Country Lovers by Walker Fiona

Author:Walker, Fiona [Walker, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781784977269
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2019-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

*

‘It took eight messages to get you to ring me back, Pax!’ Alice complained.

‘Sorry, Lisp,’ she whispered, ‘you know the signal here. You could have tried the landline.’ Her sister loathed calling that in case she got their mother.

‘Where are you?’ Alice was demanding. ‘You sound like a spy.’

‘Up in the stables tower. There are bat droppings everywhere, plus a pair of binoculars and a notebook. I think Pip Edwards used it as her lair.’

‘Is she still AWOL? You must tell me everything that’s been happening. How’s Luca O’Brien settling in?’

‘He keeps himself to himself.’ Pax was grateful for it. For six days, they had successfully avoided looking one another in the eye, being alone in the same space or addressing more than half a dozen words to the other.

‘Not strong and silent like Lester, surely?’ Alice sounded surprised.

‘Less of his mettle.’ Whereas the stud’s old stallion man wasn’t afraid to stand up to their mother, the new arrival did as Ronnie said, smiling all the while.

‘Well, the old boy does now have titanium hips,’ her sister said drily. ‘I thought Mother’s golden boy was all brass neck when I saw him, shouting the odds.’

Pax didn’t want to dwell on the feed-room argument Alice had interrupted. She’d said some unforgiveable things.

‘He’s just snappy, like all lapdogs.’ She picked up the binoculars and trained them across the yard where Luca had Beck cross-tied in a standing stall, bandaging his stamping, cow-kicking legs. He was already under Ronnie’s cosh, just as Pax would be if she didn’t take daily evasive action. One of the reasons for sneaking up here to call Alice was to avoid being legged-up onto Lester’s cob to ride out. ‘He’s clearly besotted with Mummy.’ She knew it shouldn’t bother her as much as it did.

‘Men always swoon at Mother’s feet,’ Alice scorned.

The stallion let out a bellow as Ronnie led out her retired eventer, Dickon, with a clatter of iron on cobble. A scrawny thoroughbred the colour of a scuffed oak floor, Dickon was as laid-back and kind as Beck was explosive and combative.

‘Is it mutual?’ Alice was asking.

‘Shh, I’m listening.’ She craned forwards. ‘The new stallion’s not been ridden in years and Mummy has just said, “Don’t be so wet, once around the woods is just what he needs.” Luca might be about to join Lester in an orthopaedic ward.’

‘Good.’

‘Wiser to wait until this place is in better shape first. Wish broken bones on Mack instead.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re still giving him the cold shoulder?’ Alice lectured. ‘That must have been quite a tiff.’

‘On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me, grounds for a Decree Nisi,’ she sang flatly, binoculars still raised, watching the stallion humping his back as a saddle was lowered onto it.

‘It’s nice-eye,’ her sister corrected. ‘Is that what Mack’s been giving someone else. Or is that the glad eye?’

‘Nobody gives the glad eye any more, Lisp, they sext. And there’s nobody else involved in this, unless you count his bloody parents.

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