Authors: Jane Lovering
Slightly Foxed (16 page)
a model farmyard.
"And then we met at Izzie's?" Leo looked stunned. I
opened my mouth to leap in with a further explanation and
realised I couldn't think of one. "That is
amazing
. What kind
of serendipity must have been at work that day, hey? That
feeling of
recognition
. You thinking you knew me, and then us
meeting and my feeling that you understood me, somehow,
like you had some secret knowledge about me...? That is—
words can't describe it, can they?"
Well, I could think of a few.
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We had fun that day. A breeze from the river was cooling
the Exeter streets, blowing through the disappointing post-
war architecture of the city centre like a mud-scented mistral.
We wandered the pigeon-haunted close, where kids played on
the statues and teenagers lay coiled around one another in
the shade of the cathedral. I had another brief stab of missing
Florence, part of me hoping she too was wrapped around
some beautiful youth on a baked stretch of greenery, but
most of me hoping she was sitting indoors reading Ancient
Greek and knitting a wimple.
The
Lord of the Rings
was reassuringly full of
carbohydrates and Pepsi. By the time we staggered back out
onto the dreaming streets, the air was heavily dark and
smelled musky.
"Well," said Leo. "I enjoyed that. Deserved all those
Oscars, didn't you think?"
My enthusiasm was slightly less than his because I had
spent a considerable portion of the time wondering what Piers
and Jacinta had been up to last night. Snakebite? Piers must
have lowered himself considerably if
that
had been his drink
of choice. What on
earth
had brought that about? Had he
been trying to get her drunk?
"Alys?" Leo was scanning my face. "You looked lost there
for a minute. Deep in thought?"
"Not really. Nothing important."
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We walked on through the cooked air, back to the Land
Rover and Leo pulled his mobile from his pocket. "I'd better
just drop by the yard on the way back. Jay's had the vet to
Felicity again, says she doesn't like the way things are going.
I won't be long."
Surely this contravened the Geneva Convention or
something? On the one hand, Leo was behaving as though I
was the most desirable woman on the continent. On the
other, it seemed as though he wanted to put a wall of
horseflesh between us. Was I deluding myself into thinking he
was attracted to me?
We drove through the darkness back to Charlton, passing
occasional comments about the films and the heat, until the
Land Rover swung into the drive. "I will honestly only be
about ten minutes." Leo spoke to me out of the driver's
window as I stood with gravel in my sandals. "Put the kettle
on."
I trudged into the house, the kitchen smelled doggy, but
again the perpetrators were nowhere in evidence. I wondered
where they were. Probably down on the yard with all the
other nasty biting objects. Then I wondered whether that
description included Jay, and why Leo hadn't introduced us.
Had he got something to hide? Was she a gorgeous blonde,
with topple-over tits and hips like a python? If she was,
why
was
I
here?
"Alys?" He must have come in another way. I hadn't even
heard the car. "Are you all right? You look absolutely miles
away again. Is there something worrying you?"
I shook my head. "No. I'm fine. You were quick."
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"Well, look, do you mind if we have a drink? I'm a bit,
gosh, well I suppose I'm nervous if you want the truth."
"Nervous?" I stared blankly at him. "About Felicity?"
"No, Alys, about you." Leo poured two glasses of wine,
although I didn't touch mine. "I know that I'd like to take
things further." He swallowed down the contents of his glass.
"I just—and it's been so long since Sabine and I—"
"I think you'll find that you don't forget how. It's like riding
a bike," I said, then wished I hadn't. If he was going to
compare me to Sabine, there was only going to be
disappointment in store.
"Would you like to come upstairs?" Leo took off his glasses
and fixed me firmly with his green eyes. The sheer
attractiveness of him stopped this from being the most
cheesy line I'd ever heard. "It could be a terrible mistake of
course, but if you're willing to take that chance?"
My heart was throbbing like a pain. "Yes."
I let him take my hand, his fingers were cold from the
glass, slightly moist and his touch was so ethereal it was
barely there. It was like holding hands with fog.
"I am"—he advanced slowly—"really, really scared." Chilly
fingers brushed my cheek and tipped my face towards his.
"Everything seems to be running out of my control." Gentle
lips grazed against mine, then came back for a more
exploratory kiss. He was pressed full-length against my body,
leaving not much of his desire to the imagination, cupping my
face between his hands and kissing in an almost exploratory
way. If this was the first intimate contact he'd had with a
woman since his wife, an experimental approach was
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probably not surprising. Maybe she was the only woman he'd
ever been to bed with.
"You mentioned upstairs?" I whispered into his ear when
he broke contact for a moment. "It would be a bit more
comfortable."
"I don't know if I can do this," Leo whispered back. "I want
to, so badly, but is it all too soon? Am I rushing things?"
"Rushing?" I'd known tectonic plates that moved faster
than this. "Well, you mustn't do anything you don't want to."
Inwardly I let out a groan. Being understanding was all very
well, but I was so turned on by his kissing and his closeness
that if he kept this up much longer I wouldn't be able to walk,
except possibly like John Wayne.
"Let's go upstairs." He tugged at my wrist.
I let him lead me up the staircase and along the landing,
through a door I'd previously not noticed, into his bedroom.
There was a saddle on the bed, which he hastily plopped onto
the floor, giving me time to glance around and notice there
didn't seem to be any pictures of the stupendous Sabine in
evidence. There were, however, a couple of TVs mounted
high up in one corner. I hoped he wasn't into watching
movies. Or making them. "I'm sorry it's a bit untidy." Leo
shifted the saddle again, awkwardly. "I wasn't expecting..."
He could obviously carry the reticence on all night. "We
could just sleep together," I said. "Without any pressure."
"What, you and I in the same bed? Sleeping? Together?"
He looked amazed. "Without—you know—anything
happening? I think that sounds—very sensible." He seemed to
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gain a bit of confidence by having the pressure to seduce me
taken off. "We could just lie together."
"Right." I started to unbutton my shirt, very slowly,
keeping my eyes fixed on his, and after a moment I was
gratified to see his gaze dropping downwards. His mouth
opened, a little slackly, his expression glazed, then his eyes
came back up to mine and he grinned.
"I don't think I'm scared any more."
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I lay under the weight of the sleeping Leo's arm and stared
up at the ceiling. His breath puffed regularly on my skin and I
hated myself for wanting some postcoital reassurance that
Sabine, despite her earth-stopping appearance, had made
love like a woman shoving a supermarket trolley through a
muddy gateway.
The sex had been good. In bed Leo's reticence became
tenderness, his reserve, restraint. I hated to admit it, but I'd
become used to brief sexual encounters to make sure I was
still alive. To reassure myself I wasn't just Florence's Mum.
But the York dating pool available to penniless single mothers
of teenagers seemed, as far as I was concerned, to consist of
men who wanted no commitment. So having Leo here, one
arm looped about my waist and a long leg inserted between
my thighs, was something of a coup.
I tried to move without disturbing him, slipping from his
partial embrace slowly and stickily, inching from beneath the
covers so as not to cause a great blast of chilly air to go
slashing into his sated sleep. He gave a tiny sigh and rolled
into the piece of bed I'd been occupying, but didn't wake up. I
tried to head for the door but tripped over the saddle which
stood on end beside the bed.
"Shit." The leather was cold and slippery and for a moment
it felt as though I'd tripped over a dismembered corpse. The
saddle fell with me and sprawled out on the mat on its back
with its skirts flapping like a disembowelled torso. "
Shit!
"
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Leo sat suddenly upright, one smooth fluid movement.
"What's happening?"
"I fell down." The way he'd moved was eerie, lying deeply
asleep one minute, but managing to be vertical and awake
within seconds.
"Thank God. I was dreaming—I thought it was Jay coming
to wake me up and get me to give a hand."
"Does Jay often have to come get you out of bed?" I asked
carefully, disentangling myself.
"Only when the monitors are off." Leo waved at the TV
sets. "And that's hardly ever. Don't worry." He flipped the
edge of the covers back. "I've given myself tonight off, Jay
can cope on her own. Come back to bed."
I inserted myself under the duvet, curling up against the
warmth of him. So, Jay knew where his bedroom was, did
she? The thought stayed with me even after he reached out
to me again. It was a little off-putting, to say the least. My
mind jittered from thought to thought as we rolled together,
Leo and Jay, Leo and Sabine, Piers, Piers and Jacinta.
Leo's murmur of triumph whispered into my ear and he
collapsed on top of me. "Oh, Alys."
I relaxed under his weight. "This is nice." I meant the
closeness, the intimacy rather than the sex.
"Yes." Leo struggled himself up onto his elbows and looked
down into my face. "I really didn't think I'd ever have
anything like this again."
"Surely you must have had women chasing you?" I waved
an arm to indicate the whole of Charlton Stud. "You've got all
this—and you're not exactly ugly either."
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He sighed and flopped over sideways leaving my body
feeling chilled. "I've never really noticed women. Horses were
always my life. I probably wouldn't have noticed Sabine either
if she hadn't had Charlton Stud. Oh I know, you thought this
was all mine." He pulled a wry face. "The fact is that I
inherited it when she died. It belonged to Sabine's father. She
took over the stud when her parents died. The huge irony is
that we were on the point of divorce when she was killed. I
was waiting for her to get back from France so that we could
get the papers drawn up to sell this place." There was a
curious little smile on his face. "I nearly lost everything."
"I thought Sabine was perfect," I blurted out, thinking of
the photograph in the other bedroom.
"Oh, she was. Absolutely. Perfect skin, perfect hair—
perfect." Leo sounded very bitter. "Trouble was, I wasn't the
only man to think that. Every time she went away to sales or
showing, I'd wonder. In the end I had to tell myself I didn't
care, that if she came home and said she'd met someone
else, it wouldn't hurt." He smoothed my hair off my face. "I'm
not very good with people you see. Too shy, too single
minded. Whereas with you, Alys"—those green eyes looked
down into my face again—"I feel that we share something
deeper, something beyond communication."
I lay for a long time in the dark, listening to his breathing
become slow and regular, trying to find the sleep which had
eluded me all night. Leo had opened up to me! I gave a little
shiver of glee, partially occasioned by now knowing that
Sabine hadn't been the epitome of perfection I had imagined.
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Maybe she had liked the admiration, fed on it, encouraged it—
perhaps fidelity hadn't meant anything to her?
Nice thought.
I slid into unnoticed sleep and woke with birdsong, the
sound of hooves on gravel and an absence of Leo in the bed.
I'd left my bag downstairs and my clothes were nowhere to
be seen, so I searched for something of Leo's to put on. A