The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,81

Welsh cobs – and they hadn’t exactly been the steadiest of beasts – I’d been moved on to the horses that my dad had been sent to school. Half a tonne of nervous tension with the speed and ability to cart me off for miles over hedges if someone rustled a plastic bag in the same postcode. I’d ridden them, of course, come to understand their twisty imaginations and tendencies to run first and think later, and I’d had the ability to sit out their panics and alarums. But it hadn’t been what you might call restful.

Then it had been the precarious existence of living with my hair-trigger mother, and then the peripatetic Luc. Trying not to say the wrong thing that might set off an argument or, in my mother’s case, the dismissive hand-wave. Always just a little bit primed, always just a little bit waiting. I’d spent my entire life up to now constantly on the edge of a precipice. Now, here, was the first time I felt as though I’d moved away from the drop.

So, feeling reassured and remarkably cosy considering there was undergrowth trying to get into the house, I fell asleep on the sofa.

I gradually woke up, aware that branches were still tapping on the window. When I turned over on the sofa, sleep-dribble sticking the throw to my cheek and my hair scrobbled about with the friction of the velvet cushions, it was to see Gabriel knocking gently on the glass and smiling in at me. When he saw that I’d noticed him, he held up a bottle and a bag and mouthed ‘breakfast’ at me, but I was too busy being horribly embarrassed to really take much note of his forethought. I did consider pulling the blanket over my head and pretending to be ill, and making a large laminated sign to stick on the wall to remind myself to draw the curtains in future when I slept on the couch, but neither of these things would be much use now he’d seen me, so I stumbled my way to the front door and opened it.

‘The door’s not locked. You could just walk in,’ I said, rather grumpily, into the wind that was projecting small brown birds into the air over the hedge behind him.

‘That would be rude,’ he replied. ‘And scary. Now, I’ve bought croissants and some nice wine. Shall we pretend to be French and have both now, or just have breakfast and save the wine for… later?’

I didn’t miss that little pause. Just as I didn’t miss the look he gave me, half shy and half laughing, with his wonderful brown eyes crinkling up under the big glasses and the wind tangling his hair so that he looked all wild and romantic and a little bit sexy. A bit Aidan Turnerish, if Aidan Turner had to wear really thick glasses and looked as though he needed to see daylight a bit more.

‘Let’s start with croissants, shall we? I’ll put the kettle on if you light the log-burner.’ I wrapped the throw around me to cover the fact that I was wearing fluffy pyjamas, although there was really not much sartorial improvement in wearing a fluffy blanket, and shuffled my way through to the kitchen. Patrick was peering in through the window, although I could see that Mary had filled up his hay net and done his water, so I wasn’t sure why. Maybe he thought he was some kind of equine chaperone, who had to keep an eye on me to make sure I wasn’t being unfaithful to him with a Shetland in here or something.

I made tea and wandered back to find Gabriel trying to arrange himself on the sofa. ‘Sorry. I was trying to find the most macho way to sit,’ he said, standing up again to drape his big black coat over the sofa arm, where it hung like a wilted vampire. ‘Something about this sofa makes me sit like I’m about to ride side-saddle.’ He sat again, this time leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs. ‘And since I’m already only a frock away from actually being a woman…’

‘Don’t,’ I said, putting the tea down.

‘Don’t?’

‘Don’t do yourself down. Don’t feel that you have to be more manly than Bruce Willis. There is nothing wrong with the way you are, Gabriel. Not all women want a man who can throw them over their shoulder and run four miles whilst building a shed with the other hand.’

He