‘Have you got a picture of her?’
‘It’s a bit cracked.’ Lysander took a photograph out of his trouser pocket.
After a long pause, Tabitha said kindly, ‘I expect she looks better in the flesh.’
Lysander scratched his head. ‘No, she doesn’t really. Jack’s very plain, particularly on his white-eyed side, but he’s got such a dear little face, and Arthur isn’t classically beautiful either, although I hate the Press saying it, but I love him to bits too.’
‘But you don’t want to go to bed with Jack and Arthur,’ said Tabitha. ‘Shut your eyes, darling,’ she added, as she hosed the soap out of Arthur’s forelock. ‘Not bed-bed, I mean. I suppose you’re beautiful enough for two.’
‘I feel safe with Kitty,’ confessed Lysander. ‘Since I lost weight I’m always cold. The only thing that could make me warm would be her arms around me.’
Suddenly noticing the expression of desolation on Tab’s face, Lysander realized how tactless he was being. Taking her grubby little hands, he pulled her off her bucket.
‘If I wasn’t so hopelessly hooked on Kitty, I’d fall madly for you, Tab. There isn’t a single man in the world that won’t slit his throat for you in a year or two. Like your father, you’re irresistible.’
‘Not to you,’ said Tabitha dolefully.
‘I got you a present.’
It was a silver horse-shoe brooch and he pinned it on her jersey.
‘Oh, thank you, it’s lovely.’
‘It’s going to bring you special luck. Mystic Meg said your destiny was linked with the initial I. God, I’m nervous about seeing Kitty.’
Returning at dusk from the second day of the Rutminster meeting with two wins and a couple of places, Rupert was in a much better mood. The raiding party was turning into a rout. But the smile was wiped off his face when he went into the tack-room and found Dizzy, Danny and the stable cat poring over the Evening Scorpion. They all jumped when they saw him.
‘You’re not going to like this,’ said Dizzy warily. ‘Bloody Beattie’s dumped again.’
RANNALDINI’S REVENGE, said the front-page headline.
‘Once again Rupert Campbell-Black’s past has come back to haunt him and perhaps rob him of a third victory in the Rutminster Cup tomorrow,’ ran the copy.
‘In 1980,’ it continued, ‘top show-jumper Jake Lovell shocked the world by running off with the charismatic trainer’s beautiful first wife, Helen, in the middle of the Olympics. Eleven years later, Rupert’s neighbour, jet-setting conductor, Roberto Rannaldini, has brought Jake Lovell’s twenty-year-old son, Isaac, over from Ireland to ride the brilliant but vicious Prince of Darkness in tomorrow’s race.
‘“I was impressed by Isaac when I saw him winning a race recently in Ireland,” enthused the Machiavellian Maestro from Valhalla, his Rutshire mansion. “He and The Prince of Darkness will annihilate Penscombe Pride.” ’
Without a word Rupert turned to page three.
‘In a Mafiaesque move worthy of his Latin ancestors, Rannaldini could be paying back Rupert for taking Lysander Hawkley under his wing. Fun-loving Lysander (son of Hatchet Hawkley, headmaster of posh Fleetley — fees £16,000 a year), nicknamed the Man Who Made Husbands Jealous because of a string of relationships with married women, was caught cuddling and kissing Rannaldini’s much younger wife, Kitty, in Monthaut in December.’
Rupert was deceptively calm and, as the stable cat, who loved newspapers, padded across the page, he gently removed her so he could read on. But as Tab wandered in, putting her arm round his shoulder to see what he was reading, she caught a glimpse of Isaac Lovell’s thick, dark, sombre, gypsy’s face and gave a moan of wonder: ‘Wow-wee, he is gorgeous.’
Turning on her like a cobra, Rupert grabbed her shoulders, shaking her until her bones rattled like castanets.
‘If you ever have anything to do with that little shit,’ he hissed, ‘you’re disinherited, out of here, never coming back, see?’
‘I don’t see at all,’ said Tabitha, flaring up. ‘You never approve of the men I like.’ Then, as Rupert stormed out, ‘Is he worse than Ashley?’
‘Much worse,’ sighed Dizzy. ‘I’ll tell you about it.’
‘Bastard, bastard, bastard.’ Eyes narrowed to slits, Rupert paced up and down the bedroom, neat whisky in one hand, cigar in the other.
Helpless in the face of such volcanic fury, Taggie lay on the faded patchwork counterpane of the huge Jacobean four-poster in which Rupert had made love for so many years to his beautiful first wife.
‘Pridie’ll win it with two legs tied together,’ she stammered. ‘A new jockey won’t make any difference. You’re the best trainer in the world. No-one’s heard of Isaac Lovell over here.’
Rupert got hopelessly uptight on the eve of big races. It affected the whole yard. He had hardly ever been nervous when he was show-jumping because he was so confident of his own riding, but now he could only mount the best jockeys on the best horses and pray. It was the one time when he had to be kept really calm.
‘It all happened such a long time ago,’ muttered Taggie. ‘You’re the most utterly g-gorgeous, glamorous, faint-making m-m-man in the world. Jake Lovell’s a little squit, so’s Rannaldini. I’ll probably trip over both of them in the paddock.’
Taggie never bitched about anyone. Rupert looked down at her in amazement, as she stood up, and putting her hands on both sides of his rigidly clenched face, pulled his mouth down to meet hers.
‘Kiss me. I love you so, so much.’
‘Oh, Tag,’ groaned Rupert, burying his face in her thick dark hair. ‘Thank God for you. You’re absolutely right. It’s all in the past. Jake did me such a good turn. I’m such a boring old reactionary, and I’m so against divorce, I’d probably still be miserably unhappy with Helen if he hadn’t walked off with her, and never married you and been so divinely happy. It just destroys me because he beat me in the Olympics and sex, if you know what I mean. But if I lost the war, I won the peace.’ Pulling her down on the bed beside him, he reached inside his jacket pocket.
‘I’ve got something for you.’ He handed her two open-ended first-class tickets to Bogotá. ‘We’re going baby-hunting.’ Then, when Taggie looked up in incredulous hope, ‘The nuns have accepted our application. If we fly out to Colombia and stay there for six weeks, really convincing them we’re serious about wanting a baby, they’ll find us one.’
Taggie couldn’t speak. Like the moon’s reflection in a lake ruffled by a wakeful carp, her pale face suddenly disintegrated. Rupert could feel her tears as she covered his face with kisses.
‘Oh, I love you. A real baby. I can’t believe it. Oh, d’you think they’ll like us enough?’
‘They’ll like you. I’ll have to behave myself.’ And give them a fat cheque, thought Rupert.
‘I wonder if it’ll be a he or a she, blond or black hair, oh, Rupert.’
‘It’ll certainly be black market,’ said Rupert, ‘Our little black-market baby.’
‘And six weeks together, what bliss! But I hope you won’t be too bored,’ she added anxiously. ‘What’ll you do?’
‘I can think of one thing.’ Rupert slowly unbuttoned her harebell-blue cardigan and unhooked her bra, so, like cream boiling over, her wonderful breasts spilled out. Putting his lips to one nipple he sucked gently. Just as desperate for her attention and love as any baby, he thought wryly.
‘I’m terribly sweaty and unwashed,’ mumbled Taggie, as he pushed up her scarlet skirt, and burrowed under the dark purple tights and skimpy knickers.
Rejoicing that he could get her that wet so quickly after five years of marriage, finding it always as exciting as pulling a groom in the back of a loose box for the first time, Rupert moved his fingers upwards as Taggie’s hands fumbled with his zip.