Country Lovers Read online

  She looked down her long, freckled nose at him. ‘Wire?’

  ‘Yeah. There’ll be a toolkit in the boot somewhere, am I right?’

  ‘Search me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll call the AA, shall I?’ She headed back to the passenger’s door to reach in for her phone.

  A few flakes of snow had started to drift down.

  ‘I have the app,’ she explained, tapping away at the screen. No sooner had she switched on the device than it rang. She rejected the call, still tapping and now waving the phone around. ‘Patchy data signal.’ It rang again. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ The voice softened to its honeyed newsreader calm as soon as she answered. ‘What is it, Mack? Is it Kes?’

  Luca listened to a one-sided call between Pax and her husband, her stern, dry husk of a voice telling him very coolly to go to hell. She’d be murder to be married to, he imagined, all that neurosis upholstered in middle-class chintz. Thank goodness her mother was so different.

  He located the small toolkit tucked in with the spare wheel, then dug around in his battered rucksack, locating his folding hoof knife and a pair of spur straps. He gathered up Pax’s discarded drink cans from the footwell by the passenger’s seat. Pacing around a few yards away, she was demanding that her son came back tomorrow as planned. Luca took his knife and carefully cut into each metal cylinder, removing the ends to create curved sheets of metal. These he wrapped around the holey exhaust to create a shell and then secured it with the straps. All he needed was a couple of twists of wire to attach it to the chassis fixings.

  He looked around, but there was nothing in the muddy field entrance. Further along the road was another gateway and he went to investigate. They’d broken down beside a sewage works.

  He could see Pax waving her free arm around, hand balled into a fist, landing on the car roof with a thwack. Yet when he made his way back, she sounded no angrier than an irritated teacher telling a small boy to calm down and behave himself.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mack. I’m not going to talk to you about this if you say things like that. Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start that again. There is nobody else.’ She caught Luca watching her, glaring at him as though he was the unseen husband. ‘I was in a hotel, yes, but I—’ Her eyes rolled as she waited out a lot of shouting. ‘Is that really what you think I was doing? You know what? You’re so wrong. Yes, you are. You want the truth? You do? Well, I picked up a complete stranger and spent the night with him. Isn’t that amazing?’

  Apart from bright spots of colour in her pale cheeks, she gave away no trace of emotion. She could have been telling him she bumped into an old friend in Waitrose. Luca picked up a stream of obscenities from the voice shouting out of her phone.

  ‘You do that,’ she said eventually. ‘I think lawyers are a very good idea. Yes, I do actually. How clear must I make it that our marriage is over? Do I need to run along Princes Street twirling my bra around over my head singing “I Want to Break Free”?’

  Without warning, she hurled her phone over the gateway into the field, turning angrily to face Luca, her pale face livid. For an alarming moment he thought she was going to attack him, but she hissed. ‘Do you still need wire?’

  ‘It would help.’

  Hands burrowing under her sweater and around her back, she unhooked her bra, small-cupped and conservative cream, and fed it out through a sleeve. Within seconds, she’d sprung out the underwires and handed them to him. ‘There.’

  ‘Thank you.’ They were still warm. ‘Are you going to twirl it around your head and sing now?’

  ‘No.’

  His gaze automatically went to her chest where two angry nipples pointed accusingly at him through the thick cable knit of her sweater.

  Catching him looking, she tutted under her breath and blew her nose noisily on the bra, then turned on her heel and walked to the front of the car to get back in. He could see her silhouette through the rear windscreen, knees drawn up to her chin, arms round them and shoulders high as she tried hard to hide the fact she was crying again.

  He fixed the exhaust back up with the bra wire and tried the engine which, whilst far from a smooth urban purr, was at least sounding less like a tank. Pax had regained her composure and was gazing blankly out to the road ahead.

  ‘You’d better get your phone,’ he told her.

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, at least don’t litter the bloody thing!’

  She was seriously getting on his nerves now. He climbed over the gate and tracked it down easily enough because it was ringing again. The screen was smashed. It stopped ringing as he carried it back to the car, tossing it on the rear seat.

  As soon as they set off the Bluetooth reconnected and another incoming call rang around them.

  Cursing under her breath, Pax unbuckled her belt and half-climbed into the back to retrieve it. ‘Press the red button on the steering wheel.’

  Murderously, Luca pressed the green button.

  ‘Patricia?’ a deep Scottish brogue demanded. The husband sounded like Sean Connery. He could do a calm voice too.

  ‘I can’t turn it off,’ she growled in frustration turning back round with the phone in her hand.

  ‘You’re bleeding everywhere,’ Luca realised.

  ‘Patricia, what’s going on?’ demanded the deep voice.

  The broken screen had cut her finger, scarlet drips landing on the gear shift. ‘Press the red button,’ she hissed.

  ‘Do not hang up on me, Patricia,’ boomed the voice, ‘my son deserves better than this!’

  ‘Respectfully, Muir, this is between me and Mack.’

  The blood was dripping down her slim, pale wrist, Luca noticed in alarm.

  ‘That’s where you are wrong. We are your family. We are your son’s family, we are—’

  ‘Watch the tractor!’ Pax gasped, grabbing for the wheel. Luca realised, too late, that he was driving straight at an oncoming John Deer.

  ‘Shit!’ He pulled the steering wheel hard right. Pax was pulling it hard left.

  At the last moment the tractor mounted the verge, taking out most of the hedge as it passed, driver gesticulating wildly. The puppy started barking. Pax slumped back in her seat. There was blood all over the steering wheel.

  ‘You could have killed us!’ Luca fumed.

  ‘Who is that?’ demanded the deep boom.

  ‘Listen, fella, I’m sorry your marriage is on the rack, so I am, but having spent just a few hours in the company of your lady wife, I have to say it’s a fucking miracle it’s lasted as long as it has. Now bring the kid home to his mum.’ He pressed the red button.

  Pax turned to him, eyes wide.

  ‘Stop the car.’ It sounded so deathly, he thought she must be about to pass out or throw up again.

  But, clambering out, Pax hurled the phone into an industrial wheelie bin on the edge of a village.

  Cut hand wrapped in her bra, she reclaimed her seat and fumed quietly beside him. ‘That was my father-in-law you were speaking to. I’ll thank you not to interfere again.’

  ‘Willingly.’

  ‘You should have let me get the AA.’

  ‘You certainly need their namesake.’

  ‘I’ve quit drinking.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

  ‘You won’t be sticking around long enough.’

  ‘I’m staying for six months.’

  ‘So you’ve signed a contract?’ She was fishing again, with a harpoon this time.

  ‘Watertight.’ He rolled his eyes sarcastically. Verbal was fine by him. He knew Ronnie was as good as her word.

  ‘The trust hasn’t approved it.’

  It was snowing thickly now, billowing into the wind-screen.

  ‘Pax, can we just make friends?’ he sighed.

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘At least give the dog a name.’

  ‘I already did,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He’s called Knott.’

  He laughed, exasperated, watchi
ng her face and still looking for Ronnie in it.

  ‘It’s a mountain in the Lake District,’ she explained. ‘Mummy lived in a cottage overlooking it when I was little.’

  ‘Must be a favourite spot.’

  She turned on the radio again. The station was still playing New Year tracks, Taylor Swift imploring them to hold on to the memories, making Pax settle back into her seat and close her eyes. ‘I never saw it.’

  6

  The snow, flurrying across from Wales, had turned north before the Cotswolds. Instead, bright sunlight was burning off the frost, warming the scent trail laid for the Fosse and Wolds hounds.

  Lester lifted his nose appreciatively as he came out from grooming the liver-chestnut cob, now polished like cherrywood. There were no Percy hunters, ponies or second horses to be readied these days, Lester serving as the singular ambassador for a family who had followed Wolds Hounds for fifteen generations, an honour he took seriously, a way of life he refused to acknowledge was under threat by social change or budget. He would never dream of telling anybody, least of all Ronnie, that he’d paid this season’s subscription from his own savings, sparing the diesel whenever he could. He would hack to this meet – it was half an hour across the fields at a good clip.

  He went inside to change, Stubbs at his heels.

  He’d given the Turner girl the last ten pounds from the petty cash for her trouble. She was a hard worker, if unskilled and unkempt, and whilst prone to littering her possessions about – she’d left her glittery purse in the tack room, her bobble hat by the hay bale and a set of keys on the feed room desk – she was impressively good at tidying up around the yard at speed, not a loose blade of hay in sight. It looked very shipshape when Ronnie’s silver sports car powered up the driveway.

  Lester, at the dressing-table mirror in his bedroom, tying his stock, looked down from his low casement to watch her park at a rakish angle, the engine roar cutting to dog barks. He almost thrust the pin straight into his windpipe when he spotted she had company, recognising the pelt of peppery black hair emerging from the passenger’s side, long denim legs unfolding and battered country boots hitting the cobbles at the same time as a tangle of paws, dogs spilling from all sides.

  Lester sighed heavily. Blair Robertson, all Marlboro Man testosterone, a hangover from her Wiltshire years. The wretched man was supposed to get her to call home, not accompany her back in person.

  He’d feared this might happen. The Australian event rider had a cool calculator in his handsome head, as good at counting profit as minute markers, and this stud made Ronnie too valuable an asset to leave fallow. Looking at him, Lester found it hard to spot an item of clothing without a sponsor’s logo, those embroidery tattoos that professional riders collected with pride. From his Puffa to his underwear, Blair Robertson was a walking billboard for the country elite, an ageing eventing poster boy.

  And Lester had inadvertently played matchmaker with its one-time golden girl.

  Good mood dissipating, he stomped downstairs and pulled on his boots. Outside, he counted five dogs – two extra terriers and an English pointer.

  Ronnie was heaving several saddles out of the boot of the car. ‘Happy New Year, Lester! Sorry I’m later than planned. You remember Blair.’

  Lester nodded at him, spared formal reacquaintance by the stud’s line ringing, the external bell clanging from the clock tower.

  ‘Shall I get that in the cottage, Mrs Ledwell?’

  ‘I’ll grab it.’ Ronnie was already ahead of him, dumping the saddles on Blair and running in through his front door. ‘I’m expecting a call from Tim. Lost my mobile somewhere. Where’s Pax?’ She vanished inside, not waiting for an answer.

  Left alone with Blair Robertson, Lester sucked his teeth and eyed the sky where dark clouds were gathering. ‘You told her the Horsemaker’s flown in early?’

  ‘Slipped my mind.’ He smiled easily. ‘In bed, is he?’

  ‘They’re not back yet.’ Lester scowled.

  ‘Keeping well, I see, Lester.’ The Australian’s canyon-deep voice always sounded mildly ridiculous amid civilised surroundings.

  ‘As can be expected,’ he said tersely, already backing away. ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir.’

  But to his annoyance, Blair followed him into the tack room, yawning widely, no doubt suffering from a late and probably highly seductive night. He dumped the saddles on an empty rack and admired the old photographs of Ronnie sailing over rider-frightener four-star fences in the early eighties. A few newer ones taken by Pip on her phone had been pinned up recently, cheap printer paper curling at the edges, amongst them an early shot of the dun colt Ronnie rated above all the others.

  ‘There’s my five-star horse.’ Blair tapped it.

  ‘Four,’ Lester corrected, the half dozen great three-day events like Badminton, Burghley and Kentucky graded four-star being the toughest in the sport, even watered down from the great endurance feats they’d been in yesteryear.

  ‘New rules, mate. They’re adding a star.’

  Lester’s lip curled. With each generation came the urge to meddle and change things. As they re-emerged into sharp winter sunlight, he wondered where Blair’s poor wife was today. An aristocratic beauty in her day, now going senile by all accounts, she’d given up everything for him once: a grand house, title and family. Last year, she’d given up the mad stallion too, which Lester considered a wiser sacrifice.

  ‘His dam’s in foal to the same sire this year?’

  ‘If you are referring to the dun colt, that’s correct.’

  ‘Exciting prospect. Next you’ll have to try her with this guy.’ Blair went to see Beck, admiring his ferocious beauty beyond the grilles, his deep rumbling voice doing little to calm the aggressive display.

  ‘That’s for Mrs Ledwell to decide,’ Lester muttered, adding under his breath, ‘Not your bloody place.’

  Blair cracked a hoarse laugh and Lester realised he’d been heard. He ground his teeth as he crossed the yard under the man’s watchful gaze, hatefully slow and lopsided under the weight of the cob’s saddle, its leather-cased sandwich box and hunting flask already attached.

  The Australian stood framed in the stable door, a big menacing shadow. ‘I’m on my way to lunch in Leicestershire. My most enthusiastic owners have bought each other His and Hers eventers for Christmas that they want me to take away for further education. Ronnie kindly offered me her lorry.’

  ‘Hmm…’ Lester knew he had at least two horse boxes of his own.

  ‘Could use a decent run, she reckons. No good lying idle, classy machine like hers.’

  Lester marched past him, suspecting the Australian of at least one double entendre.

  ‘We look out for each other, me and Ron.’

  ‘Not my business what you get up to,’ he muttered, throwing the saddle up on the cob, refusing to be drawn into it.

  ‘This Horsemaker bloke, Lester,’ he squinted over his shoulder where the pack of dogs they’d brought had Stubbs cornered in the tack room, ‘d’you know much about him?’

  Lester’s gnarled fingers slowed over the buckles, sensing common ground. ‘Heard he got into a spot of bother a while back.’

  ‘It was more than a spot, Lester. It was a bloody great black hole.’

  ‘Sorry! I left half my clobber here!’ exclaimed a breathless voice as, with a squeak of muddy buggy wheel, Carly charged across the yard from the direction of the rear track, pushing two of her brood, the third – a little shaven-haired thug – stomping in her wake carrying a fluffy sabre of some sort, and trailing their evil-looking dog who started barking and dragged him into the tack room to join the pack. ‘Get Mum’s purse from in there, Ellis!’ she shouted as she gathered the keys which she waggled at Lester with a self-mocking expression as he emerged from the cob’s stable. ‘Had to break into my own house just now.’ She grinned.

  She’d changed into tight ripped jeans and a boxy fake fur jacket, ankle boots coated in mud. She must have come across the fields, Lest
er realised, rather admiring her tenacity, although he did wish she’d exert it elsewhere.

  Carly was looking at Blair with sleepy-eyed interest. ‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’

  Clearing his throat brusquely, Lester said, ‘Blair is an event rider friend of Mrs Ledwell’s, Carly.’ He paused, uncertain how to introduce her. He could hardly classify her as a groom, especially dressed like that. She did all sorts of jobs from what she’d said. ‘Carly is… a working girl from the village.’

  One of her dark, sculpted eyebrows shot up and Lester had a feeling he might have got that wrong.

  Blair’s craggy face was all smiles. ‘Any friends of Lester’s is a friend of mine.’

  ‘It’s a professional relationship,’ Lester muttered, turning back to the stable.

  ‘Wait a sec!’ Carly called him back. She sucked her teeth for a moment, twirling the keys around her fingers and glancing at the buggy, where her toddler daughter was tugging at her mother’s coat hem mewling to see the horses. ‘I wanted to say thank you very much for the job this morning, Mr Lester.’

  ‘You’re very efficient.’

  She smiled quickly. ‘You can’t say you didn’t get a lot for your tenner, yeah. You’ll let Mr O’Brien know what I can do?’

  He cleared his throat, aware of Blair’s close scrutiny. ‘I will.’

  ‘Cool. Is Ronnie back yet?’ She looked around hopefully.

  ‘Mrs Ledwell is on the telephone.’

  She gathered her hat and crammed it on before shouting for her son. ‘Ellis! Pack in winding up them dogs and come back here. We’re going round to Bridge’s for coffee, so I want best behaviour, yeah?’

  ‘Can we see the horses first?’ demanded Ellis, storming out of the tack room, the dog he was trailing now had hackles high, terriers nipping at its legs.

  ‘If you like.’ She tousled his hair, eyeing Lester again. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  Gesturing tersely to go ahead with her carrot-feeding, Lester hurried back into the stable to fetch out the cob, knowing he’d be late if he tarried any longer.