Well Groomed (96 page)

Tash smiled, reaching out to tickle Linus’s hand which was grabbing for her rose buttonhole. ‘It was only when Zoe told Niall about you two having a bit of a flirt that he saw her for what she really is – a sexy, desirable, clever woman, not a general skivvy and mother-figure for the rest of the Lime Tree Farm mob. You opened his eyes, Matty. And yet you’ve avoided coming near any of us all year for fear of seeing her and feeling guilty. What you did was shitty, but no one blames you anymore. Niall is positively grateful – he told me so. Even Sally is, I think.’

‘Sally?’ He looked bewildered.

‘If you think how it made Niall see Zoe, imagine how the news made Sally re-evaluate her reliable, pompous, eco-friendly husband. Especially when she hopped over the fence for a while herself and found that the grass on the other side was covered in weedkiller.’

Matty looked furious. ‘I am not pompous!’

‘Of course not.’ Tash kissed him on the cheek and wandered off to find Hugo and walk back through the fields to the farm with him.

At the Lime Tree Farm reception, the notion of a formal line-up to shake hands was abandoned altogether and Zoe and Niall wandered around hand-in-hand instead, laughing delightedly at people’s reactions as the same story spilled out again and again yet never lost its shine.

Zoe was glowing and utterly content. With India roaming around making sure that all Niall’s relatives were eating and drinking enough, and Rufus frantically chatting up Henrietta’s daughter Emily in a corner of the marquee, she dragged Niall into the house for a few moments alone. It was full of eventers who had sequestered themselves to talk shop. Finally, they resorted to shutting themselves in the laundry room to be alone.

‘I have a confession to make.’ Niall was looking very hangdog. ‘In all the last-minute changes, I forgot to phone the airline and change the name on the ticket for tomorrow’s flight.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Zoe laughed, kissing him. ‘The name won’t be any different. I’m Mrs O’Shaughnessy now, remember? No one’s going to quibble over an initial when we’re waving a marriage certificate in their faces.’

His face lit up and he started to kiss her back delightedly. ‘Christ, I love Zoe O’Shaughnessy.’

‘Now this,’ Zoe sighed as he lifted her on to the tumble dryer and dropped down to disappear beneath her skirts, ‘is what I call married bliss.’

‘Wow!’ he let out a muffled laugh, ‘I can see my wife flashing before my eyes – I must have died and gone to heaven.’

Having thundered around the marquee with Tom and Tor for twenty minutes playing ‘Chase the Big Bottom’, Tash collapsed exhausted at the top table beside Hugo and plunged into the glass of champagne he had collected for her.

‘You’re simply marvellous with kids,’ he laughed.

‘I love them,’ she said simply, feeling champagne bubbles pop in her nose. She ducked as Polly threw a handful of confetti at her before running away giggling.

‘Then we’ll have lots.’ Hugo’s eyes were watching her closely for a reaction, but Tash hadn’t heard him.

‘I can’t believe it’s gone so well today,’ she sighed, leaning against him and pressing her chin to his shoulder. ‘You were so terrific. I’m hugely proud of you.’

‘You do realise that once we’ve all stuffed our faces you’re going to have to make a speech, don’t you?’ he asked as she grinned happily at him, blown away by the fact it had all worked out so well.

‘I love you,’ she breathed, her face flushed from her recent exertions, dark hair escaping from its ponytail and clouding around her face. Her eye make-up was smudged, her tie lop-sided and she still had a huge red lip-stick stain on her cheek.

‘You are so beautiful, Tash, I can’t wait to move you into Haydown properly and start to look after you.’

‘Do you really mean that?’ she gulped, almost beside herself with excitement.

‘Of course I do.’ He started to kiss her mouth with a cool, skilful tongue until she felt like jelly on a spin dryer. Pulling away, he cupped her face in his hands and looked at her seriously, his face suddenly anxious. ‘You do want to move in with me, don’t you?’

She nodded, still staring at him with eyes as misty as Lalique glass. ‘More than anything.’

Hugo’s curly mouth suddenly couldn’t stop smiling.

‘Now I’ve finally got you,’ he pressed his lips to her ear, his voice no more than a breath, ‘there’s absolutely no way I’m going to let another bounder like Niall O’Shaughnessy swagger in and steal you away from me again.’

‘That’ll never happen.’ She kissed him back, sliding a hand beneath the table and feeling him quiver as her fingers started to perform some dressage of their own on his thigh.

‘Too right it won’t,’ Hugo laughed, pushing her hair back from her face and looking at it. Tash was almost blown away by the intensity of those laser-blue eyes. ‘Tash, there’s something I’ve got to ask you –’

She pressed her lips to his mouth and kissed the question clean away, knowing what he had been about to ask. When they finally surfaced, Hugo was feeling far too randy to remember what he’d been saying.

‘Christ, I love you.’ He gently levered open a stud and slipped his hand into her shirt. ‘I want to take you away and ravish you right now, Tash French. Let’s go home.’

‘We can’t.’ She pressed her nose to his, shivering deliciously under his touch. ‘I’ve got a speech to do, people to thank and stacks of telegrams to read out – there’s even one from Steven Spielberg. I’m taking my job very seriously, you know.’

‘You know,’ Hugo started to kiss the hollow of her throat, lips pressing so gently that she arched against them, eager for more, ‘I’ve kissed a lot of bridesmaids in my life, but this has to be the first time I’ve necked the best man.’

‘Good grief, there’s two men over there kissing one another!’ gasped Alicia Beauchamp. She frantically scrabbled for the glasses on a loop around her neck. ‘And I think one of them’s my son.’

‘I believe you’re right.’ Lisette drained her champagne flute and immediately whisked another from a passing tray. ‘You know, I never thought he was that way inclined. I could have saved myself a great deal of time.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, it’s just Tash.’ Alicia whipped off her spectacles, hugely relieved. She turned back to Lisette and gave her an appraising look which stretched down the entire length of her beaky nose. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll definitely find the right chap soon. You’re a good-looking gel.’

Lisette smiled gratefully. ‘Thanks – but I’m rather bored of men reaching for their wallet at the end of a meal and blushing when their wedding ring falls out. I think I might buy a dog.’

‘Jolly good idea.’ Alicia looked at her approvingly. ‘Get a pug.’

‘That woman just has to Veuve Clicquot her fingers and men come running,’ Sally muttered, watching as both Rory Franks and James French hovered close to Lisette with bottles of champagne, waiting for her to drain her glass.

Sitting beside her with Linus on his lap, Matty watched as Niall’s ex-wife gazed round the marquee with her haunted eyes, seemingly oblivious of the drooling attentions of the men. She had a strange, excited look on her face that took Matty back years. He hadn’t seen her look like that since their early BBC days when she was less confident and less obsessed by her career. It was the same look of anticipation she’d once worn before her very first dates with Niall. She seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

‘I think I could finally get around to forgiving her,’ he said levelly.

‘You what? Blast!’ Sally knocked her glass over. Matty rarely forgave anyone – it was an honour he bestowed as rarely as beatification.

‘I think you were right when you pointed out that we have a lot to thank her for.’ He smiled. ‘It’s like Niall said, sometimes truly selfish acts can help other people far more than so-called charitable ones.’

Sally started to laugh. ‘Well, she’s certainly going to get enough publicity out of this wedding to guarantee that Four Poster Bed will be a huge hit.’

‘Yup.’ He traced a finger across her cheek, his eyes softening. ‘Plus she gave Niall a great part, you a chance to see how dull and fickle her so-called glamorous life is, and me a huge great slap in the face that made me get off my arse and get a decent contract.’

‘And Tash’s horse?’ She bit her lip.

‘I have a strange feeling he might just trot off into the sunset too.’ Matty was still stroking her cheek, amber eyes full of bolstering confidence. ‘That’s the funny thing about Lisette’s films. Not only are they marketed brilliantly, but they all have happy endings.’

Rolling her eyes, Sally dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I hate to say this, but your mother’s bearing down on us.’

‘Darlings, hasn’t this all worked out gloriously?’ Alexandra inserted her floppy purple hat between them in a waft of Arpège. ‘Pascal is unspeakably excited – he’s just sold Polly’s home video to that Satellite Showbiz gossip channel. I can’t get him off his cell-phone. And just think – we may all be doing it again in a few months’ time!’

‘What?’ Matty said darkly.

Alexandra nodded excitedly across the tent where the chief usher was kissing the best man in a most ungentlemanly fashion.

‘Oh, Christ, no.’ Sally closed her eyes. ‘Not her again. She’ll go off with one of her horses this time.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart,’ Alexandra said sharply. ‘Pascal has already agreed to foot the bill. And there’s no reason why we can’t go for a church this time – in France maybe? The local one at Champegny is divine around Christmas, and I’ve always adored winter weddings – all those romantic long coats, squashy hats and flickering candles. What do you think?’

But Sally and Matty were already backing quietly away to escape into the garden together, grabbing full champagne flutes on their way out.

Standing up after the long, boozy and gloriously informal wedding lunch, Tash kept her speech short and to the point, partly because she wasn’t particularly adept at speaking publicly, and partly because Hugo – who had moved into the seat beside her during coffee – had started playing on the back of her thighs with his fingers which made her forget most of what she was going to say, a lot of it mid-sentence. As his fingers moved idly upwards, so did her voice until she was squeaking away like a fledgling.

In his own very funny, articulate speech, Niall had already thanked so many people so profusely, and with so much easy, off-the-cuff wit, that she could do little more than endorse his sentiments and add her own grateful thanks to her family. Telling everyone how perfect the bride and groom were for one another was easy too – it was so screamingly obvious that it hardly needed to be said at all. Even in the few short hours since the wedding, Mali’s entire family seemed to have fallen as head-over-heels in love with Zoe as he had, and Ma was already calling her ‘daughter’.

But there was one thing that Tash was determined to say, and as soon as she had read out the last of the telegrams, she looked out across the vast marquee and swallowed nervously, suddenly not knowing how to start. Feeling herself colour, she searched around the faces in a panic until she finally spotted Lisette, sitting at the very back of the tent, her beautiful face smiling encouragingly. The next moment she was holding up both hands, long, slim fingers crossed in a message of good luck.

Laughing, Tash felt a great wash of confidence.

‘This has almost certainly been the oddest wedding most of you will ever have attended,’ she started boldly, then swallowed down her squeaky voice as Hugo’s fingertips slipped around her leg to touch her hand. ‘And I’m afraid that, just before I propose a toast to the bride and groom, I’m going to make it even odder.’ She smiled broadly as she felt Hugo’s fingers slide between hers.

There was a disconcerted stir throughout the tables and any chattering voices were rapidly hushed.

‘You see,’ she cleared her throat and looked down at him, finding herself trapped in the familiar, hypnotic tangle with his eyes, ‘I’m pretty certain that none of you has ever been to a wedding at which the best man has proposed marriage to one of the ushers . . . ’

Fiona Walker is twenty-eight years old with long dark hair and a radiant smile. Her previous two novels,
French Relations
and
Kiss Chase
, were a huge success and she now writes full-time, dividing her days between a jolly home in the country and her chaotic flat in Hampstead.