Prima Donna (24 page)

Violet’s eyes narrowed at the sight of her. She hadn’t seen Pia since the day she’d left her stranded on the loo. Pia had nearly drowned the next morning and Will had wasted no
time in sending her an email that evening to relieve her of all her further duties.

From across the room, Violet could see she had made progress. She appeared to have built up some muscle mass again and her movements looked clean and fluid, not at all jerky. She handed Will her
crutch as she sat down daintily on a gold chair someone had brought forward for her, and he took it gratefully. Violet felt her stomach twist at the sight of Will’s obsequiousness. He was so
rarely around – the locals saw more of him in the society pages of
Harper’s Bazaar
than in the village – and if he was to be seen, it was ostentatiously in his Aston or
the helicopter, a sleek blonde on his lap. It was just the kind of behaviour you wanted from the local millionaire. Yet here he was, chumming it up with the duke and playing the dutiful husband to
that brat. Violet felt disappointed that he’d been so easily tamed.

‘God, she’s gorgeous,’ Minky moaned at the sight of Pia in a black Balenciaga dress, her hair twisted low at the front. ‘And she’s got even better ankles than
me.’

‘Well, she hasn’t got your charm, Minks, that’s for sure.’

‘Hrrmph, like that counts for anything. No one’s there for her scintillating conversation, are they? Silk least of all,’ she added knowingly.

Violet bristled. She’d always known that Will’s eyes followed her whenever she passed; that he’d only never made a pass at her because his relationship with Tanner was already
volatile enough – and it served him too well to have his horses stabled next door, rather than ten miles away or in the next county.

‘Come on, let’s dance,’ Violet said, suddenly animated.

Minky inwardly groaned. Flashing her legs with Kit was one thing. But dancing with Violet was like dancing with Madonna. She’d look like a garden gnome by comparison.

Pia caught sight of her as the throng of fans clamouring for her autograph began to ebb. She felt exhausted already, her foot aching in the newly fitted weight-bearing cast. Will had persuaded
her to come to this tonight, saying that most of the villagers would be present and he wanted to take the opportunity to announce the gala to everyone. But Pia privately wondered whether he was
just taking the opportunity to show her off. Ever since news of their supposed affair had broken, people had been watching and waiting for sightings of the two of them together, and when –
thanks first to her depression, and latterly to her packed physiotherapy schedule – that hadn’t happened, whispers began to spread. Perhaps they weren’t together, after all? It
had been a surprise to find a couple of paparazzi outside the duke’s gates, pressing their cameras to the car’s windows, and she knew they had to have been tipped off.

She inwardly groaned that they’d caught her coming into this, of all things. It was hardly the Met Institute Gala. She’d managed to get out of coming to the dinner, quoting
Evie’s rigid rest schedule at Will, but a local hunt ball, for heaven’s sake. It seemed so . . . bourgeois.

She looked up at Will and watched as he played the role of protector to a tee, one hand on her shoulder as he answered questions about her recovery, extrapolating on the upcoming gala. The last
time she’d been to a party they’d been warring with each other in a prelude to seduction, and yet now the two of them seemed so . . . domestic. She would never have believed she was
capable of this dynamic just four short weeks ago.

So much had changed for her: her freedom had been taken away; her God-given ability to dance was now not a given but a question; Will was not a passionate lover but somehow peculiarly central in
her life . . . She was trying her hardest to accept her changed circumstances, but her instincts gave her no peace. The whole dance-off idea filled her with dread. She knew Will was doing his best
to give her a goal to work towards, and a shot at revenge on her naysayers, but all she really wanted was to just get through it and go back to her day job.

She watched Violet shimmy on the dance floor in a strapless yellow silk dress, a magnetic pulse gradually pulling all the men’s eyes to her. All except Tanner’s, she noticed.

Pia hadn’t made the connection about his relationship with Violet immediately. When she’d first met him by the woods he was just the redneck who’d roughed up Will. Only later,
lying in bed, had she remembered Violet calling his name, just seconds before she’d abandoned her. They seemed well suited of course, each as arrogant and abrasive as the other.

She looked around at the ballroom. It wasn’t much less ostentatious than the theatre halls she was used to performing in – same baroque gilding on the ceiling, same ornate panelling
on the walls. Only the velvet curtain and tiered seats were absent. She watched the revellers dancing badly and wished she could get up and sweep across the floor in a chain of
piqué
turns – use it in the way it was supposed to be used, rather than this drunken horsey set littering it with plump limbs and boorish voices.

Just then, a bugle started blowing and suddenly all the men got up and began arranging themselves in a chaotic line against the far wall. The DJ stopped playing.

‘What’s going on?’ Pia asked Will.

‘God, I forgot about this,’ he whispered, as a man went around the room brandishing a helmet filled with scraps of paper. ‘They hold a pony race. It’s a charity
thing.’

‘What? They’re bringing the ponies in here?’ Pia gasped, looking at the beautiful parquet. ‘But they can’t! They’ll destroy the floor.’

Will shook his head, laughing. ‘No, no. There’re no real ponies involved. The men are the mounts; the women are the riders. The men’s names are put into a hat and then the
women each draw a name at random, until everyone makes up a team. The teams get written up on that board over there,’ he said pointing to a white board, which was being covered with
scrawl.

‘And then what?’ Pia asked, amused. What the English did to entertain themselves!

‘Then you climb onto your pony’s back, the horn sounds and we all have a race through the house. First back gets to nominate the charity that they want the money raised tonight to go
to.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a bit of fun.’

The man reached her and shook the riding helmet at Pia. She looked up at him blankly.

‘No,’ she said politely, shaking her head and lifting her injured leg. ‘I don’t think so.’

A murmur of disappointment and a few ‘boos’ rumbled through the room.

‘I can’t, really,’ she said, astonished by the reaction. They didn’t honestly think that she – Pia Soto – would be seen dead participating in anything as
ridiculous as this, did they? Broken foot or not. ‘I have to protect my foot.’

‘Sure you can,’ she heard a woman call. She looked up and saw Violet smiling at her, one hand on a narrow hip. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to it with the cast on.
It’s as safe as houses with that plaster. Besides, we’re all far too worried about the Mings to get too carried away.’

‘Yeah! Come on!’ voices in the crowd shouted. ‘Be a sport! It’ll throw the numbers out.’

Pia looked at Will helplessly. He just shrugged. ‘I guess the plaster is very thick.’

‘Fine,’ she said quietly, unable to see any way out of it. She drew a piece of paper from the hat and handed it back to the man.

A buzz of excitement crescendoed around the crowd while they waited for him to open it – the husbands eager, their wives distraught, to discover which man would have Pia Soto riding on his
back.

Pia looked up at Will. ‘Thanks for the support,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t believe you’re letting me be put through this. Honestly, if I’d known for one second
that this was what—’

‘It’s good fun,’ Will interrupted. ‘And it’s for a good cause.’

‘Pia Soto and Tanner Ludgrove!’ the man called out to the room and a big cheer went up, with Tanner being patted on the back like a decorated war hero. Pia noticed Tanner himself
didn’t look best pleased about it and it was hard to tell whose face was darker – his or Violet’s.

Pia looked up at Will, aghast. ‘Oh God, I don’t believe it.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, squeezing her shoulder but looking grim. ‘I’ll get them to change it.’

But they were too late.

‘Minky de Lisle and William Silk,’ the man bellowed across the room.

‘Oh great! It just gets better,’ he muttered, as Minky shrieked and ran towards him, arms outstretched. ‘I’ll hardly make pole position with her great weight to cart
about.’ She descended in a cloud of Arpège. ‘Minky, darling,’ he purred, kissing her cheeks.

‘I have just the spot reserved for us,’ she breathed. ‘We can’t fail to win from there,’ she said, pulling him away.

Everyone began to line up in pairs.

Tanner, realizing he couldn’t expect Pia to hobble over to him, sloped over like a sulky schoolboy. It really was too much being coerced into this kind of . . . horseplay, just for the
sake of charity.

He looked down at her. ‘We meet again. I wonder if it’ll be as much pleasure as last time,’ he drawled sarcastically.

Pia narrowed her eyes. ‘Can’t they just take a cheque?’ she sneered.

‘Trust me, I’ve already asked.’

Pia sniffed huffly.

‘Shall we get this over and done with, then?’ he asked, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it onto a chair.

‘You’d better mind my foot,’ she warned.

‘You’d better mind your manners,’ he warned back, kneeling down with his back in front of her. Pia looked at his broad shoulders. She wasn’t sure she’d get round
him.

She shuffled to the front of her chair, easing her dress up her thighs. Slowly she reached her arms up over his shoulders and she felt his hands on her bottom, pushing her up his back.

‘Watch where you put your hands!’ she snapped.

‘Oh don’t flatter yourself,’ he muttered, walking her across the room and finding a space in the line-up. Will and Minky were four along to their left; Violet and Rob another
two. Violet was draping her papaya-scented hair over Rob’s face like a forelock, and he was blowing it up and off, hilariously. Jessy, down at the end on the right on Ricky’s back,
wasn’t looking happy about it.

‘Can you squeeze me a bit tighter?’ Tanner said, turning his face up to Pia. ‘Then I can hold your cast across me, rather than letting it flop about loosely.’

Pia tightened her thighs wickedly and Tanner felt his blood pressure drop. Christ, she had some power in those tiny limbs. She was like a boa constrictor. She was nowhere near as delicate as she
looked.

‘All right, that’s enough,’ he said, and he heard her chuckle in his ear.

The duke, who was far too old to take part himself any more but had been considered the one to beat in his salad days, picked up the bugle and the men braced themselves, ready for the off.

The horn blew and suddenly everyone burst forward like a gaggle of geese, the women laughing and shrieking and pretending to whip their ponies as the ridiculous spectacle picked up pace.

The leaders pulled away from the rest of the pack very quickly as some riders lost their shoes, or the effects of all the drink made a rising trot suddenly inadvisable.

Tanner had an easy lead. He could scarcely feel Pia’s weight and she was able to hold herself high up his back, rather than sagging down like a sack of Marfonas. He felt her tightening her
legs around him, squeezing him onwards, as they raced through the hall into the library. All the reading tables and Louis Quinze chairs had been pushed back to create a long corridor and Tanner
charged down it, hotly pursued by Rob and Will, who – in spite of the considerable weight disadvantage – was rallying round. He wasn’t going to let Tanner win, not with
his
girlfriend on his back.

Tanner got to the end first, taking the corner in a hopping fashion on one leg to avoid slowing too early and letting them catch up. He didn’t need to turn around to see where they were.
He could hear Minky shrieking behind him excitedly and Violet bossily ordering Rob about like some S&M mistress.

Pia said nothing. He could just feel her breathing, rapidly, in his ear and Tanner understood that, although she might consider this beneath her, when it came to competition – of any kind
– she competed to win.

They dashed out of the library and into the salon. Here, the
chaises
had been set up like an obstacle course, forcing Tanner to swerve left then right, negotiating the turns tightly. He
saw that Will had caught them up and was right on his tail, no doubt encouraged into acceleration by the excitement of having Minky’s enormous knockers bouncing up around his ears.

Tanner put his head down like any good stallion on the gallop. He’d won this every year for three years on the trot. He knew this course. They had to go back into the hall next, up the
stairs, around the galleried landing once, through the pink bedroom, then along the corridor and down the staff staircase. He’d need to pull away going up the stairs.

They came out of the salon and Will was right beside him; Rob was two lengths behind.

Pia looked across at Minky, who looked like she was going to give Will a hernia and herself a black eye.

‘
Hiiieeeee!
’ she called over excitedly, ecstatic to be sharing airspace and eye contact with Pia Soto.

‘Hold on,’ Tanner said to Pia, holding her legs even tighter, and he started bounding up the wide shallow steps, two at a time. Will tried to match him. He was fit but he
couldn’t keep that type of energy output going when he was carrying twice the weight.

He dropped back and Rob overtook him, too scared not to as Violet giddied him up between her legs. Tanner circled the landing, and Pia suddenly burst out laughing as she caught sight of the two
of them in the massive brass-edged mirrors. If she hadn’t been able to envisage herself in a ‘domestic’ set-up, she had certainly never even conceived of this! It was more fun
than she’d had in years.

Tanner laughed too, her sudden smile dazzling him, and it slowed him down as he got to the door of the pink bedroom. Rob was just a length behind. He opened the door as they drew level and the
two men charged through with war cries, like little boys playing soldiers, startling a couple who were bonking wildly on the historic bed.