The Country Escape (39 page)

‘How hard was
it to cut loose?’

‘Very. Nobody knew how unhappy I’d become – I hid it too well. Our friends thought we were Ken and Barbie. We owned a house together – we still do on paper – his parents insisted I called them Mum and Dad and my mum worshipped him. Nick was the golden boy, the local hero. After I came out of hospital, he promised to change, but it was never going to work. He was just as
controlling, couldn’t give up the porn or admit it was a problem. I found amphetamines in the bathroom cabinet, flushed them down the loo and he hit the roof when he found out. I was frightened of him by then, of what he might do if I tried to leave.’

‘So you ran away here without saying anything?’

‘I handed in my notice at the hospital in strict confidence and joined an agency to
look for a job with accommodation where I knew he couldn’t find me. I never intended to come this far west, but Eardisford was so perfect. There’s no phone reception here, so ignoring his calls and emails was easy. Constance paid cash. I wrote Nick a long letter explaining why I was doing it, and I trusted a couple of very close friends with my contact details, but apart from that, I cut all ties.’

They’d ridden the full circuit of the meadow and were almost back at the fire, weary dogs gravitating towards it.

‘And you’ve not seen him since?’

She shook her head. ‘From what I’ve heard, he basked in sympathy and self-pity for a few months, after which he took up marathon running and never looked back. When Constance died and the news story about Lake Farm made a couple
of nationals, he contacted me through solicitors to ask me to sign over my part of the house, but I didn’t reply – I’m a bit rubbish about things like that. I think they’ll go away if I put them in a drawer. The last I heard, he was living with a sports masseuse.’

‘Meanwhile you were shacked up with Badger Man.’ As soon as he’d said it, he regretted the dismissive kneejerk comment that
placed his foot firmly in his mouth, especially after what she had just confided. ‘Sorry. That was crass.’

‘Russ was good to me, but it was never going to work.’

‘Did he try to help you beat your demons?’ he asked jealously.

‘He has too many of his own.’ She looked at him and this time she didn’t look away.

The explosion of fierce emotion in his chest could have brought
down a cooling tower. ‘
I
’ll take on all your demons.’ He leaned out of the saddle to reach for her hand. ‘I’ll help you beat them. You and I are going to be sensational together. That’s a promise.’

To Dougie, it was among the most romantic declarations of his life. He was carrying her through battlefields as shells rained down, holding her on the prow of the
Titanic
, wrestling Red Indians
from horses to rescue her from a burning tepee.

Kat looked put out, gathering up her reins and urging Sri forwards. ‘I asked you not to flirt.’

‘I’m not flirting!’ he protested. ‘I’m —’ But Sri had already broken into a canter and put five lengths between them, flying into top gear now, hoofs thundering across the turf. ‘I’m baring my soul.’ He set off in pursuit.

The big
heavyweight Worcester took longer than Sri to reach maximum speed, but his big stride was soon eating the ground between them as he caught up.

‘Are you always so arrogant?’ Kat shouted across.

‘You do seriously scary truths as well as dares,’ he shouted back.

‘Your turn, then.’ She crouched low as they flew beneath the heavy overhanging branches from the wood. ‘Truth or dare?’

‘Truth.’ Kicking the horse faster, ignoring her shouts behind him, he streaked the full length of the Lush Bottom meadow, straight towards the nursery lake where its shallowest corner was shadowed by the woods. Flat-bottomed and reed-ringed, he’d ridden through it several times that week and trusted that there were no hidden hazards.

Worcester pounded in, big legs sending up great
arcs of water in front and bow waves in his wake. As Dougie reined back and turned to look for Kat, he saw she’d pulled up on the bank.

‘Come back out! I want a truth. It’s only fair!’ She glared across at him and he realized again just how extraordinary her eyes were, like iridescent opals.

‘Come
in
here and ask.’ He looked down, the water foaming and eddying around him as Worcester
pawed at it. ‘It’s barely past this boy’s hocks. A bath is deeper.’

Not taking her eyes from his, she rode in. Her knuckles were as white as marble, sinews leaping in her neck. He knew just how much guts it had taken.

‘Well done!’ he breathed, the unfamiliar lump back in his throat as more detonations took place in his chest.

‘I think I’ve earned a truth, don’t you?’

He nodded. He couldn’t deny it.

Her eyes were totally bewitching, the deep green reflecting through that opal luminosity. He nudged Worcester closer so that their knees brushed, close enough to reach out and touch her face if he wanted to, to kiss it even. He wanted to do both very badly, but he managed to stop himself, just as he stopped himself smiling or his eyelashes lowering seductively.
Instead, he stared at her with wide-eyed honesty, struggling to hear himself speak above the artillery tattoo taking place in his chest.

‘I wasn’t just hired as a huntsman,’ he told her. ‘I was hired to target somebody.’

She went very still, the big green eyes watchful. ‘You mean there’s really truth in the manhunt story?’

‘I’m here to make you marry me, Kat.’

Kat’s hearing wasn’t serving her too well. Her own heartbeat was thundering in her ears, much as it had been on and off since she’d ridden into the meadow to see Dougie waiting there, now more amplified than ever from plunging into
a lake with a horse. Riding into the water had given her the mother of all adrenalin spikes, but that had been nothing to the moment she’d thought Dougie was going to reach across and touch her, kiss her even, the kick of desire almost knocking her out of the saddle. Her skin still burned from the anticipation of it, a half-breath caught between throat and heart, like a stitch.

Her ears
were consequently struggling to take in much beyond a hundred and twenty frenzied beats per minute and her own breathing, embarrassingly loud, rapid-fire wheezing pants. And there was a lot of splashing going on beneath them.

Yet she was certain that Dougie had just said he’d been hired to marry her.

She felt as though she’d galloped bravely over a cliff only to find herself as the
end-of-pier amusement. She’d just told him her most painful, personal truth and he’d come back at her with a joke about being a marriage assassin. At least it served to remind her that he was a flippant bastard. And, more surprisingly, it made her laugh, a shocked reflex that helped shake off the fear. Dougie’s dry, deadpan delivery drew a delicious ripple of laughter up through her, as unexpected
as it was joyful. Laughter was such a relief after the intensity of talking about Nick, confessing the truths she’d never intended to spill again, certainly never to Dougie Everett. She should be furious with him for rewarding her with this childish joke, but it was too gloriously surreal – especially given they were both sitting on horses in a lake – and she was overwhelmed to have ridden Sri
into water up to her belly. Laughter helped enormously: it stopped her thinking about the water. Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes and hanging on to Sri’s mane, she laughed until it hurt.

‘I told you I was lousy at truths.’ Dougie was looking at her curiously. Beneath him, Worcester was pawing at the water, trying to get his head down.

Dropping the reins, she reached across and
cuffed his arm. ‘But you’ve really cheered me up. Thank you.’ Her eyes caught his and he held her gaze so intently that the last of the laughter melted away. ‘Dougie, please don’t —’

‘I am
not
flirting,’ he second-guessed her with an impatient huff.

‘I was going to say “propose”.’

Amusement creased in the corners of his blue eyes. Then his expression changed to one of alarm
as the Marwari mare, who had put her head down to drink, started to crumple.

Kat let out a scream as Sri dropped towards the water beneath her. ‘What’s happening?’

‘She’s trying to roll. Grab the reins and pull her head up!’

Preparing to cool off in the water with an ecstatic sigh, the mare was already down on her knees and hocks. Leaping from his saddle, Dougie threw himself
across ten feet of water to rescue her and almost got mown down as Kat kicked and cajoled so energetically that Sri stood up and spun towards the bank. A moment later they were streaking across the meadow. ‘Not even Sri’s allowed to go down on one knee!’ she shouted over her shoulder.

Galloping helped clear Kat’s head. Eventually, she pulled up at the edge of the woods, lungs bursting.

‘Never, ever do that to me again,’ she told Sri, whose curly ears were revolving like radar dishes at something she’d sensed in the woods. ‘If we’re going to get across the big lake, there’ll be no seal rolls. And Dougie Everett needs keeping under tight control. Don’t give him any more excuses to be heroic.’ She rubbed her sweaty face on the back of her sleeve, resting her arm against her
eyes for a moment to blot out the sun setting through the trees. She groaned. Telling Dougie about Nick had been a huge mistake, she was certain. Her best survival tactic would be to laugh it off. And at least he’d been generous enough to supply the running gag.

At that moment, Sri went sharply into reverse as she took exception to whatever she’d sensed in the woods, almost tipping Kat
out of the saddle. Swinging around, she let out a shrill whinny and set off at full tilt towards the reassuring bulky shape of Worcester: Dougie was jockeying him across the meadow towards them at his gambolling canter.

‘Oh, shit.’ Kat pulled hopelessly at the reins as she found herself inadvertently riding towards Dougie through Lush Bottom’s jewelled carpet of flowers, like a swooning
romantic heroine about to embrace her manly hero. Judging from the width of his smile, he was enjoying the show.

Determined not to lose face, she shouted, ‘So how are you going to make me marry you?’

Dougie was sopping wet and frustrated that his honesty had backfired, but the sight of her galloping towards him had cheered him up a lot, and he was equally determined not
to lose face. Swinging Worcester around so that they were riding alongside one another, he played along with the joke she clearly found so funny. ‘I’ll propose.’

‘Go on then!’

‘Is that a dare?’

‘If you like.’

‘Will you marry me?’ Worcester was blowing hard, accompanying the question with snorts, groans and clanking metal. Dougie brought the horse back to a trot, letting
him stretch out his neck and relax.

‘If I say no, will you lose your job?’ Kat called, struggling to apply the brakes, her long red ponytail twirling.

‘I might get a formal warning.’ He wished that he had kept quiet about the bonus. She was right to dismiss it as a joke.

‘And if I say yes and we rush off to a register office, I lose Lake Farm under the terms of my lease.’
She reined to a halt, eyebrows shooting up. The big, defensive smile was back in place, he noticed, with a sinking heart.

‘Clever girl.’ He rode level before pulling up too. ‘You spotted the evil master-plan.’

Just for a moment he saw her eyes flicker behind the smile and knew she was questioning her laughter. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to push that door and find a big HAHAHA
waiting after all.

He mustered a self-deprecating smile. ‘I take it the answer is no?’

To his surprise, she didn’t immediately answer. She was looking at the stables clock-tower, only just visible beyond the woods. It was eight fifteen. From the opposite direction, they could hear the village church bell ring the quarter chime.

‘I’ll give you my answer after I ride the Bolt.
As long as you promise not to flirt with me until then. Not once.’

Dougie honoured the flirting ban. For three weeks, he and Kat met almost every evening as the birds roosted and the hay was cut in the meadows around the estate, trading truths and dares, riding ever faster, tracking the course of
the Bolt from Duke’s Wood right up to the house. By day, he ran his hounds and exercised horses while Kat juggled aged animals, budget nightmares, dippy volunteers and endless maintenance. But each evening, for an hour or two, they stood in their stirrups and rode the loveliest turf in Herefordshire, intent on a joint mission. The marriage proposal remained a running joke, but the historic Mytton
challenge was something they both took increasingly seriously, a dare that must be met.

Dougie had plotted two routes, one of which avoided the lake but would require Kat to ride a great deal faster and more accurately. He broke it down into sections and they tackled each in turn, perfecting every change of direction and pace, like rehearsing a stunt sequence. Kat was a tireless if occasionally
stubborn pupil, fearless yet precise, listening to every instruction, determined to get better. She was also surprisingly easy to talk to.

By not flirting, Dougie found himself laughing more than he remembered doing in years, as well as shouting, coaching and trading satisfyingly furious insults. Their conversations were fast, furious and laughter-laced, breathlessly gasped between bursts
of speed, covering childhood, careers and engagements, of which they’d broken five between them if you counted Dean Stoppard, who had proposed to Kat at the age of eight.

‘His dad was being posted to Germany, so we exchanged rings and had an engagement party, promising to stay true to other until we were sixteen and could legally marry. He wrote to me every day until I replied six weeks
later breaking it off because his ring had given me a green finger.’

‘With our track record, we’d better skip engagement and heard straight for Vegas after you ride the Bolt. Race you to the haha.’

They embraced their common ground, trading memories of childhoods with divorced parents and a succession of evil step-parents, romantic disasters, favourite films and music, sharing their
unswerving love of animals and a fierce loyalty to their friends, whom they saw rarely because, after all, they had both run away here. Most of all they made each other laugh, trading insults with increasing joy.

‘You’re almost human for a posh boy.’

‘You’re pretty cool for a common cow.’

Not flirting turned them into two children playing through long, balmy, midge-hazed summer
evenings, lost in a world of chivalric challenges, silly jokes and breakneck races. Much later each night, it transformed them into two sleepless, sheet-twisting teenagers, hollow with longing, stomachs churning with anticipation. With friends and acquaintances, it turned them into two self-satisfied puritans who could very honestly report, ‘We just ride together.’ They blithely rose above the
village gossip, which had cast them as the Lancelot and Guinevere of Eardisford, and determinedly ignored the approaching storm of Seth’s first VIP visit.

Dougie counted the minutes to those snatched hours each evening, although he dreaded the call that inevitably came afterwards. Dollar’s questions were increasingly personal, the monotone voice calm as always but her mistrust clear. ‘I
think it is unrealistic to expect this of you. You are clearly becoming too attached.’

At first, he was evasive and glib, insisting it was all in hand, anything to buy himself more time. Then, in a masterstroke of unwitting impatience, he told Dollar that he had proposed but that Kat would only answer after undertaking an historic challenge. ‘Constance Mytton-Gough did much the same thing.
It’s a local tradition. She’s very old-fashioned like that.’

To his surprise, Dollar thought this perfectly reasonable. ‘This is excellent. You will keep me informed of her progress. She must undertake this challenge before Seth’s visit.’ After that, their conversations became much easier, and thankfully Dollar was soon too distracted by Seth’s ambitious weekend plans to delve into too
many details and discover the no-flirting clause.

‘He will be hosting a Bollywood party on the Saturday. His weekend guests will enjoy a banquet in the house, but there will also be a marquee in the grounds to which he would like to invite the estate staff and villagers. Invitations will be circulated shortly.’

‘A servants’ ball.’ Dougie laughed, guessing his tactics. ‘How very archaic.
Let me guess, we get the village cricket team so pie-eyed at the ball they can’t bowl straight the next day. Meanwhile, estate staff are contractually obliged to stay sober.’

‘Everybody will be encouraged to have a good time, although Sunday’s cricket match is of great importance. For Seth, cricket is second only to religion,’ Dollar said, adding briskly, ‘and his mother.’

‘Is Kat
going to be invited to the ball?’

‘That would not be appropriate. In the event that she has not vacated Lake Farm, contingencies are in place for the weekend. However, I strongly recommend you pursue your objective.’

‘Leave it with me.’ He promised nothing, increasingly aware that he was on borrowed time and that his objective had changed. He knew that the open proposal was just
a joke to Kat, and he wasn’t focusing on that any more. As far as Dougie was concerned, all that mattered was that she had a chance to ride the Bolt before Seth’s visit, yet he knew she was far from ready. Nor was he ready to let go of their shared evenings. Every minute was precious as he charged along the rides and headlands with Kat, timing each section, adoring her determined expression as she
sought to improve, the way laughter burst from her when her time was shorter, the hugs and kisses raining down on Sri’s neck.

When she heard about the servants and masters ball and learned that she would not be invited, Kat simply laughed and joked that she should ride the Bolt that night. ‘It’s just the sort of thing Constance would have done.’

She talked about Constance often,
relating conversations about Marwari horses, the history of the house and estate, and the many legendary runnings of the Bolt, so many steeped in failure and a few in tragedy.

‘The Myttons who accepted the challenge would ride up the steps and through the grand hall, out on to the front carriage sweep and along the drive to the Hereford road,’ she explained, when they examined the final
leg, eyed suspiciously by a battalion of cameras now discreetly positioned in amongst the Jacobean architecture.

‘Not easy to make sure the house is open.’ He sucked in his lips thoughtfully. ‘We could try bribing someone on the staff, but they’re a pretty tightly briefed team. The security is seriously high grade now.’ He knew he could speak to Dollar, but it seemed like cheating, and
compared to crossing the lake, it was a minor worry. They’d now clocked enough section times to know that there was no way Kat would make the time if she went around the water: she had to ride through it.

Kat had stared at the lake almost every evening that summer, trying to imagine herself swimming across it, but the first time Dougie assessed it with her close-up, on foot after
they had ridden out one evening, he let out a low groan. ‘Fuck, it’s huge.’

This hardly gave her great encouragement. ‘You’ve seen it loads of times.’

‘I always forget how big it is. It looks quite small from the top of the parkland.’

‘That’s an optical illusion from the oxbow.’ Kat stood at the shallowest curve of bank alongside the ornate stone-plinthed causeway, knowing
it would be the obvious place from which to gallop a horse through the lake, but just looking at the black, weed-choked water left her breathless with panic. Two football pitches separated her from the far side.

‘The water is only deep for about ten metres in the centre,’ Dougie shouted over his shoulder, wading in to his thighs. ‘Horses swim incredibly slowly, so this is the shortest crossing
point and it has great visibility. She’ll hesitate at first, so you’ll need lots of leg. Come on.’ He reversed up to her standing on the bank, holding his arms out.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Giving you a ride. I’m the horse.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Come on, get on. We’ll just go in a few feet and come out. You won’t even get your feet wet. I dare you, you bloody wimp. We’re getting
you across this lake by the end of the week, I swear. I’ll even tell you another truth. Anything.’

It was the first time Kat sensed real anger in his cajoling and frustration. She hesitated, already clammy-handed and breathing shallowly, but her blood was up and she wasn’t going to be accused of wimpery. Having banked on going round her nemesis, she now knew she had no choice but to face
it.

Cursing under her breath, she put her hands on his shoulders and jumped on to his back, wrapping her arms around him for balance. As soon as she did it, she realized her mistake: the sense was knocked out of her with a white-out of sensory overload, feeling the hard breadth of him, smelling his sweetness, feeling his hair against her cheek. His lips touched her arm, whether by accident
or design she had no idea, but they rested there, his breath soft on her skin, and she was certain he knew how attracted she was, how her body cleaved to his no matter what her mind was telling it to do, drawing his skin against hers, absorbing its warmth. For a moment they remained still, a lakeside piggy-back of strange, heavenly connection.

Then she screeched with laughter as he turned
away from the lake and cavorted along the bank towards the lime avenue, carrying her at a reckless bouncing, jigging pelt, slaloming through a few trees before kinking right into the arboretum.

‘You should have kicked on. I’m now running away with you!’

He finally let her down in the farmyard, where the last rays of sun were slicing right through the house, as they so often did,
turning it into a light-box. He stepped away swiftly and decorously as soon as she was on the ground, upright and eyes-front as a guardsman.

‘This is a beautiful place.’ He admired Lake Farm’s ugly artisan face, the Pompidou Centre drainpipes and loose wires transformed by its magic-lantern windows. ‘It deserves to be lived in and loved.’

‘I love it very much.’ Kat admired it too.

He wandered inside, surrounded by dogs – they now thought of him as a great mate and ushered him excitedly into their lair along with Quiver, eager to help him explore.

‘You have nothing whatsoever to drink.’ He looked in the fridge. ‘Or eat.’

‘I wasn’t expecting a guest.’ Kat edged after him cautiously.

‘I’m not thinking of me – I have a fridge full of goodies – I’m
thinking of you. You’re feeding the mare extra rations for all this work she’s doing. What about you?’

‘I get by.’

‘Come to dinner.’

‘No thanks.’ She didn’t trust herself for a minute with wine, good food and Dougie, worried she’d be a total pushover, the easiest notch ever grooved on his much-striped bedpost. ‘You’ve already proposed – it’s a bit late to start the courtship.’

‘Have I flirted?’

‘No.’

‘There you go. Dinner between non-flirting suitors is an entirely nutritional event. You need to eat.’

He wandered deeper into the house, framed in the sunset, looking around the tatty sitting room. The Tantric corner had been cleared away behind the sofa again. There would be no more Ravi Shankar in Lake Farm this summer. Russ still came and
went occasionally to tend his rescue cases, leaving big piles of foraged food, occasionally releasing one of his wildlife victims or adding another, but he was free-ranging so widely now, he was almost feral.

Seeing no evidence of co-habiting, Dougie cheered up. Feeling the sexual energy crackling in the room, Kat started to panic in much the same way she did when faced with the lake.

‘Truth or dare?’ he said, as he so often did, admiring the photograph on the windowsill of Kat and Dawn in their graduation outfits.

‘Truth,’ she said quickly, unable to face another piggy-back ride.

He stood silhouetted against a red-stained window. ‘I want to kiss you right now.’

Kat couldn’t speak, her belly so full of marauding electric butterflies she almost expected
to lift up in the air.

But instead of making a move, he stooped to say farewell to the dogs and headed for the door. ‘We’ll do a timed run at the end of the week.’

‘I don’t think I can swim the lake yet.’

‘I can. I’m riding it first. I’m the stuntman, remember. Start eating properly.’

Early the next morning, a Waitrose delivery van rattled into the Lake Farm
yard, its driver shaking from the trauma of battling through the woods, gates and ford, but grateful for the detailed directions that had been supplied with the order, without which there would have been no hope of supplying Kat with fresh ready-meals, fruit, veg and an array of deli products that made her want to kneel down and worship the fridge all day.

‘Thank you!’ She greeted Dougie
ecstatically in the lime avenue that evening, indigestion raging from bingeing on artichoke hearts, sun-blush tomatoes and stuffed vine leaves.

‘All vegan,’ he pointed out proudly.

‘I’m not a vegan, Russ is, only he’s not living with me any more. I eat anything. I just tend to forget to buy anything to eat. But I’ve eaten all your food so fast I can hardly breathe.’

At that
moment, Dougie felt something painful in his chest, a small harpoon blade. The first deep cut of love.

Kat had such raging indigestion, she posted her slowest times so far and was furious with herself. It was only much later that night, as the heartburn failed to shift, that she realized it was something else. Something far longer-lasting and harder to deal with.

‘Bugger, bugger,
bugger.’ She tipped the dogs off the bed as she trailed downstairs to eat the luxury dark vegan chocolate currently in the fridge.

Soon coasting on a huge chocolate fix, she lay wide awake for hours, contemplating Dougie and his quest to make her ride the Bolt, his joke proposal, his love of hunting hounds and his sheer, unadulterated enthusiasm for life, open air and thrills. None of it
added up to her idea of a dream man, yet it had triggered an ever more volatile chemical reaction inside her, bubbling effervescently around her dancing organs and raging heart. She was falling wildly in lust and love, and all without the aid of a single dinner date, Tantric chant, dirty movie or kiss.