Russ was at his most bristling, highly irritated to find Dougie there (‘Thanks to you, every child in Eardisford now wants a lethal weapon – eyes will be lost, mark my words!’). He was clearly itching for a fight, but Mags hustled him inside, bossily telling him to get out of his badger suit.

  ‘Do they live here?’ Dougie watched them go.

  ‘Not really. Mags shares a cottage with Calum and his warring kids in the village and Russ shares a leaky caravan with a lot of mice in the orchards.’

  ‘And you give them sanctuary?’

  Kat knew he was gazing at her again. ‘They help me a lot.’ She saw him out of the back gate on to the estate track that led alongside the mill chase, patting Harvey farewell. ‘When do we start galloping?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening.’ Dougie’s voice was refreshingly businesslike. ‘Come to the yard about six. But please don’t bring the badger – they frighten horses.’

  ‘Is the target engaged?’ Dollar demanded, in her characteristic, deep-voiced monotone, when she called Dougie for an update later that evening.

  ‘If you mean Kat, I think she’s just cohabiting, although I’ve found out it could be a threesome, which is thrilling.’

  ‘Do not attempt to be funny, Dougie. And naturally I am not referring to her marital status. Do you have her interest?’

  ‘She has been targeted, and we have interest.’ He matched her tone.

  ‘This is good. Seth will be pleased.’

  ‘I need to talk to him.’

  ‘What about?

  ‘Cricket.’

  ‘He is a very busy man. He does not have time for sporting small-talk. But for cricket, he may spare a few moments.’

  Dougie explained about the annual village versus estate match on Eardisford’s private pitch. ‘It would be very good for PR.’

  ‘I will inform him.’ She rang off.

  Ten minutes later, Seth called, his voice raised over a roaring engine. ‘Dougie, yaar, how’s it hanging? This cricket thing – love it. House should be done by then, so I might bring some mates, have a party. Do we need to get a team together?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘I’ll make some calls. The Indian international coach is an old mate, so we’re cooking, man.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to –’

  But Seth had already rung off.

  ‘– field professionals.’

  Dougie whistled for Quiver and set out for the pub to break the good news in the Eardisford Arms, calling Dollar back on the way to insist that no Indian fast bowlers needed to be flown in for the occasion, although a new set of scoring numbers for the pavilion board would be great because somebody had stolen the 4s and 0s a few years earlier to use as a birthday greeting on local roundabouts.

  ‘It will be arranged.’

  ‘I take it Seth’s a big cricket fan?’ he asked, realizing he had a useful card up his sleeve.

  ‘It is his second mistress,’ she said heavily.

  ‘What’s his first?’

  But she had rung off.

  Chapter 34

  Already complaining bad-temperedly that Dougie Everett had turned the village show into a farce, Russ was furious to learn that Kat had agreed to take up his offer of help with her riding: ‘It was probably that idiot shooting arrows all over the place that frightened the mare in the first place.’

  ‘She bolted when you started your sound check,’ she pointed out, equally riled that he wouldn’t accept any of the blame.

  ‘It was not the music. You were transferring your fear to her after Dougie Everett frightened you witless.’

  ‘Thanks for your support on that one,’ she snapped. ‘You were more than happy to let me stand there once you realized Mags was the alternative.’

  ‘I knew she’d never hold her nerve like you can,’ he tried to placate her, ‘and she’d probably have punched him. But I wasn’t happy – that bastard could have caused a serious injury.’

  ‘The arrows had foam tips. Riding Sri past an amp turned up to eleven was much more dangerous, especially in a wonky tiara.’

  ‘Why did you let those old witches talk you into riding side-saddle? It’s a symbol of female repression.’

  ‘That’s not why she ran off. It was you acting like Eardisford’s answer to Brian May.’

  ‘Rubbish. She respects me. She sees the guitar as an extension of me.’

  Later that evening, Russ dragged an amp and guitar outside on an extension lead to set up just inside the gateway to the horses’ field.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kat rushed out from the mesh run where she’d been putting the chickens to bed.

  ‘Proving my point.’ He plugged in the leads. ‘It’s all about animal communication. They trust me as herd leader.’

  The herd, dozing nose to tail in the evening sun, ignored him. Grazing nearby, Sri pricked her curly ears.

  ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea.’ Kat panted up to the gate.

  He was already looping the guitar strap over his head and striking a pose as he hit the strings with his plectrum and ran through a few arpeggios.

  The horses under the tree started in alarm. Closer to, Sri flattened her ears and swung her head towards the noise, blue eyes hardening.

  ‘An alpha mare will only truly co-operate with a handler or rider she trusts and respects,’ Russ shouted over the reverb. ‘In the wild, that would be a stallion with which she co-dominates the herd. In captivity, it’s the alpha human.’

  Greedy as ever, the bigger Shetland had already trotted across to investigate what was going on, his smaller sidekick trundling up behind him.

  ‘Russ, I don’t think she wants them near you,’ Kat said worriedly, as Sri swung her head again, then launched into her floating trot towards them, teeth bared at the litt
le ponies – they ducked their heads and skidded away.

  ‘She will chase them away from me, but I am perfectly safe,’ he insisted, riffing his way into a few bars of ‘Teenage Kicks’. It was an unfortunate choice as Sri arrived in a cloud of dust, spun promptly around and gave him both barrels of her hind legs.

  The guitar took the brunt. Flattened into the rutted, dry mud by the gateway, Russ tried to maintain his dignity as Kat hauled him out to safety.

  ‘The village show must have upset her more than I thought,’ he muttered, as he limped back to the house with his broken guitar.