by Fiona Walker
They’d neither of them had a lot to laugh about in recent weeks, but set that challenge Tash hammed up a few more legendary one-liners, suddenly finding irrepressible mirth joining a rare moment of family unity. It was a heady mix, and the thought of a holiday, of make or break, set them both alight with laughter and hope. Every time they looked at one another they doubled up. No amount of mutual shushing and pointing at Amery as he finally nodded off, comfort blanket in mouth, could stop them. Hugo clutched his chest in pain and fought valiantly for control, but somehow the release was too great. It was like a high, their senses feverish from the all recent emotion.
Speechless with laughter, they backed away from their sleeping son and crept out of the room before landing in a heap on the landing, tears pouring down their faces.
Later they made love very carefully, trying not to aggravate Hugo’s already-aching ribs. Taking it steady lent a sensuality Tash had almost forgotten amid the high-energy performances Hugo had been putting in lately. It was heavenly, and afterwards she curled up beneath his arm like an ammonite within its rock, feeling truly safe again.
That night it seemed that this closeness, this skin against skin, could heal everything.
Chapter 67
With Hugo sidelined for a further ten days, the year planner was revised yet again. Beccy was immediately called upon for extra competition duty to double check that she was up to the job if left alone. In a busy week of three back-to-back trials, Tash took on all the trickier and more senior rides while Beccy had the most straightforward youngsters at lower levels. She coped easily, her determination to succeed almost feverish, especially across country where she rode with such grit that the lorry-park pundits were already describing her as Hugo’s new protégée. She kept her focus at all times, and she was in fact a great deal calmer than Tash, who was suffering from nerves more killingly than ever.
Beccy had no intention of letting this chance slip. Her dream was being realised, and she was becoming a fully fledged event rider. A decade later than planned, perhaps, but it still ticked an empty box inside her, made all the more empty since Lough had departed Haydown.
She missed his dry one-liners, his quick brilliance in sussing out horses, his tireless, endless hours in the saddle. She missed watching him ride. Right now, competing was the only way of seeing him on or off a horse, and she wanted him to notice her. She kept finding herself thinking about that night just before Badminton, sitting on the lorry ramp, looking up at the stars and telling him that winning was like falling in love.
A week later, that same ramp was lifted on a full complement of horses as it made its final UK competition run of the month before heading to Germany. On this last team trip, at Brigstock trials in Northamptonshire, Beccy won her first class.
That evening in the lorry park, she found herself lying awake after midnight yet again. Tash had three rides the next day and Hugo – back in the saddle – had two, but Beccy had none, being deemed too inexperienced for the bigger classes, which annoyed her a lot more than she let on. She’d had almost half a bottle of wine over the celebration supper that Tash had cooked in her honour on the horsebox’s little hob, her favourite vegetarian Thai curry followed by banana fritters, but it wasn’t much of a celebration. Tash had been almost mute with tiredness and nerves, and Hugo was yet again in a foul mood because Lough was at the event.
By fate, his lorry was parked just two away from theirs.
The knowledge that Lough was sleeping so close by kept Beccy awake into the early hours. Listening carefully to make sure that Tash and Hugo were conked out behind the curtains over the Luton cab, she crept out with Karma at her heels and stood outside Lough’s box.
She had received no reply to her Are we still talking? message.
She stood beside the shiny Ketterer so long that the first silver threads of dawn were fusing on the horizon when she finally slipped away.
The next day, Beccy was a zombie, making endless mistakes like forgetting to check tack, put in studs or cool horses down properly, to the point that Tash asked her if she was deliberately trying to sabotage her chances. Tash’s nerves were ragged. Riding too defensively, she piled up penalties across country. Yawning as she watched, Beccy thought she could have done better herself, sleep or no sleep.
Then, as they cooled off her last horse together, Tash put an arm around Beccy and told her to take a break. ‘I’ll groom for Hugo in the advanced. God knows I need to take my mind off that round, and you look done in, you poor thing. Sorry I was so snappy earlier. My fault.’
Beccy sloped away, humbled by her stepsister’s kindness. But then, trailing back from a crêpe stand with a sugar fix, she saw something that ignited her anger.
Having waved Hugo off on his cross-country round, Tash kept an ear on the commentary as she sorted through the kit she’d need when she met him at the finish. She now had his phone in her pocket and the urge to nose through his messages was making her almost giddy. But as she reached for it, a hand touched her arm, making her jump out of her skin.
‘Don’t turn round.’ Lough’s deep voice made that skin as highly charged as cat’s fur brushed the wrong way.
Tash gripped the phone so tightly in her pocket that it started to beep.
‘I have to talk to you.’
‘Not here.’ There were tens of eyes on them.
‘I might not get another chance. I know you’re going to Luhmühlen.’
‘Yes,’ she croaked, fear gripping her.
‘It’s going to be tricky.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to confide in him. Of course Lough would understand how big a deal this was going to be for her. He understood her nerves better than anyone.
‘Thing is, I’ll be—’ His voice was drowned out by the commentary on the speaker overhead, raving about Hugo’s exemplary ride through the tricky water complex. ‘… is that okay?’ he finished.
Tash nodded, tears choking her. She didn’t need to hear the words to know that he’d be with her in spirit. Her heart felt like an inflated balloon in her chest as gratitude and shame took her breath away.
‘I’ll be there for you,’ he said quietly.
‘I know.’ She reached back and let her fingers brush against his, just for moment.
Seconds later he was gone. She hadn’t even looked at him.
When Hugo rode through the finish beaming from ear to ear with the best clear of the day, Tash’s left arm was still numb from Lough’s fingertips.
Watching from behind the cross-country course ropes, Beccy felt wretched. Her first win meant nothing in the wake of Lough’s single-minded desire for Tash. Winning wasn’t like falling in love at all, she realised. It was the consolation prize.
As if to illustrate her point, Hugo won one of his two sections, proving his fitness for the European Championships, although in private afterwards it was obvious how much discomfort his cracked ribs were giving him. He was knocking back painkillers like Smarties. Tash insisted on driving home.
As they headed for West Berkshire, Tash as tense as ever at the wheel, Beccy got a reply from Lough.
Let’s talk was all it said.
Suddenly she had no fear of being left alone while the Beauchamps were in Germany. She hugged the phone to her chest, thinking back to their starlit conversation, and of Lough’s assertion that one day they might both ride the devils off their backs.
It wasn’t the winning that counted, she realised, it was having the ride of your life.
At the wheel of the lorry, Tash ran her tongue backwards and forwards over her teeth so many times it started to develop a raw groove.
Lough stepping up to her side earlier that day had short-circuited her thinking. He could see how close she was to cracking up, even if nobody else could. She was running on nervous energy.
When would it go away, she thought wretchedly as, without noticing, she let the lorry drift across the M40. When would she shake this urge to leap wildly into the r
un-through-me green grass on the other side of the fence, even though her own grass was so green it blinded her at times? It made her sick with guilt and longing in equal measure.
One touch of their hands had seemed to scoop her up and lift her so high the air had thinned. Now she had been dropped back down to ground zero, her head pounding and her body aching from competing three horses that day with her heart beating in her throat.
Beside her, Beccy and Hugo were texting like mad. She wished her support team could be more supportive sometimes.
‘Anything worth knowing?’ She turned to Hugo, hoping he wasn’t exchanging hot SMSs with V.
‘I’ve just found us a groom for Germany.’ He tossed his phone on the dashboard victoriously.
‘Who’s that?’ Tash asked suspiciously, not liking the way his face was blanketed in smiles.
‘India Goldsmith.’
She laughed in disbelief. ‘Penny’s niece?’
As a horse-mad teenager growing up at Lime Tree Farm, where her mother Zoe had taken refuge after the break-up of her marriage, India had groomed at the top level, and ridden in junior and young rider classes before pursuing a media career. Now in her twenties and working in London, it seemed impossible that Hugo could have bagged her for a small tour of Germany.
But he was nodding. ‘Franny’s sorted it. They’ve stayed close since their old Lime Tree days. India’s freelancing and has nothing lined up, so is dying for an excuse to get out of London. I’ve just had a text from her. God, Franny’s wonderful.’
‘Thank heavens for Franny,’ Tash agreed hollowly. She had always adored India, who was six feet tall, looked like a model, had an encyclopaedic veterinary knowledge and could plait a horse in ten minutes. She knew she should be thrilled, but she suddenly felt very jumpy indeed, especially when she recalled that at Lime Tree Farm India had been known as Vindaloo, a nickname given to her by Gus’s lusty eventing cronies because the curry-loving student was too hot to handle. Was she V?
And Hugo was looking very pleased with himself. Too pleased, Tash decided.
Later that night, the alacrity and enthusiasm with which he undressed her and mounted her from behind then sideways, then above, then below, worried her even more. He was insatiable.
Is he thinking about lovely, long-limbed India, she found herself questioning as she lay at the end of the bed, legs hooked over Hugo’s shoulders as he slid in and out of her. He took one of her ankles and pushed the leg back, deepening his thrusts, his balls banging against her. Is he thinking about India like I’m thinking about …
Reactive ripples started to course through her.
Stop thinking about Lough, she told herself firmly. Stop it, stop it.
She thought about Lough. She thought about him approaching her earlier that day, the first time since his departure, since his declaration of love. She thought about his eyes on hers, so full of understanding, his hand on his shoulder that had made her feel like he’d shot her with a stun gun.
Hugo pulled the other ankle off his shoulder and turned her sideways so that she lay on one side of the bed, his thrusts deeper than ever.
She thought about her one kiss with Lough. That kiss all those weeks ago in the kitchen, after she’d cut his hair. Just one stolen kiss. His body against hers. His hands on her skin. His cock inside her. Oh, God, stop it, Tash … stop … stop …
‘Don’t stop!’
The orgasm was ripping through her now, sending molten showers from crotch to toe to fingertips to nose. It was everywhere, and it was so full of shameful pictures of Lough that, afterwards, she wanted to cry.
India arrived the next day, as overwhelmingly pretty and tall as Tash had remembered her, but with one critical difference. She was now at least a size eighteen, entirely in proportion but positively plus size. And it was immediately obvious that Hugo hadn’t seen her in as long as Tash.
‘Are you sure she’s up to the job?’ he asked in an alarmed undertone as India rushed off to hug Franny. ‘If I ask her to warm up a horse it could die.’
‘Don’t be so mean,’ Tash hushed, knowing that she had been a similar size straight after giving birth to Amery and Hugo had regularly tried to leg her up on to a horse – and get his leg over – without complaining.
Yet she couldn’t deny the sight of India cheered her enormously. She was just as she remembered her: bright, joyful, open, enthusiastic and the absolute antithesis of Beccy. She’d be great to have on side in Germany, and her gorgeous curves helped Tash keep the jealousy demons, and closely related Lough fantasies, at bay. V was still out there, but at least she wouldn’t be bunked up with Hugo in the horsebox on the Continent with India sharing close quarters.
Hugo and Tash spent the evening double-checking arrangements. Hugo had been passed fit to get back in the saddle a week ago, and they had been riding together all day, making the most of a final exchange of ideas. In a bullish mood, he talked tactics throughout supper and a shared bath, still reminding her of what she would need to do in coming days as they headed into the bedroom knowing they would make love. Then, just as easily as he’d been dictating terms all evening, Hugo said, ‘Let me blindfold you.’
Tash looked at him doubtfully, but she couldn’t face a fight the night before he left. And a part of her was excited at the thought. He’d asked if he could bind her before and she’d always refused, frightened of relinquishing control and, perhaps worse, him losing interest and abandoning her blindfolded and tied to the bedposts as had happened to one comely event rider she knew, whose lover had stepped outside to take a call from his wife on his mobile then rushed straight home to a crisis, leaving his mistress lashed to her brass bed for three days until her cleaning lady found her.
This time he talked her round, plying her with wine and a massage and whispered sweet nothings that left her so horny she could barely see for lust, love and dancing dots in front of her eyes. As he gathered a stray scarf from the arm of the button-back chair, she quivered with anticipation, admiring the tight curve of his buttocks. Then, realising which scarf he had in his hands, she shook her head. ‘Not that one.’
‘What?’ he stalled.
‘That was my grandmother’s. It’s Férier. We can’t use that one. It doesn’t seem right.’
He fetched another, but Tash shook her head again. ‘Mummy gave me that.’ The next one was similarly rejected. ‘I can’t stand that colour.’ Then ‘too scratchy’, and ‘Hugo, that’s a pair of tights.’
Soon Hugo was whipping scarves from drawers and wardrobes like a magician pulling handkerchiefs from a hat. One by one each was dismissed. Ardour and enthusiasm flagging, he eventually stood facing her, a chiffon scarf in each hand like a belly dancer. ‘What would be acceptable?’
‘A hunting stock would be okay.’
‘Right!’ He headed to his tallboy, but all the stocks were out on competition duty or in the laundry. ‘Shit! Hang on.’ Still naked, he headed off in search of one.
Tash stifled a yawn and snuggled back in bed, not really feeling the moment any more. There were scarves everywhere, she noticed, wearily guessing she’d be the one to pick them all up in the morning.
Hugo must have had to search far and wide, because by the time he returned she’d nodded off and was having an alarmingly sexy dream about performing the dance of the seven veils in a tented palace for an exotic, black-haired king of Judea.
A silk stock was slipped around her eyes. Still half asleep, she rolled over and he snaked a scarf around her wrists and anchored her beneath him.
‘Imagine I’ve gone away,’ he whispered as she lay enveloped in darkness. ‘Imagine you’re all on your own here.’
His fingers worked around her nipples, his breath between her legs. ‘Imagine I’m another man, coming in here, finding you tied up like this.’
She really didn’t like where this was going, especially the way her nipples and clitoris had hardened to bullets, along with the shortened breath and hot flush creeping down her chest.
‘Imagine I start to taste you,’ – his hot breath traced her labia – ‘start to claim this beautiful body for myself.’
‘Untie me!’ she demanded, knowing she’d climax at any moment if he didn’t.
‘Not before you come.’
‘Untie me, Hugo!’
‘Shh. You’ll wake the kids.’
‘Then you’d better do as I say.’
He untied her wrists and she ripped off the blindfold to find herself looking straight into his accusing eyes, mistrust etched in every line of his face. It wasn’t a look Tash cared to dwell on. Barely pausing to think, she blindfolded him.
‘Imagine you’re all on your own …’ she started, fighting not to giggle nervously.
‘I am,’ he drawled. ‘Often.’
‘Me too,’ she pointed out.
‘Then we should both be blindfold.’
‘Fine by me.’ She reached for the scarf he’d used to bind her arms and covered her eyes again, knotting it behind her head. The giggles instantly died in her throat.
The moment she did it, the mood in the room changed. It was a trust game, and they were too fiercely competitive to do anything but play along with total commitment. Nothing would entice them to pull off their masks and cheat, short of a fire or a screaming child.
Tash felt his hands on her, claiming, greedy, unseeing, so familiar and yet so deliciously new. And she reached out in the darkness for him.
It was the most emotionally connected lovemaking they’d had in months. It was deeply intimate and physical. At times the vigour between them became so concentrated that it seemed impossible to keep up the intensity, but they stayed there, trusting and believing. When Tash came, she’d never climaxed like it. As he drummed the tip of his cock against her cervix, her orgasm was like a pumping heart trying to pull him further and further inside her. The rush seemed to go on for ever, peaking and peaking, shooting so much pleasure into her that she knew her body would be hijacked by it for days afterwards.
‘Let’s have another child,’ he breathed into her ear, so deep inside that she felt he was a part of her.
