Kiss and Tell (127 page)

The press had been chasing him around all day, eating up preparation time. Earlier, he’d filmed a piece for the BBC from the horsebox, which had taken ages because Twitch, posing cherubically on his lap at the time, had in fact been flashing his overexcited pink manhood throughout the interview. They had shot it all again,
Twitch relocated off camera and Rory’s replies to veteran horse-trials commentator Julia Ditton getting more and more staccato.

‘How can I do it when my only horse is so footsore?’ he’d wanted to shout at lovely Julia, but he answered the questions humbly and politely as he did all the press that hounded him, charming old hacks and new with his self-deprecation and continual insistence that it didn’t matter what happened as long as the horses were safe and happy.

Tucking Twitch under his arm and pulling a pillow over his head, he tried to blot out the whoops and screams coming from outside and think his way through the coming days. Cranking up the volume on a particularly frisky Dizzy Gillespie solo in ‘No More Blues’, he imagined himself galloping across the turf to victory.

In the Moncrieffs’ box just twenty yards away, Faith was doing the same, her music bouncy Irish jigs and reels that made her think of her father and his eternal optimism. He had sent her a good-luck card with a little leprechaun on it that she’d stuck to Whitey’s stable door, along with cards from Magnus and Dilly, her gayfathers and Carly. Her mother was travelling to Lincolnshire the following afternoon to give her some much-needed dressage coaching before her test on Friday morning.

Faith had already walked the course once that afternoon with Gus. ‘Good, taxing four-star,’ he’d proclaimed while Faith felt far too ill to speak. She really needed Penny’s positive vibes, but the Moncrieffs were on a very sticky wicket and rarely seen in the same square acre this month, although Gus was trying hard to patch things up. As well as steering clear of Lucy Field, he’d booked a luxury bed and breakfast in Stamford, meaning that Faith had the horsebox to herself to rattle around in, freaking out about the cross-country course. To her, it was on a whole new scale to anything that she had ever tackled before and she wondered why on earth she had let her newest father persuade her into this. She longed to talk to Rory who would understand exactly what she was going through, but he was strictly off limits and for very good reason. Her father had been right; every time she thought about him she felt giddy. She
had
to concentrate. She badly needed her mother.

She’d already watched
The Man from Snowy River
on her portable DVD player. She was tempted to fire it up and watch it
again for comfort, if only just the horseback kissing scenes between Jim and Jessica that Rory loved so much, along with the stampede over the mountain – but of course that would make her think of Rory and she must not think of him.

‘Aim high and you’ll hit less timber,’ Fearghal’s voice said in her head.

She concentrated on the Irish music, closing her eyes.
Bum diddly um diddly un diddly
, the beat rattled along in her ears, making her imagine little girls in black waistcoats and bright skirts dancing through the horsebox.

In the George Hotel in Stamford, Tash was regretting her request for a four-poster bed all those week ago when she’d booked a room in the famous old coaching inn, so popular with riders and their connections that Burghley week reservations needed to be made months ahead. She must have called them around the time that she and Hugo couldn’t keep their hands off one another, she realised now, when she had been like a sex maniac, in a constant state of arousal and imagining that she would be hanging on to an oak corner post while he entered from behind. Instead, they slept like two strangers forced to bunk up in the last room in the inn, almost hanging off their respective sides of the mattress. Tash wanted to suggest that he might be happier going head to foot or pitching up on the chaise longue under the window. At home they hadn’t shared a bed for the five days before they’d departed for Lincolnshire.

This was to be the first time that the couple would be competing head to head in a major British four-star for over three years, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the sporting press. Nobody could mistake the fierce competitiveness between them, though the chilly enmity was put down to a return to top form for Tash. It was certainly a far cry from the loved-up Beauchampions days.

She had gone against her own maternal instincts this time, arranging for the children to stay away until Saturday when her family supporters were all arriving. Surprisingly, Ben and Sophia had offered to bring them and Alicia as a part of their cavalcade, thus providing the new Polish au pairs with a long weekend off and Tash with much-needed family back-up.

‘It’s the least we can do,’ Sophia had announced breezily. ‘We’ll have Granny Bea and Lotty, who loves to babysit, with us, so it’ll be
absolutely no trouble. I’ll pop down to Haydown and fetch them on Friday.’

Knowing Berkshire to be well adrift of any route between Worcestershire and Lincolnshire, Tash had a distinct sense that there was something afoot, but she was far too preoccupied to worry about it.

Even Alexandra and Pascal had announced that they were coming to England, coerced by Polly who didn’t start college for another week. In their honour, Matty and Sally had made last-minute plans for a night in Stamford and not to be left out again, James and Henrietta had found a convenient golfing hotel with a ground-floor room for Beccy, who was keen to support them all, especially Lough.

Hugo was highly cynical about Beccy and Lough’s union: ‘Rory and Sylva Frost had a better chance of making it to the altar, quite frankly.’

Tash disagreed, and she clung on to the thought that at least he had released Lough from his missile lock, even if Sylva remained on the radar. She was still the prime suspect for ‘V’.

That evening, to her alarm, she’d received a message from Sylva on her own BlackBerry, wishing her luck and suggesting that she and her new squeeze might pop along to the trials incognito and say hello which, given that they couldn’t get within a few yards of any of Pete’s eight houses without being noticed, seemed unlikely. Sylva said she was looking for a horse again, but Tash did not dare mention it to Hugo. There wasn’t much that she felt she could mention to Hugo at all, in fact. He was so explosive, she felt she should send in a bomb-disposal robot with a before she spoke.

The next day, after the competitors’ briefing and the first official course walk, Hugo was incandescent with rage to discover Oil Tanker’s stable bandages wrapped too tightly around his battered brown legs. He told Franny she was fired.

‘And what the fuck are you going to do without me, you dickhead?’ she yelled back with twice his fury.

‘There are plenty of others here this week would give their eye teeth to work for me.’

‘Not with a temper like that. Anyway, I didn’t put on the fucking
bandages – I left them off after you rode him this morning like you said to.’

‘Then who the bloody hell’s been fiddling with them?’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘Not this again. I thought we’d seen an end to this after Badminton!’

‘Calm down,’ Franny soothed. ‘It was probably Fudge.’

‘Tell Fudge not to touch my horse again,’ Hugo spat. ‘She can look after Rory’s.’

‘No point,’ Rory declared, coming out of his own stall. ‘I can’t present him.’

‘You must!’ Franny was appalled. ‘What about the Grand Slam?’

Rory shook his head. ‘The horse is more important. You see if you don’t agree.’

Gazing limpid-eyed at them over his stall door, black coat as glossy as melted liquorice, the stallion was a picture of health and it was hard to believe that something as mundane as a corn could wreck his rider’s one shot at over a quarter of a million pounds. But when Hugo lifted his hoof and pressed on the leather pad the horse flinched dramatically, almost dropping to his knees.

‘He’s not lame, but he’s very short in front,’ Rory told him as he watched fearfully, his dreams literally in Hugo’s hands.

Hugo took him to the back of the stable. ‘Chances are the ground jury will pass him fit.’

‘What would you do?’

‘For me, there’s too much pain there to risk it. He’s young. He’ll have his chance.’

‘I might not get another chance.’ Rory’s heart was rupturing.

‘So run him.’

Rory shook his head. ‘He’s not mine to risk.’

Hugo patted him on the back, nodding towards the opposite side of the long lines of temporary stabling. ‘Have you spoken to the owner yet?’

Rory heaved a deep sigh. ‘She’ll probably run away from me.’

‘She needs to make the final decision.’

He trailed across the wide avenue, his handsome head drooping as all around him horses were strapped and polished and show-sheened and hoof-oiled for the first veterinary inspection.

These days, the riders were also expected to put on a show as they ran alongside their mounts, the popular theory being that a
striking outfit might distract the ground jury’s eye from a slightly unlevel horse. This year, with an all-male ground jury at least one of whom was a well-known roué, the girls were all going to town.

When Rory looked around for Faith in the busy row of temporary stabling that housed Whitey’s stall, he didn’t immediately recognise her. There were a lot of leggy Swedes to one side, including Hugo’s old friend Stefan, who had welcomed him like a lost brother earlier, but whom he couldn’t face talking to right now amid his lofty, model-like compatriots. Then, beyond Gus’s two rides and Lough’s top horse Rangitoto, were a lot of small, sexy Italians in figure-hugging stretch tweed applying each other’s mascara. Despite standing in front of a box with a card that definitely read ‘White Lies’, Rory even struggled to recognise his old campaigner, now as luminous as a pearl, his usually unprepossessingly scraggy neck neatened by immaculate plaits, his big black eyes glowing kindly with their rims emphasised by Vaseline, his ungainly flat black hooves like gleaming coal and his rather pathetic tail still plaited to its tip and protected by a stocking, awaiting a last-minute liberation to retain its waves. The big pink and grey scar on his chest where he’d been impaled on a fencing stake just a couple of years earlier was still a vivid reminder of how close they had come to losing him, a fact Rory knew was the result of his negligence because he had been drinking heavily that day. Now the horse looked magnificent and as fit as Rory had ever seen him. The deep, demanding whicker that he let out on seeing his old master lifted Rory’s dejected heart a little.

One of the tall Swedes had come to talk to him now, wearing a very short skirt and knee-length brown leather boots with scarily high heels. She had fantastic legs, tanned the colour of a Werther’s Original. Rory’s eyes got stuck there for a long time.

‘Come to wish us luck?’ she asked in a strangled voice.

His gaze shot up to the face, working around the tan and the make-up and the professionally straightened and highlighted sheet of blonde hair. The big smile was as white and straight as a toothpaste ad, but nobody could mistake the dimples in the cheeks and the sparkle in the fiercely kind eyes.

‘Faith.’ He managed to croak her name, his heart and groin fluttering disturbingly.

‘Rory,’ she confirmed.

‘You look … different.’

She pursed her lips in a smaller smile, dimples deepening, and she gave a quick nod to Whitey. ‘Your boy’s in great spirits.’

He rubbed the satiny white neck and the horse nickered again, nosing his pockets for mints. ‘He looks amazing and it’s all down to you. You’ve done the most fantastic job with him, getting him here again. I’d given up on him, thought his career was long gone, but you had faith.’

‘It’s my name,’ she reminded him, her own voice tight with nerves. Rory knew the first vet’s inspection struck fear into them all, however sound they believed their horses to be.

‘He’s done it all before,’ he reminded her. ‘He knows what it’s all about. He’ll look after you.’

She nodded, not looking at him. It was the most they’d spoken since she had reappeared from her ‘holiday’ and she was almost hyperventilating with tension and the need to say so much more and ask so much more. But they were starting to call the first horses for the inspection.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting Rio?’ she asked.

‘We can’t run him, Faith. His feet are too sore. Even if they pass him now he’ll be in agony later.’

Faith took the news silently, staring fixedly at his neck because she still couldn’t look him in the eye. Under such close scrutiny, Rory’s neck, which was already itchy from the photo ID hanging around it, reddened dramatically.

‘You think I’m right?’ he checked worriedly when she still hadn’t said anything after another full minute, and the Tannoy was calling horses with numbers ever closer to hers.

‘I’m sorry,’ she was still staring at his neck. ‘What did you say?’

‘Is it okay not to present him?’

‘What are you talking about?’ She looked into his eyes at last, blinking all the more because she wasn’t used to wearing mascara and it made her eyes run.

At that moment, he wanted to kiss her with all his heart. He felt his chest expand until he thought it was going to burst. His mouth even started to water. That had never happened to him before.

‘Faith, you’re on!’ Lemon appeared, thrusting his Mohican between them as he elbowed Rory to one side and unlatched the stable door. ‘Where’s his bridle?’

Faith snapped out of her reverie. Handing Lemon the bridle from the hook at her side, she reached out and took Rory’s hand, towing him back towards Rio’s stall.

‘He really isn’t sound,’ he started to protest.

‘I believe you!’ she replied urgently, reaching his big plastic tack crate and cranking it open, where the suit-carrier containing his best tweed jacket, shirt and tie was lying neatly on top.

Then she started pulling his T-shirt over his head.

‘Steady on!’ he gasped as there were a few titters and a couple of catcalls around him. ‘What are you doing?’

For a moment she couldn’t speak as she found herself tangled up with hot, sinewy Rory and warm, Rory-smelling T-shirt, but then she wrestled the shirt free, clutching it like a rescued kitten for a moment. ‘Getting you ready for the inspection.’