by Fiona Walker
Her mind was in overdrive. Byrne was married to the leggy blonde, she realised. They had a child on the way.
She reached automatically for the back of her neck, feeling the heat burning there, horrified by her misjudgement.
Her touch-paper ignited again, this time blazing out of control. She felt so livid and humiliated that her skin seemed to blister, and she was amazed the stable didn’t combust around her. She’d been a total fool for coming here with her heart on her sleeve, for assuming such a deep connection based on their brief acquaintance. He’d told her from the start that he had nothing to give her, but she’d blindly assumed that it was because he didn’t trust love, never assuming that he was already taken. She wanted to mule-kick him, which fitted nicely with her current circumstances. If her puffy-legged stable-mate would oblige, she’d very much like him to kick Byrne too, then bite him, after which they could both roll on him. She’d show him just what a Heavenly Pony was capable of if betrayed.
No wonder he hadn’t wanted a relationship with her in the face of public exposure, she thought furiously. Away from the media gaze, Gordon Lapis could get away with whatever he liked, but as soon as his life became public, keeping a mistress would be impossibly messy.
She let out an angry sob.
The horse snorted back, far from sympathetically.
Legs snivelled and hiccupped.
A big brown head swung around and glared at her.
She gulped, looked at him apologetically, and started to wail.
A moment later and there was a loud rustling of wood shavings and a big hairy shoulder thudded against hers as the horse rubbed his cheek against her head with a deep sigh, slamming her against a wall as it sympathised with her woes.
Legs put her arm around his neck and wailed into his warm skin. She wailed for a long time. Nobody came back to check on her or bring her tea. Eventually, she and the horse started to clear their throats and feel embarrassed. He shuffled off to pull at a haynet. She slid down the wall and buried her face in her hands, knowing that she had to get away somehow. She’d judged it all wrong. She didn’t know Byrne at all. He was a married man.
There was a voice shouting out in the yard now, deep baroque Irish, husky and whip-crack hoarse. It was a mesmerising voice, but not Byrne’s.
‘Where is she? Paddy Flynn definitely said his new man is a man. Why d’you not ask for ID? She could be one of O’Grady’s lasses sent here to dope the few sound ones we have left. Where is she now?’
The door was thrown open and Legs found herself staring at the most mesmerising older version of Byrne, with all the same chisel-boned beauty and those huge, fierce eyes, but these were deep grey to match the grey streaks in his faded red hair.
The man was sitting in a wheelchair, so white hot with anger that the heatwave-baked tarmac around him seemed destined to melt into bubbling lava.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded furiously.
The horse sharing its quarters with Legs whickered cheerfully, knowing no fear of him. She quailed by comparison.
‘Legs!’ she bleated.
‘I told you, Brooke.’ The blonde raised her palms in self-justification. ‘Ze leg person.’
‘Now there’s a thing,’ Brooke had the same gruff laugh as his son, eyeing Legs with supreme scepticism, taking in the pedalpushers, off-the-shoulder top and the reddened eyes. ‘Where’s your bag?’
‘In the car. The thing is, I—’ she started to explain, but he interrupted.
‘Think this one will race again?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Half my yard is hopping around with fetlocks like footballs, so they are. My son thinks it’s a virus.’
‘Could be right, yes, only I’m not really—’
‘Sure you have a way with big Lappy, d’you not?’ he laughed as he watched the horse nuzzle her hair, now quite fond of the impostor in his stable. ‘Lapis here is a brute and he’d usually eat you as soon as look at you. Zina puts all the pretty girls in with him first.’
The blonde smiled innocently, making Legs wonder if Zina had already guessed that she was an imposter with murderous intentions towards her husband. The best course of action seemed to be keeping quiet and making a swift exit.
But Brooke was clearly enjoying the show.
‘Come and see the others,’ he’d already started wheeling away. ‘Now this little grey mare is Purple; she’s not so bad as the others – Finch here has been off colour all week; this chap Necrodorn is born idle, but he’s got filled legs on him too as has his neighbour Rushlore.’ Legs recognised the names of two of Ptolemy’s arch rivals, at least one of them based on Hector.
‘They’re all named after Ptolemy Finch characters,’ she said, stating the obvious.
Brooke was delighted. ‘Clever girl! Zina’s mad crazy on those silly books about the little grey-haired fellow, so she is. I’m not a one for reading about wizards, although I liked the movies, sure enough.’ He eyed her cheerfully, and Legs knew full well he was relishing the craic of talking about his son’s career in front of a stranger, unaware that she knew exactly who Gordon was in real life. Except the Jago Byrne she had fallen in love with was was no more real than his alter ego. He was as illusory as Ptolemy Finch himself, a fictional creation she’d coloured in with her imagination, joining the dots to make sense of the contradictions. Not once had she thought to draw a wedding ring on his finger.
A buzzer indicated another visitor at the gates. Zina trailed away towards the driveway muttering as she went. ‘I hope it’s not zat creepy Conrad fellow again, always turning up out of the blue wanting Jago to run this errand or that one, and calling me ‘Kelly’. Jago’s a computer programmer, not a dogsbody. Fink is ze dogsbody round here.’
Panting in the heat, Fink trailed after her.
Legs was in even greater shock. Could it be possible that Byrne’s young wife had no idea he was Ptolemy Finch’s creator? She felt dangerously close to tears again. Her skin had started prickle afresh with hot needles of indignation, her breath shortening and her mule-kicking legs tensing, torn between running away and planting hard until she found him and gave him hell.
Meanwhile, Brooke was looking at her askance, both suspicious and amused, well aware of his son’s cachet as a romantic catch. And it was obvious that Brooke had a shrewd suspicion who she was, or at least what she wanted.
‘You mustn’t mind Zina – she’s overprotective.’ He narrowed his eyes speculatively as he took in Legs’ dishevelled blonde appearance and obvious agitation. ‘And she calls all vets “the leg man” because that’s what we call Paddy, who usually cares for the beasts here. What he doesn’t know about a nag’s pins isn’t worth knowing. But you’re obviously no vet, nor any sort of horsewoman. I take it you’re another one come to see my son?’
Legs’ eyes met his clever grey ones. He had all of Byrne’s directness with less brooding darkness. Do not cry, she told herself firmly, too choked to speak
‘You are,’ Brooke nodded with certainty. ‘I have no idea what you girls see in a waste of space like him, dreaming his life away on computers when he has such a talent to ride a horse. I suppose you two met on the internet?’
She nodded vaguely, realising it was technically correct, alarm bells ringing ever-louder in her head. How many others had there been? No wonder his pregnant young wife was such a crosspatch, left to look after her father-in-law while Byrne was gallivanting around leading his secret double life. And no wonder, again, that he had resisted losing the anonymity that allowed such deception.
His father, clearly complicit in all this, seemed remarkably unbothered.
‘You’re not the first pretty caller of the day. The other girl waited all morning. I told her he’d not be back from the quarry before dark, but she insisted on waiting here in the tower.’
It must be Kizzy, Legs realised in horror. She’d been too overwrought by the disovery that Byrne was married to give it another thought until now, but Conrad had charged the redhead wi
th the task of bringing Gordon back to Farcombe at any cost, even if it took all-out seduction. Legs doubted a brush with incest would put Jago off given the hypocrisy she’d just uncovered, but she knew she couldn’t run away and leave them to it. They had to be told the truth.
‘Is she still here?’ Legs looked across at the crumbling stone wreck by the entrance gates, wondering what sort of family would let anyone wait in there, although the idea of locking Kizzy away in a medieval dungeon for a bit quite appealed to her.
‘Not that one,’ he cackled, following her gaze. ‘Jago’s tower, up there,’ he pointed through the archway at the rear of the stable yard to a corner of hilly woodland hidden from the road, through which a steeply raked path led up to another sun-baked limestone tower, this one intact and gloriously, totally Ptolemy Finch. ‘She’s gone now. Left about an hour ago, she did. I told her if she was going to the old quarry she’d need to change her shoes, but she took no notice. I’d lay you any odds she’ll be limping back here any minute. His last girlfriend used to set off up there dressed up to the nines with champagne picnics – always spraining her ankle and needing first aid, she was; it drove Zina mad.’
She felt again for the hot new brand beneath her hair, knowing she’d been a total fool for coming. But she had to see it through.
‘Where is the quarry?’
‘Oh, you don’t want to go there. It’s impossible to find unless you know the local area.’
‘I have a sat nav. Just give me the location details.’
‘You’ll never drive there. The old road in is shot to pieces. Francis took a horse.’
Stubbornly, Legs took the coordinates.
Chapter 47
‘You have arrived at your destination. You have arrived at your destination.’
‘How can I have?’ Legs howled driving on through a haze of dust on the bumpiest, steepest and stoniest road she’d ever tried to navigate, raised high on the limestone escarpment, so narrow and precarious that it was like trying to drive along a lumpy tightrope. ‘I can’t see anything!’
Then she let out a scream as the car seemed to lurch sideways, tipped at an acute angle, the nearside wheels now spinning uselessly.
At boiling point, she hauled up the handbrake and clambered out to assess the situation. It could have been worse, she realised; she could have driven another three feet and plunged to her death. Instead, she’d been grounded in a deep rut inches from a precipice.
Ahead of her stretched a miniature Grand Canyon cut out of the ground like an inverted cathedral. It must have been disused for many years, and had now been reclaimed by nature, the quarry floor carpeted with wildflowers, a deep pool at its centre dancing with insects and dragonflies, the strata in the steep stone sides filled with nesting birds, and the grassland ridge was the brightest emerald green, patrolled by hundreds of blue butterflies.
Slumping against her wonky car bonnet in a haze of dust, she gazed out across the wide drop and spotted a horse tethered on the opposite side, grazing peacefully. A few yards away, she could make out a figure sitting beneath an ash tree, his back propped against the trunk, earphones blotting out all outside noise as he worked on a laptop propped on his knees.
For a moment, Legs wanted to turn and flee, mortified to have chased after him across the sea, living for the moment yet again with the consequences certain to humiliate her. But her car was beached, and she had to tell him the truth about Kizzy. At least she’d beaten the redhead here. She just had to say her piece and leave as swiftly as possible by whatever means, even if that meant racing all the way back to Laois on foot. She had her running gear in the car, after all.
She looked for something to wear to cover the back of her neck, determined that he mustn’t see the heartfelt declaration she’d so foolishly had stamped there. She remembered Francis’s appalled face when she’d revealed the precious little stars on her ankle, and his pious pronouncement that all tattoos became labels of regret one day. No doubt he’d derive great satisfaction from her current situation. But she was determined to keep her cool and maintain her dignity. She would even give him the ring she’d had engraved to replace the signet with the Kelly family crest that had gone over the cliff at Farcombe the night he’d rescued her. It would be her parting gesture, a reminder that he’d thought her life worth saving once, even if he could never share it.
Collecting a fluffy pink polo-necked jumper from the back seat of her car and dragging it over her head, she pulled a small box from her glove compartment and she set out around the lip of the quarry.
She was pouring with sweat by the time she reached him, the horse starting back in alarm to find another human penetrating this remote spot.
Byrne looked up and pulled out the earphones, equally surprised, dark eyes stretched wide. ‘Are you going to tell me you’re a ghost again?’
Legs wiped the sweat angrily from her face, ‘Of course not.’
‘How on earth did you get up here?’
‘I drove.’ She nodded across to the Tolly car, now a dusty wreck poking from a huge pothole at a jaunty angle as though abandoned there by teenage joy-riders.
‘Looks like it could use a valet.’ He raised his eyebrows and then closed his laptop, casting it aside on top of a copy of Finnegan’s Wake.
Legs was overheating fast. She felt faint being so close to him again. ‘I have to tell you something important. It’s too personal for an email or call.’
He looked up at her, his face shaded by his hand as he squinted against the sun. ‘Isn’t an announcement in the Telegraph more standard practice?’
She stared at him dumbly, guessing he must think she was here on festival business. This was going to be tougher than she’d imagined. Just looking at him was turning her inside out, and her polo-neck was suffocating her. She was starting to sway dizzily, like a Carpenters fan listening to ‘Close to You’.
‘Here, sit down.’ He patted the ground beside him. ‘This sun’s punishing today. You look dressed for the arctic.’
‘I’m fine!’ She perched awkwardly beside him, grateful at least that he was being quite amicable. She’d expected him to shout at her to go away. As long as she could curb her own emotions and her mood-swinging desire to both kiss and punch him, she’d be fine. She simply had to make her point in a straightforward, unemotional way:
‘It’s about Kizzy. She’s on her way up here right now; your dad doesn’t think she’ll make it in her high heels, but she’s very determined. She’s here in Ireland with Conrad to talk you back to Farcombe; that is Kizzy thinks she’s going to meet Gordon but as soon as she sees you she’ll realise you’re Jago Byrne, Poppy’s son. And Conrad doesn’t know you’re Poppy’s son at all, but he will as soon as Kizzy puts the two of you together. And Kizzy might even try to seduce you – in fact I’m pretty certain she will – but you mustn’t let that happen because what neither of you know is that—’
He put his finger up to her lips to silence her, making Legs’ mouth so tingly then numb with longing she felt as though she’d kissed a nettle leaf. ‘Breathe, Legs.’
Realising that she was starting to hyperventilate, Legs went even hotter and started to pant. Even her eyes were sweating. She could see Byrne’s concerned face swimming in front of her, dark brows lowered. He probably thinks I’m ill again, she realised in horror; first pneumonia, now swamp fever. She didn’t want to come across as sickly. She wanted to be cool and calm as she relayed the truth about Kizzy before departing with her dignity intact, possibly elbowing him over the quarry precipice as she went.
‘Let’s get that jumper off. Ridiculous thing to wear on a day like this.’ He reached out to haul it up over her head.
‘No!’ Legs protested, but her face was already surrounded by pink mohair and it was too late as Byrne tugged it off, almost removing her ears in the process.
Even though she leapt away as fast as she could, he still caught sight of the reddened skin at the top of her spine. ‘What’s this? Have you hurt yourself?’
‘It’s nothing!’ She covered it with her hair, edging further away from him.
He sighed, casting another wary look. ‘So what exactly is it you’ve come here to tell me? You lost me somewhere after the high heels bit.’
‘Kizzy’s your sister, Byrne. Half-sister.’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘She’s Poppy’s daughter?’
‘No. Her birth mother is definitely Liz Delamere. Kizzy has no idea who her real father is, but Liz told me it’s Brooke.’
‘Ah.’ He tipped his head back against the tree and looked up, closing one eye as he took in the implications of this. Then he suddenly laughed. ‘Dad’s longed for a bigger brood all his life and I always hated being an only child, so I guess we just got what we both wanted. Thank you for telling me.’
Legs didn’t know what to say. She’d expected him to seethe with anger in classic Byrne fashion, berating his irresponsible father and mad Liz for forsaking him just as her mother had with Hector. Instead, he shook his head in bewildered delight and laughed again.
‘Thin Lizzie the conspiracist. Who’d have guessed? She can’t have been much more than a child back then. I wish I could remember her better. I know she made Dad laugh, which was an amazing thing. There had never been much laughter at Nevermore before that.’
‘Oh, she’s still quite a joker,’ Legs muttered. ‘We had a hilarious time on the cliff’s edge. Shame you climbed up to put an end to the fun really. It was all downhill from there that night.’ Tears were welling again as she thought about following him here to Ireland. Stop it, she told herself. Don’t go there. You’ve said all you need to, and now you can give him the ring and go before you make a fool of yourself by shouting at him for deceiving you into loving him.
But she stayed glued to her rocky perch, unable to tear herself away as Byrne looked out across the quarry. ‘This is where I taught myself to climb,’ he told her. ‘I’d come here after school as a teenager and worked my way up those walls from every approach, sometimes in the pitch dark.’
