The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

had triggered all the speculation off again. Apart from the loss of the baby, which had affected him just as badly as Taggie, Rupert had had a pulverizing year. Even successful owner-trainers had been stymied by the recession. Rupert’s yearlings didn’t automatically fetch six figures any more. For the first time he was having to put up with indifferent horses if the owner was rich enough to pay for them. Hence the post-mortem today. As a founder director of Venturer Television he should have made a killing but advertising was right down and they’d been forced to layoff staff.

Nor were his three children giving him much joy. Marcus, who was at Bagley Hall with Flora, was a wimp whose only ambition egged on by his mother, Rupert’s first wife, was to be a concert pianist. Tabitha, with whom Rupert had enjoyed an adoring, almost too symbiotic relationship, had suddenly turned into a brat who questioned Rupert’s every decision and attitude and who had recently, at the age of fourteen, fallen madly in love with Rupert’s tractor-driver. Removed out of temptation to Monthaut, she had sulked so badly that Rupert, in a rage, had packed her off home to her mother. Finally, Perdita, with whom Rupert had an erratic relationship — only her husband Luke could really handle her — had added a last straw heavier than a crowbar.

His wife Taggie, though young enough to be his fourth child, adored him and longed to have his children. After an almost fatal miscarriage early on in their marriage when she had been told she couldn’t have children, she had endured several painful and disappointing attempts to have a test-tube baby. Finally getting pregnant to universal rejoicing in August, at four months she had had a ghastly and inexplicable miscarriage.

Nothing in the world would bring back the baby. Dismissing Rupert’s anguished protestations that he must be bringing Taggie bad luck, James Benson, who was also Rupert’s family doctor, told him to take Taggie away for a holiday.

‘And then go to South America, or Texas, or even Romania, and adopt. There are plenty of babies if you wave your cheque book.’

Having endured innumerable sleepless nights worrying about Taggie, Rupert was desperately in need of a break himself. A dashing skier all his life, the mountains always recharged his batteries and Taggie would get brown and strong again.

Then all had been sabotaged by Perdita ringing Taggie from Palm Beach; she had deliberately chosen the moment just before Christmas when Rupert was in Ireland. Announcing that it was high time he and Taggie got to know their grandchild, she asked if she could dump little Eddie on them for a fortnight while she and Luke flew to Kenya to play polo.

‘It’s the chance of a lifetime, Taggie,’ she had begged. ‘All expenses paid. Luke and I have been working our asses off keeping the barn and the ponies going. The recession’s been far worse in America. We really need to spend some time together.’

And sweet, gentle Taggie, of course, had agreed and Rupert had returned from Ireland to find little Eddie in situ, totally American, utterly adorable but as self-willed as his grandfather, who never stopped asking when Mom and Dad were coming back. Outraged with Perdita for lumbering Taggie with a child when she’d just lost her own, Rupert had promptly employed a French girl to look after Eddie. But, infuriatingly and stubbornly, Taggie had insisted on caring for him herself, getting up in the night whenever he cried, even allowing him to come into their bed, so there had been no holiday and even less sex.

He had taken Eddie skiing to give Taggie a break and the little sod, who had learnt to ski before he could crawl, had given Rupert the slip and showed him up as a grandfather in front of the entire world Press — the Misconstruction Industry, as he always called them.

Rupert actually liked his new grandchild. He knew it was desperately uncool to mind about being a grandfather, or even worse, to go round saying that he had only been eighteen when Perdita had been conceived. But, at the moment, he felt a failure as a grandfather, a father, a husband and a trainer, particularly with Mr Pandopoulos bellyaching beside him.

Most of all Rupert despised himself for biting Taggie’s head off yet again because she had allowed his grandchild to wreck their holiday. She looked utterly ravishing this evening in a crimson angora jersey and a straight black, sequined skirt, showing off legs far more beautiful than any tiresome owner’s colt. Rupert was about to take her hand and tell her he loved her and was only livid with himself, when he noticed a couple at the next table. A plain girl whose pink face clashed with her brilliantly coloured ski suit and a miraculously good-looking boy, whose clear bluey-green eyes were unashamedly gazing in his direction. Rupert was quite used to admiration from his own sex, but the boy didn’t look gay, so he must be after Taggie, hardly surprising if one was lumbered with a dog like that.

Five minutes later when Kitty went upstairs to read a bedtime story to Rannaldini’s children, Lysander paid the bill. For Arthur’s sake, he must do it now. Knees knocking, mouth dry, unaware of every woman gazing at him hungrily, he approached his great hero. Looking down at the wonderful chiselled features, the cold lapis-lazuli eyes, he wanted to give Rupert some amazing present, to kneel down and kiss his hand. Instead he stammered, ‘Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind my butting in?’

‘If you’re a journalist, piss off,’ snapped Rupert.

‘Oh no, no, no, I’m absolutely not. My name’s Lysander Hawkley.’

Rupert’s eyes narrowed in half-recognition.

‘Basically I live in Paradise,’ went on Lysander, ‘I’d hoped to meet you last week at the Valhalla nativity play.’

Rupert looked fractionally more friendly.

‘We were hoping to go,’ said Taggie, feeling horribly sorry for the poor boy. ‘Do sit down for a minute and tell us about it.’ She winced as Rupert kicked her on the ankle.

‘Thank you.’ Lysander beamed at Taggie and nearly knocked over the water jug in his efforts to appear calm.

‘I gather Georgie Maguire’s daughter — last seen throwing up into a trumpet at Bagley Hall — went berserk and listed Rannaldini’s mistresses,’ said Rupert lightly. ‘Roberto Rannaldini, this is one of your nine lives. Cameron said it was seriously funny.’

‘Not for Kitty,’ said Lysander quickly.

‘Kitty?’

‘Rannaldini’s wife,’ said Lysander proudly. ‘She was with me just now.’

‘Ah’

The penny was beginning to drop. This must be the boy that Cameron had been raving about. ‘We’ve got to sign him up, Rupert. He’s to die for.’

‘What part did you play?’ asked Taggie, aware of the menace of Rupert’s mood.

‘Oh, I just shifted scenery, but my horse, Arthur, carried the Third King. He was seriously good in the part, but that was only a sideline. It’s Arthur I wanted to tell you about.’ He looked at Rupert fair and square.

After five minutes he realized that Rupert was yawning and tapping long fingers on the table.

‘Sorry. I’m talking too much.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with that.’

‘He sounds really sweet,’ said Taggie quickly, wishing Rupert wouldn’t be so vile.

Comforted, Lysander turned to her. God, she was lovely with all that cloudy dark hair and her soft, pink mouth and her kind, silvery-grey eyes and sweet, shy face.

‘You’re so much prettier than your picture in the Express,’ he stammered, ‘and we saw your little boy. He’s adorable. He’ll be skiing for America soon and he looks just like you.’

‘Odd,’ said Rupert coldly, ‘he’s no relation of Tag’s. He’s my grandchild.’

That’s torn it, thought Lysander. ‘I know it sounds crass,’ he stumbled on, ‘but you don’t look anything like old enough to be a grandfather.’

Little bastard, patronizing me, thought Rupert.

‘He doesn’t, does he?’ Taggie put a hand over Rupert’s clenched one. ‘Eddie’s parents are playing polo in Kenya, so we’re looking after him for a few days. Good practice because we’re hoping to adopt our own baby from South America soon.’

Rupert was looking thunderous. He didn’t like Taggie discussing their private life. The boy could easily be stringing for The Scorpion.

‘I spent Christmas in South America. Brazil actually,’ Lysander told Taggie, ‘in an incredible house with a swimming-pool and a polo field, running into the sea at one end and the mountains at the other. We were drinking