The Country Escape (27 page)

‘You did what?’ Kat looked up from spooning baked beans into a pan.

‘You said he was sniffing about earlier.’

‘I said I don’t trust his motives,’ she admitted, wondering if she’d subconsciously sent Russ round to the mill to do exactly that, although no doubt hoping he might be a bit more subtle about it. She could imagine him towering like a bear in his towel, chest hair bristling
and gargantuan shoulders squared as he told his host in his hardest Brizzle accent to keep his fucking distance.

‘What did he say?’

‘“Yah, like, sure, like, whatever.”’ He mimicked the husky drawl. ‘Seemed a bit put out, but he’s not used to our insular rural ways. He wears his collars turned up and says “totes”,’ he sneered. ‘If you ask me, he’s a puppet. There’s somebody much bigger
pulling his strings.’

‘Or his stringhalt,’ Kat muttered, quietly relieved the blue eyes wouldn’t be catching her unawares in the pig muck again. She knew Dawn was probably right and Dougie Everett flirted with everybody on instinct, like debonair Brom Hunt master Frank Bingham-Ince, who would chat up an automated phone switchboard. But Kat found it disconcerting, and she was furious with
her internal organs for doing their seismic-shift jigs every time Dougie looked at her.

By contrast, her
kundalini
seemed set to stay in the deep freeze that evening when Russ looked deep into her eyes, Ravi playing in the background, and suggested she needed to relax. He smelt sensational, having nicked a load of Dougie’s bath oil.

Kat closed her eyes and focused on her chakras,
eager to be spirited away to a higher plane where she could try to find her inner temptress again and not go weak-kneed over hell-raising actors with bad chat-up lines.

‘Keep your eyes open,’ Russ reminded her. ‘Look into mine. Let’s count.’

‘Of course.’ She did as she was told. But the clever dark gaze seemed to look straight into her head and find Dougie Everett there, collar turned
up, blue eyes teasing, both hateful and charming as he said, in that sexily intimate undertone, ‘Nine, eighteen, take your top off, twenty-seven, spread your leg, thirty-six, touch yourself…’

‘Wow,’ Russ breathed, noticing her pupils dilate and breath quicken. ‘I think we’re getting somewhere. This is the breakthrough moment.’

Appalled at herself, Kat wriggled back, holding up her
hands apologetically. ‘D’you know, Russ? I think we should leave it tonight.’

‘Cool.’ He nodded sagely. ‘This is your journey. The bus stops whenever you ring the bell.’

Kat ruffled his hair gratefully as she headed past to extract Daphne from the cat flap where she was stuck as usual, but her face flamed.

Kat arrived late to run her Pilates class in the village hall, finding her regulars already limbering up on their mats as she hurried in and slotted the CD into the stereo.

‘Sorry – crisis with an escaped water buffalo… again!’
she said brightly. ‘Have we all done our warm-up stretches? Great. Let’s get straight on and do the Hundred!’

As chill-out music started pumping from the speakers and a dozen local ladies in joggers and Lycra lay down obediently, she spotted a figure standing at the back, blue eyes devilish, big smile flashing. Dressed in black joggers that hung low on his lean hips and an Actors Studio
T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and biceps, Dougie Everett seemed both amused and baffled as the ladies adopted the Tabletop position. A puppy was asleep on the rolled-up hoodie behind him.

Kat raised a hand in acknowledgement, furious with her body for staging an instant rearrangement of heart, stomach and lungs, all of which appeared to be palpitating like mad. She didn’t want
him hijacking her class for more flirting.

‘And INHALE,’ she instructed, grabbing a spare mat from her kit bag and hurrying to the back of the room.

‘Hope it’s okay to join in?’ Dougie asked cheerfully, his voice already doing its husky seductive thing.

She didn’t look him in the eye. ‘Have you done Pilates before?’

‘I work out.’

‘It’s the last class of the season
so it’s quite advanced. It can be very punishing, especially if you have…’ she cleared her throat and lowered her voice to a whisper ‘… addictions.’

‘Addictions?’ His eyebrows shot up.

Kat had heard of young, fit stars dropping dead because they had abused their bodies so badly. She didn’t want Dougie Everett pegging out during the Saw movement because his heart couldn’t take it. ‘
Chemical
addictions,’ she breathed, so that none of the ladies would hear.

He laughed incredulously. ‘Since when did you need a drug test to take part in a village fitness class?’ Then he leaned right into her ear so that she could smell the warm citrus of his skin as he murmured, ‘I am totally, utterly clean.’ He somehow made it sound thrillingly filthy.

Kat thrust the mat at him,
her face flaming. ‘I’m afraid most of the movements will be hard for you to understand at this stage in the course.’

‘Oh, I’ll pick it up as I go along.’ He flapped out the mat like an eager Scout on a camping trip and plumped down on it, beaming up at her.

Kat turned back to her class. ‘INHALE. Heads up, curl spines, see the scoop of your abs, hold the position… and EXHALE,’ she
instructed. She headed back to the front of the hall, determined to stay professional. ‘That’s right, Miriam. EXHALE… Legs and arms extended now, try to keep those legs low, hold the position and INHALE… Lovely, Tina! Fingertips reaching for that far wall.’

Tina, who was as fit as a marathon runner and only came along to get away from her kids – she had been known to fall asleep on her
mat halfway through the class – was staring at Dougie open-mouthed, the creases on her sun-kissed twenty-something forehead in direct contrast to the lack of them on Miriam’s fifty-something Botoxed one on the adjacent mat, although both women’s eyes bore the same look of wonderment.

He was doing non-stop crunches at the back. He seemed to be able to pump away at will. Kat lay down to demonstrate
the final part of the movement, trying hard not to think about her Tantric moment with Russ when
kundalini
had started moving for all the wrong reasons, mostly Dougie’s torso.

‘Now five short breaths – sniff, pant, sniff, pant, sniff, and move those feet and hands up and down. Make the abs do the work, remember. Relax your head and neck, Babs. Great!’

Still Dougie pumped, beaming
at her every time he raised his head over his wide triangle of chest. No wonder he had such a sculpted six-pack on screen.

‘Bring your knees up to your chests, roll your spines back along the floor and lower your heads.’ She ended the movement in a rush.

As Kat ran through the mat exercises, Dougie became increasingly disruptive, gaining his own eager audience and doing his own thing.
He found the notion of the Roll Up hilarious – ‘If I’d known, I’d have bought Rizlas and a pouch of Golden Virginia’ – and went on to pound through thirty sit-ups in the same time it took Kat’s ladies to groan their way from lying to sitting with their fingers reaching for their toes, exhaling on command. He was similarly flippant about the Roll Over (‘Reminds me, I must buy a EuroMillions ticket’),
and took his puppy outside for a comfort break during the One Leg Circle (‘Quiver needs a one leg lift’). His phone rang during Rolling Up Into Ball, cutting short an anecdote involving his father, the
Daily Telegraph
and his PPS’s head in Westminster as he went outside again. Kat really hoped he wouldn’t come back, particularly as her ladies had now lost concentration entirely, chattering in
amazement about the fact Dougie had a phone signal and speculating on which Hollywood starlet he was talking to.

‘It’s such fun with him here. What a shame this is the last class. Do you think he’ll come to boxercise when that starts up?’

‘Let’s do some leg stretches.’ Kat clapped her hands to get their attention and started them off in the first sequence movement before going in
search of a pen to write LADIES ONLY on her boxercise and self-defence poster.

‘Pilates class,’ Dougie told Dollar, standing outside the village hall, the line suffering from bad satellite delay.

‘This is not wise,’ she said, after a long, crackling pause.

‘Why?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘You told me to get fit and seduce Kat Mason. I’m killing two birds with one
stone.’

‘You must maintain your enigmatic edge. This is impossible to achieve in a fitness class, trust me. You are not taking this job seriously. And please do not kill her. We are not considering that option yet.’

‘It’s a figure of speech.’

‘And I was joking.’

‘I forgot you do that sometimes.’ He chuckled. ‘Now who isn’t taking the job seriously?’

‘I take my
job very seriously, and my neck is on the line over this, Dougie.’ Her voice was steely. ‘I knew it was too early to trust you on your own. There’s a lot more at stake here than your summer bonus. Take a deep breath, then go in more slowly.’

‘Sounds like a bloody Pilates move,’ he muttered sulkily.

When Dougie came back into the class, his attitude had changed completely.
Slumping despondently into his mat, he took instruction and performed the stretch movements, frowning darkly throughout. Kat longed to make him really sweat as punishment for being the class joker earlier, but he was suddenly a model student, pushing for the extra core strength with surprising polish and balance, totally in control of his body and far fitter than anybody else, including Kat. By
the final few positions his blond mane was dark with sweat, his skin glistening and he was breathing hard, his body accustomed more to power than precision.

Kat found the sight highly distracting, especially when he looked at her. As she demonstrated the final side-kicks, she found his eyes on her again, no longer amused and playful, but hard, focused and determined. Instead of her heart
feeling it was using her lungs as a punch-bag, the excited drumming was far lower now. Why did every position she adopt suddenly remind her of sex? The Inner Thigh Lift, the Seal, the Boomerang and the Teaser all took on hitherto unimagined sexual connotations. They became the
Kama Sutra
of body-toning mat movements as her brain slotted Dougie Everett into them. Finishing by demonstrating the
Control Balance, a tricky shoulder-stand splits, she found her ninth chakra was truly staging a coup. She could think about nothing but oral sex. She had visions of Dougie’s blond head between her legs, his arms wrapped round her thighs. Control and balance deserting her, she slammed back down on to the mat like a skittle, then leaped up and declared the class over.

Dougie was among the
first to leave, pulling on his hoodie and gathering the tail-wagging puppy into his big front pocket before wandering across to thank her.

‘How much do I owe you for the class?’ His smile was guarded, no longer radiant with teasing naughtiness, the eyes still disturbingly hard and sexy.

‘Have this one on me,’ Kat said, acutely aware that her chakras had cashed in shamelessly. ‘I
still owe you one for the AA man and the bath.’

He was looking at the LADIES ONLY graffito she’d added to the boxercise poster on the wall above her head. ‘I should have added that as a clause for free baths at the mill.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘Your boyfriend looks much better out of badger uniform.’

‘He’s not –’ She stopped herself, reddening at the speed with which she wanted
to explain away Russ’s status, a man she had sent round specifically to back Dougie off and with whom she still occasionally hunted her elusive
kundalini
. ‘–‒ conventional.’ She finished lamely. ‘He’s not very conventional.’

‘Neither are you.’ He looked through his lashes, more like his flirty self as the smile caught an updraught of laughter. ‘I like that a lot. Thanks for the workout.’

As he sauntered away, Miriam bustled up, flicking her pith helmet of blond highlights, still immaculate although she was sweating heavily in her reinforced body-shaping leotard and waving a poster about forthcoming village-hall movie nights, for which the ever-industrious Pru and Cyn had annexed the next slot as a sanctuary fund-raiser, the film written in as ‘TBC’.

‘Did you know
about this, Kat? It hasn’t had committee approval. I do hope
TBC
isn’t another film in which everybody takes their clothes off in the first five minutes.’

As May blossomed and bloomed between its bank holidays, choking the verges with cow parsley and jewelling Eardisford’s walls and gardens with flowers, Dougie continued to charm the village. He became an increasingly popular face at
the Eardisford Arms, where his affability and quick wit won him firm friends. His regular disappearing acts between pints of Coke were the subject of early speculation, until a few of the earthmen, lining up outside for a smoke, realized he was simply checking the puppy in his car. As soon as he’d had his jabs, Quiver joined the terrier regulars in the bar and was given an honorary cushion to lie
on by the inglenook seat in the fireplace.

‘I’ve never known a puppy so well behaved, or its owner.’ Mags was enchanted. ‘Dougie’s a total gent. Do you think he’s teetotal because he’s got a problem?’

‘Well, he’s definitely AA,’ Kat informed her confidently. She’d not been in the pub since the night of the point-to-point, partly because she was broke and partly to avoid her flirtatious
neighbour, but it seemed she was the only one shunning it. Now Dougie took to stopping off in his local for a soft drink most evenings, and the hard-core regulars had trebled in numbers, rebalancing the sexual divide. Her boxercise and self-defence class had started up again, but was no longer fully subscribed as the village ladies swapped wrist-holds and right hooks for the wrist action of
lifting pints.

‘It’s the long evenings and sunny weather,’ the girl grooms insisted, eager to pounce on the newcomer and demand advice with a tricky equine problem. The Hedges sisters fought for his attention constantly, they complained. Miriam had turned into a positive cougar of biscuit-baking coquetry, and the millstream footpath – traditionally a boggy right of way most locals avoided
– was suddenly awash with dog walkers in full makeup. But there were no rumours of drug-fuelled sex orgies at the mill. In fact, Dougie Everett seemed remarkably chaste.

While Kat thought this odd for a man who had already shown he was more flirtatious than a stallion hound, Dawn – who was celebrity mad and therefore fascinated by Eardisford’s glamorous new bad boy – speculated that he
was already conducting a secret affair. ‘That’s why he’s stopped sniffing round you. She’s got to be married. Men like Dougie don’t hang about. And there are always more girls queuing up.’ They joked that she should set up a beauty spa in Eardisford to cater for Dougie’s many admirers.

Based on what she’d witnessed of his chat-up technique and heard about his philandering reputation, Kat
couldn’t understand why everybody was so enchanted by him. ‘Even the men adore him,’ she complained.

‘Don’t tell me Dair’s forsaken me for a man?’ Dawn wailed.

‘Actually Dair’s one of the only people who doesn’t buy into the charm,’ Kat revealed; the estate manager’s nose still being firmly out of joint. Even Russ had promoted their closest neighbour from ‘posh muppet’ to ‘the cunning
stuntman’, appreciating Dougie’s superior knowledge of films and music, although they’d clashed more than once over hunting, especially as Dougie remained tight-lipped on plans for the estate’s private foxhound pack. ‘He won’t say a bloody thing,’ Russ grumbled. ‘Just that it will all be completely within the law.’

Dougie was a regular figure on horseback and out running around the estate.
He avoided the tracks around Lake Farm, his path never crossing Kat’s as she walked the dogs or hacked to and from her lesson with Tina to do battle with Sri, whose latest ploy was to plant herself stock still and refuse to do anything. Galloping the full length of the estate between the quarter rings of the church clock seemed increasingly far off. More often than not Kat couldn’t even get out
of the yard.

Moving with far greater speed and ease around Eardisford’s green lanes on a clutch of newly purchased hunters, Dougie’s sublime horsemanship was much admired. He persuaded Brom and Lem joint-master Frank to ride out with him, a brilliant move that ensured far smoother relations with many of the estate’s tenant farmers and neighbouring landowners than Dair had achieved with
his starchy introductions. Frank and Dougie got on famously, and in this way the hunt supporters, all initially furious that their best Wednesday country was denied to them next season, were rapidly won round as they discovered that the handsome maverick knew his stuff.

The Brom and Lem’s hunters were still all grassed off for summer, as tradition dictated, hound bitches whelping, the rest
of the pack exercised on foot or by bicycle, so Dougie took advantage of the quiet time to forge links and gain local expertise. The estate kennels were soon resonating with the baying of several couple of hounds drafted from the Brom and Lem and from a friendly hill pack across the border, the brindled, broken Welsh coats mingling with the smooth, dapper English foxhounds like husks amid conkers.

‘Old hunting parkland meets the Marches at Eardisford, so it’s a fitting mix,’ Pru reflected, at May’s sanctuary committee meeting, which was dominated by talk of the reinvented sporting estate.

‘He obviously cares passionately about his animals, just like we do,’ Cyn sighed dreamily.

The sisters spent most of the meeting reminiscing about the good old days when the Brom and
Lem’s kennels had been based at Eardisford, hunting three times a week with Constance regularly field-mastering. Styling themselves on her as young women, the sisters had hunted with three packs along the Marches and partied with all their most eligible bachelors, and were now transported back to long days in breeches and woollen coats and evenings dancing and sparkling in formal dress. Dougie
Everett’s glamour brought with it just as much thrill as his sporting experience, and everybody wanted to be in on it. Having sent apologies for absence, it turned out Miriam was trying to sell Dougie a horse. Frank was also absent, having put his back out charging around with Dougie. The other grandees and stalwarts agreed that Constance would have approved wholeheartedly: ‘Hunting’s what this place
is about.’

Kat, who was increasingly protective of the sanctuary and sensed a big conflict of interests, was grateful Russ was working in the orchards and not hijacking the meeting to climb on his soapbox as he so often did. She was already uncomfortable enough with the topic: she didn’t like to think of Constance hunting – the joyful, compassionate old lady she had known close to the end
of her life seemed such a far cry from a bloodthirsty Diana of the chase, thundering across her own land after fox, stag and hare before the ban. She knew Russ firmly believed Eardisford’s new owner had a similar goal in mind and Kat was frightened he was right.

Gathered in the Lake Farm kitchen, the committee were far too buoyant to dwell on such uncertainties, cock-a-hoop that the sanctuary
coffers had been boosted by a successful point-to-point fund-raiser, now eager to discuss how to make much more money as they laid into home-baked chocolate cake and almond thins.

Kat grasped the opportunity to suggest they seek permission to open to the public at last. ‘I know it’s a lot of red tape, but we all saw how successful the Open Day was last year. Visitors would bring in a lot
of revenue. Then we can start to take in other old, unwanted animals – pets left behind when owners die, abandoned livestock, lame old horses.’

‘Far too tricky to get local authority planning,’ Pru, who was chairing in Miriam’s absence, dismissed the idea with a sharp tap of pen against notepad, ‘and the liability insurance would be totally prohibitive. We’ll just have to raise more money
privately. There’s the village show coming up, of course, and movie night for which we must —’

‘Balls!’ trilled Cyn, making her sister drop pen and jaw. ‘I told you! Constance loved balls! A masked summer ball would be marvellous. We’ll ask Miriam to let us use her garden with a lovely big marquee. A peacock theme would be heaven. Let the young bloods boogie!’ She gave an energetic jiggle,
then winced as her neck cricked.

‘We can’t possibly afford to host a ball,’ Pru said crushingly. ‘Besides, we all know how twitchy Miriam gets about her RHS open days. I was thinking more along the lines of a pub quiz or a race night. And as I was saying before I was interrupted,’ she glared at Cyn, ‘we must now decide urgently upon a film to show at the village hall next month. People
are already buying tickets.’

‘I vote for something timeless and romantic.’ Cyn sighed, shooting her sister a hurt look. ‘
Gone With the Wind
maybe. It has a ball in it.’ She brightened as a thought occurred to her. ‘We could all dress up.’

‘How about a masked movie night?’ someone chuckled.

‘Genius!’ Cyn clapped her hands together happily.

There were universal sounds
of approval among the stalwarts: ‘Jolly good idea. Sounds great fun,’ before the vote was passed.

‘Was the ball in
Gone With the Wind
really a masked one? I thought it was set in the American Civil War,’ Kat queried, wishing they showed as much interest in the practical running of the sanctuary as the social jamborees. But the committee had already moved on to the need for volunteers for
the village show where they had a host of displays and fund-raisers to co-ordinate.

‘Kat will lead out the parade of the veteran horses on Sri,’ Pru read from her list.

Kat swallowed uncomfortably at the prospect of persuading the irascible Marwari horse to go anywhere near the village.

‘Before that, there will be pony rides followed by the mini gymkhana,’ Pru read. ‘How’s
that going?’ she asked Kat.

‘All in safe hands.’ She thought guiltily back to her challenge to Dougie Everett to arrange it. She hoped he’d remembered.

Pru made an eager note when told that Eardisford’s dashing huntsman was now in charge of pony rides and races. ‘Marvellous choice!’

‘He said he might do some sort of stunt display too,’ Kat remembered. ‘Jumping off the church
tower while shooting flaming arrows, I think.’

‘We’ll never get that past Health and Safety,’ said one of the stalwarts.

‘
I
’ll get it past,’ Pru insisted. ‘I think we should ask Mr Everett to open the show as well. There’s bound to be press interest. Shall we liaise with him, Kat, or will you?’

She hurriedly said she’d much rather they did it.

‘This will be our best
village show ever,’ Cyn predicted. ‘That boy’s
such
an asset.’

‘We could call it the Dougie Everett and Eardisford Show,’ Kat muttered, realising she was now responsible for having turned him into even more of a local hero.

‘I think that’s a bit of a mouthful.’ Pru had written it down and was looking at it.

‘That’s what happens when you bite off more than you can chew.’