Country Pursuits (3 page)

Back in Churchminster, someone else was feeling the effects of sleep-deprivation. The central heating in Harriet Fraser's cottage had broken down sometime around two in the morning, and she had spent the remainder of the night wrapped in pyjamas and four jumpers, shivering madly. Forgoing her normal morning shower, Harriet threw on her old cords and fleece jumper and tramped up to the main house to ask for some help.

At the age of thirty, Harriet had left home. Sort of. What she had actually done was move from Clanfield Hall, the grand estate
home of her parents, Sir Ambrose and Lady Frances Fraser, and down the drive to Gate Cottage, a small stone two-up two-down at the estate's entrance. For someone who had grown up in a house with corridors so wide it took five minutes to jog across them, Gate Cottage couldn't have been more different. Harriet adored it. For the first time she was her own boss and she also loved the peace and quiet.

Clanfield Hall was very quiet as well, today, she reflected as she arrived at the top of the main drive. It was nine o'clock, but the morning mist hadn't lifted yet, and the vast lawns were shrouded in an ethereal white cloak. The gardens were historic and breathtakingly landscaped, the
pièce de résistance
a huge, ornate fountain in front of the house. Rumour had it that Queen Victoria had once bathed her feet in there during a summer party.

A hot bath was foremost on Harriet's mind as she skirted round the east wing of the house to the back, and in through the kitchen entrance. There she found Cook, busy decapitating a dead pheasant.

A cheery, red-faced woman, Cook had been in the family's employment since Harriet was a little girl.

‘Miss Harriet, what are you doing here so early?'

‘Blasted heating's broken down again,' said Harriet gloomily, shaking her muddy wellingtons off by the door. ‘It's got to be the fourth time in the last year. Do you know if Jed's about? I need him to take a look at it.'

‘I think he's out by the lake, fixing some fencing,' replied Cook. ‘Now then, do you want breakfast? I could do your favourite pancakes . . .'

Harriet looked down at her bulging waistband. ‘I'm meant to be on a diet.'

‘Just a few,' said Cook conspiratorially, whose motto in life was ‘If it moves, feed it.'

‘Oh, go on, then!' said Harriet, with a cheeky grin. ‘Just don't tell Mummy. Speaking of which, where are they?'

‘Her Ladyship is in the drawing room, Sir Ambrose is in his study,' informed Cook.

‘I'd better go and say hello, then,' said Harriet. ‘Can you hold off on the nosh for a bit, Cooky?'

She left the warmth of the kitchen and padded down the long, wood-panelled corridor to the drawing room. The house had been in her father's family for three hundred years, and family crests adorned the walls, alongside creepy looking portraits of her ancestors. A meek and mild only child, Harriet had found growing up at Clanfield Hall a daunting experience. She had much preferred hanging out with Cook and the other staff in the cosy servants' quarters, than with her parents in the huge chilly rooms ‘front of house'.

Harriet arrived at the drawing room door and tentatively pushed it open. Her mother was sitting in a Regency chair by one of the room's huge windows, reading. Lady Frances Fraser was a well-preserved woman of fifty-one, her slender figure encased in a silk shirt and long tweed pencil skirt. As always she was immaculately made-up, with her blonde hair pulled up in a chignon. She looked up as her daughter walked in.

‘Have you put on weight, Harriet?' Lady Fraser never failed to comment on her daughter's weight, even if she'd only seen her the day before.

Harriet edged into the room. ‘No, Mummy, I've been on my diet. Honestly, I've been really
good . . .' She thought of the pancakes and blushed guiltily.

‘Hmm,' her mother offered up her cheek, which Harriet kissed dutifully. ‘Maybe we should get you a personal trainer as well.' Lady Fraser loved her daughter, but despaired at having produced such an ungainly, overweight lump. In contrast to her own sleek blonde hair, Harriet's was a brown, frizzy mess she usually scraped back in a ponytail that looked like it was exploding out of her head. The famous Fraser cheekbones were hidden beneath red, chubby cheeks. In fact, the only thing Harriet had going for her, as Lady Fraser often pointed out, were her calves and ankles, which stayed enviably slim no matter how much weight Harriet piled on.

Frances was twenty years her husband's junior and had given birth to Harriet when she was only twenty-one. Afterwards, due to a medical complication, the couple were told she would be unable to have any more children, and with this news Sir Ambrose's hopes of carrying on the family line had been dashed. Once he'd got over the shock, some years later, he had gone about trying to marry Harriet off to any blueblood available. Harriet's debutante ball had been the most horrific evening of her life: her frame crushed into an unflattering taffeta dress, and every eligible young bachelor firmly giving her a wide berth. Harriet had retreated behind a wall of books ever since, and much preferred a dashing hero in a Mills and Boon novel to real life. As a result, and to her complete mortification, she was starting her third decade still a virgin.

‘Well, I just came to say hello,' she said, hovering on one foot.

‘Do stand up straight, darling,' instructed her mother.

‘Sorry, Mummy,' apologized Harriet. ‘I need to find Jed, my heating's broken down.'

‘Again?' her mother raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at her daughter. ‘Honestly, I don't know why you persist in living in that hovel when there's a perfectly good wing here for you.'

‘I'm fine, really!' replied Harriet hastily. ‘I'll get it fixed.' She turned to go out of the room. ‘I might go and say morning to Daddy as well.'

‘I wouldn't, if I were you,' said her mother, returning to her book. ‘The post boy delivered the
Daily Star
instead of the
Telegraph
, and he's in a frightful mood.'

Her father's short fuse was legendary: he'd once smashed a priceless oriental vase when his horse lost in the 11.28 at Cheltenham.

‘I think I'll leave it for a while,' said Harriet.

An hour later Jed Bantry was standing in the kitchen of Gate Cottage, iron wrench in hand. Harriet, who had ended up having seconds of Cook's delicious pancakes with maple syrup, was now feeling vaguely sick, and vowed not to eat another thing for the rest of the weekend. She watched Jed as he rummaged around in the kitchen cupboard that housed the building's heating system.

‘The fuse has gone,' he announced, pulling himself out to face Harriet. The morning sun caught his face, lighting up his chiselled features. Harriet
blinked as she was reminded again what a gorgeous man Jed had grown up to be. Jed was the son of her parents' housekeeper Mrs Bantry. They lived in one of the workers' cottages at the edge of the estate. Mr Bantry had run off years before ‘with some old tart from the dairy' as Cook had put it. Similar in age, Jed and Harriet had practically grown up together, worlds apart but side-by-side. Jed was now the estate's handyman and sometime gardener. He had always been a boy of few words, and even now, in adulthood, Harriet still couldn't work him out. But they existed in companionable silence, a familiarity that had grown over the years.

Jed had grown over time, too. Once a skinny, rangy kid, he was now a strapping six-footer with wide shoulders and a lean, muscled physique from doing hard manual work all year round. With a tousled mop of black hair, eyes the colour of faded khaki and a flawless complexion, Jed Bantry could have walked straight off the set of a Hugo Boss advert. Not that he seemed aware of this. All the local girls fancied him madly, but Jed showed little obvious interest in the opposite sex, preferring to spend his time working on the estate or tinkering with his motorbike. Harriet had wondered in recent months if she should start fancying him, too, but her parents would have had a heart attack if she had. Besides, Harriet's libido was so dead and buried, she doubted any man other than a dashing Victorian hero called Heathcliff Montgomery would ever make her heart flutter.

‘I've got a spare fuse – I'll go and get it, then, yeah?' said Jed, bringing Harriet out of her daydream. She watched him pack away his toolbox, his
rock-hard buttocks straining against the material of his overalls.

‘Oh, yes, that would be lovely, Jed,' said Harriet gratefully, giving herself a shake. ‘Thanks awfully.' She watched him tread off down the path and shivered again. The temperature was reaching arctic proportions, while the waistband of her trousers pinched miserably. In a decisive moment, Harriet decided to kill two birds with one stone, and went to dig out her Davina McCall workout DVD to do in front of the telly.

ON THE OTHER
side of Churchminster, Freddie Fox-Titt was inspecting his wife's overgrown bush. His beloved Angie was a keen amateur gardener and had planted something gooseberry-related by the entrance to the Fox-Titts' estate. God only knows why, Freddie cursed to himself. It had mutated so much it was in danger of blocking off the driveway. Not good when you made your living hiring out your land for various shooting and fishing parties. This was why he was armed with a large pair of rusty, antiquarian hedge clippers he'd found in Meakins's shed.

Unfortunately the gooseberry bush, with its sturdy stems and prickles, was proving quite an adversary. Freddie had been going at it for forty-five minutes and had hardly made a dent. When a branch pinged back in his face and scratched his cheek, Freddie decided enough was enough. ‘Bugger this,' he said to himself, and turned back to the house, making a mental note to get Meakins in for an extra day that week instead.

Halfway up the drive, Freddie was nearly mown aside by a black GTI, bass pumping as it sped
towards him at tremendous speed. ‘ARCHIE!' Freddie yelled, squeezing up on to the verge to avoid being mown down. The car screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust and then reversed back to where Freddie was standing.

The tinted window slid down, and drum and bass music blasted out, making Freddie's eyes water. In the driver's seat sat a youth with a shaved head, tramlines round the sides. His eyebrows had been shaved into strips and he was wearing a baggy tracksuit and a big gold pendant. This was Freddie's 17-year-old son, Archie.

‘Wassup?' he asked insolently, smoothing his hand across his shaven head and admiring it in the rear-view mirror.

‘Do you have to drive like a bloody maniac?' yelled Freddie again, straining to be heard above the music. Archie sucked his teeth at his dad in response. ‘Where are you going?' asked Freddie, this time more reasonably. He hadn't had such a long conversation with his son in months.

‘College, innit?' replied Archie, casting his eyes around and looking bored.

‘Are you back for supper with us this evening?' asked Freddie hopefully.

Archie sucked his teeth again. ‘I'm not hanging out with you
olds
, man! Me and Tyrone is going to this house party. Laters.' And with that, the window rolled up and Archie revved his car, disappearing down the drive.

Freddie watched him go and sighed. Christ, who would have teenagers? Until he turned sixteen, Archie had been a model son. At Eton he had excelled at sports and science and planned to
become a vet, much to the delight of his parents. But almost overnight, Archie had changed beyond recognition. He had announced he was sick of private education, dropped out of school, and enrolled in the local college to do his A levels. Instead of spending weekends with his old friends Tarquin and Rupert, Archie started hanging around with some local lads from the nearby town of Bedlington. Shortly afterwards, he had shaved off his mop of Hugh Grant hair, swapped his chinos for ridiculously baggy-crotched jeans, and started to talk like someone who had just absconded from a Harlem ghetto. Freddie didn't know what to do with this walking, talking, Vanilla Ice lookalike who was suddenly living under his roof.

His wife Angie was more understanding. ‘It's just a stage he's going through,' she soothed Freddie. ‘Don't worry, Freds, he'll soon grow out of it.'

‘Bloody well hope so,' said Freddie gloomily. ‘Still, at least we haven't got to fork out for school fees any more. It's been a tough few years.'

So it had. The Maltings, the handsome Cotswold stone house the Fox-Titts lived in, was in the middle of the Maltings estate. It had once been a stud farm, but when Freddie and Angie had moved in twenty years ago, Freddie had seen the potential of the two hundred acres of land it came with. As well as the shooting parties, Freddie rented his pastures to local farmers and organic produce businesses. However, the foot and mouth disaster a few years ago had hit him hard, and he was still recovering from it.

Angie Fox-Titt ran Angie's Antiques on the village green. She was a short, petite woman with
lively brown eyes and a mane of bouncing chestnut hair. Freddie thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, even after over two decades of marriage. Freddie, in his fifties, balding and slightly portly, often wondered how he'd managed to snare such a gorgeous creature, but Angie, her heart broken by too many handsome bastards before she'd met him, had finally decided to go for personality over perfection. Freddie and Angie worked very well together, their marital harmony only slightly marred by the metamorphosis of their only child.

Screeching up the Bedlington Road, Archie patted his pockets to make sure the cash was in there. Tyrone had called half an hour ago to tell him he had scored some weed: ‘This is like, shit hot bruv, get your ass over here.' Archie had needed no encouragement. Who needed an afternoon of double chemistry when he could smoke himself into oblivion with Tyrone? As he rounded the bend far too fast, Archie nearly careered into two little old ladies, tottering up the road holding on to each other.