Fourteen miles northeast of Kendal, on a flat, rough-mown field that ran alongside the River Eden above Tebay, the agricultural show was moving into full swing. Giles Frederickson cast a critical eye over his cadets as they scrambled across the main arena, setting out obstacles for the dog agility classes. Not a bad performance, he decided, but they could have done with another week’s practice.
In his time Frederickson had been involved in all manner of events from the Royal Tournament to the Winter Olympics. He tended to measure all other public displays by those standards and was rarely entirely satisfied. Still, not bad.
He recognised that the cadets were not responsible for his general ill temper. Even after he’d learned that the police were not going to pursue the shooting, he’d still told Angela it was time to end the affair. Besides, after today they wouldn’t have a legitimate reason to liaise quite so regularly and openly. Not without her dim-witted husband beginning to suspect.
The major still derived a certain satisfaction from the fact that Angela had given her husband’s gift—the dog—to her lover. And the poor cuckold had actually been grateful to him for having Ben taken off their hands. If only he knew.
He’d find Angela hard to forget. Under that icy exterior, she’d proved to be a woman of passion and stamina. Thank God for Viagra, he thought. He had no illusions that he was her first infidelity, nor any more than a fleeting diversion, but he liked to think she hadn’t been ready to let him go just yet. He’d learned things in the Far East that Western women seemed to find surprising in bed, and Angela had been no exception.
She’d assumed, scornfully, that coming under police scrutiny had made him turn tail, and he hadn’t disillusioned her. True, he’d been concerned about DC Weston. Frederickson could recognise a born hunter when he came across one. If he hadn’t been told to let it lie, who knows what the detective might have uncovered?
“Ah, Giles, there you are. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me,” Angela Inglis’s voice stroked a nerve down the major’s spine.
He turned. She looked perfect, as always, poised and cool despite the muggy summer heat, in a pale green dress that might have been raw silk, deceptively simple and ending demurely at the knee.
“Have you met Max Carri?” she asked, before he could speak. “Max is one of our wonderful sponsors.”
The public address system blared into life at that moment, calling all junior Working Hunter competitors to make their way to the collecting ring, and judges in the floral arrangement category to the handicrafts marquee.
The interruption gave Frederickson a chance to study the man whose arm his former mistress grasped with such a light yet proprietary touch. Sweet-talking sponsors had been very much Angela’s bag, so he’d heard about Carri but hadn’t met him during the run-up to the show. He wasn’t pleased by what he saw.
In contrast to the tweeds and florals so beloved of the natives, the man wore a Panama hat and a cream linen suit with the careless flair of someone who spent a good deal of time and money on his wardrobe. In Frederickson’s instantly formed opinion, he was altogether too sleek, too smug, too…predatory.
Frederickson didn’t like the purr of satisfaction in Angela’s voice, either. Nor the fact that the two of them looked well matched.
Replaced me so easily, have you?
Carri, meanwhile, returned the scrutiny with only a twitch at the corner of his mouth giving away some inner amusement. Frederickson squared his shoulders inside his dress uniform and held out a leather-gloved hand. Carri shook it without any attempt at bone-crushing heroics.
“I must say, Angela’s been singing your praises,” Carri said.
Frederickson had been half-expecting an Italian accent to go with the colouring and the name, but the voice was classlessly English. Elocution lessons, he thought nastily.
“She’s too kind.” Frederickson’s voice was bland.
“You’ve certainly got your boys well drilled.” Carri nodded to the swarm of cadets. He gave a rueful smile. “If only my people could work with such coordination, I’d be a rich man.”
“Oh, Max.” Angela gave a breathy laugh. “You are a rich man.”
He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Comfortable, certainly. Enough to keep the wolf from the door and for indulgences such as this.” He smiled at her and Frederickson felt his hands tighten. “But what’s paying for a few trophies and a token of prize money without all your hard work to make the whole thing happen?”
Angela fluttered at the praise. Then, duty done, and possibly objective achieved, she began to turn away, stopping only to favour Frederickson with a final, gracious smile. “You’ll join us in the refreshments marquee for lunch, Giles, of course?”
So I can watch you fawn over him some more? “No, I don’t think so.” He offered a slight smile to take the sting out of the refusal, nodding to the cadets. “Have to keep an eye on my chaps if everything’s to run to schedule. The timings are pretty tight. Thank you, anyway.”
To her credit, she managed to conjure disappointment. “We’ll need you on the main stage for the prize-giving,” she said firmly. “Three o’clock sharp. No excuses.”
“No, ma’am. I’ll be there.”