The Country Escape (8 page)

‘Would Seth be hunt master?’ He decided to enjoy the idle daydream just a little longer, monitoring that ravishing face
for signs of life.

‘No, you would.’

Master huntsman was a rare and revered role, working with pack and field. He was the perfect fusion of upstairs downstairs, both master and servant, with the authority of one and the guile of the other.

‘Could I bring my own horses?’

‘As many as you like.’

He tried to imagine his Friesian stunt team galloping through plough
and wet turf, high-stepping trick-trained horses that would be a laughing stock if he ever took them out with his father’s pack, yet he knew they’d have the best of fun, as Harvey once had. If Dougie took this on, his horses would be safe. Rupe wouldn’t sell them. He would also be a very long way from Kiki and her fervent diamond-polishing. It was almost tempting.

‘Where exactly is the
estate?’

‘It is called…’ she checked her pad again ‘… Urds-ford. It is in Herefordshire.’ She rhymed ‘Here’ with ‘beer’.

Dougie’s smile widened. He’d vaguely heard of the estate, although Herefordshire was unknown territory: his forays in that direction tended to stop in the Cotswolds with friends. He tilted his head, switching on the flirtatious charm to see if he could get a reaction.
‘Will you be based there, Dollar?’

The eyes glowed briefly. ‘Part of my time will be spent there, yes. There is much to organize. Seth will not use the house as a residence. He does not like the English countryside.’

‘So why buy an estate in Herefordshire?’

‘It is a business acquisition. He has a large portfolio. The privacy and hunting it offers are unique, and the history
of the house is of special interest to Seth’s family. I have autonomy over the project, but I will expect to work very closely alongside you.’

‘How closely?’ He weighted the question with an overload of throaty flirtation.

‘Very closely, Mr Everett.’ The voice was utterly deadpan, but the eyes glowed again. ‘I take it your answer is yes?’

Dougie had started to look for the
hidden cameras. This had to be a set-up. She’d be offering him an Aston Martin, a personal harem and an inexhaustible supply of Krug next.

‘I’m not a professional huntsman.’ He toyed with a tiny beetroot jelly loaded with sour cream and caviar. ‘I’m an actor.’

‘You will most certainly be required to act.’

‘I hardly think the annual hunt panto compensates for a year out of
movie making.’

The room was filled with Desi music and Dollar turned away to answer her phone, her pretty face darkening. She nodded to him over her shoulder, then hurried along the corridor to take the call, although whatever language she was speaking was far beyond Dougie’s schoolboy French.

A brace of waiters appeared to clear the starter and put down two steaming bowls of deep
brown soup, swirled with crescents of cream and pluming with peppery promise. But Dougie had only got as far as admiring his reflection in the spoon when Dollar reappeared and started to gather up her things. ‘I must go to Moscow. I will leave straight away. This suite is booked all night. You can stay here and I will arrange the transport for your return, or if you prefer we will take you now.’

‘You can drop me off.’ Dougie threw down the spoon, having no desire to linger in an oversized igloo wearing gimp leather and kinky boots with no mobile phone or toothbrush. ‘I’m called at first light tomorrow.’

She marched towards the corridor. ‘Seth will be delighted that you want to do it.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not available.’ Dougie finished his beer and zipped up his Puffa.
‘I have work commitments lined up later this year.’ And an engagement to break off, he added silently.

‘I believe you are referring to the television series set during the American civil war and based upon a famous book?’ She stood by the curtain to the main ice hall, waiting for him. ‘We understand that the producers have yet to confirm that you are cast.’

Dougie looked at her sharply.
Abe had insisted it remain totally confidential until contracts were signed. A twelve episode epic retelling of
Gone With the Wind
from the battlefield, filled with fast-galloping action, trick-riding heroics and epic love scenes, it was tailor-made for Dougie’s talent and Abe was confident he had the deal in the bag, despite his client’s relative inexperience. The money was sensational, less
so the shooting schedule, which involved working on location in Georgia, South Carolina and back in Eastern Europe for almost a year, but that didn’t bother Dougie, who saw it as a painless cauterization from Kiki. If he got the gig, Dougie was also determined to take his own horses with him.

‘You know about that?’ he asked Dollar in surprise.

‘I know a great deal about you, Mr Everett.’
The beautiful mask gave nothing away.

‘Then you’ll know I much prefer being called Dougie.’

Again, the eyes glowed all too briefly. ‘We would like you to take this job offer very seriously, Dougie. There is an extremely generous bonus I have not yet told you about.’

They were standing together in the narrow chute leading through to the main hall, her arm barring his path where
she was holding the curtain ready to draw back. The smell of her perfume was overpowering – peppery nasturtiums, sharp lemon balm and the sweetest lily-of-the-valley top note, reminding him of window boxes in Chelsea. He felt a sharp pinch of homesickness.

But he smiled easily. ‘If the television series falls through, I’ll get back to you.’

‘Do that.’ Her neat, dark eyebrows lifted
and a set of perfect white teeth outshone the walls as she smiled for the first time, infinitely more beautiful and chilly. ‘I will find out more about the girl in case of that eventuality.’

‘What girl?’

‘I have not yet told you about the girl.’ Dollar led him at speed through the icy, domed hall with its Northern Lights glow. It had filled up with drinkers now, all dressed like
Arctic explorers as they perched on fur-topped stools around ice tables swilling schnapps, trying not to gape at Dougie’s lederhosen and New Romantic boots poking from beneath the Puffa. Many stared openly at Dollar as she passed in her furs, her rare beauty making jaws drop. The helicopter’s thrum could be heard outside as its blades got up to speed.

Dougie felt his James Bond fantasy
sliding away and experienced a pang of regret. Tomorrow he’d be back to makeup, kinky boots and broadswords, dabbling with his axes-all-areas girl to cheer himself up while he stewed over his disengagement from Kiki, his neglected horses at home and the pampered boredom of film work. A part of him longed to gallop through a forest shooting at more than just padded blue targets.

‘What girl?’
he asked again, as they went outside, but the helicopter drowned his voice. Darkness had fallen, the ice hotel glowing like a child’s night light plugged into the side of the mountain.

Once they were airborne, Dollar pulled her microphone close to her mouth: ‘The estate that Seth is buying – Urds-ford – has a lot of tenants. He does not see this as a problem because he just wants the main
house and some accommodation for his staff with the hunting grounds, but there is a farm excluded from the purchase that he would like to acquire. Its vacant possession will ensure total privacy for Seth’s house guests. The current occupant cares for animals there and claims it’s a sanctuary, but really it is just a memorial to the lady who lived in the big house. This girl was her nurse, and the
only circumstances in which that farm will become vacant are her marriage or her death. It is my job to ensure the farm
will
be vacant. That is why we need you.’

James Bond was back, tugging his cuffs from his dinner jacket and arching an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying you want me to kill her?’

‘We want you to marry her, Dougie.’

‘
Breathe!
Feel the force of your chakras, Kat. Feel the
kundalini
rising. Isn’t it ’mazing?’

Eyes closed, Kat breathed, then paused to listen, head cocked. ‘I’m sure I heard her.’

‘It’s a false Dawn,’ Russ assured her.
‘She’s still totally sparko. Let’s hold hands. And
breathe
.’

Kat was finding it hard to focus. The candle beside them was guttering noisily, like a blocked drain, drowning out the sitar music. ‘I can’t believe we poisoned my friend with Hopflasks, then let Dair bore her half to death.’

‘She’s having a terrific sleep. Think about your body. Breathe out negative thoughts.’

‘I’m breathing in a hell of a lot of patchouli – can you move that joss stick?’

Like the incense, Tantric sex was a slow burner, but for all her complaints Kat could tell something strange was happening as she matched her breathing to Russ’s and let the tensions slip away. Her body no longer stayed coiled like a tight spring, but seemed to glow and liquefy, infused with a sensuality that
felt no pressure or panic. As foreplay went, holding hands and humming in pyjamas for weeks on end might seem ludicrous, but she was sure she was starting to feel the benefits.

‘This will take as long as it takes. Maybe weeks, maybe months,’ his soft voice rolled over her reassuringly, ‘you can’t hurry it. If you want to reach the next plateau, Kat, you’ll have to trust me to let you know
when we’re ready to progress.’

‘You sound like Tina talking to me about learning to ride,’ she joked, aware that her progress on both fronts was inhibited by an urge for small-talk to cover big tension.

‘In many ways it shares the same processes, training the body to work in a new realm without thinking, taking acquired skills into unconscious thought on a spiritual level that manifests
in physical reaction.’ Russ didn’t do small-talk. He did big breathing and long lectures. ‘We’re all just animals, after all – humans have the fight or flight response, like all species, and we want to fuck each other instinctively. That’s what makes animal behaviour so fascinating. Tantra uses animal magnetism at its core, but raises our instinct to a spiritual level. The idea is that by
holding back from orgasm, the pleasure is far deeper and greater. Look me in the eyes.’

Kat smiled at full force as she did so, hiding any doubts. Looking at him, so hirsute, academic and carnal, she was disconcertingly reminded of the day aged thirteen that she and her then best friend from school had sneaked
The Joy of Sex
off her mother’s bedroom bookshelf and leafed through it. The
contents had been a million miles from Nick’s love of internet porn with its aggressive, priapic men, and women with hairless privates. In the smuggled book, the beards, pubic hair and smiles had mingled like Fuzzy Felt, helping the teenagers piece together the basics that would take their Justin Timberlake fantasies to a whole new level. The idea of Russ helping her discover Fuzzy Felt pleasure plateaux
in a darkened room far from WiFi started to excite her again.

‘When do we get to the orgasm bit?’ she asked.

‘When we’re ready. Let’s meditate now. Close your eyes again and empty your mind of all thoughts, concentrating purely on your breathing.’

With Russ’s warm hands encircling hers, Kat tried to get into the zone, but was soon aware of one terrier rejoining them on the
rug, another scratching to be let out and the lurchers whining at the bottom of the stairs. And while her breathing seemed calm and rhythmic enough, Russ’s was very laboured: she thought he sounded as if he was coming down with a cold.

Just as she was contemplating offering him some Sinex, he released her hands so that she could place them on her chest. ‘Now we’ll do the chakra massage.
Nine times table,’ he reminded her.

Russ had explained that the chakras worked in multiples of nine, so the Tantric massage, which they must begin by performing on themselves while fully clothed, moved from chest to groin using the nine times table. Being hopeless at maths, she was always aware that she had to count out loud, which she knew put Russ off but if she didn’t she lost her place
long before the seventy-two rotations around the genitals and the eighty-one panting breaths that followed. They’d only moved on to this stage a week ago, and she wasn’t sure it was really working for her yet. The stroking and rubbing was really quite pleasant, but the mathematics stressed her out. Russ was being incredibly patient, but she sensed he was starting to despair that she’d ever awake
her
kundalini
, the sacred sexual energy force that would lift her to the ultimate plateau.

Kat counted down eighteen rotations on her breastbone before slipping her hands lower to run her fingertips around her nipples twenty-seven times, feeling them harden through the soft cotton of her top. But she was distracted by the worry that Dawn would wake up at any moment and she lost count between
forty-five caresses to the lower belly and fifty-four light touches to the pubic bone.

‘Look at me again.’

As she did so, a tiny money spider dropped between them on a long thread, thought the better of it and shot back up again. Kat stifled a laugh, forced back to the beginning of fifty-four touches.

Russ, who had been trying to hurry her along and had himself already reached
seventy-two, was staring intently into her eyes and rocking rhythmically in the candlelight,
kundalini
clearly up and at ’em. In the candlelight, he looked both potent and poetic, his dark hair wild, unbuttoned shirt slipping off one shoulder to reveal the Celtic band tattoo on his upper arm. The Ravi Shankar CD he’d put on was jumping in the ancient player, catching on a refrain and repeating
it like a nightclub DJ sampling it before releasing it to play again. It was weirdly discordant, but not unpleasant. Russ had called Tantra the LSD of mind-sex, so it seemed fitting.

‘Three, two, one,
breathe
…
seventy-two, seventy-one, seventy…’ Cheating, Kat skipped a couple of chakras and went straight for the
swadishthani
, the second chakra which was right in with the action below the
bikini wax. Even through loose cotton, she could feel the heat of excitement greet her, and flinched with surprise as it scorched up inside her almost instantly, like a flare going off. An equally hot blush stole across her cheeks as she gazed into Russ’s dark eyes and felt her nipples buzzing.

His eyes intensified, and he nodded, rocking alongside her, matching her breaths. It was amazing.

There was a whine from the door as Daphne scraped to be let out, weak bladder at its limit.

‘Ignore her,’ Russ ordered.

Daphne whined again, scrabbling and spinning, rousing her deaf friend Maddie and triggering one of her barking frenzies.

‘I’ll have to let her out.’ Kat stood up. ‘She’ll bark non-stop if I don’t, and poor Dawn’s still asleep. Shall I take her another
cup of tea, do you think?’

‘You’ve already brought three cold cups down after taking hot ones up. Be grateful she hasn’t drunk them or she’d be scraping at the door like Daphne. Leave her be.’