The Country Escape (15 page)

Kat trailed back towards Lake Farm through the beech woods and then into Herne Covert, indigestion staging a comeback in her churning chest, reminding her that lunch with the Hedges family had been just a couple of hours earlier.
Then Russ had been her best friend in the village, her renegade, who was unswervingly honest about everything and infuriatingly opinionated about most things too. She was trying not to let panic take hold. He was still Russ, she reminded herself. He and Mags would never let the sanctuary down. She had a sudden image of them cradling an injured fox, like two indulgent parents, sharing a kiss as they
chose a name.

Stop it, she chastised herself. He’s on your side
.
He was free-range Russ, who hated red tape, acted first and justified afterwards, just as his aunt Babs had said. He believed he had right on his side, like Will Kane in
High Noon
, standing up on his own against the bullying and repression of a lawless gang and a kowtowing community. Mags was his Helen Ramirez, an old lover
who had forsaken him for too many others since, whereas Kat was his Amy. She wished they could enjoy the heartfelt, intimate passion of Dougie Everett and his co-star. Instead they were hamstrung by inhibitions, needing to recite their nine times tables in pyjamas to feel safe with sex.

Kat splashed through the ford, kicking up rainbow arcs, her dark, wet enemy reduced to teardrops. It
seemed ridiculous that she tackled so many gutsy tasks without a second thought – she could handle agricultural equipment, mend fencing, coppice trees, manage large animals, start a generator, ride a horse – yet her two greatest fears remained: sex and deep water. She dared herself to approach one of them now, walking along the riverbank, dropping down to the gravel edge and stooping to collect a
stone to bounce ducks and drakes along the water.

Cross it!
She heard Constance’s voice in her head and smiled with relief at its deep, heartening familiarity.

You can do it, Katherine! Feel the adrenalin, for goodness’ sake. I didn’t put you in Lake Farm to rub your stomach while patting your head or whatever this Tantric nonsense is about. Your riding is frightful and you must
swim in the lake soon. It’s warming up.
 

Still deep in thought, Kat followed the river to the edge of the lake and stared across its smooth black surface, trying to imagine Constance swimming it on horseback more than seventy years ago in a desperate bid to save the estate. When war broke out in Europe, her father, Charles ‘Hock’ Mytton, had wanted Eardisford to pass into the hands of his
brother in the absence of male heirs, his intention being to stay on in India indefinitely, but his only daughter Constance had been determined that she should take the reins. The estate was not subject to primogeniture so she had every right to inherit. To prove her worth, she’d agreed to take on the Bolt, the three-mile gallop from Duke’s Wood to the Hereford road, crossing all obstacles in between,
which must be completed within the two strikes of the church clock quarter to win the Eardisford Purse and, in Constance’s case, the right to run the estate.

I was frankly terrified, but it was
such
fun! One has never lived until one has risen to a challenge like that, Katherine, racing because one’s very future depends upon it. You will feel it, and nobody will betray your trust as they
did mine.

Riding side-saddle, Constance had been the first Mytton to make the time in over a century and take the Purse. Nevertheless her father had stoutly refused to sign over the estate to her care until she married, which at nineteen Constance worried she was too young to do. Her heart was already lost to a young RAF officer she’d met a year earlier at a shooting party and with whom
she was wildly infatuated, exchanging passionate letters, but marriage seemed a long way off. She wrote to him explaining the situation and telling him that she loved him, only to learn shortly afterwards that he had been killed in one of the first Allied raids.

I have no idea if he read my letter before he died. I prefer to think not. I loved him so very much and it felt such a frightful
thing to ask; easier to treat it as a business deal, like Daddy did.
 

Not long afterwards, a heartbroken Constance was summoned to India to find her father gravely ill, the cancer he had kept secret ripping the life from him. In an extraordinary deathbed deal, he told her that a young officer in his regiment was willing to become her husband. Major Gough’s family owned a modest country
house in the Borders, he explained, but he ‘knows his hunting better than any man’. Constance and Ronnie were married just two days before Hock Mytton died. Their marriage had lasted six decades and borne five children, and she’d told Kat how love had grown slowly within it.
I adored my darling, gentle Ronnie, but I confess I always wondered what it would have been like to marry for love and not
duty. I think it must be such a frightful gamble. Yet if one gets it right, the jackpot is simply magnificent: a lifetime of love. You are a gambler like me, Katherine. One of us should get it right.

Kat watched a pair of swans gliding towards her across the water and remembered Russ telling her that they mate for life, along with wolves and barn owls. He had then spent a long time explaining
why this was bad for genetic diversity and species survival. He preferred the harem-band model, where family groups were ruled by a matriarchy with one alpha breeding male protecting them and mating with multiple females.

Snarling under her breath at the thought of being part of Mags’s matriarchal Eardisford group, Kat looked up as a helicopter swooped low over the woods, coming in to land
by the main house. There were no builders on site over the bank holiday, and she couldn’t imagine any of the new owner’s many advisers, lawyers and architects working through Easter weekend. Her curiosity intensified when she guessed it had to be Seth himself.

She was dying for a closer look. The boat mooring was just a short walk away, but there was still no way she had the nerve to take
the short-cut across the water to the parkland, particularly with several ancient dogs in tow, so she hurried along the path that cut through the woods to the west of the lake. The water in the ford was near her welly tops as she waded through, carrying the old terriers under each arm, then dropping them on the far bank and racing on. Snuffling Maddie bounded ahead, low-slung Daphne falling behind.

Kat climbed up on to the ridge that ran around the oxbow’s end. From here, she had a good view through the trees to the main terraces and could see a figure wrapped in squashy furs stalking across them, pausing occasionally to look up and hold out a tablet computer on which they were taking photographs of the scaffolding-covered house. Russ would go mental if he saw that fur coat, thought
Kat, then stopped midway over a stile in surprise. It was definitely a woman. Did Seth have a wife?

‘That’s as far as you go, young lady!’

It was one of Dair’s gamekeepers, a trio Russ had nicknamed Meat and Two Veg. While Spud and Turnip were well-meaning, if slow-witted, local lads, Meathead, the senior keeper, was a particularly nasty ex-squaddie whose main brief was to keep out
trespassers, a task he took very seriously.

‘You and your dogs better turn round right now, Kat.’

‘This is a public footpath,’ she reminded him smugly.

He pointed at the sign that read,
All dogs must be kept on leads.
‘Can’t be too careful with new lambs, and there’s game birds loose.’

Kat felt in her pockets for a lead, but she didn’t even have a loop of baler twine.
She could have pointed out that the nearest Eardisford flock was at least half a mile away, and that most of the estate’s game birds were hanging around Lake Farm right now, hoping for Russ’s brown rice leftovers, but she couldn’t be bothered to argue with Meathead. ‘I was just trying to get a closer look at your new boss and my new neighbour.’

‘Nothing to see here,’ he replied, spreading
his arms wide as though controlling a large crowd eager to witness a grisly crime scene, not a small redhead with two elderly dogs.

But before she turned to walk home, Kat did see something. Another figure had appeared in front of the house and was walking towards the woman in the furs, tweed-sleeved arm thrust out in welcome, his flat cap pressed down low over his nose.

‘Dair knows
exactly
what’s going on round here.’ He’d told her that her future was riding on it.

What was it he had said yesterday?
Things round here take a long time to figure out. They are never as simple as they first seem.

Kat thought it looked completely straightforward from where she stood: Russ was bonking Mags. Dair was double-crossing everybody. And Seth’s wife had arrived.

There was no sign of Russ at Lake Farm, although one of Mags’s most recent road-kill pheasants had given up the fight, stiff with rigor mortis in its pen, and Usha had escaped into the lake again. Anger still cooking, Kat got on with
the late-afternoon yard tasks, bringing in the three horses that were still being stabled at nights, feeding and haying them before checking over the field stock and finally coaxing Usha out with a bucket of nuts. Then she gathered the chickens, geese and ducks into their respective fox-proof homes. Trevor the peacock, who was feeling lovelorn, followed her about, calling anxiously. Finally, she
checked on Russ’s hutched wildlife casualties in the barn, thankful that they were all still alive, staring back at her with black-eyed fear and confusion.

The range needed relighting, and there was no kindling in the house, so Kat went to raid the wood store and groaned when she saw only huge uncut sections. Russ had come outside to chop some last night, but he seemed to have sliced no
more than a few toothpicks of kindling. Her anger bubbled hotter as she reflected on the number of hours he spent outside star-gazing with no practical purpose. If he could identify the smaller constellations, predict the weather or give her some horoscope guidance, it might at least seem worthwhile, but she sometimes suspected it was his way of avoiding hard work. Whenever he did knuckle down and
cut some wood, he insisted on doing it the old-fashioned way, with an axe, which took for ever and meant they were always running out. Kat checked that there was some fuel in the chain saw and, donning ear protectors and goggles, set about splitting the wood to size in a small-scale timber massacre. It was the perfect vent for her burgeoning fury.

Which was why she didn’t hear the Range
Rover roaring into the yard, or realize that Dair was standing beside her until he pulled the emergency cord and cut the fuel, making the saw putter to silence.

‘What the bloody hell d’you do that for?’ She swung round furiously and saw that the woman in the fur coat was with him. Close-to she looked no older than Kat herself, with extraordinary dark, melting eyes and the most expressionless
face Kat had ever encountered.

‘You are Miss Katherine Mason?’ the woman asked, in a deep, modulated voice.

Kat knew that Russ would recommend muttering, ‘Who wants to know?’ but there was no point in denying her identity with Dair there.

‘Yes – hi!’ She flashed the big smile and thrust out a hand, noticing too late that it was covered with chainsaw oil and log moss. ‘Call
me Kat.’

The woman shook it by the fingertips, her face deadpan. ‘I prefer to keep this formal, Miss Mason.’

‘Of course.’ Kat adopted her most formal face. ‘May I call you Mrs Seth?’

For a nanosecond, the dark eyes sparked. ‘I would prefer it if you do not. I must apologize for this intrusion on a sacred holiday, but my decision to come was made at short notice. This has been
my first opportunity to visit Eardisford, and my priority was to meet you in person.’

‘I’m honoured.’ Kat shifted uncomfortably. The woman was staring at her, unblinking. It was very disconcerting. She stooped to pick up the log basket. ‘Come in and I’ll make a cup of tea.’

‘That will not be necessary.’ Her eyes lingered Kat’s face, forensic in their detailed examination of each
freckle and laughter line, followed by a lengthy assessment of her body, which felt even more intrusive than Dair’s habitual boob-leers. ‘I have been advised that you cannot be financially motivated to leave Lake Farm. Is this right?’

Kat glanced at Dair, who still had his flat cap pulled right down over his nose, his expression impossible to read. ‘Yes.’

The woman let out an irritated
tut. ‘Then you have not been offered the right price, Miss Mason.’

‘I was told the new owners of the Eardisford Estate have no legal objection to the sanctuary.’

‘That is correct, although there is an open offer to relocate it somewhere more practical. There would also be significant remuneration for you personally.’

‘The Mytton-Gough family already offered that, but this
really isn’t about money. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip.’

She was examining Kat’s face again. ‘Everybody has their price, Miss Mason.’

‘Sure.’ Kat smiled. ‘Mine’s a billion.’

Beside her, Kat heard Dair’s sharp intake of breath.

The dark eyes regarded her for a long time, unblinking in that oh-so-still face. ‘You have a child-like quality.’

Kat snorted with
laughter.

‘It is not unappealing. Thank you for your time.’

Kat gaped at her. ‘Is that it?’

‘Goodbye, Miss Mason,’ she said, turning to walk back to the car. There were no threats or counter-offers. The conversation had taken less than a minute.

To Kat’s surprise, Dair reached out and gave her elbow a squeeze before hurrying to open the passenger door for his companion.

‘Turncoat,’ Kat hissed, under her breath.

Watching as the Range Rover bounced away, she caught the reproachful eyes of Dair’s two ultra-obedient pointers through its rear windscreen.

When Mags’s elderly Citroën finally bounced along the track belting out the Buzzcocks, Kat marched out to meet it, noticing how the pink-haired one reached across to play-cuff Russ’s ears
and fake-punch his chest before pulling up the handbrake, the big-sisterly affection taking on a whole new perspective in the light of Dair’s revelations. Tattooed, pierced and fierce, Mags’s reputation for fighting might be formidable, but she had a soft side that men found irresistible. She was an earthy, ever-laughing flirt, absolutely doted on animals and, now Kat thought about it, Russ.

‘You missed such a drama, Kat!’ her rasping, laughing voice called, as she spilled from the car. ‘We almost lost him twice. He’s one tough little bastard. We called him Heythrop.’ She went round to the boot and pulled out a cross-eyed, stunned pheasant.

‘That’s Heythrop?’

‘No. I hit this poor sod coming back. Think it’ll be okay after a night’s kip. That,’ she pointed to the
back seat where Russ was stooping over a battered cardboard box, ‘is Heythrop.’

‘He’s still a bit groggy from sedation.’ Russ drew out the box with great reverence and held it under Kat’s nose. The smell of rank old dog fox and antiseptic was not a winning combination. ‘Lucky I caught him when I did because the snare was already deep in his throat and he was struggling like stink – a couple
more minutes and his windpipe would have been cut open. This skin condition’s sarcoptic mange.’

Kat regarded the scabby old fox unenthusiastically. It looked positively leprous. ‘Isn’t that highly contagious?’

‘We’ll have to be vigilant and quarantine him.’

‘The vet gave him a dose of Stronghold,’ Mags said reassuringly, ‘so it should clear up by the time he’s back on the
road.’ She pushed away the dogs, all snuffling round the box with interest.

‘He can go in the old dairy so he’s close to the house,’ Russ announced. ‘Fetch some bowls and bedding, Mags, and I’ll get a hutch – here.’ He thrust the fox box at Kat. ‘Don’t worry, he’s not going anywhere. The dope he’s just had is even stronger than Mags’s home-grown happy herbs.’

She could feel the anger
bubbling again, indignant at the insouciant way he acted as though he owned the place. I’m the custodian here, she wanted to rage, and why the hell didn’t you tell me you and Mags were once an item? But she bit her tongue, biding her time as she watched them bustle about, arranging Heythrop’s new quarters, suspicion and jealousy creating an uneasy bass chord to her heartbeat. Looking down at
the manky, sedated new patient, she saw the box was lined with an old Sunday newspaper business section and in one corner, beside one of Heythrop’s back paws, there was a shot of a man in dark glasses playing polo, captioned Arjan Singh. She set the box down hurriedly and reached inside. But the accompanying story was too shredded and covered in fox pee to make out.

She was so distracted,
she didn’t spot the fox’s vulpine eyes widen as he struggled to gather his wits for a moment before springing out and legging it across the yard, hotly pursued by the lurchers.

‘Shit!’ Paper flying everywhere, Kat rushed after him, but by the time she’d squelched through the barn arch, he’d vanished into Usha’s wood.

Russ was livid. ‘He’ll never survive in that state!’

Before
Kat could get a word out, Mags had sprung to her defence. ‘You told her he wasn’t going anywhere.’

‘I didn’t mean “Put the box down.”’

Kat bit her lip guiltily. ‘I’m sure he’ll be —’

‘Foxes are hard-core, Russ,’ Mags intervened again. ‘He’ll be fine. Leave the girl alone.’

‘The wound will almost certainly get infected. Kat’s just sentenced him to a slow and lingering
death.’

‘You shouldn’t have given her the box to hold, Russ. Don’t shift the blame.’

‘And you’d know all about shifting blame, I suppose?’ His fury was redirected to his pink-haired partner in crime, ursine eyes blazing.

‘You can fucking talk!’ Mags lunged forward with a balled fist, which Russ made to grab.

Without thinking, Kat stepped between them and found herself
body-slammed from both sides, which at least silenced them both, although it left her own ears ringing and the yard spinning as she spluttered, ‘Just what in hell is going on?’

‘Ask
him
!’ Mags spat, leaping into her car to try for a wheel-spinning exit, spattering them with mud. Unfortunately she had to stop to let Trevor the peacock strut past before finally roaring away.

‘Well?’
Kat turned to face Russ furiously.

‘I’m going in search of the fox you’ve condemned to death.’ He stormed into the dark, his anger so far eclipsing hers that Kat felt any brooding resentment vanish.

She sensed the time had now come to suggest he stop free-ranging on Lake Farm. But even as she thought it, she chewed her lip, not wanting to cast him out into the wilderness, like one
of his broken-legged hares.

When she emerged from scrubbing off the mud in the bathroom, Russ was already back and had lit a fire with her freshly cut wood. He turned to look at her, huge and bear-like, silhouetted in the fire light.

‘Forgive me.’ He hung his head. ‘I was hot-headed and judgemental as usual.’

‘I’m sorry about the fox.’

‘Maybe he does want to be back
out in the wild,’ he conceded, reaching for a peace offering of foraged hawthorn leaves, hedge mustard and wild sorrel for a salad. He thrust them at her like a bouquet. ‘I shouldn’t have blown up like that.’

‘Shouldn’t you be apologizing to Mags?’ she asked spikily. ‘That was quite some fight.’

‘We’ve had worse.’ His eyes fixed on hers.

‘Yes. I gather you two go back a
long
way.’

‘You know we do.’

‘I didn’t know you were an item once.’

He gave her a wary look. ‘Has someone said something?’

‘You know this place – rumours everywhere. Why didn’t
you
say something?’

‘It was centuries ago. We were kids.’

‘You were a
lot
more of a kid than she was. She was practically cradle-snatching.’

‘Hardly – she’s nine years older than
me, and I was a pretty grown-up teenager. I admit I was besotted with her from the age of thirteen, but she just thought that was funny. Then, when I was on holiday here after my GCSEs, she’d just split up with a boyfriend she’d been seeing and was really down. We got together and it lasted on and off till I went to uni, but then she started going out with Calum and… I moved on.’

‘I heard
she broke your heart.’ Kat’s own was rattling dysfunctionally in her chest, unbroken but badly dented and bruised, like her ego. Then the truth struck her. ‘Oh, God, she’s the one who means you keep your love free-range and can never commit, isn’t she?’ She’d always imagined some wild Charlotte Rampling type in the animal-liberation movement, not dumpy, pierced Mags. But it all made sense. Was
it really Mags who had hurt him so deeply he needed the nine times table to get a hard-on, just as Nick had left her with a body that was harder to defrost than the Christmas turkey?

His dark eyes looked at her levelly. ‘It took a while to get over, but it’s great we’re friends again. It’s you I’m with now, Kat. If you want my fidelity, I’m proud to be able to offer it.’

Kat thought
he sounded as though he was presenting her with an expensive new sound system. ‘You prefer free-range relationships.’

‘My focus is on us right now. What we’ve both been through takes a lot of healing. We must learn to trust.’ His dimples deepened, the dark eyes filled with compassion, the Tantric urge clearly upon him. ‘Mags is history. You’re the one I’m with right here, right now, Kat.’

Kat fought an urge to point out that this was pretty obvious, given they were standing alone in the house together. She could hear Daphne whining to be let out, nose rattling the cat flap. ‘So what was the argument about between you?’ she asked, still prickly with suspicion.

‘Vin,’ Russ said. ‘He’s the band’s drummer – the one with the beaded goatee. He and Mags
do
have recent history.
He got beaten up last night and has now quit. She thinks I’m the one who told Calum she’d been shagging him behind his back.’

‘Did you? Has she?’ She was amazed. Russ’s band always seemed so staid, their biggest fall-outs involving arguments about the definitive Clash track and who got the dodgy amp on stage. Suddenly they were Fleetwood Mac meets Abba.

‘What do you take me for?’
He looked offended. ‘There are rumours everywhere, as you say. We’re all so jumpy about the future here, it’s making us turn in on ourselves. Let’s find karma.’ He was already lighting a joss stick and reaching for the Ravi Shankar CD.

Kat went to let Daphne out, extracting her from the cat flap where she’d got stuck and posting her through the door, breathing in fresh air and weighing
up her Tantric desires. A small flame was definitely flickering, fuelled by the day’s unexpected twists. She craved the sensual peace of its familiar routine and the reassurance of Russ’s eyes gazing into hers, although the realization that his
kundalini
was way behind hers had knocked her back. She wasn’t sure her nine times table would hold up this time.