Every day, Jack would go out working around the yard, making small repairs and feeding the livestock. And every day, late in the afternoon, he would go out with a towel on his shoulder and come back an hour later. As summer was fading and the grass was getting thin, twice a day he fed fresh hay to the horses.
‘Come out and see them,’ he said to Belle. ‘You won’t see anybody around here for miles. And I’ll be with you.’
‘No,’ she said, nervous, remembering Nipper at the door. ‘That’s OK.’
For days after the big reveal of her ruined face, she’d mostly kept to her room, hardly venturing out at all. Her leg was fine, the bandages off, but her face! Thoughts crawled through her head, the main one being that every time Jack had sat there talking to her, eating across the table from her, he had been forced to look at her ugliness. He’d never reacted in any way to it, which to her was astonishing. Used to turning heads, used to having men adore her, she could barely take it in. She was so changed. She was ugly, and that was it from here on in. She would have to get used to it, somehow.
When she finally came out into the kitchen again, started cooking meals again, petting the dog, mumbling a few words to Jack, she could see he was relieved.
‘Come out later this afternoon and see the horses when I bed them down,’ he said when she was washing up. ‘Nobody’s about.’
No one to see how disfigured she was. Was that what he meant?
‘All right,’ she said, because she was bored with indoors, going stir crazy.
In the afternoon he went out again, towel on shoulder, and came back an hour later.
‘Where do you go?’ Belle asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
‘Nowhere,’ he said.
‘With a towel on your shoulder. Nowhere. Right. Did your mum have a pool here somewhere?’
Belle certainly hadn’t seen one from any of the windows. She hadn’t seen one when she’d been out in the yard, hanging out washing. Christ, she was so domestic all of a sudden! It startled her. She’d never lifted a well-manicured finger around the gatehouse, never had to and never wanted to. Now her nails were snagged, her skin roughened by work. Before, she’d always been made up to the nines, but now she had no make-up and anyway, what was the point? Her face was ruined. Now, what the fuck was she? Some sort of hausfrau, cowering away from a world that had hurt her too much. She thought again of Mum, of Dad. Her heart sank and pain gnawed at her. Harlan had taken over Charlie’s evil empire and they were both probably dead. She herself was only breathing by luck alone.
Jack was staring at her face. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’ She forced a smile and felt the scarring on her left cheek pull tight. Oh Christ. She turned her head aside, letting her hair fall over that side of her face.
‘My mother didn’t have a pool. Nothing so fancy,’ he told her.
‘So where do you go with the towel every day?’ she asked.
‘Nowhere special,’ he said.
‘You’re a great conversationalist,’ said Belle.
He grinned, his eyes not leaving hers. Dark blue. He had, she thought suddenly, beautiful eyes – black-lashed and crinkled from laughter at the corners.
Belle turned away. ‘All right, fair enough. I’ll stop asking. Waste of time, yeah?’
When dusk was setting in and the trees were black skeletons against the cool peach of the sunset, they went out and he loaded up the little trailer with hay.
The stables looked just about ready to fall down, but inside in a cosy clean loose box stood a big chestnut mare with a white blaze down her face. A tiny light-gold palomino pony was standing beside her, looking hopefully up at Jack as he came in and dumped the feed there for them. Immediately, they started to eat.
‘What a beautiful horse,’ said Belle, surprised. Jack’s mum obviously had an eye for a fine animal. Belle herself had ridden at pony clubs and hacked out at the riding stables, but the chestnut was something else; a thoroughbred. She reached out a hand and stroked the mare’s elegant neck.
‘This is Lady Marmalade. Because of her colour. Or Lady, as she’s called around here,’ said Jack, watching the horses munching contentedly. ‘She’s twenty-three years old. But she looks bloody good on it. Needs riding, really, but I don’t.’
Belle turned to him. ‘So what do you do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For a job. For money.’
‘This and that.’
‘Evasive.’
‘Private.’
‘Same difference.’
Again he gave that sudden unexpected grin. Belle felt, to her absolute shock, a hard visceral tug of attraction. Christ! Why had she not noticed before? He was actually a handsome man. The realization of that made her feel even worse about her disfigurement. She turned her head away from him, concentrated on the sleek mare and the dumpy little Shetland.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and eat.’