There was a narrow slice of time during which Henry almost cried. But he didn’t. Because he laughed, hysterically, with such volume that the ducks squawked and flew away across the pond.
“I was angry at you, but I never hated you!” George caught Henry’s bare toes for a second, tugging them. “Why the devil would you want me to hate you?”
“Because—because if you hated me, I could stop loving you.”
“You—” George swallowed, Henry saw the movement in his throat. “Did it work?”
Henry gazed at him. At that handsome face and the strong, tan neck and the suggestion of muscles under his T-shirt, at the thick, dark hair and what was visible of George’s toned, bare legs. He didn’t need that uniform to look gorgeous. Henry shoved aside all the weight of the unlived years, and wondered—if he told George the truth, what the hell would this super-heterosexual television celebrity do?
Make a documentary about closeted rural types, perhaps?
No, that wasn’t the George that Henry had loved.
“George, I…” Henry pressed his palms together.
“Captain Standish-Brookes!” Standing in the meadow at the back gate was the entire Crawford family—husband, wife, five children under the age of seven and three large Labradors. The little boys and girls stood on tiptoe and peered over the hedge for a chance to see the celebrity and their father told George happily, “They’re Robin Hood crazy thanks to you. Can we get a photo of you with the kids?”
“We’ll continue this, Fitz,” George murmured before he leaped to his feet, beaming at the children. “Of course, bring them in. I’ve probably got a couple of bowstrings somewhere if you want a souvenir, my little Merry Men and Women!”
The children cheered and George beckoned the family into his garden.
What the dickens am I still doing here?
Once the last of the Crawfords, including the dogs, had trooped into the cottage behind George, Henry dressed as fast as he could. He shoved his socks into his pocket along with his tie, pushed his feet back into his brogues and grabbed his discarded waistcoat and jacket from the bench. Then he was off, flying through the meadow, wondering how he could have been so unguarded, so bloody stupid.
You nearly told the straightest man on telly that you still hold a flame for him.
Henry didn’t stop until he banged the front door of Longley Parva Manor shut behind him as if all the devils in hell were in pursuit. He threw his armful of clothes onto the old oaken chest in the hallway and wandered into the lounge, shoelaces trailing. Bad Billy Fitzwalter stared down at him from his frame on the chimney breast.
If Henry believed in such things, he would have sworn that his ancestor had quirked an eyebrow at him.
Chapter Eight
George didn’t sleep well. This was new, for George always slept well, but his friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend-again had never professed love for him before.
Well, an old love, a flame burned out.
At three o’clock that morning he was in the sitting room with Georgina’s portrait, asking that most notorious ancestor how one went about dealing with this. She, he knew, had slept with men and women alike. She’d gambled and drunk and died rich, happy and infamous but then, she hadn’t had a TV career to contend with.
If only he had known, what a life they might have had, George and Fitz.
Life is full of what ifs, though, isn’t it?
Lucky the man who won Henry’s heart.
As the sun rose George went for a run, covering miles as he pounded through fields and along tracks and roads, head down, The Beach Boys pumping from his earphones. As he ran, as he sweated out the worries of the night and how to get the shirt back to Henry without making his friend even more uncomfortable, he formulated a plan. Henry might not want charity, but that didn’t mean George couldn’t intervene with ’orrible Ed Belcher on the sly.
He showered and breakfasted on jam tarts. Then he dressed casually in chinos and a shirt, relaxed but not too informal, before taking a steady stroll over to the Belcher monstrosity, the mansion and stud farm as much an eyesore today as they ever were. At the locked gate, George pressed the intercom and waited patiently.
“Hello? That my Bolly delivery from Ocado? If it’s not, piss off!”
Ed Belcher, charming as ever.
“Hello, Mr. Ed, it’s George! Got a mo?”
“You, is it? Television personality? Better not have a film crew with you, but if you have, I can get my PR team on the blower. What do you want?”
“Bit of a chat?”
“Not every day a bona fide celebrity turns up on my doorstep. Even one who nearly ripped my ear off—just a joke, eh? Eh?” A buzzer sounded somewhere and the gate unlocked. “Come on in!”
George pottered through the wicket gate and up the driveway toward the house. Outside was the Ferrari, one of the marks of Ed’s success, along with the Aston and the yacht and the stable full of racehorses. Like his father, who now resided in Monaco, Ed Belcher was rich beyond George’s imagining, but George wouldn’t trade places with him for the world. He had been inside the Belcher house and it was all hard edges. Glass and marble and gold—there was no softness to be found in the mansion or the man who inhabited it.
And after three decades, the jury was still out on his bloody wife too.
Ed had opened the door and was lounging on the front step with a purple Ralph Lauren jumper around his shoulders. He waved, his heavy watch sliding down his arm as he raised his hand in greeting.
“George! Hello there, how are you? Welcome once again to Longley Parva Old Hall, eh? Buck’s Fizz in the kitchen?”
“That’s how you greet a visitor.” George laughed as though Ed were his favorite person in the world. “Lead the way!”
“Steph!” Ed bellowed, his voice echoing off the shiny walls as he led his guest into the house. “Got that Buck’s Fizz ready for our visitor yet?”
The kitchen was at the back of the house, with a huge window overlooking a flat lawn that appeared to have had all of its life tweezered out of it. As, apparently, had Steph, who was pouring champagne into tall glasses on the gray granite worktop.
“Captain George Standish-Brookes, to what do we owe this honor?” She pouted at George and held out a glass to him.
“Stephanie Belcher.” George kissed her contoured cheek as he took the glass. “Sorry about the jam disappointment!”
Her face turned pale, then she rallied. “That’s what happens if you wound someone’s masculine pride, I have discovered.”
She clinked her own glass against George’s, but he was thinking about Henry again, in linen, in Brighton, licking—
Back to business.
“Fitz is a straight arrow.” Not the best choice of words, he admonished himself. “And jam judging is anonymous after the Mrs. Knowles versus Mrs. Tanvir debacle—blood on the prize sponges and all that!”
He took a sip of the Buck’s Fizz, which was rather more champagne than orange juice. How the other half live, George supposed.
Brighton, though, a hot summer day, a long summer night and—
No, that chance had flown fifteen years ago.
“What’s this I’ve heard, Eddie old chap, about you making a play for Fitz’s old country pile?” George laughed, every inch the hoo-ray even if it twisted his stomach into a knot. Here in this temple of sharp corners without an inch of comfort or a hint of chaos he saw nothing to enjoy, no color or life or living, yet he had a part to play. “You live in a bloody palace, Ed. Why would you want to move into a place that’s leaking, sloping and generally creaking with age?”
“As the saying goes, give unto Caesar that which is his. It’s my house by rights.” The corner of Ed’s mouth turned up in a sneer, revealing teeth stained with orange juice.
“You’ll need a bloody good lawyer, mate!” George looked at Steph, composing his most irresistible smile. “What’s your take on the feud that just won’t die?”
She tucked her hair behind her e
ar in a studied manner and blinked her empty blue eyes at him.
“Isn’t it all to do with that creepy man in the portrait above Henry’s fireplace? His gaze follows you around the room. I begged Henry to turn it to the wall, and he refused!”
“Come on, Steph.” George concentrated his efforts on her as he sipped at the cocktail. “Which would you rather have? A tumbledown bit of a stately dump or this? I know which I’d choose.”
And it isn’t Belcher Towers…
Steph tugged at the gold Versace chain around her neck. It left a red mark.
“Oh, this, of course! We’ve got a pool and a subterranean garage, helicopter pad and absolutely no draughts!”
“Home cinema,” Ed added, puffing out his chest. “Games room, indoor pool, fully equipped gym.” The millionaire patted his flat stomach. “And what that doesn’t fix, the doctor will, eh?”
He nudged George, crowing with laughter, and George joined in, wondering what exactly Ed meant. Was Ed silicone and Botox? Could a stomach be silicone and Botox? Who knew.
“Why don’t you come over one night, Captain George?” Steph lounged against the worktop, hand on her hip, bosom tilted forward. “Bring your documentaries with you, we can set them up in the home cinema. I’ll make some nibbles, it’d be fun.”
“Oh, God, you don’t want to see my ugly mug blown up to thirty feet tall!” George grimaced, but threw Steph a glance anyway, just to show willing. She was looking at him in turn and, as their gazes met, she very slowly drew her tongue over her top lip. This village really was a hive of drama, George realized. Enough for a dozen Christmas specials!
“Old Brooky with his top off all over my cinema?” Ed scowled. “Not my idea of a good time, Steph!”
Steph glared at him over the rim of her glass as she gulped down the entirety of her Buck’s Fizz. She clanged the empty glass down onto the worktop and put her hand in front of her mouth.
Surely she wasn’t stifling a belch?
Then she poured some more.
“Your home cinema, Ed-babes?”
“Ours, Stephy-Steph.”
With the tip of one manicured finger, Steph stroked a line down her husband’s face, all the while pouting at George.
“That’s better, Ed-babes.”
“So this lawyer business,” George said. “A good old jape, eh?”
Ed adjusted his cufflinks and grinned. “Of course not—I want my house. My house, that my family were cheated out of by Henry’s ancestor and by yours—your drunken, profligate vicar ancestor.”
“He was all of those things.” He laughed. “But he lost the scores, he didn’t fabricate them. A vicar’s word can be trusted!”
“I find it very hard to believe that anyone related to you could possibly be trusted.”
Steph rounded on her husband. “Ed-babes, Captain George is our guest.”
“It’s all right—” George began, but one look at Steph’s annoyance silenced him. Here was a chink in the Belcher armor, he realized, a possible way in. He was in the media, after all—he knew all about exploiting his angles.
“Yes—Stephy-Steph, you’re quite right. I did invite George in.” Ed raised his glass to him, smiling, but his face rapidly assumed a stern frown. “But just so you know, George, I’m deadly serious. And I will keep squeezing your ex-friend’s balls until I get my house back.”
Steph, at least, winced just a little. But she turned a bright, beaming grin that was as fake as her nails on George.
“Just Ed-babes and his little joke!”
“Squeeze all you like for me, old man,” George assured them. “You don’t accuse me of being a thief and get away with it. Oh, I might smile for the fête, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“Ha! I knew it. What a shower that man is. Prances about in his tweeds, nearly brained his best friend with a cricket bat and clings on to his outdated idea of gentility. And”—Ed leaned toward George and added in a stage whisper, jabbing his finger toward his wife—“a crap shag by all accounts, too!”
“I’m sure George doesn’t need to know about that, Ed-babes.” Steph had the grace to look embarrassed. “Darling, I told you not to repeat that—I don’t kiss and tell.”
George glanced at Steph and gave the barest hint of a wink. “You’ve always had class, Steph.”
She shrugged in a casual fashion and pouted again.
“Course she has, in spades—that’s why I married her.” Ed put his arm around her waist and drew her near to him. Then he stuck his tongue into her ear.
“Stop it, Ed-babes, not in front of Captain George!” Steph grinned at George with such a salacious look in her eye that George braced himself, hoping she wasn’t about to invite him to a threesome over the kitchen counter.
“Look, Ed, Steph, balls out and all that.” George leaned his arm on the worktop, lowering his eyelids just a little to give that flirtatious look that had led to a terrifying encounter with a GMTV presenter on the famous sofa. “I’m always looking to advance my career, and I can return the favor. Have you guys thought about TV?”
Steph nudged her husband and Ed looked up with a grunt.
“Yes, of course! Like The Apprentice. Think you could wangle that for me? I’d be great at that.” He wagged his finger at Steph, and in a voice that sounded more suited for the bedroom than the boardroom, whispered to his wife, “You’re fired.”
“I should have my own cookery program.” Steph was back to tugging her gold chain, pulling just a little too tightly as she met George’s eyes. “Footage of me out for a horse ride, then wandering about the stables in figure-hugging jods, and cut to me in the kitchen—I’d be a rural Nigella, steaming pans of prize-winning greengage jam everywhere!”
“I was thinking of something for the two of you,” George agreed, having not thought of anything of the sort until this moment. “A real power couple, maybe choosing a power couple to follow in your footsteps? Steph judging the girls—who’s more qualified, after all?—Ed judging the guys. Look at you both, you’ve got it all, I reckon people would gag for you.”
Steph beamed, then squeaked as Ed pinched her bottom and nuzzled her neck. The 1812 Overture interrupted, bursting from an intercom on the wall. Ed groaned and went over to speak into the intercom. George looked at Steph as he took another sip from the glass. He lowered it, glanced over his shoulder at Ed and whispered, “I wouldn’t tell Ed this, but I’ve a feeling I might be looking at the real star of the show.”
Steph fluttered at him, simpering her oddly plump lips. She thrust forward her bosom again and lowered her voice.
“The offer still stands—swing by sometime and let’s entertain ourselves in the home cinema.”
“Balls!” Ed slammed his fist into his palm and came back to stand beside his wife. “Bloody balls! Got a cripple on our hands.”
“Oh, that foal, Ed-babes? The one the vet’s come down from London to look at?”
“The very same. Useless, limping thing. Bound for the bloody glue factory!”
George nodded a manly nod, squaring his jaw. He should let this go, he knew. He was here for the summer and only the summer, then off around the world again, he didn’t need complications like vets and foals or—
“Never seen the stud, Ed. Any chance of a quick nose out there if you’re going anyway?”
Ed gave George a matey slap on the shoulder. “Sure thing—if you’re going to turn us into telly, then it’s a good place to start.”
George followed Ed out through a side door, along a path and finally into the stud. The smell of horses rose up around them, the business of the stables in full swing. Ed raised his hand to a man in Hunters who was waiting for them by one of the stalls.
“Most expensive equine guy in the country, Captain George—in the country! Now there’s something for your program. Wouldn’t find this fella in tweed trousers with his arm up a cow’s arse at midnight, I can tell you that for nothing!”
George nodded approvingly, thinking once more of that chap in
his pinstripe suit, that chap who had once loved him.
“What the hell is wrong with bloodlines, eh, George? Bloody good stallion, bloody good mare and what do I get—look over here, just look at this useless dog’s breakfast.” Ed gripped George’s shoulder and piloted him to a split stable door. A plaque on the wall said FOAL 12.
George wondered now at the wisdom of this but it was too late to do anything more than just stand there and peer over the door at the inhabitant of the stable.
There, standing with one leg just slightly at an angle, as though making an effort to look absolutely normal, was Foal 12. The horse was black as a starless night, wide eyes shining with hope at the new arrivals, and George knew there and then that he would be leaving this house with a pet foal. What he would do after that he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t leave the lanky little chap here.
Ed shrugged at George. “Bolt job, eh? Best thing for it. Put it out of its misery, and me out of mine—bloody packet this cripple’s cost me. Can’t race it like that, let alone ride it—look at its gammy leg! No room for passengers at my stables.”
“What’s his name?”
“Name?” Ed tipped his head back and laughed, saliva clinging to his teeth. “It doesn’t have one. Other than—that.” Ed knocked his knuckles against the plaque. “And when it’s gone, there’ll be another Foal 12. Hopefully a darned sight more useful than this thing.”
“Think of the PR, Ed.” George held up his hands as though framing a shot. “Millionaire Ed Belcher is the sort of man who cares about his foal and does all he can to re-home it even though it’s about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Let me take him, stick him in the doc, the powers that be will love it.”
Rubbing his chin, Ed leaned against the stable door and Foal 12 stepped back from him.
“You—you really think so?” Ed met George’s gaze. “I wouldn’t want any of the gentlemen on the exchange to see it and think I’d lost my balls.”
The Captain and the Cricketer Page 8