Читать книгу Miss Chance - Simon Barnes - Страница 15

She looked at him admiringly. ‘You really are a bloody fool, aren’t you?’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘It’s because you fancy her. Admit it.’

‘Not the point.’

‘Just want to impress her as the master horse-tamer. Well, I should warn you that she lives with Jim the fat farrier, and she’s tamed a few million horses herself. If you’d asked me, I’d have told you that. And I could have told you a fair bit more about that mare of hers. Of yours, I mean.’

Mark had driven from Kath’s to make arrangements about keeping Miss Chance at the yard where Mel kept Presuming Ed. He discussed it with the yard’s owner, Jan, and then went to watch Mel and Ed complete a schooling session. As she finished, he hastened to tell her the news.

‘I already know a fair bit about that mare of mine.’

‘Good boy. Stand still.’ She looked back at Mark. ‘I mean, that was a nice little jumping mare, but she spoilt it. She jumped it in a puissance event, and I think she won – cleared damn near five feet, that I do know. But the mare was overfaced, she’s only seven, it was too much for her. She got frightened silly.’

‘It happens.’

‘And Kath, well, she can ride all right, don’t get me wrong. But I know how she treats a reluctant jumper.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘Let’s put you in your box, shall we? Oh, you want a mint, do you? Well, here we are. She beats the crap out of them, that’s what she does. What she has done is to terrify the life out of a horse, and then beat it up for being frightened. So the horse has – well, had a nervous breakdown, basically. You’d think she’d know better, but oh no. Typical showjumping type, no patience. Wants results, wants them quick. And so she smiled sweetly at you and persuaded you to part with a load of money for damaged goods.’ She was putting a light rug onto her horse, turned away from Mark, busying herself with the straps.

‘I couldn’t help myself, Mel.’

‘You should know better. I know you’re in a vulnerable state right now, but you can’t go forking out five hundred quid every time you fall for a pair of blue eyes.’

‘Brown eyes.’

‘God, he doesn’t even know what she looks like. Blue eyes, almost invariably a touch of blue eyeliner.’

‘No, Mel. Brown. One on each side of her head. Ears also brown, very large, pointed.’

‘You stand there for a bit and cool off and then I’ll turn you out, all right?’ She closed and bolted the stable door behind her and neatly flipped the bottom latch with her neatly booted foot. ‘Are you seriously telling me that it’s the mare you fancy?’

‘Something about her.’

‘Damaged goods, Mark.’

‘I know.’

She put her head a little to one side and raised an eyebrow above one of her own blue, not navy, eyes, though not in invitation to the delights of the hay-barn. ‘Have you become a sucker for lame ducks in your old age?’

‘It’s the spark in her –’

‘It’s the damage that’s the attraction. Isn’t that right?’

‘Stop trying child psychology on me.’ A standard marital riposte of Morgan’s, as it happened.

Mel was smiling to herself in a thoughtful sort of way. Then she turned to him. ‘I always thought you wanted the part of lame duck for yourself.’

‘Me?’ Mark was outraged. Morgan had, more than once, said much the same thing.

She grabbed his arm suddenly, impulsively, in a fashion that took him back through a dozen years, to a period when they had both been unsure of themselves, but each quite certain of the other. ‘I think you’re mad, but never mind. I’ll help you all I can. Because you’re going to need all the help you can get.’