Free Riders by Jilly Cooper Page A

Half-shafts of moonlight found their way through the beech trees on either side of the road, shimmering on their dark gray-green trunks. Fortunately the house was still dark.
    “Oh good,” said Tory, “I can put back Mummy’s mac before she finds out it’s missing. I’m going to London tomorrow. I’ve got two awful drinks’ parties, then a dance on Wednesday, but I’ll be home on Thursday. Mummy and Colonel Carter are going out to dinner. I’ve got to babysit. Perhaps you could come around, after they’ve gone out, and we can decide what to do.”
    “I think it may be a bit more problematical than that,” said Jake.
    He took the key, opened the door for her, and turned on the hall light. Oh God, thought Tory miserably, there was Fen’s whip lying on the hall table, beside a wilting bowl of pink peonies. Jake turned to her, a slight smile touching his lips. Was it contempt, or pity, or mockery?
    “Thank you very much,” he said, and was gone.
    Fighting back her disappointment that he hadn’t attempted to kiss her, Tory then reflected that she would probably have tasted of onion-flavored crisps.

5
    T he drinks’ parties on Monday and Tuesday were bad enough for Tory. But the dance on Wednesday was a nightmare. At the dinner party beforehand, some sadist had seated her next to Rupert Campbell-Black. On his right was a ravishing girl named Melanie Potter, whom all the girls were absolutely furious about. Melanie had upstaged everyone by turning up, several weeks after the season began, with a suntan acquired from a month in the Bahamas.
    Rupert had arrived late, parking his filthy Rolls-Royce, with the blacked-out windows, across the pavement. He then demanded tomato ketchup in the middle of dinner, and proceeded to drench his sea trout with it, which everyone except his hostess and Tory thought wildly funny. Naturally he’d ignored Tory all the way through dinner. But there was something menacing about that broad black back and beautifully shaped blond head, a totally deceptive languor concealing the rampant sexuality. She wondered what he would have done if she’d tapped him on the shoulder and told him she was the owner of an £800 horse.
    Then they went on to the dance and she somehow found herself piled into Rupert’s Rolls-Royce, driving through the laburnumand lilac-lined streets of Chelsea. She had to sit on some young boy’s knee, trying to put her feet on the ground and all her weight on them. But she still heard him complaining to Rupert afterwards that his legs were completely numb and about to drop off.
    The hostess was kind, but too distraught about gate-crashers to introduce Tory to more than two young men, who both, as usual, danced one dance, then led her back and propped her against a pillar like an old umbrella, pretending they were just off to get her a drink or had to dance with their hostess. Thinking about Jake nonstop didn’t insulate her from the misery of it all. It made it almost worse. Obviously it was impossible that he should ever care for her. If no one else wanted her, why should he? Feeling about as desirable as a Christmas tree on Twelfth Night, she was sitting by herself at the edge of the ballroom when a handsome boy sauntered towards her. Reprieve at last.
    “Excuse me,” he said.
    “Oh, yes, please,” said Tory.
    “If no one’s using this,” he said, “could I possibly borrow it?” and, picking up the chair beside her, he carried it back across the room and sat down on the edge of the yelling group around Rupert Campbell-Black. As soon as they got to the dance, Rupert had abandoned his dinner party and, taking Melanie, had gone off to get drunk with his inseparable chum, Billy Lloyd-Foxe, who was in another party. Now he was sitting, cigar drooping out of his handsome, curling mouth, wearing Melanie’s feather boa, while she sat on his knee, shrieking with laughter, with the pink rose from his buttonhole behind her ear.
    Later Billy Lloyd-Foxe passed Tory on