Tarquin shook his head as he gathered up the blanket and shoved it onto the shelf. “No one!”
But soon enough, the identity of their visitor was revealed.
“Knock, knock!” Bryan shouted. “Anyone in?”
At least it’s not Petunia.
“You’ve caught us slacking,” Chris called in reply, by now as decent as he ever was. He didn’t seem too fond of fastening his shirt buttons, which Tarquin wasn’t about to complain about. Tousled seemed to suit him.
The Oracle squealed again as Bryan opened the door and appeared with the pig. “Can you sort out this bloody pig? I’m having a barbecue after the boat race—feel free to donate her!”
Tarquin folded his arms. “I should really barbecue you—what are you doing wandering around my yard?”
“Just…saying hello.” Bryan didn’t sound convincing, and even the pig seemed to notice as she grunted in what sounded like exasperation. From the corner of his eye Tarquin saw Chris stoop to pick up the discarded riding crop, all innocence as he approached and held it out.
“Don’t forget your whip, squire.”
“Thanks, Chris.” Tarquin took it from Chris, then looked down as the Oracle nudged something with her trotter. My bloody glove! Tarquin picked it up from the floor. “Did you want to have a word, Bryan?”
Bryan didn’t appear to hear. He was staring instead at Chris. And Chris, a playful smile on his lips, was staring back at Bryan.
“Hello,” Chris said, his voice filled with mischief. “Let me guess, it’s just hit you that Bough Bottoms are going to row you into oblivion this year!”
Bryan flared his nostrils. “No, I’m merely sizing up the enemy. Prepare to lose, Captain Hardacre!” Then the schoolboy tone vanished. “Just thought I’d pop by in case anything had turned up in the house—any of your uncle’s old books or his authors’ manuscripts that you want to sell.”
“But that’s in my house,” Chris observed, his innocence doing a marvelous job of shining a spotlight on Bryan’s unctuous snooping. “I can see this is the sort of village where nobody locks their doors. If you did that in London, you’d wake up with no house! I have found a treasure trove of bits and bobs, actually, right back to the earliest days of Hardacre Books, when Great-Uncle Beardsley was struggling to get it off the ground.” He dropped his voice. “And a few bits about Pierce too. Nothing important, just the odd handwritten letter and…what was it, now? Oh yes, the original signed contract for Madam Fanny’s Floral Pomander.”
Bryan’s eyes had been growing larger and larger. “You—you found all that? Do you have any idea—? If you want me to find a buyer, you need only say. Sorry—I popped over as I didn’t get an answer at your house and thought maybe you’d asked Tarkers for some sugar.”
Tarquin pressed his lips tightly together as he restrained his urge to laugh.
Some sugar!
“I came over to get some riding tips from the Master of the Hunt,” Chris told him, stepping out into the sunlight. “I can’t sell any of it yet, Bryan, even if I wanted to, which in the case of the Hardacre Books stuff, I don’t. If I don’t have the Oracle of Delphi living under my roof one month from today, I forfeit everything. The house—all my improvements to it included—the contents, the Hardacre Books archive, it all goes to my great-uncle’s last fancy, as he put it. Whoever she is, she’s probably telling the pig I’m a real villain behind my back! It’s in her best interests, after all.”
Bryan curled his lip. “Last fancy, eh? Not much fun for you—all it would take is for Porker here to take a dislike to you, or go wandering out and get run down in the road, and…lucky old fancy!”
“I’m going to win her over no matter what it takes.” Chris grinned. “We Hardacres have our hidden charms, you know.”
At Chris’ words, an expression warred over Bryan’s features, somewhere between surprise and chronic indigestion.
“It’s true, I didn’t get on with Beardsley one bit, and I never thought I could be friends with a Hardacre, but Chris and I seem to be knocking along fine!” Tarquin patted Chris’ shoulder, making sure not to linger. “Aren’t we, old bean?”
“Rubbing along,” he agreed. “So you can look me up in a month, Bryan, and we can have a pint and go through whatever stuff I might have taking up space. Anything Pierce’s off the table though. By rights it’d be the squire who got first refusal on that, the guy used to live in his house, after all!”
Bryan nodded. “He did indeed, so they say. But there’s no evidence, is there, other than gossip, of course. And who’d believe gossip!”
“There’s many a grain of truth in gossip, I’d say!” Tarquin grinned, but he really didn’t like Bryan’s rudeness to Chris. “I wouldn’t be surprised if old Pierce at least visited the Bough Collection. Right up his street!”
“Well, I’m hoping our squire might give me a personal tour when he’s got a moment.” Chris patted Tarquin’s back, sending a shiver through him. “I’m a bit of a wide-eyed innocent, so I’m looking forward to being thoroughly schooled.”
“I’m sure you’d find it educational,” Tarquin replied.
“Wouldn’t mind a tour of it myself!” Bryan remarked, but he backed away as the Oracle approached him, oinking at him with interest. Chris, however, bent down and patted his knee, as though summoning one of the resident dogs.
“Can I take her for a walk on the harness?” he asked, rubbing his fingers together to tempt her closer. “Do you think she might let me?”
The Oracle turned to Chris and gave him a spirited grunt.
“Worth a go!” Tarquin said. “It’s in the house. I’m not quite sure how she got out to the stable yard, unless she’s sprouted opposable thumbs and opened the gate, but she might’ve jumped over the fence. Maybe she came to see you?”
Then got distracted because Bryan was poking about.
“Well, I’ll leave you be. But, Chris?” Bryan drew one of his silk-embossed business cards from his pocket and braved the pig in order to slip the card into the pocket of Chris’ shirt. “Call me, okay?”
“I will, Bryan Reeve of Shillinglaw.” He patted his pocket. “But not until my month is up.”
“Bye, then!” Bryan swaggered away over the yard, and once he’d vanished around the corner, Tarquin rolled his eyes.
“He’s so smarmy, isn’t he? I don’t know how Petunia can bear to work with him!”
“No Reeve is getting his hands on anything of mine,” Chris admitted. “If he’s related to the guy I knew at Leadbetter, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I’d trust this little Miss Piggy though, look how cute she is!”
The Oracle had been sniffing the ground, as if memorizing Bryan’s scent for future reference. Now she looked up at Chris, one ear flopped back, wrinkling her snout at him. He cocked his head to one side, matching her gaze.
“Fancy a walk and a song?” Chris asked the pig. “Uncle Tarkers too, unless he’s got farming to get on with.”
“Other than sorting out the cows and sheep later, I haven’t got much on today,” Tarquin said. Other than some very tedious paperwork. “If we head over to the house, I’ll grab the harness and you can have a go at putting her into it!”
“Go on then, I’m in the mood for a challenge!”
As Tarquin led the way, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jodhpurs, to avoid raising the issue of holding hands. It was cowardly of him, he knew, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to mention it. “This way, over here. See the—well, that’s funny, I’m sure I shut the gate earlier. But I came out of the side door when I was geared up for my ride, so I wouldn’t have noticed if it was still open. Oh, blast it!”
The gate between the garden and the stables was open wide, and had to have been the route taken by the Oracle.
“No harm done, thank God she didn’t head for the road.” He stooped again, scratching the Oracle’s ears. “There’s a lot riding on this old girl!”
“Just a bit! I’ll make that gate mor
e secure, Chris. Don’t worry!” Tarquin gave him a wink, then headed through the backdoor, where the Oracle’s harness hung on the back of a kitchen chair. He reappeared, holding the harness aloft. “Here we are! Fancy having a go?”
“How tough can it be?” Chris held out his hand. “Let’s get her safely fastened in! Anything I need to know before I start?”
“Erm…you need to know she’s very strong, but I’m sure a strapping chap like you should manage!” Tarquin passed him the harness. Their hands touched and Tarquin sighed. “Sorry. And the other thing to know is, that’s the front. It was tailor-made for her, so it fits her perfectly.”
Chris knelt down before the Oracle, clutching the harness in his fists. What followed seemed to Tarquin something close to watching a man try to put a harness on a large, water-filled balloon. The pig was never keen on the device and now, faced with an amateur, she slipped free time and again. Only when she managed to elicit a groan of frustration from Chris did she seem to grow tired of the sport and allow the harness to be put around her. Then she trotted into a shaft of sunlight and settled down to snooze.
Tarquin clapped softly. “Well, you got there in the end, although it doesn’t look like she’s in the mood for a walk!”
The Oracle shifted in her sleep and the harness slid down on the yard, slipping from her plump form. Chris winced and shook his head, a man defeated.
“The pig has spoken,” he sighed.
Tarquin patted Chris’ arm in consolation. “Nonsense! You just need to make it tighter next time.”
Chris smiled and nodded. Then he rose to his feet and said, “You’ve probably seen enough of me for one day, after all! Thank you for the most wonderful time, squire.”
“Thank you, too!” Tarquin held out his hand to shake and Chris took it. Was that what men did after an enjoyable spanking session? It seemed the gentlemanly thing to do.
Chapter Nine
Tarquin had been down into the cellar to choose the wine for dinner and emerged garlanded with cobwebs. Chris wouldn’t have thought much of the squire like this, with a layer of dust on his jumper. But Chris shouldn’t think of the squire at all, because Tarquin was engaged, and even if he really liked Chris, and kept thinking about him, but had been deliberately avoiding him for the past couple of days—
“Found a very nice claret, if that’ll go with dinner, Petunia?” Tarquin held out the bottle toward Petunia, who was cooking at the stove.
“It should,” she called over the strains of Classic FM. “My beef Wellington is looking typically amazing! No soggy bottoms here, Mr. Hollywood!”
Bottoms. Oh, Chris. Chris and your lovely bottom and your lovely erection and your lovely kisses and your lovely chest and your lovely arms and your lovely hands.
The bottle!
“Oh, bloody hell!” Tarquin’s experience as a fielder in Bough Bottoms’ cricket team came into its own at that moment as he managed to catch the bottle of claret an inch before it hit the stone flags of the floor. “Whoops, clumsy old Tarks!”
She rolled her eyes, then twirled and asked, “How do I look? Summery? I want to look like I might be off to the Proms.” Before Tarquin had a chance to answer, Petunia peered intently at the bottle he had saved. “Oh, not that one, Tarquin, we’re not our parents at Christmas!”
“But I had to go into the far reaches of the cellar for this!” Crestfallen, Tarquin slowly turned the bottle, admiring its vintage label. “Do you want me to go back down there and get another? There’s spiders down there.”
“There’s spiders down there,” Petunia mimicked. “Go and get something less…boring. And tell me I look adorable in my dress! If we’re not going to Henley this year because of your boring old farm, I’m wearing it tonight instead!”
“You look very nice.” Tarquin crossed the room and puckered his lips to give her a peck on her cheek, his stomach churning with guilt. “Sorry about Henley. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Well, you know how to do that.” She puffed her fingers through her hair and cocked her hip so her full skirt with its pattern of pink roses flared toward him. “Three little words?”
“Erm… the Oracle of—oh, no, that’s four words.” Tarquin stared at her blankly. “Chilled pinot grigio?”
Petunia smiled and shook her head. She did it to be coquettish but instead it just made Tarquin think that he was sailing very close to a telling off. That meant he had given The Wrong Answer. She tapped one finger to his chest and tutted. “No. What three little words would I love to hear from my fiancé on this gorgeous summer night?”
Oh hell.
Tarquin took her finger, as if grabbing a woman’s finger was somehow romantic, and stuttered, “I…I love you?”
Petunia frowned, then her expression grew dark and she snatched her finger back. “Centre Court tickets! For God’s sake, Tarquin, you promised! For the gents’ final!” She turned back to the Aga and stamped her foot. “I love you? That’s not going to get me into Wimblers, is it?”
Tarquin blinked at her, deflated.
Silly me, of course she doesn’t care if I love her or not.
“Centre Court? I don’t know—I could try to get some. Erm…let me go and get another bottle.”
“Don’t try,” she spat as he retreated. “Do!”
Tarquin shuffled back to the cellar. Perhaps he could stay down there and never come out again. That’d be nice. No Petunia hassling him about Henley and Wimbledon, no delicious temptations from Chris.
He turned the light on at the top of the stairs, his head bowed. And as he reached the last step, he noticed something he hadn’t before.
Footsteps in the dust.
Not his own. They were smaller than his. Someone else had been down here. And there was nothing there—apart from the wine, a fuse box and the gas meter. Tarquin handled those. So why had Petunia come down here?
Tarquin followed the footprints and found that they went in a circuit of the room, up against the walls.
What the hell had she been doing?
Unless…perhaps it hadn’t been Petunia at all. Perhaps it had been an intruder. But the cellar had been locked—even though the key hung on a board in the pantry. It was hardly the most secure set-up.
Tarquin picked up two bottles of pinot noir and headed up to the kitchen again. “Tuney? Have you been in the cellar?”
“God, no, never!” She didn’t look up, intent as she was on stabbing the blade of a sharp knife into a large camembert at the kitchen table. “I thought we might start with a Pimms and eat out on the lawn. Don’t you think?”
“Outside? But wouldn’t it be nice to use the dining room?” Tarquin rummaged for the bottle opener in the drawer, instantly annoyed by the plethora of elastic bands and corks he had to fight through first. “Be nice to show off the Stubbs painting to our guests now it’s been cleaned!”
“I know.” She nodded. “So pop out and make up the table, nothing like eating out as the sun goes down!”
“But—” Tarquin swallowed. Anything for a quiet life. And I’ve been a very bad man. “Right. Outside it is, then. Tablecloth and umbrella?”
Her reply was another roll of her eyes and another stab of the knife. It was up to him, then. Of course it was, how else could Petunia find something to pull him up on?
Tarquin gathered up the cutlery and the tablecloth and headed outside to begin the task of laying the table. He heard drilling coming from somewhere on the evening breeze, and that same breeze caught the tablecloth, which billowed out like a sail. And that set off the dogs, who right at that moment had rounded the corner of the house with the Oracle in pursuit.
“Shush, you pack of noisy sods!”
“Is that Christopher drilling?” Petunia was at the door, her knife in one hand and the boxed camembert in the other. “He’s due in twenty minutes. Why is he drilling? What time did you tell him, Tarquin?”
“Time?” Tarquin paused, mid-wrestle with the tablecloth. “Why would I be telling Chris the time? Doesn’t
the man own a watch?”
“Did you tell him seven for seven-thirty?” she asked, but it was more like an accusation than a question. “You didn’t tell him to arrive at half past, did you? Oh, Tarquin, why would you tell him that?”
The cold truth dawned on Tarquin like a bucket of icy water over his head.
“Oh, bloody hell, I forgot!” Tarquin threw the tablecloth onto one of the chairs and ran his hand through his hair. “Clean left my mind!”
Because, to be fair, Tarquin’s mind had been occupied with rather a lot, the memories of the tack room dominating his every waking thought.
The dogs and the pig retreated.
“You—” She stared, her eyes wide with fury. Oh God. The dam’s breaking. Then the dam burst and Petunia bellowed, “Well you’d better get over there, get him by the nose and march him over here because I’m baking a camembert, my beef Wellington’s in and the Eton Mess is chilling. I wonder why I put up with you sometimes, you’re useless! A complete waste of bloody space!”
“Fine. I’ll go and see Chris, then.”
Because at least he doesn’t think I’m a waste of space.
And as Tarquin turned and stormed off toward the fence dividing his garden from Chris’, he wondered how the heck he’d ended up engaged to Petunia. In fact, he wondered why she had insisted they get married when he was fairly sure she didn’t like him very much at all.
Tarquin was careful this time to avoid any nails as he clambered over the fence and landed on Chris’ lawn. He strode across his neighbor’s garden, up to the house, and on the steps of the veranda he found himself looking through the French windows at an extraordinary sight.
It deserved to be in a calendar.
Chris was kneeling like Narcissus, but rather than gaze at his inestimable beauty, he was hammering at the parquet floor. His torso was bare, his arm flexing with each hammer blow. A quantity of his dark blond hair had fallen into his face, and Tarquin wanted nothing more than to kiss it back. He was sheened with a patina of sweat, and Tarquin’s lips parted as he remembered the taste of Chris’ skin.
The Captain and the Squire Page 9