Well Groomed (51 page)

The enquiry after Lowerton had cleared him of blame – rumour had it that this was under the duress of one particularly exigent Olympic selector – but the mud still clung to him, and he was uncomfortably aware that his reputation was tarnished. At least his sponsors were sticking by him, but two private owners had taken their horses elsewhere – one, rather gallingly, to Gus Moncrieff, who had backed off considerably since Surfer’s death. Two days after the accident, he had turned up on Hugo’s doorstep with a bottle of wine and a sympathetic ear, only to be told sharply to bugger off. Hugo was deeply ashamed of his acerbity, but far too proud to do anything as simple as apologising. Gone were the easy days when he could hack down to the Moncrieffs’ for a long, lazy afternoon drinking coffee and talking horses. He didn’t want to risk bumping into Kirsty or Franny there, knowing that they would remind him of his headstong, thoughtless ability to screw up. He also knew that the Moncrieffs were in dire financial straits, and that Gus bore a burning resentment towards him for being comparatively buoyant. He’d deliberately not stopped Franny’s wages while she was staying with them, knowing that they couldn’t afford to pay her, but he longed to do more and had been searching out likely sponsors for them, although the current black cloud of bad publicity hanging over him wasn’t helping.

He would willingly have bought another Lime Tree horse to tide them over, but the Moncrieffs had sold so many horses this year that the only one who was still officially on the market was the crabby, slothful, know-it-all Fashion Victim. Hugo would never dream of depriving Gus of his Badminton run, especially as Stefan had hinted there was a potential sponsorship deal hanging on it. He was also not having the best of times with his last Lime Tree purchase. The hapless Mickey Rourke, though tremendously willing, was a disaster, constantly getting thoroughly overexcited and tripping over his own feet. The last time they had competed he had failed even to exit the start box as, bouncing around in his eager, clumsy manner while they were being counted down, he’d caught his legs in the rope barrier and brought himself crashing down to terra firma, trussed like a suckling pig. Hugo only persisted because he knew that Tash had such faith in Mickey, and because he didn’t want to be seen as failing where she had triumphed.

In truth, there was one overriding reason that he steered clear of the farm, and he had to endure vivid descriptions of it day after day as Stefan chattered cheerfully about what a great bunch of people they were. The Moncrieffs, it seemed, had been caught up in the Wedding of the Year, and no wonder, for Niall almost lived there at night, sitting in that messy kitchen helping India with her homework, Zoe with her cooking, Rufus with his Highway Code swotting and Tash, no doubt, with just about everything.

When Lisette took him out to dinner at the Olive Branch that evening, Hugo barely spoke, drank or ate. He felt unbearably nervy being there at all, certain that one of the Lime Tree Farm contingent – worse still, all of them – would troop in at any second. He wondered if Lisette was deliberately hoping to bump into Niall.

‘C’mon,’ she goaded, ‘what happened to the sexy, dynamic Hugo I fancied rotten for years?’

‘He went off,’ he snapped. ‘Tell me, d’you want Niall back?’

His directness didn’t throw her for a second. She smiled, luminous grey eyes dancing at him through the candlelight. ‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Whether I get a better offer first.’

Hugo raised his chin, eyes unfriendly. ‘They don’t come much better than Niall.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she breathed.

A few years ago he would have sparred back, loving the direct ballsiness of her come-on. All through his adult life he had actively searched out partners who could take him on that level – Amanda, Kirsty, and countless others who had made it perfectly clear what they wanted from the start. But now Hugo felt no pleasure at all, no sexual kick. He wasn’t even flattered. He rubbed his forehead tiredly, wishing he hadn’t come. He was wasting her time as well as his own; he had no desire to lead her on. She was a phenomenal woman, deserving a far more worthy target to set her sights on. He was too full of bullet holes already.

Suddenly his face drained as he watched a couple come in through the door, faces turning pink in the sudden heat, laughing as Ange swooped on them with coat-taking bonhomie. It was Tash and Zoe. Hugo studied them, as still as a sniper.

‘Ah.’ Lisette, in turn, was watching him. ‘I think I’ve just spotted my rival.’

‘What?’ he snapped.

Lisette smiled. ‘You don’t think I mean Tash?’

‘Well, she and Niall
are
getting hitched,’ he hissed.

Still smiling, she dropped her voice to a breath so light it would barely mist a glass. ‘And I’m very pleased for them. I can assure you, I have absolutely no interest in winning Niall back.’

‘Sure you haven’t,’ Hugo sneered, glancing towards Tash again.

‘You don’t have to believe me.’ She played with the stem of her glass.

He took a slug of mineral water. ‘So who is this rival, then?’

‘Actually, it’s you.’ She winked and gazed across again as Tash and Zoe settled at the opposite end of the bar with glasses of red wine and a stack of crisps, well out of earshot. Neither of them appeared to have noticed that she and Hugo were there.

‘Me?’ Hugo sounded appalled. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ He wondered for a horrifying moment if she thought he had some sort of homo-erotic crush on Niall.

But Lisette just smiled. Tilting her head, she smoothed back a long, glossy tress of hair. ‘I never would have believed it of Tash French.’

‘Believed what?’ He pushed his plate away, longing to leave. He hadn’t a clue what she was prattling on about.

‘That she had such exquisite taste in men. It’s the one thing we have in common.’ Lisette laughed, and then dropped her voice to a near-whisper. ‘Tell me, Hugo, how would you like to buy a half-share in an event horse from me?’

‘You own a half-share in an event horse?’ He looked at her disbelievingly.

‘Shh.’ Lisette rolled her eyes towards Marco Angelo who was hovering nearby, her voice even lower. ‘I was rather surprised too. It was something you said in passing that made me realise in the first place.’

‘Shit!’ Hugo closed his eyes as he realised which particular horse she was talking about. He’d hankered after it for years, admiring its phenomenal talent, its monumental athletic power, and above all its unbreakable spirit. He’d wanted the horse from the first moment he had ever seen it at Alexandra D’Eblouir’s house in France two years earlier, and jealously watched it take the sport by storm ever since. It was just the sort of animal he adored, knowing that he had the experience and strength to control that famous explosive ability which many condemned as dangerous. On the very few occasions he’d ridden it, he’d experienced that elusive click that sometimes took years to achieve with a horse. With this one it was instantaneous.

‘I gather you rather tragically lost one of your top nags recently,’ Lisette was saying without a trace of sympathy. ‘So I thought you might be interested.’

‘That horse belongs to Tash,’ he said flatly.

‘No, he doesn’t,’ she breathed. ‘It was you yourself who told me Niall owns him. Or rather, half of him as it turns out. And I’m willing to sell you my share. Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere more – intimate.’ She pressed her ankle against his beneath the table.

Unsmiling, Hugo looked at her for a long time, his cool blue eyes so intent that he could have been counting the flecks on her corneas. He was wearing that curious half-smile that Lisette could never read but found wildly sexy.

‘Perhaps we should,’ he drawled softly. ‘Come back to the house for a drink.’

IT WAS NOT UNTIL the day after Niall flew to America to promote Celt that Tash realised he had gone at all. Humiliatingly, it was Zoe who told her.

‘I thought you knew,’ she gasped in surprise. ‘He popped in to say goodbye last night. You hadn’t come back from the Tewkesbury trials.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Tash bit her lip. ‘We had a flat tyre. I thought he was going next week – after my birthday. I assumed he was up in London last night.’

Zoe looked away, embarrassed for both of them. ‘He didn’t mention your birthday. Anyway, he should be back by then.’

He wasn’t.

Tash’s birthday fell on a Sunday. The day before, she took her two ‘seniors’, Snob and Hunk, to Ratchet Trials, getting a lift with Hugo and Stefan, as Gus, Penny and Kirsty were competing elsewhere.

It was the first time that she had travelled with Hugo since the day of the accident and she had barely seen him in the few weeks since then. They had competed at the same events, but he had grown increasingly aloof and detached towards her, simply nodding ‘hello’ when they encountered one another. He no longer joined in so much with the tomfoolery and high jinks of the other riders, and his fuse was currently so short that they steered clear of him too.

‘Honestly, he’s intolerable,’ Brian Sedgewick complained as he returned from walking the Ratchet course. ‘I asked him what the best approach to the saw-mill drop was, and he said “on foot”. Then he nicked a fag and bogged off.’

Tash found that by the time she was changing for her dressage test, they had exchanged all of three sentences. To add to her unease, Hugo was immediately after her in the running order and wanted to change in the lorry at the same time.

‘Can you wait two minutes?’ Tash asked at the door, suddenly suffering a fit of modesty. ‘I’ll give you a shout when I’m done.’

‘No, I can’t.’ He pushed past her and started to strip off. ‘Bodybuilder needs a lot of working in, and I don’t trust Jenny with him. She seems to get him leaning into his forehand like a pit pony heading down to work.’

Jenny was Franny’s replacement, an eager ginger-haired youngster fresh out of training college, with a huge crush on Hugo. She was really too inexperienced for his yard, but he had been in a hurry for someone and he knew her father well. What she lacked in maturity, she made up for with boundless enthusiasm, good humour and immunity to Hugo’s tongue-lashings. Her slavish adoration had won her ridicule from many of the other eventers, but Tash found her charming and far easier-going than the irascible Franny, who was still shacked up with Ted. With her pretty, pixie face and outlandish taste in jumpers and hats, Jenny had also won the affection of Stefan, who doted on her like a big brother.

Tash had India grooming for her that day and was worried that she might be finding it hard to handle Snob’s over-boisterous strength. India loved helping out at events, and thought of it as her Saturday job, but she was inexperienced and not as strong as Tash physically. Stuck in the horse-box with Hugo, Tash knew that she was leaving her to cope all alone, and longed to escape and see what was going on. Hugo seemed to be taking an unusually long time to change.

‘I won’t look if you want to get your kit off,’ he said as he re-tied his stock for the third time, fiddling with the pin.

‘It’s all right, I’ll wait for you to go.’ She was sitting at the table with her back to him, watching out of the window as Stefan helped one of Hugo’s younger grooms to get Happy Monday to open his mouth for the bit.

‘Are you that afraid of me?’ he muttered edgily, stabbing himself in the finger with the pin and wincing. ‘What do you think I’m going to do – pounce on you in a fit of passion once I see your bare legs?’

‘Of course not!’ She squirmed, ashamed of her own silliness. It was ridiculous that she found herself so mawkish and uncomfortable with him when she thought nothing of stripping off and changing in front of Gus, Ted or even Stefan, which she had done hundreds of times in cramped lorries. There was no room for modesty in eventing, yet with Hugo her face flamed as though given an Eric Morecambe cheek-slapping.

‘Well, you’ll have no time to ride Snob in,’ Hugo snapped, stooping down to pull off his old cord breeches ready to don his whites. He perched on a chair to do this and spent ages easing them off over his feet.

Staring fixedly out of the window to stop herself ogling his rower’s legs and trendy underwear, Tash was also aware that she was wearing her grottiest sports bra, which had a ladder on one nipple, and that she had that morning resorted to the kinky knickers that Niall had given her for Christmas because she had no others clean. Perhaps worse was the fact that it was a cold day and she had hastily fished a pair of tights from the laundry basket which, although only worn once before, had that stale, unpleasant smell of dirty washing. She had no desire to flash all this in front of Hugo and receive the usual derision and ridicule.

‘Get your finger out, Tash,’ Stefan yelled through the door. ‘You’re on in three, and India’s had to get off Snob because he’s all over the place. He’s really lathered up now.’

Hugo was still sitting on the chair, his muscular thighs shimmering in the neon lights as he tugged the jaunty red wool socks upwards.

Dog in a bloody manger, Tash fumed, realising that she had to get outside soon or forfeit her chances.

Succumbing to shame, she pulled off her jeans and, grabbing the white breeches from the back of Hugo’s chair, tugged them on as fast as she could. They were incredibly long and narrow, with a vast, gaping waist as though the elastic had lost its stretch. She must have boil-washed them by mistake, she realised, as she dived out of her sweater and into a sweatshirt which would be hidden by her dressage jacket. Because she had lost so much weight of late, she could really pad up beneath her black jacket, a godsend on days like today. And not being a stock snob, she had wrapped her made-up one around her neck in seconds, adhering the Velcro and jumping into her boots practically en route for the door.

To her chagrin, Hugo watched her throughout, a big grin on his face for the first time in weeks.