Free Appassionata by Jilly Cooper

bossily to Abby’s other side, Rupert nipped in and pinched the seat. Not having eaten all day, he was more than a little drunk. He was fed up with Christopher for snubbing him and leaving him to pay for the taxi, so decided to irritate both him and Rannaldini by flirting with Abby.
    Stung by Christopher’s earlier rejection but believing she had a night ahead and a week in the UK with him Abby had taken one incredulous look at Rupert, who was even more beautiful in the relentless overhead light, and was only too happy to flirt back.
    ‘Great entrance this evening,’ Rupert told her softly. ‘You and Rannaldini looked like Snow White and the single dwarf.’
    Abby laughed. ‘He is single if his wife’s just left him.’
    ‘Couldn’t happen to a nastier man.’ Rupert unfolded her Union Jack napkin, casually caressing her thighs, as he laid it across them.
    ‘Why does Rannaldini detest you so much?’ asked Abby. ‘I’ve just heard him telling Christopher you were the beegest sheet unhung.’
    ‘I didn’t know one hung sheets any more,’ Rupert smiled blandly at Abby. ‘Mrs Bodkin, our ancient housekeeper, likes to hang them out in the wind, but I thought you Americans used massive tumble dryers.’
    Abby burst out laughing.
    ‘You still haven’t explained why he hates you.’
    ‘His wife, whom he bullied and cuckolded shamelessly, has just run off with one of my jockeys. He thinks I orchestrated it.’
    ‘Did you?’
    Rupert shook his head. ‘You should see my jockey, he’s so pretty everyone wants to ride him.’
    ‘Why d’you hate Rannaldini?’
    ‘He can’t stop flaunting the fact that his trainer is the little sheet who ran off with my first wife.’
    ‘Did she marry him?’
    ‘No, someone else.’
    ‘How very complicated,’ said Abby losing interest.
    She was quite short sitting down, noticed Rupert, her great height was all in her legs. Her pale face was shiny with sweat, black circles hammocked the bags under the tigerish eyes. Beneath her chin and on her collar bone, her Strad had left red marks as though Dracula had been having a good gnaw. Nanny would have recommended a good dose, reflected Rupert. She was far coarser than Taggie, but still hellishly sexy.
    The waiters were plonking down carafes of wine. Obscuring Christopher’s view with a large vase of red dahlias, Rupert filled up Abby’s glass.
    ‘I know you probably hate to talk about work,’ he went on, having listened carefully to two Australian pouffs in ecstasies in the gents at the Opera House, ‘but I’ve never heard the Brahms so lyrically played. I wept in the slow movement. The last movement really captured the Hungarian idiom and in the first movement, I never believed passages in tenths could be so clearly executed, but with such a beautiful sound. You must have a very big stretch,’ he picked up Abby’s rather large, stubby fingers, ‘for someone with such a little hand.’
    Abby blushed with pleasure. She’d written this guy off as drop-dead handsome beefcake and he really knew about music. Flustered, she snatched her hand away and grabbed a piece of bread.
    ‘No bread, Abigail,’ boomed Christopher, glaring through the red dahlias like Moses on the wrong side of the Burning Bush. He knew how soloists could blow up, eating to stave off loneliness in hotel bedrooms.
    Biting her huge red cushiony lower lip instead, Abby studied the menu.
    ‘I’ll have spaghetti carbonara,’ she told the waiter defiantly.
    ‘You will not,’ snapped Christopher, ordering Dover sole and radicchio salad for both of them. ‘And no sauce tartare,’ he added bossily.
    ‘Odd denial from such a tartar,’ said Rupert, thickly buttering a large piece of white bread, sprinkling salt on it in the Argentine fashion, and handing it to Abby. ‘Rannaldini was going so bloody fast, I nearly had a bet on the last movement. How much would he earn a night for conducting?’
    ‘About one hundred and fifty thousand bucks.’
    Rupert was