‘You know Rupert, don’t you Rannaldini?’ gushed Hermione.
‘No, but we have my trainer, Jake Lovell, in common,’ said Rannaldini silkily, ‘who is about to oust Rupert as leading trainer and who was a very great friend of Rupert’s ex-wife.’
Not a flicker in Rupert’s face betrayed how much he wanted to hit Rannaldini across the room.
‘And we also have Lysander Hawkley in common,’ he drawled, ‘who’s an even closer friend of your present wife, Rannaldini. I gather she’s taken up race-riding, and was last seen hurtling across country on The Prince of Darkness — perhaps Jake Lovell could give her a job, although I hear she’s expecting Lysander’s baby.’
Seeing the murder in Rannaldini’s deadly-nightshade-black eyes, Christopher said hastily: ‘Shall we go straight in?’
Dinner, as a result, was incredibly acrimonious; scenes from the Battle of Waterloo depicted on the dining-room walls were nothing to the barrage of sotto voce bitchery flashing between Rupert and Rannaldini.
Christopher placed himself between Hermione and Abby but just as he was ushering Rannaldini bossily to Abby’s other side, Rupert nipped in and pinched the seat. Not having eaten all day, he was more than a little drunk. He was fed up with Christopher for snubbing him and leaving him to pay for the taxi, so decided to irritate both him and Rannaldini by flirting with Abby.
Stung by Christopher’s earlier rejection but believing she had a night ahead and a week in the UK with him Abby had taken one incredulous look at Rupert, who was even more beautiful in the relentless overhead light, and was only too happy to flirt back.
‘Great entrance this evening,’ Rupert told her softly. ‘You and Rannaldini looked like Snow White and the single dwarf.’
Abby laughed. ‘He is single if his wife’s just left him.’
‘Couldn’t happen to a nastier man.’ Rupert unfolded her Union Jack napkin, casually caressing her thighs, as he laid it across them.
‘Why does Rannaldini detest you so much?’ asked Abby. ‘I’ve just heard him telling Christopher you were the beegest sheet unhung.’
‘I didn’t know one hung sheets any more,’ Rupert smiled blandly at Abby. ‘Mrs Bodkin, our ancient housekeeper, likes to hang them out in the wind, but I thought you Americans used massive tumble dryers.’
Abby burst out laughing.
‘You still haven’t explained why he hates you.’
‘His wife, whom he bullied and cuckolded shamelessly, has just run off with one of my jockeys. He thinks I orchestrated it.’
‘Did you?’
Rupert shook his head. ‘You should see my jockey, he’s so pretty everyone wants to ride him.’
‘Why d’you hate Rannaldini?’
‘He can’t stop flaunting the fact that his trainer is the little sheet who ran off with my first wife.’
‘Did she marry him?’
‘No, someone else.’
‘How very complicated,’ said Abby losing interest.
She was quite short sitting down, noticed Rupert, her great height was all in her legs. Her pale face was shiny with sweat, black circles hammocked the bags under the tigerish eyes. Beneath her chin and on her collar bone, her Strad had left red marks as though Dracula had been having a good gnaw. Nanny would have recommended a good dose, reflected Rupert. She was far coarser than Taggie, but still hellishly sexy.
The waiters were plonking down carafes of wine. Obscuring Christopher’s view with a large vase of red dahlias, Rupert filled up Abby’s glass.
‘I know you probably hate to talk about work,’ he went on, having listened carefully to two Australian pouffs in ecstasies in the gents at the Opera House, ‘but I’ve never heard the Brahms so lyrically played. I wept in the slow movement. The last movement really captured the Hungarian idiom and in the first movement, I never believed passages in tenths could be so clearly executed, but with such a beautiful sound. You must have a very big stretch,’ he picked up Abby’s rather large, stubby fingers, ‘for someone with such a little hand.’
Abby blushed with pleasure. She’d written this guy off as drop-dead handsome beefcake and he really knew about music. Flustered, she snatched her hand away and grabbed a piece of bread.
‘No bread, Abigail,’ boomed Christopher, glaring through the red dahlias like Moses on the wrong side of the Burning Bush. He knew how soloists could blow up, eating to stave off loneliness in hotel bedrooms.
Biting her huge red cushiony lower lip instead, Abby studied the menu.
‘I’ll have spaghetti carbonara,’ she told the waiter defiantly.
‘You will not,’ snapped Christopher, ordering Dover sole and radicchio salad for both of them. ‘And no sauce tartare,’ he added bossily.
‘Odd denial from such a tartar,’ said Rupert, thickly buttering a large piece of white bread, sprinkling salt on it in the Argentine fashion, and handing it to Abby. ‘Rannaldini was going so bloody fast, I nearly had a bet on the last movement. How much would he earn a night for conducting?’
‘About one hundred and fifty thousand bucks.’
Rupert was appalled.
‘That’s more than my best stallion gets for covering a mare. “Con” is the operative word.’
Remembering Abby’s c.v., Rupert gazed into her eyes. They were the same pale yellow as the winter jasmine growing round the drawing-room window at Penscombe, but the irises were ringed with black, and the brilliant whites lined with the thickest dark lashes. Rannaldini had compelling hypnotic eyes, too; perhaps it was essential for a maestro.
‘I hear you want to conduct.’
‘So I don’t have to put up with schmucks like tonight.’
‘Isn’t it enough being a genius at the violin?’
‘Genius is never enough,’ said Abby haughtily. ‘I want power.’
‘Nice scent,’ Rupert buried his nose in her wrist. ‘What’s it called — raw ambition? Your poxy agent doesn’t want you to come on Declan’s programme. You’d enjoy it. Declan’s a lovely man, and Edith Spink’s on our board. She’s a lovely man too.’
‘Spink,’ squeaked Abby in excitement, ‘I just adore her Warrior Woman Suite, a genuine talent, Spink, even if slender.’
‘I’d hardly call Edith slender. She weighed in at sixteen stone, all of it muscle, at our last board meeting. When she came to my stag-party, she drank everyone else under the table.’
‘You’re the dopiest guy.’ Again Abby burst out laughing, leaning back as the waiter laid a fish knife and fork on either side of her Union Jack table mat.
‘Don’t you have any control over your life?’ taunted Rupert.
Abby shrugged and drained her glass.
‘I live on a treadmill. Hotel bedroom, airport, concert hall, airport, hotel, recording studio, recital, back to the airport. I know the flight schedules better than the Brahms tonight. I’ve slept in the most beautiful suites in the world, but had no-one to share them with.’
‘Lay down your Brahms, and surrender to mine,’ said Rupert lightly.
Then he looked deep into her eyes, holding them, letting his own narrow slightly — corny old tricks he hadn’t played for years.
‘That is a terrible, terrible waste. How did you meet your gaoler?’
‘My dad died early. He didn’t make any dough, he never verbalized his feelings, but he cried when he listened to Beethoven and I loved him. Mom isn’t Jewish, right? But she became more of a Jewish Momma after she married Dad. She was the one who pushed me. She still calls after every concert trying to control my life. Christopher heard me playing and signed me up when I was twelve. He took me out of school in the States, found me a good teacher for a year, then packed me off to the Conservatoires in Paris and Russia.’
Rupert let her run on. It was quite interesting, and he liked looking at her face which had great strength and at her breasts rising out of the halter neck.