by Fiona Walker
‘That’s where you’re wrong. She needs you.’
‘I can’t ride her for toffee.’ She straightened the stirrup and stared at it, girding herself to step back up to the altar on which she continually sacrificed her pride.
‘Let me have a sit on her,’ Dougie offered, before thinking it through.
‘Would you?’ She looked at him over her shoulder. ‘That might really help. Tina’s too scared of her to do it now.’
Having gone to considerable lengths to scrub up to dashing country casual in thigh-hugging burnt-orange trousers and Timothy Foxx polo shirt with the collar up, Dougie wasn’t dressed for riding, and balked at Kat’s insistence that he must borrow her hard hat, a modern plastic one that looked part bicycle helmet, part Alessi fruit bowl. ‘It won’t fit.’
‘I have a surprisingly big head.’ She thrust it at him.
‘And I have an unsurprisingly big one.’ He gave her a playful look, trying it on to prove his point, only to find it fitted perfectly. The pink headgear was deeply undignified, as was the fact that his trousers were so tight he couldn’t get his foot in the stirrup and needed a leg up, but he gamely jumped on the mare, eager to wow Kat with a few moves. Instead, he immediately found himself spinning and reversing with no perceptible control.
‘Okay, she might take a while to crack,’ he conceded, at which point Sri’s long curling ears twitched and she took off like a rocket, carting him into the sunset.
Kat watched them race away across the meadow with some satisfaction, her morose mood lifting briefly as Sri took charge, a small patchwork missile.
‘Atta girl,’ she said, echoing Constance. After such a wretched twenty-four hours, it was a shamefully enjoyable sight.
He really is a very handsome boy, Katherine. Lovely relaxed hands. And quite fearless.
‘Eardisford’s own cavalier,’ she said out loud, as she watched him charge past in the opposite direction.
When Dougie finally pulled up, his smile was so wide it almost touched his ears. ‘This mare has some spirit!’ he called, as he rode back to her. ‘They say you tell a gelding and ask a mare, but this one needs a peace force. She was born for a challenge like the Bolt. How soon do you plan to attempt it?’
Kat could still hear Constance’s voice, forthright and passionate: It will set you free.
‘This summer.’
‘Then we’ll have to put in a lot of work.’ He looked excited, the big smile no longer remotely wolfish. ‘She needs to be fitter and you need to be the one in control.’ Pulling at the mare’s curly ears, which were flicking back and forth on high alert, he dismounted so that he was standing beside Kat, his eyes catching hers and holding them, flirtation creeping back. Only Dougie Everett could look absurdly sexy in a pink plastic helmet. ‘I want you here every evening.’
When Kat looked up ‘callipygian’ in the dictionary later, she found it meant having well-shaped buttocks.
Chapter 38
‘I can’t believe you let his body go to the hunt kennels!’
Russ had come back to Lake Farm to wash, collect some clean clothes and use the computer before setting off for a midsummer-solstice music festival. An evening that had started with a much-needed Russ bear-hug to console Kat over the loss of Sid had quickly degenerated into a debate about the morality of Constance’s wishes.
‘The old bat belonged to another era, we know that – and asking you to ride the Bolt! She was bloody barking.’
‘I am going to ride it!’
‘You don’t stand a chance, everyone knows that.’ He was pulling T-shirts out of the laundry basket while he waited for his bath to run.
‘Constance had faith in me even if you don’t. She said it would set me free.’
‘Bollocks it will. It’ll just land you in hospital. The Hon Con was a decrepit old imperialist who got her kicks out of ordering her minions about – even after her death.’ He threw a pair of mismatched socks with holes at both heels on to his pile. ‘Daring you to ride the Bolt was a sick old masters-and-servants joke, unlike condemning her animals’ cadavers to be ripped apart by foxhounds after their death, which is just sick.’ He picked up the socks again and laid them on top of the dresser where the sewing kit lived.
Watching him, Kat realized she couldn’t let it drift any longer. The list in her head kept being added to by the day: no more dirty laundry, no more Tantric sex, no more of Mags’s pheasant casualties, no continued abuse of the Lake Farm printer, no lectures about Constance – on it went, and it was her responsibility to re-lay boundaries and claim back the sanctuary and her home.
‘Russ, we have to talk.’
‘What – now? I’m running a bath.’
‘After your bath. And please don’t use my Body Shop mitt this time.’ It was another item on the list: remove scum-line and pubic hair from bath and toiletries.
Kat decided to write a few bullet points to help her explain herself, but by the time Russ joined her at the kitchen table and started opening two Sui-Ciders – which the Eardisford Arms had been trialling through June without success – the piece of paper in front of her still had just one line. This is my home. As she tried to explain the new ground rules, she saw in horror that there were tears in his eyes, his Shakespeare-hero face at its most misunderstood and tragic.
‘Do you want me to move out permanently?’
‘I think it’s best you don’t sleep here any more.’
He nodded, chewing at a thumbnail. ‘And the injured wildlife?’
‘They can stay. You can come and go as much as you like – if you need to leave some stuff here, that’s fine. You’re a huge help to me and a great friend, and I love hanging out with you and all that you do to help here, but I need my space back all to myself.’
‘It’s the sex, isn’t it?’ He put his head into his hands.
Kat doubted it would make him feel better if she pointed out that, no, it wasn’t just the sex. It was the mean-spirited, bad-tempered, selfish freeloading and the totally obvious undying love for Mags, which was undoubtedly the reason he couldn’t get aroused. His compassion for animals was inspiring and his intelligence was breathtaking, but he was the broodiest sod she knew and appallingly undomesticated.
All this raged in her mind as she took his hands and forced herself to stay calm. ‘You’ll overcome this problem, Russ, I know you will. Just not with me.’
‘That’s exactly what Mags says. She says two wrongs don’t make a right, and the fact you have such big hang-ups about sex just makes me worse.’
‘There you go,’ she said tightly, appalled that he’d told Mags.
‘It’s hard for her to understand my problem. It never happens when I’m with her, you see.’
‘Really?’ She let go of his hands, her voice climbing scales. ‘You found this out recently, did you? Was that before or after you offered me your “fidelity”?’
‘You can’t stop a grand passion like this, Kat. It’s like a tsunami.’ The tortured bear eyes lowered. ‘I have only ever loved one woman. I’m sorry, Kat. I tried so hard not to go there again. She’ll never leave Calum and his kids for me, I know that, but he can’t give her what she needs either.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He’s only into C and B sex these days.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked in alarm, imagining a torture chamber beneath the falconer’s cottage.
‘Christmas and birthdays. Even that makes me want to kill him. I can’t share her. He doesn’t deserve her. He’s a jealous sod too. I half suspect Mags wants it out in the open so we can fight for her.’
‘Well, it’s bound to be harder to keep secret now you can’t use me as cover,’ she muttered, horrified that she had been so naïve as to believe all the lines about a teenage love affair that had petered out.
‘It wasn’t like that, Kat! I care deeply about you.’
She rubbed her forehead. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘If she really won’t leave him for me, I’ll move on after the apple harvest’s in, I re
ckon. Go travelling, find a volunteer project overseas where I can do some good. The orchards are in great nick now. It’ll be a record-breaking year if the sun stays. Guess we got one thing right as a couple. The Wassail King and Queen brought a bumper harvest.’
She smiled sadly, thinking back to the wassail ceremony on Twelfth Night and their first kiss, fuelled by Bill’s spiked cider, followed by the first of many disastrous attempts at seduction.
Sitting up straight again, Russ launched into one of his rallying cries: ‘Rest assured, Kat, I’m not leaving this village until I know that you and the animals will be safe here, and the estate wildlife is protected.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She smiled.
But he shook his head, dark eyes flashing a warning. ‘It’s not safe here. This farm’s too important to the estate for them to leave you in peace, especially if they’re hunting outside the law. Dair’s wearing his flat cap lower than ever and Meat and Two Veg are patrolling the footpaths like never before. There’s definitely something dodgy going down. I bet Everett knows the truth. What’s he said?’
‘That he’s hunting with stunts. “Shtunting,” I guess.’
He didn’t smile. ‘You are ’mazing to put up with all his crap, Kat. I know how hard it must be riding out with the bastard, but you’ve got to keep digging for the truth. I’m still here to look out for you, you know that. Me and Mags. We both love you to bits.’ The bear-hug offered itself again.
Kat forced a smile and accepted the gesture, deciding that, as break-ups went, it was a very comforting one.
Chapter 39
In the hidden meadow the following evening, Dougie buckled an old stirrup leather around Sri’s neck and ordered Kat to leave the mare’s mouth totally alone. ‘Keep the loosest rein contact and hold on to the neck-strap if you need to balance.’
As soon as they tried to pick up canter, the mare gave a huge buck and Kat fell off within three strides.
‘Try again,’ Dougie said cheerfully. ‘That’s just exuberance.’
She did, and fell off again.
He was unapologetic. ‘Once more. You’ve got to learn to sit a buck. It’s easy with practice.’
The next fall was starting to hurt. Fed up and humiliated, Kat picked herself up from her grassy crash mat and straightened her helmet. ‘You show me how to sit a buck if it’s so easy.’
‘I knew I should have brought Worcester.’ He kicked out his stirrups and ran a reassuring hand along the neat peppery mane in front of him before jumping off. ‘You’d better hop on Rose. She’ll never stand still if you try to hold on to her from the ground, but she usually has better manners when ridden.’
Kat looked doubtfully at the enormous mare: she was far taller than Sri – at least seventeen hands – and had white-rimmed eyes that rolled a lot. With her long back and a stride that could cross a field faster than a bird’s shadow, she reminded Kat of Tina’s Donald, on which she’d ridden the charity race. She had to be easier than Sri, she decided, not noticing the worried expression on Dougie’s face as she grabbed the stirrup.
Refusing his offer of a leg up, Kat spent a long time hopping on the ground in order to mount, the saddle being a lot further up than she’d realized. When she finally made it, she could feel the heat of Dougie’s backside still on the leather, which was curiously reassuring as the big, rangy horse started to dance beneath her.
‘Just sit very quietly and she’ll be fine,’ Dougie told her, glancing briefly up to the skies in prayer, which she was too busy shortening her stirrup leathers to see.
Sri’s curling ears twitched like hot butterfly wings as soon as she felt him on her back, primed for another race where she dictated the pace. When asked to canter in a circle instead, she gave Dougie her full repertoire of bronco gymnastics.
‘Are you okay there?’ he called across to Kat whose big mare was jogging on the spot, like a runner waiting at a pedestrian crossing. ‘Want to swap back?’
‘Fine! I’ll stick to this one, thanks.’ She watched anxiously as Sri almost turned herself inside out in her determination to get her head and gallop, but Dougie sat on her easily, chatting as though he was lounging on a sofa with a mug of tea.
‘The secret is to avoid tipping forwards,’ he explained, as Sri rodeoed around. ‘Try to imagine your legs are Velcroed to her sides, your back a strong spring and your bottom is plugged into the saddle.’ Realizing that bucking was getting her nowhere, Sri now dropped into a light, bouncy canter. He gave her a pat. ‘Good girl.’
Kat was incredibly impressed, but had no time to say so as Rose decided the lights had changed on the pedestrian crossing and started to march forwards.
‘Good idea – lovely evening for a hack.’ Dougie rode upsides. He was doing the all-smiles thing as usual, but his blue eyes watched Kat closely. ‘Relax your hands a little. We’ll stick to walk for now. Happy?’
‘Very,’ she insisted, struck by how far away the grey’s ears seemed compared to Sri’s little curling archway at the end of the narrowest skewbald neck. The grey mare, by contrast, had a huge long stretch of runway to the pricked, black-tipped peaks. Kat was particularly taken by being so much higher up than Dougie. ‘She’s gorgeous.’
They moved into the long shadows of the trees alongside the woods, sending a small group of muntjac scattering for cover ahead as they were chased by the terriers, who had accompanied Kat to the meadow as usual.
‘I used to think muntjac got the nickname “barking deer” because they stripped bark off trees.’ Dougie watched them go. ‘Then I heard the racket they make.’
‘It gets pretty loud here after dark,’ Kat agreed. ‘I couldn’t sleep when I first moved in.’
‘Heard one of your horses calling last night.’
Kat thought about the old hunter charging lamely up and down his field hedges. ‘He still thinks his friend’s going to come back.’ She’d spent a lot of the previous night trailing out to comfort him, wishing there was something more she could do to ease his grief.
Going slowly meant talking, which Kat wasn’t entirely comfortable with given how overtly flirtatious Dougie was, but she was loving the feeling aboard the long-striding grey mare, and he seemed happy to chat about everything from horses to movies, the estate’s farms to the forthcoming cricket match, occasionally breaking off to remind her to bend her elbows and relax her hands. She could fulfil her promise to Russ and Miriam, she thought, and asked about the role of an ‘equerry’. ‘I mean, what is it really? You’re a huntsman, right?’
‘Seth hired me to help entertain important house guests.’
‘A court jester?’
‘That’s probably closer to the truth, yeah. I’m a trick rider, after all. Keep your lower leg still.’
‘So how does the horseback archery fit into it?’
‘I’ll slay dragons.’ He dropped his reins and mimed drawing an arrow, causing Sri to bolt forwards. Glancing over his shoulder as he pulled her up, he saw Kat still idling along beneath the sweet-chestnut branches twenty metres behind him. ‘Well held!’
Kat, who hadn’t needed to hold on to the mare because she hadn’t broken out of her loafing walk, looked at him curiously.
He waited for her to catch up, still watching her closely. ‘Sit up, you’re slouching. Heels back. We’ll take it up a notch.’
‘When is Seth moving in?’ she asked, as they broke into a trot. ‘We’ve all been waiting so long.’
‘I don’t think he’s planning to live here.’ He was sitting out more bucks as Sri fought to go faster. ‘It’s more of a corporate hospitality thing,’ he added, momentarily vanishing as the mare spooked at a rabbit shooting out of the undergrowth nearby, reappearing on Kat’s other side. ‘He’s due to visit for the cricket match next month and there’s talk of him hosting some sort of party, but the new landing strip’s not long enough for his plane so he won’t be dropping by until that’s changed.’
‘That’ll explain why the bulldozers were out again this morning,’ she said, gr
ateful that her mare was lolloping along so charmingly while Sri crabbed into a sideways canter, bucking again.
‘The work on the house is pretty much complete, I believe.’ Dougie was bobbing up and down like a kid on a trampoline. ‘I’ve not been inside, but it’s got to be amazing. The palm house is now full of mango and banyan trees. There’s a man called Sanquat especially employed to look after them. It’s all he does. He even sleeps in there. Like you and your animals.’
‘It’s so beautiful here.’ She looked across at the woods to their left, above which peeped the main clock-tower, its face pink in the sunset, telling them it was almost nine. ‘I love this time of year.’
