by Fiona Walker
Dair’s Range Rover was first to arrive, pulling the canvas-sided shooting trailer in which dogs and guns were being transported. Having spotted some of the activists’ nets, a furious Dair sent off his keepers to remove them while barking into a small piece of technology that appeared to have broken. He got increasingly frustrated with it until one of the guns pointed out that he hadn’t turned it on.
‘Which is the Russian?’ breathed one of Russ’s companions.
‘I don’t think he’s joined them yet.’ Russ scanned the assorted faces.
It seemed they were all waiting for their guest of honour. While his comrades bickered about who would get the last biscuit, Russ edged closer to try to listen in.
‘What have you done, Dawn?’ Kat wailed, looking at her reflection. One eyebrow had recently been an expressive little arch but was now a thin ginger line surrounded by inflamed, reddened skin.
‘It’ll settle down in a bit. You always had sensitive skin. I need to do a patch test before I do your lashes and upper lip.’
‘I really don’t have time. I have about a million things to get on with. Everything needs feeding, Usha’s fence needs mending again and I haven’t let the geese out. I can’t waste all day lying around having beauty treatments.’
‘I’m just trying to help.’
‘I know, Dawn, and I’m incredibly grateful, but I don’t think I’m going to sort my love life out with reshaped eyebrows alone.’
‘Where are you going? I’ve only done one!’
‘I’ll be back after I’ve fed the animals.’
The stag was on the move again, squeezing his way through some broken stock fencing and into more sparse woodland skirted by pasture that was being cropped by a raggle-taggle of mixed livestock, all clearly used to their visitor. Watching over a further fence, a horse bobbed its head and whinnied a welcome.
The tracker followed, guessing the stag was looking for somewhere to lie up for the day before the sun rose too high. As soon as it did, his boss could spring a surprise.
‘Looks like it’s going to be a walk-up shoot,’ whispered one of the Bristol sabs, as they watched the guns hanging around the trailer drinking tea and glancing at their watches, excited dogs milling underfoot. ‘Can’t do much about that. Boar and muntjac are legal game even at this time of year.’
‘These are all estate staff,’ Russ noted, as one of Dair’s gundogs came perilously close to the saboteurs’ hide-out and pointed helpfully for his master, only to be called back with a sharp reprimand. ‘There are no invited guns here. I still smell trouble.’ He turned to watch as an incongruously glossy black Land Rover Defender with blacked-out windows appeared along the track. ‘Here we go.’
A glamorous Indian girl leaped out, whom Russ recognized as Dollar, although he had only ever seen her through the mill-house windows with most of her clothes off. She was immaculately dressed in lightweight tweeds and country boots but looked totally out of place and extremely disgruntled as she picked her way through the dogs to have a word with Dair.
‘You bloody what?’ the estate manager exploded, pulling off his flat cap.
Eager to find out what was going on, Russ edged his way further along behind the cover of a bank of bracken. As he did so, there was a furious squeal behind him. With lightning response, he grabbed an overhanging tree branch and pulled himself up so his legs were out of the way as the boar charged past. But the hefty female wasn’t interested in him, he realized, as she charged out of cover, teeth and tusks bared, to warn off Dair’s dog, which gave a terrified yowl and ran behind his master’s legs.
Dollar was directly in the boar’s path. With even faster reactions than Russ, she pulled out a handgun and aimed it between the sow’s eyes. But Dair was already making a heroic lunge to pull her out of the way, grabbing her as her fingers closed over the trigger and causing her to misfire across the clearing.
‘Ouch!’ came a furious wail, as a figure in a balaclava dropped out of a nearby tree. ‘You just bloody well shot me. Oh, Christ, there’s blood everywhere.’
As the sow screeched off into the undergrowth, Dollar holstered her gun and ran with Dair to check on Russ who was now wailing, ‘Somebody call an ambulance!’
‘No need.’ Dollar pulled aside the backpack, which was strapped to him and gushing hot tea everywhere, the Thermos inside it having taken a clean shot. ‘He is not hurt.’
After a sleepless night spent trying jealously to come to terms with the fact that Kat was in a tempestuous love triangle that he was honour-bound to square off, his father and Seth having urged him to push his seven-figure suit for her sake – the facts of which would no doubt convince her once and for all of his tarnished morality – Dougie blazed a path to Lake Farm just before seven. He could see no way of offering Kat a clearer signal of his love than offering this to her. It was all he had to sacrifice; his pride was already surrendered. This would secure her future even if he couldn’t be part of it.
As he drove into the yard, Kat emerged from the feed room, scoop in hand, wearing her pyjamas, plastic clogs and a surprised expression, one brow lifted curiously. He’d never known her more beautiful. No wonder she had all the men on the estate wooing her.
‘We have to get married, Kat,’ he said.
‘Hi, Dougie. Good to see you too. Would you mind running that past me again?’
‘You must marry me, Kat. You’ll get a million pounds and you’ll be safe.’
‘Again.’ The eyebrow was still riding high.
‘When I took this job, I was offered a million pounds if I could persuade you to marry me. Seth will still honour that. I checked. You can have it all.’
‘One more time would be great.’ She was shaking her head, eyebrow higher than ever.
‘I’ll give you the lot. My father suggested splitting it, but I’d rather do it this way. We’ll divorce straight afterwards, of course – or go for an annulment. By then you’ll have the pay-out, so you and the sanctuary will have a secure future.’
‘I think I’m up to speed now.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Thanks. I’ll think about it.’ Turning away, she stomped back into the feed room.
Dougie waited a moment, then dashed after her.
Kat was deep-breathing into the pig-nuts bag, trying to regroup her grand plan. In her many fantasies about Dougie striding up to sweep her off her feet – and last night there had been many, all revolving around a Cinderella moment gate-crashing the Bollywood ball – she hadn’t ever imagined a dodgy deal brokered in a farmyard. She’d envisaged passion, contrition, laughter, forgiving mistakes and retrieving hope – possibly involving a death fight with Dollar on the Eardisford ramparts – and instead she’d just got the cash offer. Anger was knitting her ribs together, stealing her breath and twisting her vocal cords.
His shadow loomed in the door and he cleared his throat. ‘I appreciate this is probably coming as a bit of a shock, Kat.’
‘Telling me.’ She tried to breathe, but she was almost suffocating with indignation now.
‘I told you the truth in the meadow. I said I was asked to target you. I tried to warn you.’
‘Thanks for that,’ she said tightly, scooping out enough pig feed to make the Vietnamese pot-bellies explode. ‘It always makes for a romantic proposal.’
In the half-light, Dougie couldn’t read her face clearly, although her skin was flushed a becoming pink, he noticed, and that raised eyebrow was still doing its ironic thing above eyes showing a lot of white.
‘Actually, you haven’t given me an answer yet,’ he reminded her. ‘You said you’d give it to me when you’d ridden the Bolt.’
‘That’s not going to happen today.’ Her voice was strange, all breathless and tight. He hoped that meant she was overcome with emotion. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. She still had one eyebrow raised, he noticed. And her bottom in those pyjamas was ravishing. ‘I’m sure it hadn’t escaped your notice that Duke’s Wood is full of Russians swigging Bloody Marys and taking pot shots a
t wildlife – which we’re all supposed to believe is tree felling.’ She cupped a hand over her ear, listening for bangs.
‘So you’ll definitely think about it?’ He peered into the gloom.
‘I think we can safely say it’ll be on my mind. Is that all you came to see me about? Only I have a lot to do.’
‘Will you come to the Bollywood ball as my guest? Not the fancy-dress servants’ bash in the marquee, the big black-tie masters’ do in the house. Free upgrade. That way you can meet Seth. He’s a sly bugger, but it might help to talk to him face to face about this place. You might not even have to marry me.’ He gave an ironic laugh that was met with stony silence.
Kat’s first, hopelessly shallow, reaction to the ball invitation was to wonder what on earth she’d wear, but then the red mist descended once more.
‘I’ll come back for an answer later, shall I?’ He showed no sign of leaving.
‘Probably best.’ She was blind with anger now, as inarticulate and blood-boiling as a punch. She kept seeing him with Dollar, pressed against the window. My heart is worth more than money, she wanted to scream, but the sanctuary’s future held her anger tightly in check.
His silhouette hadn’t moved from the doorway. She could almost swear he was breathing as crazily as she was.
‘Is it true you refused to hunt this weekend?’ she asked.
With the light behind him, she couldn’t see his eyes. His answer was clipped and defensive, covering all emotion: ‘I won’t hunt out of season. Almost as bad form as marrying for money or cheating at cricket.’
Another hot blade of anger entered her side as she remembered Russ saying that Dougie’s refusal was just a smokescreen to cover the illegal goings-on. She couldn’t shake the image of him in the mill last night, Dollar wrapped around him, as urgent and carnal as one of Nick’s porn movies. ‘I don’t want to go to the ball, Dougie. I don’t want a free upgrade. I don’t want a million-pound upgrade. In fact, I don’t want ever to see you again. I just want to be left alone here to get on with my life.’
‘You can’t stay here, Kat. That’s the point. You have to —’
‘I’m not a servant or a master,’ she interrupted hotly. ‘And I won’t honour and obey a hypocrite who thinks he can double-cross both, not even for five minutes. You represent everything I’ve always hated, Dougie. I could never trust you. If you have any respect for me at all, please just go away.’
His silhouette dipped for a moment, head lowered, then vanished from sight, leaving early-morning sunlight flooding in.
When Dawn brought out a cup of tea five minutes later, she found Kat still standing in the feed room holding the scoop of pig nuts. Loud, angry complaints were coming from the fields and pens as the sanctuary animals awaited breakfast.
‘Dougie was just here,’ Kat said, in a strangled voice.
‘I can’t believe I missed meeting him again! What happened?’
‘He offered me a million pounds to marry him, then invited me to the ball tonight.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘I told him I could never trust him.’
‘I’d better do your other eyebrow.’
Unsettled by the Lake Farm livestock’s complaints, the stag moved deeper into the wooded enclosure, but his way was barred by the stock fencing. He had cornered himself.
The tracker watched him closely through the trees, certain the moment was approaching. When the red-headed girl appeared on a quad bike to throw feed out into troughs, the stag watched her warily from his wooded couch, but he didn’t make a move to break cover. He seemed content to hide there for now.
The tracker gave the signal to move in.
Dougie was still monstrously uptight when he arrived at the kennel yard just before seven. He needed the horses to soothe him, especially Worcester, the genial comedian, who liked to rest his moustached muzzle on his master’s shoulder and let out a sigh of such deep content it was guaranteed to lull even the most fevered heart.
‘Why the hell have you turned so many out?’ he snapped at Gut, when he saw empty stables. ‘The horses have to be available at a moment’s notice today.’
Gut, whose English still extended only to a few words, babbled incomprehensibly in Hindi, miming finger-snapping and muscle flexing, then pointing to the sky and tapping his watch with a surprised shrug and some eye-rubbing.
Dougie was getting a lot better at interpreting his head groom’s mimes. ‘Oh, fuck, they’re already out riding, aren’t they? I bet they left at bloody dawn. What weapons did they take?’ he demanded. ‘Wea-pon?’ He mimed a gun, then bows and arrows.
Gut mimed back something that was part light sabre, part Saturday Night Fever.
‘Spear?’ Dougie suggested, imitating a spiking motion.
‘No, no, no, sir.’ Gut moved on to John Travolta dancing in Reservoir Dogs before striking a Rambo pose.
‘Machine-gun?’
As the two men mimed weaponry, like small boys enacting an imaginary battle, a member of the security team, who’d been posted beneath the arch in the entrance to the carriage courtyard, muttered at intervals into his lapel, then waited for a response in his earpiece. The Russian party might have been out since dawn, but the house and its gardens remained under close surveillance from both Igor and Seth’s private squads. Head cocked in suspicion, the guard eyed Dougie and Gut’s strange dance through very dark glasses.
Dougie quickly gave up on his guessing game and stalked into the tack room to use the land-line to try to summon Dair. A man who preferred to communicate with memos and letters, only using the estate’s walkie-talkies if the situation was life-threatening, the Scot had battled to get to grips with the satellite phone he’d been equipped with since Seth’s reign, but this time he picked up within two rings. ‘I knew you would be behind this, Everett.’
‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘I could ask you the same thing. I’ve tracked these woods for days preparing to flush the best ground game. Instead, I now have guns, dogs and picker-uppers sitting in the back of a trailer wasting time while a fucking Russian is apparently galloping around Herne Covert with a cross-bow. He wants a stag.’
Dougie let out a groan of horror. ‘But Herne Covert’s right by the lake. The sanctuary’s beside it.’
‘I’m on my way there now. Whatever you do, don’t let him near the farm and don’t alert Kat to what’s going on. It’s all under control.’
True to his word, Seth had set out on his daily run around the estate’s parkland instead of in his state-of-the-art gym. He found the early-morning air a revelation, his lungs filled with cool, dewy sweetness as he hammered along the landscaped avenues. The contours of the park were far steeper than the settings on his machines and he soon regretted wearing such heavy ankle weights. The bodyguard accompanying him was already struggling to keep up, Seth noticed, as his ears pounded with MIDIval Punditz from his iPod. Dollar would have had no trouble keeping pace, he reflected, but she had always fallen into step with his life perfectly, until she’d kicked him squarely in the balls because he wouldn’t marry her, then enacted her revenge by announcing she was leaving to marry someone else. That had not worked out – Seth had kept quiet his involvement in her lover’s murder conviction and the length of his sentence – but she had been far less compliant since her return, the controlled anger bubbling ever closer to the surface, along with the rebellion. Seth knew she would not accept any wife he took, and had now grasped that he had to deal with it head on rather than tossing her playthings like Dougie to distract her.
He regretted sending her out with the Russian on his early-morning hunting trip. It was another thing she’d find hard to forgive. Igor was thoroughly unpleasant.
Mounted on Worcester, whose normally kind eyes were already edged with white from the spurs assaulting his sides, Igor splashed through the ford, leading his three outriders, all of whom were trusted friends of long standing and always travelled in his coterie. They had hunted with him and his tracker acr
oss six continents. Breaking into a canter as he rode up the slope, he saluted the little man in Russian military camouflage, barely visible among the trees, then jumped the horse through the gap where the fencing was broken. He posted one of his outriders there to stand point while the others crossed the field to open the gates on to the lakeside, where he intended to drive the stag so that he could pursue him through the parkland.
What Igor hadn’t accounted for was the panic-stricken reaction of Lake Farm’s elderly grazing herd.
As the stag broke cover with textbook grace, he quickly drew unexpected outriders of his own – a llama and two alpacas, several sheep and goats flew alongside the big red deer as he belted into the sanctuary’s horse field, where a wall-eyed mare flattened her ears and gave chase too.
‘Mat! Kon govno!’ A stream of obscenities came out of Igor’s mouth as he spurred Worcester in hot pursuit. To his alarm, he found two evil-looking Shetlands closing in on him in a pincer movement.
