Country Lovers Read online

But as the mare drew closer, skipping this way and that, the whites of her eyes glinted with malice and her rear end pivoted around ready to deliver a sharp reminder of girl power.

  Luca hauled Beck away just in time to miss two hard-rammed, metal-rimmed hind hooves punching through the air towards them.

  At this, the stallion landed back on all fours and every one of his vertebra seemed flex and click like knuckles as his back bunched up and his head flew down.

  ‘Oh shit!’ Luca could guess what was about to happen.

  11

  Bridge had parted company with Craic whilst travelling at speed, thanks to a low tree branch swiping her into a holly bush like a golf ball into the rough. The pain was up there with the third hour of labour, and she was mortally offended the little sod didn’t wait for her, tanking back off instead in the direction of his cob friend who was still trotting through the trees to catch up with them.

  As she scrabbled out of the bush, her skin ribboned with cuts, Bridge heard Petra scream further along the track.

  Limping to her aid and battling through the veil of skeletal tree branches, she could just make out the big grey horse Luca O’Brien was riding going bananas.

  ‘Holy feck!’ She stumbled closer. Scrambling out on the track, she found herself near Gill on her high horse.

  ‘That is why I said we go the opposite way.’ Gill was frozen with disapproval.

  ‘How can he sit on that?’

  The grey stallion was putting on a rodeo display, head between its knees, twisting around in gravity-defying leaps, dodges and lunges while the mare flicked her back legs at him in a short, bad-tempered barrage.

  Like a centaur fused with his equine half, Luca followed each stomach-churning rotation, moving with the furious horse. Beck was up on his hind legs again now, almost vertical, then spinning and bronco-ing again, a blur of twisting tonnage, seemingly determined to shake off both his female assailant and his rider, head snaking out, his teeth sinking deep into the mare’s red neck.

  Squealing in outrage, Petra’s mare backed away.

  The stallion charged at her, his course only diverted by his rider’s seemingly superhuman strength, turning his head like a stunt horse.

  Now, instead of sitting passively, Luca kicked him forwards, starting to circle in bounds and leaps at first, urging him onwards, fingers moving like a pianist on the reins, his hands speaking to the horse’s mouth, telling him to listen, to get busy, to get to work, his body so perfectly weighted that the stallion had no choice but to stay beneath this light-seated counterbalance of a man who knew exactly where they were going. There was ten metres at most between the lines of trees, but after three jagged loops, his circle started to look symmetrical, the horse’s head coming down, his ears flicking back and forth, and within a few more dizzying rounds his black-eyed concentration matched his black-coated rider’s, only a letter box of handsome face visible between hat and collar.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Mo panted up to Gill and Bridge, leading Craic. ‘You’ll not see the likes of that every day.’

  ‘You will on YouTube from now on.’ Bridge was videoing it excitedly on her phone. ‘This is so going viral. What a fecking brilliant rider.’

  ‘Never seen a mare attacking like that,’ Mo clarified. ‘Look at Ronnie’s face!’

  Standing up in her stirrups with Lawrence of Arabia eyes, she was shouting at Petra to ‘bloody well catch that bloody mad mare!’

  ‘She’s nuts, that one,’ Bridge agreed.

  ‘She’s got the hots for him,’ Gill said drily.

  ‘Are we talking about Ronnie here?’ queried Mo.

  ‘The horse of course! Classic wild instinct.’

  ‘That was flirting? Talk about treat ’em mean.’

  ‘I used to flick boys I fancied in class with my ruler,’ sighed Mo.

  ‘Do you think she was telling him off for getting her up the duff?’ suggested Bridge.

  ‘Breaking the news, maybe,’ Gill conceded. ‘She’s a very strong-willed mare.’

  ‘It’s like Jeremy Kyle,’ chuckled Mo.

  Looking grudgingly impressed, the chestnut was trotting back towards her friends with Petra in hot pursuit. Behind them Ronnie dropped her reins and clapped as Luca rode back to her, her big blue eyes bright as speedwells. The Bags distinctly heard her purr, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Swinging his head to watch his redheaded attacker retreat, the stallion stopped four square and bellowed before the Horsemaker turned him quickly away.

  ‘He fancies her back,’ Gill huffed. ‘Brazen!’

  ‘Their foal’s going to be beautiful.’ Mo patted her hot cheeks.

  ‘I meant Ronnie, this time.’

  The Bags’ collective jaws then dropped to see the Horsemaker touch his fingers to his wool-muffled lips and hold them up.

  ‘Is he blowing a kiss?’ Bridge whispered, angling round for a better view.

  ‘Saluting her with one, I think.’

  ‘He’s like a medieval knight,’ Mo sighed dreamily.

  ‘Now that,’ breathed Gill, watching them ride off, ‘is flirting.’

  Walking back towards them, having caught the mare, Petra fanned her face. ‘What a nightmare! No need for ambulances, thank goodness, although you’re looking a bit Kill Bill there, Bridge.’

  The other two women turned to her with a collective gasp.

  ‘God alive,’ Gill leant closer, ‘what broke your fall? Edward Scissorhands?’

  Looking down, Bridge realised there was blood all over her yellow high viz. ‘Is it that bad?’

  ‘You might need a bit of extra make-up for your interview, love.’ Mo tried to sound reassuring.

  Gill was less so. ‘You have an interview with a face like that?’

  ‘No make-up will cover that,’ Petra predicted.

  Bridge felt her face, gashed lip swollen like a wasped plum now, great bramble slices on her nose, cheek and forehead. Hurriedly switching her mobile phone’s camera to selfie, she let out an anguished cry. Something from a horror film was staring back, skin lacerated with blood-jewelled strings of scratches, lower lip distorted into an obscene trout pout.

  As they remounted and headed back along the track, desperation rose in Bridge. ‘There must be something I can do? Gill. You’re a vet. What can I use?’

  ‘A paper bag?’ Petra suggested.

  ‘Well, there’s fibrin sealants, I suppose – wound glue – which might close it all up neatly enough to put foundation on, but I wouldn’t advise it.’

  ‘I’ll take it!’

  ‘I can’t let you have any, it’s completely unethical.’

  ‘Sod that, I’m a fecking mate.’

  ‘The veterinary one has blue dye in it. Go to the minor injuries unit in Broadbourne.’

  ‘There’s no time. We waited four hours last time we were there and still got sent to Warwick Hospital. And that was just for a towel rail burn.’

  ‘Apparently, if you rub cocaine into wounds, it’s like ET’s finger,’ Petra said informatively. ‘Instant healing.’

  ‘No kidding? And where would I get cocaine round here – Great Compton Village Store?’

  ‘Surely a rock-and-roll woman like you has a stash?’

  ‘You need Lee Welch,’ Mo told Bridge.

  ‘Who?’ One ear was bleeding too, she realised. She was lacerated.

  ‘Skully, they call him. Can’t miss him. Covered in tattoos.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mo, but tattooing my face to hide this is way too extreme.’

  ‘He’s the local dealer; he’ll get you sorted.’

  ‘Bridge is not buying cocaine,’ Gill squawked. ‘I’m shocked at you, Mo.’

  ‘I was talking about the wound glue, love. A lot of the travelling crowd Skully mixes with won’t go to doctors. They call him the Medicine Cabinet on account of the fact he’s nicked that much from dispensaries he’s better stocked than Lloyds. My bet’s that wound stuff gets used by all the bare-knuckle boys.’

  ‘Bare-knuckle figh
ting?’ Petra was agog. ‘Round here?’

  ‘There’s a lot of honour in it for gypsy families.’ Mo gave them all a wise look. ‘Big money too. Turners been doing it for years. Skully patches them up afterwards like a regular cosmetic surgeon.’

  Gill was peering closely at Bridge’s face. ‘It looks worse than it is. That lip’s going to keep bleeding on and off when you talk or eat, but the rest will all scab over very quickly.’

  ‘What’s Skully’s number?’ Bridge demanded.

  None of them had it.

  ‘Okay, we all know this job’s going to be high flying and cancelling isn’t an option,’ volunteered Petra. ‘So tell them you had a bad day doing voluntary work clearing brambles from landmines.’

  ‘In the Cotswolds?’

  ‘Canals, then.’

  ‘Or tell the interviewer the truth, maybe?’ Gill suggested.

  Bridge couldn’t shake the mental image of herself rolling up at the school to meet Auriol ‘Battleaxe’ Bullock with blood splattered over her best white interview shirt, looking like she’d just been mugged by someone wielding a bike chain. If she cancelled this close to the interview, she’d never get a recall. Illogically, she now wanted this job more than life.

  ‘You know her, Mo,’ she mopped up more blood as it dropped on her tabard, ‘your kids go there. Will she buy into the heroic horse fall thing, d’you think?’

  Mo pulled an apologetic face. ‘Mrs Bullock’s more of a cat person.’

  ‘You could say your cat did it?’ said Gill. ‘I’ve had colleagues look worse after a routine worming.’

  ‘Hang on! Mrs Bullock, you say?’ Petra had just sussed it. ‘My tennis club friend’s chair of Maggers’ PTA and says the woman’s totally batshit amazing. They all adore her, but Helen’s convinced the governors are in collusion with the LEA to close the place because it’s safeguarding chaos. The children love it there. It just needs legitimising. Bridge, you are magnificent. I might have guessed you’d seek something like this, a quirky challenge out of altruism rather than financial reward.’ Her dark, wide-set eyes looked genuinely enchanted.

  ‘Yeah, I’m woke like that.’ Bridge sat up taller.

  ‘What a super thing to want to do,’ agreed Gill.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling her.’ Mo looked pleased, pink face beaming.

  Bridge wanted to cry. ‘Anyone have a paper bag?’

  *

  ‘God, those women!’ Ronnie growled as she and Luca rode home. ‘If they can’t control their bloody horses they shouldn’t be allowed on bridleways. Petra’s a chum, but a very daft one. I’ll call her out about this later.’

  ‘It was Beck that overreacted.’ The eyes behind the smile were fixed. ‘He did the same thing in a warm-up arena once. Almost killed his rider too.’

  ‘That chestnut mare’s the one he escaped to before Christmas. Comes into season all through winter, apparently. Total menace.’

  ‘She’s violent, dominant, a natural running mate. She’s attracted to him.’

  ‘In the wild, maybe. As I keep reminding you, this is the Cotswolds.’

  ‘You’re saying being sex mad and cycling all year round isn’t normal here?’

  ‘Put like that…’ She laughed, grateful for his easy forgiveness. Even at her most tenacious, Ronnie had the sense to know when she’d misjudged a situation, and today was one such. Luca was right: if Beck needed to work to keep his mind happy, it must be reintroduced slowly. Manageability around mares was non-negotiable.

  ‘You still think I’m mad standing him at stud, don’t you?’ She looked at him.

  ‘I think it’s dangerous,’ he said, his face guarded.

  ‘The bloodline’s flawless.’

  ‘There’s bad blood, sure enough, but it’s not in his veins.’ He ran a hand along the curved crest of Beck’s neck, its silver mane as glossy and even as a fifties curtain fringe.

  ‘In his past?’

  ‘Horses are no different from us – some find it easier to forgive than others. Beck’s just not the forgiving sort; all that instinct, too much mishandling.’ He zipped his padded collars higher. ‘We need to worry about what he does now, not then.’

  She held his eye, both unsmiling now, mutually aware he knew more about the horse than he was letting on. Lester had said as much, dropping dark hints left, right and centre like Miss Marple in a hospital gown, dosed up on hunt gossip and Dick Francis.

  They rode on in silence for a while, low sun dancing through the bare tree branches swaying and rattling around them.

  The stallion let out a furious, spine-shaking whinny, calling to his distant herd at the stud.

  ‘Was it you he almost killed in the collecting ring?’ It occurred to Ronnie with a jolt of horror.

  Luca shook his head.

  ‘Who then?’

  He took too long to answer, with a deliberately nonchalant shrug. ‘Young lad with all the gear and no idea; they never got on. He’s as tough on his riders as he is on his mares, this one.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him.’

  The stallion, hopelessly unfit and exhausted from his tantrum, was soft-eyed once more, ears flicking back each time his rider spoke, telling Ronnie about a boss he’d worked for who made him ride her horses in for two hours before she’d get on. They really did look splendid together, reminiscent of the glossy picture plates from her parents’ coffee table bible about the horse in portraiture which she’d pored over in lonely adolescence: George Washington on Blueskin, Napoleon crossing the Alps – truthful alongside the ruthless – Van Dyck’s King Charles I and V – one monarch as arrogant as the other was moral. All the horses grey. All beautiful. None more so than Beck with the scarf-masked ninja on his back, soothing him all the while.

  ‘He likes you a lot more than most, I think.’

  ‘I’m easy to like.’ The smile crossed between them again, Luca’s mouth buried beneath his coat collars and scarf, but creasing the corner of the green eyes.

  Ronnie wasn’t so sure it was as easy as it had once been. He had more layers to him these days, and not just winter padding; it made him harder to read, shaded in with subterfuge and a lot more anti-social.

  She thought back to the impish, flirtatious young man in Germany. That Luca never stressed or needed sleep, riding like Bellerophon into battle. He’d followed her round like a puppy, fiddling late into the night while they all drank and made merry. Now he bore the scarred signs of a romantic fugitive: over-working all day, holed up silently in the attic flat like a legionnaire setting up camp by night. So like Pax, who went to bed at toddler time if the dark windows of the stables cottage were anything to go by.

  At least the stud’s unofficial curfew was saving electricity, she reflected bleakly. They were all tucked up with lights off by nine.

  Her own solitary bedtime ritual, a prolonged indulgence of bathing and reading, music and radio, sprang from many long years as a mistress. Family, guests and men got terribly in the way of it, although she missed them like mad when they weren’t around, a contradiction she’d never matched up.

  Blair remained incommunicado in Wiltshire, still in possession of her horsebox. Somewhat against her better judgement, she’d succumbed to impulse with several bright and breezy texts, the most recent of which said, Bring my box back! with five smiley faces. The returning silence spoke volumes. Blair had admittedly never been a big texter, but still…

  Ronnie got more chat from Lester than any of them right now. Bored in hospital and obsessed with the minutiae of institutionalised care and his recovery, he was as talkative as she’d ever known him. He’d also discovered the Internet thanks to a neighbouring patient with an iPad. The old stallion man’s enthusiastic online research into sports horse bloodlines had thrown up all sorts of information he was eager to share with her.

  ‘Lester googled Beck’s breeding,’ she told Luca, noting the way his eyes sharpened. ‘He’s new to search engines, so he read an awful lot about German pianos before he fo
und anything interesting. He did show me a piece about him being sold before the London Olympics.’ She and Lester had almost fainted when he’d read out the price rumoured to have been paid for the horse. ‘Did you ever meet him, this crown prince who bought him?’

  ‘He’s just an ordinary prince, I think. There are seven thousand of them out there.’

  ‘Cuts down on kissing frogs, I guess.’

  ‘Especially with polygamy.’ The smile flashed over his zip tag.

  Ronnie caught it like a yawn. Oh, that smile! So full of after-hours promise. He might be getting early nights, but she had a shrewd suspicion he wasn’t sleeping much. After her own nightly analgesia of bath, Bowie and reading, she’d sent up more than one prayer that he’d smile at someone his own age. Flirting with him was far too easy.

  ‘I do think wives should be taken one at a time, don’t you?’ she joked now. ‘Even if they’re not one’s own.’

  He didn’t answer, eyes still sharp.

  Was she married, Ronnie wondered, this woman who had left a crack in the playboy’s heart? She let it go for now. Experience had taught her that it served little purpose to dredge up a bad past with men or horses. Better to motivate them to succeed, these creatures of need and greed. With confidence, they focussed unswervingly forwards.

  They’d reached the gate from the bridleway to the stud’s rear farm track. Stretching down from the saddle to enter the bolt code, she caught Luca watching her backside.

  ‘We must introduce you to some of the local set,’ she said as she waved him through, Beck calling to the herd again. ‘I can’t hog you all to myself.’

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  ‘Pax needs to get out too,’ she said as she turned Dickon to close the gate, realising too late it sounded like she was setting them up. Over her shoulder, the luminous green gaze had dimmed.

  ‘Like I say, I’m good thanks. I’m sure Pax would rather be spared my company.’

  ‘What is it with you two?’ she grumbled. ‘I know she’s impossibly stressed and it’s not always easy to know how to handle it, but if you talked to her occasionally it might stop me wanting to fall on my pitchfork.’

  ‘I work with horses, Ronnie; I don’t do backchat.’