I kissed her neck and laid my hand on her stomach.
'That makes it a g, not a t, in twenty across,' she said.
'Stigma?'
'Clever old you.'
'Is that the lot?'
'Mm.'
After a bit she said, 'Do you really loathe the idea of green and shocking pink curtains?'
'Would you mind just concentrating on the matter in hand?'
I could feel her grin in the darkness.
'O. K.' she said.
And concentrated.
She woke me up like an alarm clock at five o'clock. It was not so much the pat she woke me up with, but where she chose to plant it. I came back to the surface laughing.
'Good morning, little one,' she said.
She got up and made some coffee, her chestnut hair in a tangle and her skin pale and fresh. She looked marvellous in the mornings. She stirred a dollop of heavy cream into the thick black coffee and sat opposite me across the kitchen table.
'Someone really had a go at you, didn't they?' she said casually.
I buttered a piece of rye crunch and reached for the honey.
'Sort of,' I agreed.
'Not telling?'
'Can't,' I said briefly. 'But I will when I can.'
'You may have a mind like teak,' she said, 'but you've a vulnerable body, just like anyone else.'
I looked at her in surprise, with my mouth full. She wrinkled her nose at me.
'I used to think you mysterious and exciting,' she said.
Thanks.'
'And now you're about as exciting as a pair of old bedroom slippers.'
'So kind,' I murmured.
'I used to think there was something magical about the way you disentangled all those nearly bankrupt businesses- and then I found out that it wasn't magic but just uncluttered common sense-'
'Plain, boring old me,' I agreed, washing down the crumbs with a gulp of coffee.
'I know you well, now,' she said. 'I know how you tick- And all those bruises-' She shivered suddenly in the warm little room.
'Gillie,' I said accusingly, 'You are suffering from intuition;' and that remark in itself was a dead giveaway.
'No- from interpretation,' she said. 'And just you watch out for yourself.'
'Anything you say.'
'Because,' she explained seriously, 'I do not want to have the bother of hunting for another ground floor flat with cellars to keep the wine in. It took me a whole month to find this one.'
CHAPTER FIVE
It was drizzling when I got back to Newmarket. A cold wet horrible morning on the Heath. Also the first thing I saw when I turned into the drive of Rowley Lodge was the unwelcome white Mercedes.
The uniformed chauffeur sat behind the wheel. The steely young Alessandro sat in the back. When I stopped not far away from him he was out of his car faster than I was out of mine.
'Where have you been?' he demanded, looking down his nose at my silver-grey Jensen.
'Where have you?' I said equably, and received the full freeze of the Rivera speciality in stares.
'I have come to begin,' he said fiercely.
'So I see.'
He wore superbly cut jodhpurs and glossy brown boots. His waterproof anorak had come from an expensive ski shop and his string gloves were clean and pale yellow. He looked more like an advertisement in Country Life than a working rider.
'I have to go in and change,' I said. 'You can begin when I come out.'
'Very well.'
He waited again in his car and emerged from it immediately I reappeared. I jerked my head at him to follow, and went down into the yard wondering just how much of a skirmish I was going to have with Etty.
She was in a box in bay three helping a very small lad to saddle a seventeen hand filly, and with Alessandro at my heels I walked across to talk to her. She came out of the box and gave Alessandro a widening look of speculation.
'Etty,' I said matter-of-factly, 'This is Alessandro Rivera. He has signed his indentures. He starts today. Er, right now, in fact. What can we give him to ride?'
Etty cleared her throat. 'Did you say apprenticed?'
'That's right.'
'But we don't need any more lads,' she protested.
'He won't be doing his two. Just riding exercise.'
She gave me a bewildered look. 'All apprentices do their two.'
'Not this one,' I said briskly. 'How about a horse for him?'
She brought her scattered attention to bear on the immediate problem.
'There's Indigo,' she said doubtfully. 'I had him saddled for myself.'
'Indigo will do beautifully,' I nodded. Indigo was a quiet ten-year-old gelding which Etty often rode as lead horse to the two-year-olds, and upon which she liked to give completely untrained apprentices their first riding lessons. I stifled the urge to show Alessandro up by putting him on something really difficult: couldn't risk damaging expensive property.
'Miss Craig is the head lad,' I told Alessandro. 'And you will take your orders from her.'
He gave her a black unfathomable stare which she returned with uncertainty.
I'll show him where Indigo is,' I reassured her. 'Also the tackroom, and so on.'
'I've given you Cloud Cuckoo-land this morning, Mr Neil,' she said hesitantly. 'Jock will have got him ready.'
I pointed out the tackroom, feedroom, and the general lay-out of the stable to Alessandro and led him back towards the drive.
'I do not take orders from a woman,' he said.
'You'll have to,' I said without emphasis.
'No.'
'Goodbye, then.'
He walked one pace behind me in fuming silence, but he followed me round to the outside boxes and did not peel off towards his car. Indigo's box was the one next to Moonrock's, and he stood there patiently in his saddle and bridle, resting his weight on one leg and looking round lazily when I unbolted his door.
Alessandro's gaze swept him from stem to stem and he turned to me with unrepressed anger.
'I do not ride nags. I wish to ride Archangel.'
'No one lets an apprentice diamond cutter start on the Kohinoor,' I said.
'I can ride any racehorse on earth. I can ride exceptionally well.'
'Prove it on Indigo, then, and I'll give you something better for second lot.'
He compressed his mouth. I looked at him with the complete lack of feeling that always seemed to calm tempers in industrial negotiations; and after a moment or two it worked on him as well. His gaze dropped away from my face; he shrugged, untied Indigo's headcollar, and led him out of his box. He jumped with ease up into the saddle, slipped his feet into the stirrups, and gathered up the reins. His movements were precise and unfussy, and he settled on to old Indigo's back with an appearance of being at home. Without another word he started walking
