Isabelle entered carrying a huge casserole dish and took in the scene with wide eyes. Her brother appeared to be holding my hand, whilst my underclothing was heaving-to at an angle previously only seen on a post-iceberg Titanic.
“I see you’ve introduced yourselves,” she said indistinctly. “Leo, could you go and shout for Ivan?”
Leo let go of my hand, leaving it tingling slightly and went out.
Isabelle looked sideways at me. “It’s nice to see Leo talking to someone he doesn’t know.” She distributed stew onto plates around the table. “He’s usually terribly shy.”
I turned away and gave one last hoik under my T-shirt. My cleavage subsided somewhat, but at least everything was now tucked back where it should be. “He seems very sweet,” I said, understating.
“Oh, he is. He’s a lovely man, he’s just…” At that point we were interrupted by the entrance of Ivan, Josh, Leo and a small dark girl who was introduced as “my daughter Emma”. We sat down to eat, leaving me fretting about the potential end of Isabelle’s sentence. He’s just… Just what? Just psychotic? Just got a half-inch willy? Just gay?
The conversation went on around Leo and me. We were seated opposite one another which gave me the maximum of opportunities to stare at him. Although a carelessly placed jug of water cut off most of my view from midchest down, I’d already noted that he was wearing a black T-shirt and close-fitting black jeans. His dark hair was long in an I’ve-been-too-busy-to-get-to-the-barber’s way, curling around the back of his neck and wisping down over his forehead. He had short nails, slightly bitten, and his face was stubbled with a couple of days’ growth. All in all, desirable.
“It’s bad news about The Star, Alys, I’m afraid.” Isabelle ladled me another helping of stew. “Fully booked.”
“Oh.” Damn, blast and bugger. “Well, if you can give me a lift to somewhere, I can get the bus. I’ll find somewhere to stay in Exeter. Or go back tonight.”
Everyone exchanged a smile. Even Leo. Perhaps this was the moment that someone said, “Oh, you can’t go out after dark. Not round these parts.”
“There won’t be a bus back to Exeter until tomorrow morning,” Josh explained. “Trains up to York stop running at eleven. It’s nearly nine now.”
There was a short pause then Leo, with his eyes fixed firmly on his stew, mumbled something.
“Oh that would be wonderful,” Isabelle said. “That will save Alys a lot of bother.”
I smiled brightly. Leo looked up and caught my eye. Although he seemed a bit panicked, he managed to give me a small grin. I wondered what he’d suggested. I drained my glass of wine and hoped he hadn’t offered to post me home in a Jiffy bag.
Chapter Nine
The evening petered slowly to a close, helped to its conclusion by a steamed treacle pudding which Isabelle bore triumphantly from the kitchen accompanied by a jug of custard. I hadn’t seen so many calories on display since I caught sight of some illustrations in The Lard Modellers Handbook. Eventually everyone pushed back chairs and emptied glasses, looking at watches and making noises about how late it was getting.
I helped Isabelle clear the table in the hope that she’d drop some hints about what Leo had suggested for me.
“Um. Alys. Later. Well, it’s not that we’re not delighted that he’s taken to you but—if you could be a little bit careful about what you mention. Only, there’s the poetry, obviously, and it might be best if you didn’t mention his wife either. Still a bit of a sore spot. If he asks anything about school just bluff it. I said that you left after a year to go and live in South Africa, so he shouldn’t.”
“What if he asks something about South Africa?”
Isabelle slammed the dishwasher shut. “Oh. I never thought of that. What do you know about South Africa?”
“Um. Apartheid. Nelson Mandela. That’s it, I’m afraid.”
Leo walked into the kitchen and stood by the Aga, his arms full of lengths of rope. He was tying and untying knots in them, but every now and again his eyes would flicker up and rest on me for a moment. I pretended to be busy swilling out some pots and not noticing, but I could feel it each time his gaze landed on me almost as though it had physical weight. Once I turned and looked over my shoulder, addressing a remark to Isabelle, and his eyes caught mine. He looked away after a second but—had I imagined it?—a blush crossed his face as he glanced back down at the twisted rope in his hands.
When the kitchen was tidy, I stood awkwardly. Leo bid his sister goodnight and the pair of them looked at me. “Er,” I began, but Isabelle cut me short by wrapping her arms around me and giving me a huge hug.
“Well, Alys, it’s been lovely seeing you after all this time. Thank you for coming all this way.”
Leo seemed to be waiting for me. Cautiously I followed him to the door. “Goodbye,” I said, somewhat quietly, in case I wasn’t going. “Thank you for dinner.”
Leo was standing outside the door with a torch in his hand. I picked up my rucksack and Isabelle closed the door behind us with a resounding and somewhat thankful thud. So. Let me recap. I was standing in the dark, with a man I desired marginally less than I liked breathing, and that man showed every sign of wanting to be there. I let out a silent murmur of thanks that I’d been keeping my karma shiny and bright. I must have been very, very good, probably in quite a lot of former lives, to have deserved this.
“So,” I said, as we began to pick our way by the narrow torch beam up a dusty track.
“I hope you don’t think I normally do this.” He spoke without looking at me. “Taking women home when I’ve just met them. But, I don’t know, there seemed to be some sort of connection between us, when I saw you standing there in front of the photos of Thistle…and…you seemed…it was almost as though you knew me when you looked at me. Like a flicker of recognition. I’m sorry. That sounds really pathetic, doesn’t it? But I knew that I didn’t want you to disappear off to wherever it is that you come from. Not without my at least having the chance to talk to you.”
My foot chose that particular moment to shoot into a rut. My leg gave way. I stumbled and lurched forward a couple of strides before I pitched to my knees in the dust. Great. I wanted to come over suave and sophisticated and here I was impersonating Frankenstein’s monster’s trial run. But there was an advantage. Leo lifted me to my feet by my upper arms. He was much more muscular than he looked, that black T-shirt must contain a decent body. As he placed me back upright, his hands lingered for a moment, and I felt the hairs along my forearms react. He was so close I could smell the scent of hay and horses from him, also something spicy and definitely sexy. I was feeling quite ridiculously hot and wondered how I was going to talk myself out of this.
“Oh, look.” His voice had the breathless, dreamy quality that I normally associated with men when they were about to suggest that I might like to dress up in a rubber catsuit. “That’s Sophia.”
“Who?” We’d emerged from the lane and now the trackway was crossing an open field, well moonlit, but I couldn’t see any sign of anyone else. “Where?”
“There. Isn’t she beautiful?”
I looked where he pointed. “What? Behind the horse?”
“Pony. Sophia is my champion Section A mare. In foal to Cleavers, if everything works out right.” We continued walking, uphill now, past the grazing pony, towards a stupendously lovely house which was gleaming yellow in the moonlight. “I’m sorry. I get a little bit carried away about my animals, sometimes. They’ve been everything to me since—well, for a long while now.” We walked on, around to the front of the house, which made me stop for a second and catch my breath. It was a large Elizabethan building with high mullioned windows and arched doorways. A proper gravelled driveway led off between neatly clipped lawns into the distance.
“Gosh. The last time I saw anything like this, it was a re-creation on Time Team.”
“It is rather lovely.” Leo pushed open a door which bore more metal decoration than your average body-piercing en
thusiast and led me into an enormous hallway. I followed him through into a kitchen. A large range took up most of one wall and a huge butler’s sink occupied a greater portion of the other. A scrubbed table stood in the middle and the corners were occupied by dogs’ beds, horse rugs, saddlery and assorted piles of papers, boxes and bottles. It was a mess. But, I was pleased to note, there were absolutely no feminine touches around the place, not even so much as a rag rug to warm the chilly stone flag floor. If he did have a wife, she was a complete domestic slob.
Leo glanced around at the empty dog beds. “I wonder where the terriers have got to?” He opened a door. I admired his back view as he took a few steps out of the kitchen. My subconscious checklist of desirable male features was sagging under the weight of ticks—the way his hair curled slightly over his collar, the broad line of his shoulders, the neatness of his buttocks. All this and the sensual frisson which had definitely slithered between us when he’d helped me upright. He was, without a doubt, what Florence would call fit.
Florence. She’d be back from wherever-it-was that Piers was taking her by now, surely? Especially with an exam to sit tomorrow.
“Hey, Mum!”
For once she sounded pleased to hear from me. “Is everything okay, darling? Are you back at Dad’s?”
“Yeah, everything’s cool this end. What’re you up to?”
“Well, I’m sitting in an Elizabethan mansion chatting to a rather nice man.”
A snorty kind of laugh. “Yeah, right. And I just pulled the Arctic Monkeys.”
“No, I am. Honestly.”
A pause. “What, a man? A real one?” There was a sudden, frantic amount of whispering off-mouthpiece as Florence relayed this piece of information to someone else.
I heard Piers say, “Is she all right?”
Piers obviously thought the only way I’d ever be in contact with a man would be for one to have abducted me. “It’s all fine. Look, I’ll be back tomorrow. Ask Piers to bring you home in the evening, if he doesn’t mind.”
There was a lot of rustling at the other end, then Piers’s voice. “That’ll be okay, Alys. I’ll bring her back around nine. Will you be in?”
“If I’m not I won’t be too late. Thank you for running her around, Piers. I hope it’s not interfering with your life too much.”
“Well, you know, things are kinda quiet at the moment.”
We were silent at each other. I heard Florrie say, “Let me talk to her again,” petulantly, as though Piers had been withholding the handset. “Mum, you don’t have to come back on my account, you know. It will be fine for me to stay with Dad a bit longer.”
“No, I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ve got to work. Bye darling!”
Florence muttered me a goodbye, another set of plans obviously thwarted by her evil mother, and I laid the phone down. Leo was standing just inside the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have realised.”
“Realised what?”
“I…umm…” His eyes headed for the ceiling and began following the contours of the walls. “I’m afraid…I’m…oh bugger it. I should have realised that you weren’t available. My fault. Sorry.” His eyes continued to roam somewhere above head height, but the rest of his face assumed a wry expression. “I hope I haven’t compromised our…friendship by saying that.” He’d obviously heard the tail end of my conversation, all Piers and darling.
“Oh, but I am,” I said. “Available, that is.” Aware that this made me sound like Tart of the Century, I hastened in with, “I was talking to my daughter. I’d promised I’d ring. But apart from her—oh, and Grainger, he’s our cat—well, there’s nobody.” Then, because that gave the impression that I was Billy No-Mates, “Nobody special, that is. I mean, I see people, of course I do, doesn’t everyone, but not men. Well, some of them are men, obviously, at least half, but I don’t see them, I mean, I see them, otherwise I’d fall over them all the time, but not in that way. If you see what I mean.” It had finally dawned on me that I was gabbling.
“In other words, you don’t have a significant other?”
“I don’t have any kind of other.” And forgetting everything Isabelle had told me, “What about you? Married?”
Leo sank suddenly into a chair. “I hope you’ll excuse me.” He put his head in his hands for a moment as though he was very tired. “I like you Alys, but there are things I find quite difficult to talk about. I’m not naturally a very open person.”
“I think most poets aren’t,” I said without thinking, then blushed a bright and unflattering shade of cerise.
“How…?”
“Isabelle.” I dropped his sister firmly into the cesspit of fraternal relations. “She mentioned that you wrote poetry sometimes. A lot of poets aren’t good at verbalising relationships and things. They put everything into words in a different way.” Because I was panicking slightly and his expression was a bit blank, I added, “W.H. Auden was exactly the same!”
“Ah. Was he?” Leo got up and went to a cupboard, which turned out to be rather satisfyingly full of wine. “Drink?”
We drank. Talked. Leo seemed to talk a lot but without giving much away. He told me about the stud, his five champion stallions and the mares. I tried to ask intelligent, nonprobing questions but it was really awkward. Curiously, this made him more exciting, more inscrutable, like a wrapped parcel under the Christmas tree.
Eventually we both sat back and yawned in tandem. “Do you realise it’s nearly three o’clock?” He rubbed his hands over his cheeks. “I need a shave. And a haircut. I do apologise, Alys, for being such a scruffbag. You deserve better and next time we meet I shall try to be a little more presentable.”
“I think you look”—I couldn’t meet his eye—“great.” Understatement of the year. “You don’t need to do anything on my account.”
“But I’d like to.” Leo leaned across the table, put a finger under my chin and gently tilted my head so that I had to look at him. “May I, Alys? May I see you again? I admit, I’ve got no idea how, but all I know is that I’d like to, very much.”
“Yes,” I almost whispered and hoped that he’d take the pleading expression in my eyes as an invitation to kiss me. Whatever he took it as, he didn’t kiss me. Didn’t even close the gap between us, just let go of my chin and sighed.
“It’s late. I’ll show you to the Green Room, I think you’ll like it. I’ll run you through to Exeter tomorrow to get the train, but I’m afraid I’ll probably not see very much of you before that. I’m up at six to start on morning stables.”
I followed him up the most stunning flight of stairs ever seen outside a forties Hollywood musical, and along a twisted tangle of corridors and landings. At last Leo stopped in front of a door. “This is the Green Room. Bathroom is down the corridor there. Good night, Alys. Sleep well.”
I half pursed my lips in expectation of a kiss, but he was gone, striding away into the darkness. I went into the bedroom and undressed, then lay and cursed. Maybe I should have asked Leo where his room was? Maybe he’d appreciate being swept off his feet, maybe he didn’t know how to make the first move. But Leo struck me as a man who liked to do the gentlemanly thing and, let’s face it, sleeping with a woman you’ve only just met who’s largely off her face on white wine is hardly gentlemanly. I didn’t really know how to make the first move—not these days. Anyway, hadn’t I secretly preferred him as a dead man?
If only he wasn’t so damn sexy.
Chapter Ten
“And this,” Leo continued, as I gritted my teeth to stifle a tiny bubble of yawn, “is Charlton Persephone.” He leaned over yet another stable door and rubbed the neck of yet another small grey pony. “All my mares have women’s names and the stallions are all named after plants, as you might have noticed.”
I had noticed. I had also noticed that Leo was clean shaven this morning, was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a worn pair of denims and that he smelled of Aramis. He leaned companionably close over the half-door, and
I became very aware that his shoulder was touching mine. I turned around to hold my face up to the sun, letting the urgent light burn away some of the heavy-lidded desire for more sleep. To my gratification he turned too, then stood in front of me forming a shadow which blocked almost all the rays. Enough light was getting past him, however, to mean that I could only look at him through half-closed lids.
There was a moment of silence. The blinding light meant I couldn’t see his expression, only the outline of his head. “Excuse me,” he said softly. “Do you mind if I just—” His head came forward, a hand reached out and cupped the back of my head. I closed my eyes waiting for lip impact. Instead I felt a brief fiddle at the front of my hair, and he pulled away again causing the sunlight to strobe across my face. “You had a piece of hay caught.”
My lips slammed together. “We’d better get going,” I said rather tersely. “I don’t want to miss my train.”
“Plenty of time.” Leo moved on to the next stable. “Come in here a second.”
He unlocked the door and I followed, into a loose box full of straw but no pony. “What?”
“Oh. Only this.” He grabbed me very firmly by both shoulders and kissed me deeply. I’d got used to being kissed by men who made the event feel as though my face was being attacked by half a pound of raw liver, but Leo—well, let’s just say he was hot. He didn’t attempt to explore the contents of my T-shirt, but a definitely not-disinterested hand roamed about between my shoulder blades and there was a distinct pressure against my hip. Finally he let go and stood away, shaking his hair off his face and holding his watch up in front of his eyes. “Hmmm, better get off to the station.”
“Oh.” I found myself slightly embarrassed. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”
“You don’t mind? That I kissed you?” Leo opened the stable door and ushered me out as though we’d done nothing more meaningful than examine some paintwork. “I felt that it was something I wanted to do.”
Slightly Foxed Page 5
