Using pregnancy tiredness as an excuse to go to bed early, she dragged an all-too-willing Hugo with her as they left the rest of the family to petit fours and coffee.
‘The pregnant woman can have an unusually high sexual appetite
in the first trimester,’ she told him breathlessly as she closed the door behind them and leant against it, licking her lips. ‘And the second, it seems …’
Hugo raised his brows and beckoned her towards him. She shook her head, slowly lifting her hands to her shoulders to edge off the straps of her tea dress. ‘Take your clothes off.’
He shot her a bemused look but did as she urged. Off came the shirt, wrenched over his head, cufflinks falling randomly. Off slid the trousers, kicked aside along with the socks. His erection was already poking from his underpants like a welcoming arm raised through curtains before he tugged them down and let them fall.
Now was the perfect moment for her Meg Ryan
Top Gun
running jump, Tash realised. It was time to cast aside previous false starts and failures. Tonight it would be perfect.
Flexing up on to the balls of her feet like a gymnast eyeing the vaulting horse, she looked at his true blue eyes, then his beautiful body with its blackening bruises from the fall he had taken, then his amazing, vigorous cock waiting to thrill her.
And then she sprinted faster than a triple jumper, took an elegant bounce into launch position and leaped around him.
‘Jesus!’ Hugo laughed as they tipped back towards the bed, hands on her thighs, his hips clamped between them. Then they landed together and his expression changed from joy to pain.
‘My coccyx!’ he wailed.
‘Oh God, have I hurt it?’ Mishearing him, she looked down and felt his wilting erection with a cautious hand, her probing fingers having an extraordinary analgesic effect on the back pain and a restorative effect on his sexual enthusiasm. ‘Feels incredibly well to me. Shall we test it out?’
‘Better give it a ride just to check,’ he agreed as she angled her hips and mounted.
She leaned down and kissed him, on and on and on, lips as soft as ripe cherry flesh, tongue in his mouth greeting his, hands on his face, hot body sliding closer around his in the most intimate welcome.
The four-poster bed more than earned its keep that night as Tash clung on to each newel post in turn, loving her increased sexual appetite.
*
Downstairs, Sophia gave a brief speech before her troops dispersed, making sure that they had all got their personalised instructions, checklists, guests lists and phone-tree numbers.
‘This time,
nothing
will go wrong,’ she announced dramatically.
Watching her from the opposite end of the table, Ben Meredith thrilled at the sight of his wife in full flow. His loins tightened hungrily and he made a mental note to fill out the breakfast in bed form as soon as they got to their room.
In a golf hotel near Bourne, Beccy limped to her door, her crutches thumping, to let in Lough. She pressed her finger to her lips and nodded towards a connecting door that led from her little room through to her mother and James. If one were to stay very quiet it was possible to hear James snoring.
They were indeed quiet, although inside their bodies firework noises raged. Kissing filled their heads with rushing blood, heartbeats in their ears, electric crackles in their groins.
Lough could only stay for half an hour, he explained in a whisper. He had borrowed an ancient scramble bike from a fellow rider, but he had to return it by midnight, like Cinderella’s pumpkin, and check on Toto again.
He wanted to stay so much. He wanted to lie her down and kiss between her thighs again, to part her downy-soft pubic hair and drop kisses there, tease out those silken petals and taste the dew on them.
Instead, they kissed like teenagers on a doorstep, barely moving from the same spot as the room spun around them, the force of the vortex making minutes become blinks of time.
‘Stay,’ she begged, her broken body so alight with love and lust that she couldn’t believe anything this heavenly could lead to pain.
He shook his head, drinking last kisses, backing reluctantly away and opening the door.
‘We have a lifetime,’ he reminded her in a whisper.
Then, unable to stop himself, he walked straight back into the room and shut the door again behind him. ‘That lifetime starts right now.’
Lying alone in the Moncrieffs’ ancient horsebox, Faith fought all her overwhelming urges to run barefoot across the lorry park to Rory’s
box and hurl herself on top of him. Instead she listened to Irish jigs on her iPod and started composing a text.
When the phone leaped in her hands, buzzing with a new message before hers was complete, it almost slipped from her grip like a fish and flew through the air.
But it was just Lough, asking her to check on Toto.
Rory knocked on the door of the Moncrieffs’ old Bedford HGV, his heart hammering far harder than his knuckles. But there was no answer. It was in darkness. Faith must be asleep.
He headed to the stables to check on Whitey.
Faith had run all the way to the temporary stabling only to realise that she had left her ID pass behind so ran all the way back for it, detouring via the lorry park marquees where the last dregs of the grooms’ party were still lurching around. She was grateful to see that Rory wasn’t among the staying chasers, although Franny was attached to one of the injured German riders, her catsuit making squeaky noises as they kissed hungrily.
She dashed into the lorry to collect her ID, flicking on all the lights in her search until she tracked it down in the pocket of her sleeveless hoodie. Running yet again, breath sharp and fast in her chest now, she dashed to the stables security gate.
‘Busy in here tonight,’ the official yawned, having only just waved another one through a minute earlier.
Faith checked first Whitey, who whickered eagerly, still wide awake and fit to party, and smelling strangely of freshly crunched mints, then Rangitoto, who looked sleepy but comfortable despite keeping all his weight on three legs.
She hurtled back to the horsebox park, battling the urge to detour via the big, shiny Beauchamp box like a heat-seeking missile.
It was no good. She just needed to stand near him.
Creeping up to the Beauchamps’ box, she propped herself up on the steps as silently as she could and peered in through the nearest window. It was almost dark inside; the little reading light was on above the Luton and the curtains open to reveal a crumpled sleeping bag, but nobody was occupying it.
When Rory wandered back past the Moncrieffs’ old Bedford he was
surprised to see all the lights on this time, the lorry glowing amid its darkened companions like a party boat in a sleeping harbour. But there was nobody aboard.
He turned away with a sigh, disappearing around the tail end of the lorry just as Faith appeared at the cab end, wearily sorting out the correct key to let herself back in.
She got straight back into bed and texted Lough that his horse was okay but sore.
Her DVD player was still on her bunk. She watched Jim and Jessica’s kissing scene again, but the battery conked out half way through.
She remembered Fearghal’s words: ‘Of course you must tell him you love him. Just wait until after the trials.’
He was right, of course, she told herself as she switched off the light and closed her eyes tightly. It was just another fifteen hours until the outcome.
Her eyes snapped open.
What did Fearghal know, she thought hotly, sitting up and groping for her phone. He was just a dodgy horse dealer from County Mayo. Hadn’t he said that her mother was the one that got away? That meant he had got it wrong all those years ago and had let Anke get away. Well, she couldn’t risk that happening with Rory.
Whether you win or lose tomorrow
, she typed out on her little phone,
I love you with all my heart and I always will
.
Closing her eyes and screwing up her face, she pressed Send. Then she hid under her duvet, groaning with shame.
Her phone beeped back within seconds.
I love you too.
When Rory and White Lies trotted into the arena at Burghley as the last combination to jump, they had just one fence in hand as a safety margin against any mistakes that might rob them of the title and the Grand Slam.
The crowd, knowing how much was riding on this round, were absolutely silent.
In their midst, even Sylva Frost was holding her breath and jabbing Pete in the ribs to stop him signing autographs over the membership enclosure fence and start concentrating.
‘That the butch bird you were shagging from the stables?’ he asked vaguely as Rory trotted past, waiting for the bell.
‘Darlink, this is a man called Rory,’ Sylva told him, handing him his prescription sunglasses. ‘He is a friend.’
‘You want me to buy you this horse?’ He checked as he put on his glasses and realised that what he had taken to be a big-boned woman riding a large white cow was in fact a pale-faced man riding an ugly grey horse.
‘No,’ she purred. ‘I want the black mare Kevin the French boy was riding.’
‘Righti-ho.’ Pete yawned, grateful that wearing his dark glasses meant he could close his eyes without being rumbled. All the sex was exhausting. At least this was the last horse and they could get back in his chopper soon, although he feared his chopper might get another rotary action from Sylva’s tongue. She was showing a great predilection for high-altitude sex, which made piloting tricky.
Sitting beside his father, Berry on his knee, Dillon ignored Pete’s loud yawns and concentrated on Rory, Fawn’s hand in his with her fore and middle fingers crossed as the unprepossessing grey horse lumbered towards the first fence.
Whitey had never respected coloured poles as much as he should, and in old age he had become increasingly arrogant and eccentric towards them.
He was as fit as he had ever been. He had bounded through the final inspection with such enthusiasm and spring that the ground jury had laughed as they passed him with a wave, unlike poor Rangitoto, who had not even tried his luck.
With the overnight leader withdrawn, the way was clear for Whitey to convey his rider to victory, but he was never going to make it easy for Rory or the breathless crowd.
He barely lifted off the ground for the first fence, crashing through it so belligerently that horse and rider almost stopped, disoriented. The crowd groaned, sensing a huge anticlimax in store with poles set to fly everywhere.
He hit the next three fences so hard that it was a miracle they didn’t come down; the top pole of the fourth jumped clean out of its cups before landing neatly back down in them, then he rattled the next two.
It seemed he was almost enjoying the anxious gasps from the crowd every time he tapped those flat black feet down on the wooden poles. Later, some spectators swore that he winked a dark eye at them as he lumbered past the stands.
Yet they were soon half way around the course and everything apart from the first was still up.
In the collecting ring Stefan, lying in second, couldn’t bear to watch.
Bang, rattle, bang, Whitey clouted the double of gates and the angled oxer. Thwack, clunk, rattle, he scraped over the stile, the triple bar and the wall. He then set the top plank swinging and muddled his stride up so much that he dipped a leg in and out of the big parallel, somehow leaving it untouched.
But as Rory rounded the far end of the arena to set up for the final line, a treble combination followed by an upright, something seemed to go wrong and he looked down in alarm, then leaned forwards to look at Whitey’s head.
He was riding in a hackamore, a bitless bridle that gave control by exerting pressure on the horse’s nose and thus relieving his mouth where the bit had left him a little desensitised after cross-country day. A hackamore required a greater degree of skill from the rider, but Rory had been using it with the horse for years and knew he was safe in it as long as the contact was light.
Now the contact was so light it was non-existent.
One rein had broken, severed just beside the metal arm of the bridle that applied pressure to the horse’s nose.
Rory was racketing towards the final four fences on the course with no steering and limited brakes.
‘Ohmygod!’ In the grandstands beside her mother, Faith covered her eyes and wailed.
In the collecting ring, Hugo said a prayer and held on to Tash, who gripped his hand so tightly in return that his signet ring flew off and his fingers turned blue.
Standing closer to the arena entrance, Lough groaned aloud, suddenly remembering Lemon’s warning: ‘Rory Midwinter won’t win
tomorrow even if half the field withdraws.’ It had seemed a hollow threat at the time but now, as the horrified crowd watched Rory lose control down the last line, he knew Lemon had cut the rein as a parting gesture.
‘Just do it!’ he breathed, willing Rory on. Beside him, leaning on her crutches, Beccy let out three little squeaks for each of the elements of the treble Whitey cleared. She had let out similar squeaks of pleasure last night, Lough remembered, only those had been far wilder and harder to conceal as they’d stifled all their sound effects in case they awoke Henrietta and James.
There was nothing stifled about the squeal that Beccy emitted when Whitey’s soup-plate black hooves landed back down on the turf after that final upright without spilling a pole.
The crowd followed within a split-second, roaring and screaming and clapping and whooping as Rory thrust his hat in the air and hollered with glee, patting Whitey’s grey neck and dropping a kiss on his plaits as the old horse thundered around the arena taking a victory lap, imagining himself back at Cheltenham, in the Foxhunter Chase.
Julia Ditton was waiting for the victors in the collecting ring, microphone aloft and running shoes on so that she could jog alongside Rory as soon as he came out, demanding an in-the-saddle quote live on BBC2.
But of course Rory had just one rein attached to a now-useless hackamore. And Whitey was enjoying himself far too much to slow down. He might be eighteen, but he was as fit as a fiddle and the crowd’s cheering ringing in his ears was sweet music after so many years away from the limelight. He lapped it up, literally, bombing round and round, ears pricked, eyes shining.