Farm Fatale (48 page)

    "You don't need to do much, not with a pretty face like yours and all that lovely blond hair. Although it
might
be a good idea to brush it now and then. Just smarten yourself up a bit. Wear a skirt even. And remember, the shorter and tighter, the better."

    "But I hate skirts. Especially ones that are too short."

    "There's no such thing as a skirt that's too short—another great universal truth for you, darling. Anyway, remember, Matt's been out with some pretty glamorous women. You've got stiff competition. In every sense of the word, I would think."

    "Champagne D'Vyne, you mean?" A chill, slight but definite, suddenly swept through Rosie. The society blonde Matt had loved and lost. But if it had been such a tragedy, why hadn't he mentioned her? He'd mentioned practically everything else. The four Fs, even the pint-glasses-on-the-penis trick. So why hold back?

    "You got it, baby. Supposed to have been the whole reason he became a recluse, remember. Never got over being dumped by her and all that."

    "But that's rubbish," Rosie burst out. "His breakdown was about being too famous too quickly. He told me."

    "Well, he would say that, darling, wouldn't he?" drawled Bella.

    "He never said anything about Champagne," Rosie insisted, remembering, suddenly and uneasily, Matt's reference to relationship problems. When she had tried to draw him out, he had resisted. But that could have meant anything. Geordie, Murgatroyd, anyone.

    "Not something he wants to boast about, I imagine," Bella returned to Rosie's growing annoyance. Why was she playing devil's advocate? Well, if she thought Rosie was going to tell her everything about her afternoon with Matt after this, she had another think coming.

    "Anyway, darling," Bella said with every ounce of the wisdom of Solomon, "there are certain things, and people, one never gets over. Your farmer and his wife, for example—"

    "Thanks for reminding me," snapped Rosie.

    "Just pointing out a few stately home truths, darling. You need to be tough if you're going into this game. No point having your legs open if your eyes are tightly shut."

    "I don't know what you're talking about."

    "Yes, you do."

    "No, I don't."

    "Yes, you do." There was a laugh in Bella's voice.

    Rosie blinked first. "How did you guess?"

    "It's in your voice, darling. You've obviously had the shag of your life. But the real clue was that you never denied it when I said you had stiff competition. Normally you'd have slapped me down instantly. Was it as good as it sounds, anyway?"

    "Better," breathed Rosie, tingling all over at the thought of it.

    "Good. But if you want more where that came from, you must listen to your aunt Bella. The difference between a one-night shag and a relationship is some serious grooming."

    Rosie's stomach twisted with irritation. "Doesn't it have something to do with liking the other person, a shared sense of humor, respect, and all that sort of thing?"

    Bella snorted. "Oh, sure. In the case of Champagne D'Vyne, it also had something to do with being posh and blond with tits. Seriously, Rose, Matt had a nervous breakdown after she dumped him. She's pretty gorgeous, you know—if you like that sort of thing," she added loyally. "Personally, I find her looks a bit obvious."

    But weren't everyone's looks obvious? Rosie thought. Obviously good or obviously bad. "A pretty hard act to follow however you look at it," Bella concluded.

    Nervously, Rosie scrolled back through her memory. Had she missed something?
Had
Matt mentioned Champagne directly? Oh, God, he
had
. At the party. "
What my ex-girlfriend called MTF
," he had said about Guy Grabster. "
Must Touch Flesh
." But she could remember neither his expression nor the tone of voice in which he had said it. At the time, it hadn't seemed important.

Rosie spent a troubled night in which fitful dozes were alternately dominated by blond women with enormous breasts and Matt himself. Looming ever closer, a wicked expression in his long green eyes, his heavy lips twisted with malicious intent. As the church clock struck seventeen, she climbed out of bed exhausted. More bushy-eyed than bushy-tailed, she thought, examining the black smudges of sleeplessness in a mirror whose lack of a recent clean did not improve things greatly. Nonetheless, as soon as the silver hood of the Mercedes slid up to the window, Rosie was out of the cottage like a ferret out of a trap.

    Or like a ferret out of Arthur's house. The lane outside rang with the shrieks of Satchel, Blathnat, and a clutch of other children with equally well-developed lungs. "The ferret's escaped," Satchel screeched excitedly, attempting to run past Rosie into her cottage.

    "Well, it's not in there," Rosie told him firmly as she locked the door and climbed into the back of the Mercedes. It rolled off, to the assembled whoops and jeers of the children.

    "Is Matt feeling better today?" she asked Murgatroyd eagerly.

    "Mildly so, madam. Unfortunately, he was up all night again."

    At this evidence that the album was still going badly, Rosie's spirits sank slightly. She decided not to inquire further.

    Piled up on the backseat of the car were a number of newspapers. Murgatroyd, it seemed, had bought the daily press on his way to pick her up; obviously his way of killing two household birds with one stone. And birds, Rosie saw, was right. The front page of the topmost tabloid was almost completely dominated by a huge photograph of a leggy, big-breasted blonde leaning forward into the camera with a rapacious and red-lipsticked grin. "Champagne's Fatale Attraction," proclaimed the headline.

    So this is what Champagne D'Vyne looks like, Rosie thought, reading the caption and taking in the pale blond hair, perfect teeth, expensive skin, and breasts that rose triumphantly from the dress with no visible means of support. She stared at the picture, trying to suppress the drumbeat of dread that had struck up within her. Bella was right. Champagne was a hard act to follow. Only, Rosie thought determinedly, I'm not trying to follow her.

    
Model, journalist, and aspiring actress Champagne D'Vyne,
gushed the accompanying paragraph,
is on a role, literally. The blond society
beauty, as famous for her string of celebrity boyfriends as for her well
known social column, is to star in the forthcoming multimillion-dollar
"rustic romp"
Farm Fatale.
See page 8 for full story.

    Feeling oddly numb, Rosie obeyed and read on.
"It's my first
starring role and I'm ecstatic," purrs D'Vyne, who beat off stiff competi
tion—rumored to include Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, and Gwyneth
Paltrow—to land the part. "I've no idea how I did it." She dimples.
"I simply put my best front forward."
Farm Fatale
is being directed
by acclaimed U.S. director Brad Bergspiel, 85, who also happens to be
D'Vyne's boyfriend. Bergspiel's recent hits include the Oscar-winning
supermarket love story
Aisle Always Love You
in which Meg Ryan's
portrayal of a ditzy blond checkout assistant landed her the Best Actress
statuette, and last year's box-office-buster, the gritty gymnastics comedy
Arse over Tit,
which starred Gene Hackman as an inspirational sports
teacher and was hailed as
The Full Monty
with parallel bars. As
Bergspiel is currently in the hospital in the U.S., D'Vyne has taken over
and is currently scouting for locations in the British countryside. D'Vyne,
26, whose previous escorts include singer Matt Locke…

    Rosie hurriedly put the paper down. She felt a sudden chill in the air. Had Murgatroyd turned up the air conditioning? Staring at the impassive back of his head, she was suddenly seized with the panicked urge to find out what, if anything, the butler knew about the woman who had once figured so largely in Matt s life.

    "Amazing, isn't it?" Trying to sound amused, Rosie grabbed the paper and held up the front page so that Murgatroyd could see it in his rearview mirror. "Wouldn't have had her down as the rural type, would you?"

    She waited, coiled like a spring, as, beneath his peaked cap, the reflected Murgatroyd raised an eyebrow. "If I may say so, madam, I have to disagree."

    "Really?"

    "Indeed, madam. From what I can gather, Miss D'Vyne was very skilled at making hay while the sun shone."

    Rosie had no idea how to convert this gnomic remark into a full explanation of what the relationship with Champagne D'Vyne had meant to Matt. Not least because Murgatroyd's mouth looked determinedly clamped shut. Silence descended in the Mercedes' interior. Oh, well. Why was she worrying about it, anyway? As Rosie looked out at the fields romping away to the horizon, her heart soared at the thought of what lay ahead. Matt had told her he loved her, hadn't he? Too good to be true it may have seemed. But it had been true and—Rosie glowed at the memory—it had
definitely
been good.

    Murgatroyd stopped in front of the archway beneath Matt's tower and murmured that it being such a lovely morning, Madam might like to wait in the courtyard for five minutes while he parked the Mercedes. Rosie happily assented and climbed out of the car, looking up at the ancient stones, golden against a sky as blue as a Madonna's robe. It
was a lovely morning, but then it would have been were i
t pouring. She breathed in the cool, fresh air, quietly ecstatic at the thought of seeing Matt again at last. Only a few minutes to go now.

    "Play to your strengths, darling," Bella had instructed. "Show your lovely teeth. Give him a big smile when you see him."

    "AEIOU," Rosie mouthed obediently, stretching her mouth about in order to warm up the muscles of her face as Bella had advised. She was thus occupied, grimacing extravagantly at the sky, when an imperious voice rang out in the silence like a gunshot.

    "And who the hell are you?"

    It was like being hit in the face. Standing in the archway, the sun from the courtyard behind streaming through her ice-blond hair, thin, braceleted arms tightly folded, and slender brown legs planted aggressively apart, was the most exquisitely lovely woman Rosie had ever seen. Although she had seen her before, a mere ten minutes ago, in fact, on the front page of Murgatroyd's newspaper. But even if she hadn't, there would have been no doubt that this was the legendary Champagne D'Vyne.

    Rosie stared at her feet first. Slim and tanned they were, Rosie recognized, and the other end of the pedicurial universe from her own unloved toes, shoved unceremoniously into the unvarying trainers. Champagne, by contrast, swayed atop a pair of killer-heeled magenta mules festooned with flowers and sequins.

    Rosie raised her eyes to Champagne's legs. Legs that, with their smooth, caramel, elegantly oval kneecaps and thighs set so far apart you could drive a bus through them, positively shouted of the benefits of exfoliating, tanning, and waxing, not to mention godlike genes. Helplessly, Rosie recalled her own gray and whiskery calves. A glimpse of Champagne's skirt, a mere slip of lace-edged ice-blue satin, set Bella's voice booming in her head: "There's no such thing as a skirt that's too short. Another universal truth for you."

    Above the universal truth, Champagne's slim hips curved into a tiny waist. Above this a feather-trimmed fuchsia cardigan barely contained her famous breasts. Miserably, Rosie recalled her own arrested buds beneath the inevitable fleece. The only similarity she had with the goddess before her was hair color, yet Rosie knew her own unruly, strawlike mass bore, in truth, little resemblance to the shining river of white fire flowing over Champagne's straight and shapely shoulders.

    During the nervous nanosecond she dared to look directly into Champagne's face, Rosie registered a straight and perfect nose, slanted green eyes, and inflatable lips oddly suggestive of Matt's. Oddly suggestive all around, in fact. The woman before her positively thrummed with sex. Again in stark contrast to herself.

    Champagne, she recognized, wasn't just the kind of woman who stopped traffic. She was the kind of woman who made planes fall out of the sky. And men fall head over heels. And
never
get over it.

    "Who did you say you were?" Champagne repeated, obviously satisfied with the impression she had made.

    "A friend of Matt's." Rosie tried to sound as unfazed as her hysterically chattering teeth would permit.

    "A
friend
?" Champagnes exquisite lip curled in contempt. She raised a perfect arc of eyebrow and swept Rosie with a glare like a green laser. "He didn't say he was expecting any friends."

    Rosie's heart thundered with panic. What was she doing here? Bella's voice again: "He had a nervous breakdown when she left him." And now she was at Ladymead, lounging against the tower wall as if she owned the place. As if…Rosie's throat contracted. Her palms began to sweat. Had she and Matt…could they have…There was, of course, no point wondering why. One glance at this sublime creature and it was obvious.

    As for when, that, too, was obvious. She had not seen Matt yesterday. He had been in bed all day. He had been up all night last night. With…? Well, it was staring her in the face, wasn't it? Or rather Champagne was. Smirking nastily.

    Rosie swallowed hard. "Er…I've come to do Matt's picture," she stammered, horribly aware, before this paragon, of her own sartorial shortcomings. Why hadn't she listened to Bella? Then again, nothing short of plastic surgery, a personal shopper, and a limitless platinum card would have brought her anywhere near the style, taste, and perfection of the vision in front of her.