Leo stared at me, rather blankly for a moment, then a glorious smile lit his face. “It’s wonderful to see you.” Back came the clouded expression. “Oh, but tonight’s not really a good time. I’m shipping a couple of fillies down to Cornwall, settling them in. We hope one of them’s in foal so we don’t want her upset if we can help it. Can you stay?”
“My bag.” I pointed at the doorway.
“Well, that’s fantastic. I’ll be back tomorrow, in time for dinner. Can we talk then?”
“Wonderful.” I mostly meant it. This dark half-light really suited Leo, carved the planes of his face into sharp angles against his unruly hair and made his eyes behind his glasses shine with a meaningful expression. “I can amuse myself here for a day.”
Leo stepped up and enfolded me in an embrace. “No, it’s great that you’re here. Does this mean you’ve reached a decision?” He held me away to look into my face. “Is it yes or no, Alys?”
Gently I disentangled him. “That’s partly why I came, to help me to decide. I’ve got a life in York. It’s not a great one, but it’s mine. I want to make sure that I’m doing all the right things, making the right decisions, do you understand?”
Leo nodded slowly. “I think so. All I can say is if you do say yes, I’ll do my very best to make you happy. I’d like everything to be…” He tailed off.
“To be what?” He felt odd against me, somehow foreign, until I realised that I was comparing this hug to being held against Piers in a car park. “What, Leo?”
“To be different,” he finished, sadly. “Not like it was with Sabine. None of the lying and avoidance and all that.”
“Me too,” I said, half under my breath, as Leo collected papers and bags for his trip. “Me too.”
Chapter Thirty
The next morning I decided to go for a walk through the fields. Leo had shown me the extent of Charlton Hawsell Stud fields on the big map in the office. He’d also pointed out the neighbouring farm belonging to Isabelle and her husband. So, I put on a white T-shirt and cut-off jeans and set off to explore.
Down the pea-gravelled driveway and over a gate I went, catching vague distant glimpses of girls on ponies in a board-sided school. I walked through a paddock where a bright chestnut mare and foal stood nose to tail reflecting the sunlight, and almost fell over the woman crouched beneath an ash tree.
“Oh!” I clutched at my heart. “I didn’t see you down there.” I paused to wonder exactly why she was on her knees in a clump of tussocky grass. Surely you didn’t have to pray to ponies, did you?
“Look.” Her voiced was hushed, wondering. “It’s a dragonfly hatching. Isn’t it beautiful?” Stuck to one of the longer strands of the grass was the zeppelin-like body of an insect, tugging itself free of a restricting shell and spreading its wings to the sun. It shimmered. “It’s like magic, the way they go from this ugly, shrunken thing to this beauty. Don’t you think so?” She stood up, shaking her hair back. “You’re Alys, aren’t you? I’m Jay. Leo hasn’t introduced us properly but—well, that’s Leo, isn’t it?”
“I…hello.” I found my hand had been clasped and was being shaken in a firm grip. “Yes,” I finished, feebly. “That’s me.”
Close up, Jay was pretty. Properly, make-up-free pretty. Her cheeks were rounded and blushed by the sun and outdoor living, her hair glittered a conker-brown and she was shapelier than she’d appeared from the window. She was looking me over in a similar way, though I doubt she’d come to any similar conclusions. Not in this cheap T-shirt, with the draggy-down hem and the uneven cutoffs.
“Leo really thinks a lot about you.” Jay had stopped examining my face and was back to staring at the dragonfly emerging from the cocoon. I wondered if there was room in that shrivelled casing for me to crawl inside. At least then I could have avoided the lustre of love that bloomed across her face when she mentioned his name. “He’s hoping you’re going to marry him.” Dark eyes, with a hint of tear-shine, met mine. “Are you?”
Marry him? Right now I could have killed him. How could he not know? How could he not have noticed that this clear-eyed, unencumbered girl loved him so whole-heartedly? He spent how many hours a day in her company, yet he’d not picked up on that one?
“I don’t know,” I answered her honestly. “I just don’t know.”
A sideways shrug. Not as bad as she’d been expecting. “Oh, okay. Only—”
I half cringed at what I imagined might come next. Was Jay about to confess all to me, her longing and lust for her employer, like some historical novel, which she dare not mention for fear of losing “her position”? What did I say if she did?
“—only I’ve been offered another job. In Wales. So if you move in you might have to help out in the stud. Just for a while, until Leo can replace me.” Her gaze was back on the dragonfly. “Do you have much experience with ponies?” Now she looked up, but it wasn’t at me, it was at the mare and foal languidly flicking flies. The expression of love and loss on her face nearly equalled that when she spoke of Leo. “I wouldn’t ask. It’s just that a few of the mares can be a bit difficult, and handling stallions isn’t something you can just pick up in an afternoon.”
“Like I said, Jay, I’m still thinking. There’s a lot to consider.”
The half shrug again. “Okay. Sorry, didn’t mean to interfere or anything. Going for a walk? It’s lovely down by the river. If you go through that gate, there’s a path.” She’d turned back to her close examination of the insect, now scaffolded to the grass stem, wings glistening an unnaturally vivid blue.
“Thank you.” I didn’t just mean for the walker’s guide. Jay had purposefully let me see her devotion to Leo. She hadn’t even tried to hide how much she cared, and that was courageous, to say the least, when I could have destroyed her dream with just one sentence. But then, she was leaving anyway…
My sandals were soaked by the time I reached the line of trees which marked the edge of the river. So I took the shoes off and carried them, enjoying the freedom. It did mean I had to tread more carefully. The grass, which looked so silky-soft and innocent, concealed pockets of thistles and rocks. When I finally attained the bank of the river, I was high-stepping like a chorus girl.
I collapsed in the sandy-floored bower formed by a willow tree stretching its arms towards the water, and stared into the river’s rippling shadows. A breeze fingered the back of my neck as I propped myself up on my elbows and a few birds flickered through the air. Flies swarmed above the water. The river’s surface moved like lazy cellophane.
“Hey.” A shout assailed me from the far side of the river, the sound snatched at and tossed around by the passing breeze. “Hey. Alys!”
I struggled to sit up, panicked into the here-and-now by the use of my name.
“Piers?” Seeing him here, facing me across the narrow band of river, dislocated me. Piers belonged in Yorkshire. Despite the fact that he wore a countrified version of his normal clothes, he still looked out of place. Wrong. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“There was a call. It’s bad news, Ally.”
Oh God. Florence. Something’s happened to Florence. Before I was really conscious of my movements, I was wading towards Piers, my shoeless feet nearly numb on the stony-floored bed of the river. When I looked up from my stagger I saw that he too had entered the water and was sluicing his way towards me.
“What’s happened?” I gasped.
Piers touched me very lightly on the cheek. “Mrs. Treadgold. She died this morning.”
The water reached just over his knees, midthigh on me, tugging gently at our clothes. A cloud of mayflies racketed around our heads in the silence. “She’s dead.”
“Yeah. You okay?” Piers shifted as stones moved under his feet, some of the dancing insects tangled in his hair and he raised his hand to dash them out.
“I think—I don’t know.” Another kingpin in my surety of life had been removed. “She’d been ill, Piers, and I didn’t even know. I didn’t even notice.” I
looked up into his face. “Am I really such a cow? So neglectful? Mrs. T keeps…kept giving me advice and I don’t even think I took it.”
More stones moved, slippery undersides were revealed. I found myself sliding, put out a foot to stabilise myself, and the world turned over.
I grabbed at Piers instinctively, felt his arm go out to catch me and then both of us were down in the water, flailing and gasping at the cold contrast. I resurfaced, arms whirling and grasping, and I found myself with hands full of Piers’s T-shirt, gripping on for dear life as I coughed and sucked at the air. His skin was cold where his T-shirt rucked, colder than mine, and I realised this was the first time I’d ever touched him, skin to skin. I didn’t let go.
We splashed our way to my bank while he muttered and swore to himself in Spanish. When we finally flopped onto the sandy bank-top, he wrenched off his T-shirt and flung it disgustedly at his feet. “Fifty-three fucking pounds, now it’s only good to clean the car.” God, but he had a nice torso.
I looked down at my own T-shirt. “Seven fifty, and I reckon it’s got a good few years left in it.”
Piers stared at me for a second, then shoved wet hair out of his eyes and smiled. “Yeah. Serve me right for being such a poser.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No. But you think a lot of stuff that you don’t say, Alys. You’re like—like a kind of book, where the pages are just open enough to read some of the words, but you can’t get the whole story. And, by the way, you are not a cow. Or neglectful.”
“Mrs. Treadgold was so good to me.” Tears felt hot against my chilled skin. “I should have been there for her more. I should have talked to her more.”
“Years you’ve been keeping it all inside, Ally. Years. Years of hiding so that no one would find out what you did or find out how screwed up you’d got over it all.”
He’d hunched up, arms around his knees, bare back curved. His backbone protruded through the skin, vanishing up into where his hair fell over his shoulders. I found this oddly affecting. “You need to learn to talk to people.”
“Why did you come?” I said abruptly, trying to stop his train of thought. “You didn’t need to drive all this way. You could have rung. And anyway, how did you find me?”
“Got the address off the ’net. Went to the house. You weren’t there but this woman said you were headed out this way. I guess I picked the wrong side of the river.” Piers looked at my still-ringless hand. “You’ve not told him yet?”
It was either lose my temper or start crying again. I chose anger. “Oh right, so you’re here as the front-line deputation of the Alys-mustn’t-marry-Leo brigade, are you? I bet Jace put you up to this, did she?”
Piers muttered something.
“What?”
He stood up. I thought for a moment he was going to face me, but he turned his back again and leaned against the tree, staring out over the field, his breathing rapid. I couldn’t keep my eyes from the rise and fall of his rib cage. He muttered again.
I gave up. Unfolded my arms and pulled myself upright so that I could stand beside him. “For God’s sake, Piers, what?”
“I said—” This time he turned round and I nearly stepped back. He looked as though he was about to throw up. His normally pale skin looked grey, his eyes were absolutely huge. “I’m not here for anyone but me. Self-interest kinda thing, y’know?” He took a gulp of air. “I don’t want you to marry this guy.”
I just stared at him.
“Okay, Alys, here’s the thing, right?” Another gulp. “I’m in love with you. Can’t help it, don’t fucking want to help it, it’s how I feel.” Some colour had returned to his face now, faintly brushed across his cheekbones. “That’s all. You can throw things and scream now, if you want.”
I closed my mouth with a click. Somewhere, deep inside me, it felt as though someone had wrapped my heart in a warm blanket while somewhere else, somewhere more primeval and certainly farther down, there appeared to be a firework party in progress. My eyes were stapled to his bare chest, the silky coil of hair dead centre which ran down to his belly. And beyond. Oh God, don’t let me even think about beyond. This wasn’t right. I shouldn’t be looking at Piers like this.
“Do you think I should?” I stammered. “Scream, I mean?”
“Well.” Piers moved closer. “If you did, then I wouldn’t be able to do this.” His head tilted down, against all probability mine tilted up, and our lips met. There was enough passion, desire and good old down-and-dirty sex there to satisfy any world-stopping criteria, but there was also an underlying softness. If I’d had any of my mental faculties to hand instead of having them flapping around inside my head like a bunch of stoned budgies, I would have said it was a kiss of promise. His mouth tasted sweet, faintly of peaches and there was something succulently alluring about his naked chest pressed against my damp T-shirt.
Eventually, and reluctantly, I pulled away. Piers let the hand he’d had tangled in my hair fall to his side. “I can’t do this. It’s just too weird. I mean—you and me? What planet did you come from, Piers?”
“Because, why? Why not you and me? Because you’ve got this Leo sitting on the sidelines, all saddle soap and tight jodhpurs?”
A glance down at Piers’s wet jeans, clinging tighter to his thighs than any jodhpurs. My heart was swooping about inside my chest. “I thought—but—you’re my friend.”
“Four years, Ally. Four years I’ve wanted you. If friends was all I was going to get then it was still worth it. So, if you’re gonna marry your guy, at least I’ve told you how I feel.”
“Have you really thought about this?” I said, quietly. “I mean, what about your girlfriend? Maybe you’re reacting to breaking up with her?”
He let out a hoot of laughter. “Ally, sweetheart, Sarah didn’t exist. And yeah, I’ve really thought about this. I’ve had four years to think about it.”
“What do you mean Sarah didn’t exist? No one that thin could be a figment of my imagination.” I was rather carefully avoiding the issue here.
“I invented her. I gave myself six months, yeah? Six months without a woman, to see if I could either talk myself out of love with you, or find out if you could ever feel anything for me—and you kept on and on about me being with someone. You never took the hint, did you?”
“I didn’t know,” I exclaimed. “You never did or said anything to make me think that you—”
“Reckon? Anyway, Sarah. I wanted to make you jealous. Thought it might be my last hope. So once I’d pulled her outta the air, I had to find someone.”
“So that poor girl, her name wasn’t even Sarah?”
“Yeah, it was. She’d been hanging round a while. So I—”
I let out a breath. “So that’s why you told me she was from Manchester and she said she was from Durham?”
Piers gave me a grin which was manic bordering on the completely insane. “Finding a girl from Manchester called Sarah at short notice. Well, have you ever tried it?”
“Surprisingly enough, no. But all that trouble, just to make me jealous? All those hints that there was someone but it was difficult?”
“That was you. And difficult hardly fucking covers it!”
“Oh, Piers,” I said helplessly, as ideas and implications as well as memories and feelings all flooded into me together.
“Did it work?” He stood so close that I could feel him breathing. “Did Sarah make you jealous? Did you think about her with me, that it could have been—should have been you?”
I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it was shock, maybe it was pleasure, maybe it was the sheer ludicrousness of the situation, but I started to laugh. Proper, head-back, gut-wrenching laughing. “You shit, Piers,” I managed to gasp between hoiks of laughter. “You pure, unadulterated shit.”
“It did work then.” He started laughing as well. “Okay, yeah, I’m a complete bastard, but I had to do something or I’d lose you altogether.” The laughing stopped. Was replaced by—what? Expectation? T
he molecules of the air hung heavy between us. It was almost too much of an effort to breathe. “And I couldn’t face that. Not losing you to that wanker.”
I felt obliged to speak in his defence. “Leo isn’t a wanker. He’s kind and sweet and…” I was running out of justifications, “…good.”
I’d asked for it. I really had. Piers put his head on one side and looked at me out of eyes that burned. “Ah,” he said softly. “But I’m not just good.” I had nobody else to blame, I really didn’t. “I’m a fucking revelation.”
He was, too. Tore down all the inhibition borders, shredded away every last self-preserving boundary and quite unashamedly made me surrender my soul to him. There under that willow tree we had sex so hot that I was surprised sheets of molten rock didn’t stream from the hills and the river itself didn’t catch light and flame like a Sambuca. Piers. My God, Piers. It shouldn’t be happening, his fingers shouldn’t know how to tease me like that. I shouldn’t arch under the feel of him sliding inside me, and I definitely shouldn’t be screaming his name. It felt dangerous, it felt threatening but most of all it felt right.
Tongue-to-tongue we lay, a rough description of the explosive sex scribbled in the dusty sand beneath us; the passion and sympathy we’d found in each other had surprised both of us. Eventually Piers raised his head and blew my hair from my cheeks. “This is exactly how I imagined it would be.”
“What, the flies and the sand? Do you fantasise about the Foreign Legion?”
Piers just grinned. “You so do not want to know about my fantasies. Actually, you probably do. But, I meant this. The losing control and the mind-blowing fucking sweet awesomeness of it all.” He held out one hand, straggling the rest of his rangy body over mine. “This—this is all I’ve ever wanted.”
I reached up from beneath him and ran my hand down his back. “I think,” I said slowly, “that one of us could get incredibly hurt.”
“You can’t get hurt if you don’t care.” He was responding to my touch, moving restlessly against me, eager once again. “Do you care, Alys?”
Slightly Foxed Page 20
