The Country Escape (19 page)

‘I heard you were back.’ Vaughan Everett
sounded delighted. ‘Not getting married this year after all?’

‘Watch this space, Dad. D’you know of any good kennel huntsmen still without a position for next season?’ When his father learned that Dougie was going to be based at Eardisford, he let out a bark of recognition. ‘I’ve been shooting there. Tremendous place. Old Ronnie Gough was a terrific card. Fought in El Alamein with your
grandfather.’

‘I assume your research team knew about my family connection?’ he asked Dollar, when he came off the phone.

‘It will be in the notes.’ She sounded bored.

‘Let me guess. It’s as irrelevant as my interest in you.’

‘I no longer consider your interest in me irrelevant.’ She glanced across at him, the red spots in her cheeks glowing along with the determined
eyes. ‘Having reflected on the matter, I believe I may be able to help you with your rebound.’

Dougie found her formality a terrific turn-on. He would have liked to pull a James Bond move and drive the car off-road to a quiet spot to explore the rebounding options alongside the seat-reclining ones, but his ongoing flirtation was severely hampered by Gut sitting on the back seat looking
car sick.

For all her cool, Dollar was not comfortable around horses, keeping her distance as she looked through the information on her tablet computer and used it to take photographs. Still pale and queasy, Gut made a silent and expert appraisal that impressed Dougie as he pointed out every conformation fault and blemish with a jerk of his head or flick of his fingers.

‘Stringhalt.’ Dougie nodded when the little man pointed out the way the horse snatched up one hind leg in walk. ‘Shouldn’t affect his action at full speed. Dad had a novice chaser moved like that, won the Foxhunter twice.’

The horse, a stringy bay called Kevin Spacey, was well raced and at the top of its game. Dougie was looking forward to some fast work on a Thoroughbred, as far detached
from his beloved Friesians as Kiki was from Dollar, but as soon as the trainer legged him up into the saddle, he froze.

Dougie stared at the glossy black avenue of pulled mane in front of him and the questioning, black-tipped ears at its end, not understanding what was happening. He could barely hold the reins, cold sweat rising, his whole body clamping into a self-protective muscle lock.
At first he assumed it was a throwback to the flu bug, but as the horse moved off and he was swamped by cold tremors, it occurred to him that this was the first time he’d ridden since the fire. As soon as he thought about it, he was fighting for breath, as though the smoke was still in his lungs. He’d never imagined it would affect him so strongly.

One short burst of canter along an all-weather
track was enough to bring Dougie close to blacking out. The line of birch practice fences in the grass ridge at the top of the hill seemed to come in and out of focus.

The gelding was an honest one because they made it over eight full-sized steeplechase jumps without Dougie contributing a single thing to the ride.

‘He’s a great horse,’ the trainer told Dollar, as they watched from
his car. ‘The owners want top price, but he’s worth it. Could do a Grand National next year. Your jockey’s a bit out of practice, I’d say.’

‘Jet-lag.’

‘Thought so.’ He smiled charitably, although he secretly thought Dougie looked desperately outclassed and distinctly out of condition. ‘Needs a few saunas to make the weight.’

‘I have an exercise regime lined up.’ Dollar smirked
and watched Dougie trot back, pale face for once unsmiling.

‘I think we should buy this one. He’s a bloody saint. Even you could ride him.’

The next horse they tried was not so forgiving, unseating his rider over a simple hurdle, leaving Dougie with a bloody nose and two black eyes.

‘We will have to disguise that on race day,’ said Dollar, dispassionately. ‘I suggest you do
not introduce yourself to Katherine Mason until it fades. It is most unattractive.’

She had been coolly businesslike all day, barely reacting to his nasty smash, or apparently noticing that he was riding like a dork on a weekend pony trek. He guessed there were some advantages to her ignorance around horses.

‘Miss Mason will be representing the sanctuary by riding in a race on Saturday,’
she was saying. ‘This will be your first encounter, so we need you to look very handsome and catch her eye.’

Dougie perked up slightly when he heard that Katherine Mason was an experienced horsewoman, capable of riding in a point-to-point. He’d had her down as a tree-hugging hippie. Getting to know her might be more fun than he’d anticipated.

‘I’ll be sure to use plenty of slap,’
he muttered, mopping up blood, imagining himself course-side at the point-to-point in a movie-location makeup trailer, hitched up amid the burger vans and bookies’ stands.

‘Slapping will not be required,’ she said, deep voice betraying an element of shock.

He eyed her with amusement. ‘One can be banned for excessive use of the Pan Stik.’

When she stared at him blankly, not
understanding, he mustered an Everett Effect smile. ‘My father always used cayenne pepper and Vaseline on black eyes – he carried a pot ready-mixed in the pocket of his hunting coat.’

‘Did he fall off as much as you do then?’

‘He hardly ever fell, but he slept with a lot of married female followers. It was their husbands who gave him black eyes.’

Like Dougie Everett, Kat was having a taxing day in the saddle, although her skills were far more basic.

‘Kick on!’ Tireless Tina called, from the opposite end of the sand arena, reading a text on her phone and not noticing
that Kat was hanging on tightly while Sri cut the corners in a fast trot, curling ears flat against her head like a diving hawk’s wings. Breaking into a loping canter, the mare then skewed away from the rails, let loose a fly buck and deposited Kat unceremoniously in the dirt before stopping and standing benignly over her. Watching from the arena rails, the Lake Farm lurchers – whom Kat had thought
safely confined to the old kennels but had followed her to Tina’s yard – narrowed their eyes against the blustery wind, which lent them a look of horrified disappointment.

Kat had been riding the skewbald Marwari mare for just over a week now and had fallen off every time. Spitting salty blood and sand from her mouth, she gathered up the reins and remounted. Constance had told her it took
seven falls to make a rider, which, by Kat’s calculation, made her a rider several times over. She had started to dread her lessons. Sri seriously objected to her retirement being interrupted. As critically steely, blue-eyed and domineering as the woman who had bred her, the mare lacked the sense of humour that had united Constance and Kat. She was a natural herd leader; a light touch, quick wit
and instinctive talent gained her respect, and Kat had none of those skills in her riding repertoire yet.

She knew she wasn’t anywhere near ready to take on Sri, who had none of the tolerance and stoicism of Tina’s old teaching horses, but her instructor seemed increasingly reluctant to lend her own, especially Donald, whom Kat was supposed to be riding in the charity race. ‘Let’s save
him for the big day!’ Tina had insisted cheerfully. Kat knew she was so bad that poor Tina couldn’t bear to watch.

Sri knew it too. The mare might have accepted Kat as the main source of feed, comfort and occasionally fun, but she was a long way from believing that she had a clue what she was doing in the saddle, and Kat could understand why. The world’s most uncoordinated rider on the
world’s most opinionated horse was not a good combination. It was like bringing a Ronaldo back out of retirement, pairing him with the local pub’s worst five-a-side player for a kick-around and expecting him to be happy about it. Even Tina struggled to make Sri do as she was told, and she’d ridden and competed with horses all her life. ‘I’ll be frank,’ she’d said, when she hurriedly dismounted after
riding the mare for just a few minutes. ‘I think she’s very tricky. Okay, dangerous. Okay, psychotic.’

Yet Constance’s challenge to ride the Bolt was all about the last of her Marwari herd, and Kat felt compelled to push herself harder, acutely aware that all eyes would be on her at the charity race that coming weekend, including Sri’s. She might be riding another horse in it, but those
blue eyes would be watching from the sanctuary stand where the rare Marwari horse was among several Lake Farm animals that would be on show while the volunteers rattled tins. Kat knew it was a bit batty, but she thought that if the mare saw her riding in a proper race on Donald, she might just accept that Kat wasn’t entirely hopeless.

‘Have I missed something?’ Tina looked up from her phone.
‘Why have you stopped trotting?’

‘Just having a breather.’

Tina tucked the straggly blond curtains of her bob behind her ears. ‘Frank says that Eardisford’s new owner just bought Kevin Spacey for a small fortune.’

‘He bought twelve trafficked teenage virgins from Albania yesterday, according to the earthmen,’ she reminded her. ‘But it turned out to be a geography trip from
Brombury High School looking at the ridge and furrow pasture on Cuddy’s Clump.’

‘Kevin Spacey is a point-to-pointer.’

Rumours were flying around the village that Seth had moved in at last and was on a spending spree to populate his new manor, but Kat thought it unlikely, given that the huge house remained swathed in scaffolding and gift wrap just as it had been for the past ten weeks,
builders’ vans still lined the carriage sweep daily and JCBs were digging up great swathes of parkland to make way for a landing strip, helipad, polo field and a golf driving range. Lake Farm continued to be of particular interest to visiting engineers and surveyors, who had spent a lot of time eyeing it up from the other side of the water through April’s thickening bulrushes and iris spears,
taking photos with iPads. Kat was growing accustomed to looking across the lake to find a man in a grey suit and reflective waistcoat peering back through a theodolite.

Seth was no longer seen as quite such a Very Good Thing locally. When the Brom and Lem had been told that they could no longer hunt the estate, he was seen as a Less Good Thing. As soon as the planning permission application
had gone in for a phone mast on Pick’s Hill, he was seen as Quite A Bad Thing. If he didn’t show his face soon, he would undoubtedly be upgraded to a Dangerous Thing. It was always the same in a small rural community, where knowing your neighbours dispelled the enemy.

In Watford, by contrast, Dawn was spellbound by the idea of the dotcom billionaire moving in next door, demanding regular
updates when calling to offload about the stresses of house selling. ‘The agents now think we should do something about the garden,’ she’d huffed the previous evening, ‘so I have tons of topsoil, ten square metres of decking and a flat-pack gazebo on order. Dad and his mates are going to help me fix it up next weekend. It means I can’t come to cheer you past the winning post, which I’m seriously
down about, but I know you’ll be amazing. I reckon Seth will whisk you away in his helicopter and woo you. I am
so
jealous.’

Kat wished she shared her friend’s confidence in her riding skills and pulling power. Gazing at the curling skewbald ears in front of her now as she wobbled around the arena in an uncontrolled trot again, she felt nothing but relief that she would be riding Donald
in the charity race, not dangerous, psychotic Sri.

But her instructor was delighted with their progress.

‘We’ll have your names engraved in the plinth for the Ladies’ Race next year, eh?’ Tina called out now. ‘We might even swap your charity race entry to this girl on Saturday.’

Lifting her head abruptly, as though she had understood every word, Sri ground to such an abrupt
halt that Kat flew on to her neck. Unlike kind Donald, who would lower his unbalanced rider gently, Sri dropped her head like a trebuchet arm ejecting a missile, leaving Kat indented in the dirt.

‘I think the only engraving on plinths will be in memoriam,’ she joked. ‘“Here lies flat Kat.”’

Hacking back across the fields after their lessons was always Kat’s favourite bit
about riding Sri. The mare was completely in charge, curling ears pricked, eyes alert, knowing exactly where she was going as they marched along the headlands from Tina’s little yard to Lake Farm, dropping through woods carpeted in a haze of bluebells now, and out into the Eardisford parkland, which had remained ungrazed so far this year. Meadow flowers jewelled the bottle green grass in pinks and
yellows, polka-dotted with white dandelion clocks, like a gaudy hotel carpet.

Two yellow JCBs were do-si-doing around a large earth mound close to the walled haha, engines droning so loudly that Kat didn’t hear the car approaching behind her as she crossed the main drive towards the woods, lurchers and terriers hugging the mare’s heels. Then Daphne let out a warning yelp and the mare shot
forwards down a sharp bank, throwing Kat backwards out of the saddle so that she dropped the reins and was almost sitting on her rump, arms windmilling in the air. The speeding silver car didn’t even brake, its blond driver wearing such dark glasses that he didn’t seem to see her, or the dogs, which escaped the tyres by inches as the unfamiliar car roared past, music blaring out of its windows.
Scrabbling back into the saddle, Kat had just enough time to register that she’d met one of the passengers before when there was an indignant squeal beneath her and Sri took off across the park at breakneck speed.

‘That’s her!’ Dollar called urgently, as the rider and horse sped into the woods, one’s red hair matching the asymmetric red patches on the other’s coat. ‘Katherine Mason.’

‘Unique riding style.’ Dougie accelerated towards the house, ignoring Gut’s nauseous groans behind him. ‘Nice-looking horse. Strange ears.’ He took the right fork to the stables and dropped off his groom.

Driving more steadily to navigate the bumpy back tracks that led to the mill house, he found Dollar’s long fingers had moved from her tablet to his thigh. He looked across in surprise
and found her radiating hot-skinned anticipation, dark eyes glowing in that immobile face. ‘I will be spending this evening with you.’

Despite the pounding headache, Dougie felt a satisfying leap of anticipation in his groin.

‘I will cook for you,’ she said.

Dougie, who ate for fuel and had always found Mary Poppins domesticity a turn-off, felt his libido immediately drop
to stand-by. He thought of the green sludge in the fridge. ‘Really, you don’t have to.’

‘You must have a special diet between now and the race – low carbs, selected proteins, fat-burning super-foods. And you must taste my lobia.’

‘That sounds delicious.’ He cheered up. ‘I’d like your lobia as a side dish with everything tonight.’

‘It is a good source of the potassium you need
and also fibre and protein. When I lived with a
kalari gurukkal
he often prepared it to his own recipe that I have kept.’

‘Was he some sort of chef, then?’

‘He is a grand master in the Indian martial art of
kalaripayat
. It is extremely skilled violence.’

‘Is he still around?’

‘He’s in prison for killing a man.’

Dougie swallowed and flashed his big-screen smile.
There was something about the way Dollar spoke that could be incredibly unsettling, particularly when she said things like that. ‘I can’t wait to taste your lobia.’

‘Then it is fortunate your kitchen cupboards are filled with good spices. We will also need black eyes.’

‘I already have those.’

‘You do?’

He touched his fingers tentatively to his swollen nose, and the
purple shiners on either side.

She flashed a rare smile. ‘Dougie, lobia are black-eyed
peas
.’

‘I gotta feeling,’ he started to laugh, ‘that tonight’s gonna be a good night.’