Читать книгу Chloe - Freya North - Страница 19

‘Shit Chlo!’ said Carl under his breath, ‘what an ass!’

Chloë spun on her heels and scrutinized her reflection in the glass-fronted mahogany sideboard which sat easily in the tack room next to the grandfather clock.

‘Woe!’ she wailed. ‘Is it the riding? All that squidging by jodhpur and squashing by saddle?’

Carl looked puzzled.

‘Is it very noticeable?’ pleaded Chloë, craning her neck and tucking up her pelvis. ‘How huge?’ She bit her lip. ‘Well-padded or downright unacceptable?’

‘You what?’ said Carl, none the wiser.

Chloë gave herself a hard pinch on the left buttock and batted doleful eyes at him. He broke into a wide smile and walked over to her. Turning her sideways on, he crouched until he was eye-level with her bottom. With a light but skilled hand, he glided over her buttocks; eyes half closed to assist his expert analysis. He stood up and turned her towards him. Putting his hands gently on her shoulders and not letting her eyes venture from his for a moment, he slid his hands down over her back to the base of her spine. Exerting a little more pressure, he traversed his hands over her buttocks and down to the tops of her thighs. To do so, he had to bend his knees slightly. To do so, he had to part his legs a little. This forced him to buck gently into her and, as a consequence, his groin was glued to hers. Keenly, he held on to the tops of her thighs, revelling in the base of her bottom resting lightly on top of his hands.

‘Shit Chlo,’ he said hoarsely, ‘all I said was that you have a great ass!’

Chloë laid her hands over his pectorals which she could feel and define well beneath the ample layers of wool that the Welsh February decreed. She could feel his erection pressing into her appendix, as was its wont. Having lowered her eyes demurely, she raised them again to his. And smiled.

‘I thought you meant –’ she faltered.

‘Daft cow!’ said Carl gently. Carl’s greatest compliments were his softly drawled insults.

‘You do know that my name is Chloë?’ said Chloë. ‘Klowee?’

Carl pulled his puzzled expression back down over his face, knowing the effect it would have on her. Chloë clenched her buttocks with delight, tapped him on the nose and gave his chin a quick pinch. Wilfully, she ran her tongue tip over her teeth, finishing with a flourish of a smile.

‘For some reason,’ she said, squeezing Carl’s buttocks which were firm and fitted her grasp very well, ‘you’ve taken to prefixing an abbreviation – a true perversion of its virgin state.’

Carl twisted his top lip and dipped his eyebrows simultaneously, shaking his head slowly, trying to fathom her out.

‘Shit Chlo, what are you on?’

‘See!’ laughed Chloë triumphantly. ‘Shiklo!’

She grabbed a pair of bridles and, humming gaily, turned to leave the tack room.

‘Chloë Cadwallader,’ enunciated Carl with care and conviction after her. Still humming, she turned towards him, the brave sun of a frosty February morning alighting on her face and throwing fire into her hair.

‘Yes?’

‘Chloë Cadwallader,’ he said even more slowly, chewing the vowels, sucking the consonants; rolling the syllables around his mouth and booming them over to her, ‘you’re one crazy bitch!’

As Chloë tacked up, she smiled to herself with Carl’s words stroking her psyche. Fancy such affection lacing such seeming insults! To be called a ‘crazy bitch’ by Carl was something to be savoured and played, again and again. And ‘daft cow’ – well! When Brett had called her ‘darling’ it had meant so little that it had grated her ears savagely. When he ended his calls with ‘Love you!’ she would often hold the receiver away from her ear. And hold it even more distant when he closed the conversation with his trademark ‘ciao!’ Now, with Carl’s love-laden calumnies chiming in her ears and a small child tugging eagerly at her jacket, Chloë looked around her and beamed gratitude at the hills and the sheep and the hazy boundless sky.

Wales, as Peregrine had said, was an absolutely splendid idea. Wales, as Jocelyn had said, was a heady contradiction of rustic simplicity and rural grandeur. Wales, as Gin often trilled, was wild, wet and Welsh! Wales, as Carl said once, was a cool country, pretty and awesome in equal measures.

‘Wales,’ said Chloë quietly to herself as she gave the small child a leg up and checked the pony’s girth straps, ‘Wales is the best thing that’s happened to me.’

Just you wait!

‘MissChloëCadwalladerEsquire,’ called Carl as Chloë and her young charge ambled out of the yard, ‘you’ve forgotten your badge! Agin.’

Chloë brought Desmond to a square halt and checked. It was quite true, once again, or agin (she now heard certain words exclusively in New Zealandish dialect).

‘Where would I be without you!’ she called with fondness, carefully unpinning Jocelyn’s brooch from her breast.

‘You’d be on your hands and knees scouring the grass for it, like last week!’ laughed Carl, hands on hips, divine forearms on display. ‘Or rummaging about on the muck heap like the week before, you dim wench!’ He sauntered over, his clumping boots scumbling leisurely over the cobblestones.

‘Thanks a million, young man,’ said Chloë, entrusting her heirloom to the man with the perfect wrists, ‘and please,’ she grinned, ‘call me Shiklo!’

‘It’s pretty,’ said Carl, holding the brooch in the approximate direction of the suddenly swallowed sun. Chloë loved the way his ‘t’s were unclipped, more a roll of the tongue inside his smile.

‘It’s perhaps the most precious thing I have,’ she said seriously.

‘Apart from your sanity? And that’s on its way out!’ said Carl, slapping his thighs in mirth.

Oh! His thighs!

‘Oh ha bloody ha!’ retorted Chloë, desperate to keep a straight and severe face.

‘Well, I’d be right honoured to be Guardian of the Badge till your return, milady!’ said Carl with an extravagant bow.

‘Thank you, kind sir!’ chirped Chloë, allowing him a fleeting smile and a lascivious wink. The small child regarded them with a certain incredulity, and a maturity that exceeded both theirs.

‘Come!’ said Chloë to the horses.

‘Shit Chlo,’ called Carl after her, ‘wouldn’t mind!’

Maybe soon.

You mean?

Yes. Well. Wanted to take it slowly. You know, have fun with the infamous bases. Base three’s next you see. Got to feel ready for the home run. Heavens, this is a first for me, remember.

William felt uncomfortable. His neck felt stiff and his legs were begging for a stretch. His bladder was full. Again. He was thirsty and felt tension spread across his forehead. He looked pale. And a little panicked. But he felt uncomfortable more because he was driving. He was nearing the Severn Bridge and was bang on schedule but still he felt ill at ease. He hated driving because he trusted a bicycle more, and his legs the most. Most of all, he hated the fact that the car he was driving belonged to Morwenna.

‘William!’ she had chastised most unbecomingly, putting an affected whistle to the ‘w’, ‘Well!’ (she did the same there too) ‘I really do think it’s time you bought yourself a motor. A little run-around at least.’ She paused. ‘Hmm! A little run-around