Chapter Text
Rocky is safe.
Three words, a mantra repeated in his head. It’s what matters most. He’s unharmed; he’s home. There is little to worry about, really.
Nevermind the uncharacteristic winds howling across Ruthshire this very moment, rattling the window panes and shaking the ancient bones of his ancestral home until it feels like his very soul is thrumming, unsettled. He’s lived here all his life—save for the years in his 20s, before Helen and the children came along, when he’d taken up residence in London, slipping in and out of beds with an agility not unlike the one he possessed on a showjumping course—and still he’s never known Ruthshire brace itself against such a storm before.
Except even the winds roaring outside pale in comparison to the storm brewing inside him tonight.
At least Rocky is safe. That's what he keeps telling himself, over and over again as he retraces his steps to the drawing room, a jumper clutched tightly in one hand. Because if he dares think about how Rocky is safe, lets himself think about who walked Rocky back across the valley in the dark, in nothing but a nightgown and the astounding amount of courage God has seen fit to pack into that slight frame… Well, he's fairly certain he'll do something unforgivable. Like say something he isn’t allowed to.
He pauses in the corridor, lingering outside the drawing room door. Through the gap he can hear the fire spitting and popping in the marble hearth.
The taste of silence is thick and unsavoury in his mouth.
With a deep breath, he plasters on what he hopes is a genial smile and steps inside.
“One horse safely tucked up and unscathed from his ordeal,” he announces to the room.
Taggie is sitting on the sofa across from Cameron, the tartan blanket he’d hastily draped around her before taking Rocky back to the stable still wrapped around her shoulders. At the sound of his voice, she peers around, blue meeting brown, and suddenly it’s as if he’s staring up at the clear summer sky again. Sunshine pressing life back into him after a long, bitter winter.
“Thank you,” Taggie murmurs back, and he realizes belatedly that he’s handed her the jumper he’d unearthed from his wardrobe. It’s a shade of grey, old enough that he can’t recall how it came to be in his possession, and entirely too comfortable.
“Rocky says sorry, and he hopes you haven't caught a chill,” he hears himself saying. Finds himself, in fact, sinking to his knees before her.
Thinks: how right it feels.
Christ, he shakes his head an infinitesimal fraction. He really needs to pull himself together. Yet that is easier said than done when it comes to one Agatha O’Hara, who is shrugging the blanket off and tugging his jumper over her head.
“Why didn't you put a coat on, you plonker?”
That draws a soft laugh from her, and Rupert feels like he’s taken a shot of top shelf whiskey. The sound has a similar effect too for, emboldened, he adds, “Something... Something warm.”
He can feel a smile spreading across his face, and guesses he must look like an actual plonker.
Christ, but she’s right there. In his drawing room, as the clock ticks closer to midnight, having braved a hurricane just to bring his dear, darling horse back to him. And it means the world to Rupert because Rocky isn't simply another horse. He knows how that sounds, wagers Declan would have something cutting to say about it, some sly observation in his Irish brogue about posh English bastards and their animals.
Nonetheless, it's true.
Rocky has been with him through so much. The hard-fought victories, the golden celebrations. The wreckage of his marriage, and the particular humiliation of its aftermath. Good boy, he’d once even aimed a kick at Lovell when he veered too close, and if that doesn’t show wise judgement, Rupert isn’t sure what does. Rocky really has been with him through it all. Like the children growing up as Rupert’s own world shrank. Through every ill-advised decision and public disgrace he's managed to accumulate over the better part of two decades. Even at his most unlovable—and he is self-aware enough, if just barely, to know there have been many such occasions—Rocky has remained. A steady, uncomplicated presence. Asking nothing of him except to be ridden well and cared for, which Rupert has always managed. Even when he's failed at everything, and everyone, else around him.
There is a part of his soul living in that horse. He has never admitted this to another person; he suspects he never will.
But Taggie understands.
She must, mustn’t she? Or why else would she have gone out into the cold, walked across the valley in that flimsy red jacket and those cowboy boots, both of which he knows are kept by the front door. There for her to grab as she rushes out of the Priory to tend to one errand or another, or to complete some new catering job.
Or to bring him his horse back, evidently.
He has loved her for a while now. There is no point denying it, even if it is the most stubborn, inconvenient thing he’s ever crossed paths with. But God help him, he's not sure he has ever loved her more than he does at this very moment. She’s clad in his jumper, nestled in his plush sofa as firelight reflects off her auburn hair whilst she grins sheepishly up at him, blissfully unaware of what she's just done to him. How she’s cracked his heart open.
“Oh, we could’ve picked him up.”
It’s a shock to him, and to Taggie if the flicker in her expression is anything to go by, when Cameron's voice cuts across the room. She sounds as measured and confident as expected, and he’s almost disappointed in himself for how easily he’d forgotten she too was in the room. He can’t be letting his guard down like this. But then Taggie’s voice is ringing in his ears as she replies, and he’s mesmerized by the sight of her flushed cheeks again. That pink mouth is moving, and he remembers with painful clarity how sweet she tastes. The way her body feels soft and pliant under his hands as his lips move over–
Hastily, he drops his gaze to her hands, where Taggie's fingers are curled around a mug Mrs. Bodkin had no doubt pressed into her hands earlier, knuckles whitening slightly.
"...phone didn't work,” she finishes.
Though he’s only caught the end of that sentence, he mumbles, “Oh, really?”
At her nod, and Cameron’s inhale, he pushes himself to his feet, wanting—no, needing—to put some distance between himself and Taggie.
He’s by the telephone on the side table before he's fully conscious of his movements. Feeling pathetically, absurdly grateful for something to do with his hands, to look at anything but her, Rupert lifts the receiver and holds it to his ear.
Silence.
"Yeah." He clears his throat. "Nothing. The line must be down."
For a moment, he does not move. Does not immediately turn around but stands there with his palms pressed against cool mahogany. His back to both of them, he breathes. One, two, three. Counts the seconds the way he used to once count strides approaching a fence.
He tucks both hands firmly into the pockets of his trousers as he strides back to stand between the sofas. It’s a precaution, really, because Taggie is looking around him with those blue eyes that are still a little bright from the cold, her cheeks colored a deep, tell-tale pink where the wind bit at her. The urge to reach out and smoothen the damp strands of hair on her forehead is nearly irresistible. To press the back of his hand against that cold cheek and know, for certain, that she's warming up. Just to be sure she's alright.
His hands stay in his pockets.
“It reminds me of my granny,” she tells him, and he almost frowns.
What?
Oh, yes, he did just ask her about her Bournvita, didn’t he? He hadn’t meant to, and this is exactly why he’s afraid to spend more than ten seconds in Taggie’s presence. He never feels like he’s fully in control of his actions when she’s around, and he’s terrified of what else he might ask or confess without realizing it.
He needs a drink, a strong one.
Somehow, the next thing he knows, he’s asking her, “Sure you don't want something stronger?”
Sensible creature that she is, however, Taggie shakes her head. Just as well, Rupert can’t help but think with a wry smile. He’s seen her with glossy eyes and slurry speech once before, and he’s not sure he’d be rational enough if even a fraction of that Taggie appeared before him again.
“Well, I would love a drink,” drawls Cameron. A susurration coming from his other side alerts Rupert that she’s shifted in her seat, likely to look at him better.
He ought to turn, cross to the drinks cabinet, pour two fingers of scotch. Neat, like Cameron takes it. Then sit beside her, present a united front, or something approximating one at least. Perhaps mention that it's late. That he'll drive Taggie back home and return within the hour, and they can all pretend there was nothing more remarkable about this evening than a minor equine drama during a nasty storm.
What he says instead is: “Yeah, me too. It's all rather apocalyptic.”
But it’s not his words that will damn him in the end, he realizes a beat too late. It’s his eyes, which don’t waver from Taggie’s gamine face as he says it. Instinctively, in some distant part of his brain that hasn’t, by some miracle, abandoned sense yet, he realizes he’s just compromised himself in front of Cameron.
Cameron, who is sharp-tongued with an even sharper mind. Who will not take his lack of attention too kindly. It’s not particularly generous of him either to overlook the woman he is supposedly in a relationship with. True, they never actually named what they are to one another, but the details hardly matter now when he’s seduced her into his bed and invited her into his home.
Resigned to the fact that he'll have to smooth things over with Cameron later, he searches vaguely for some excuse. The days catching up to him, perhaps, which isn't entirely untrue. The weeks since Beattie Johnson's exposé have left him feeling flayed, scraped raw like he hasn't been since the very worst of the divorce. When his life was spread across pages of every national and international newspaper alike; a torrid story he’d played no small part in, ready to be picked over by strangers.
And although he is now back on Venturer’s board, and the gossip has started to fizzle, he still feels untethered. Lost. But he cannot afford to lose sight of the path ahead, the dark and winding road he himself had set upon with such brashness back in Spain.
It’s Cameron, the franchise, I can’t get out.
That’s what he’d told Taggie months ago, and Rupert thinks it's the most honest he has been with anyone in a long, long while. So yes, he'll deal with Cameron. He'll deal with all of it.
Later.
Because right now Taggie is before him looking so adorably exhausted. Chin dropping slightly, eyes gone soft and heavy-lidded. She’s so breathtakingly alive too, and situated not five feet from him. It’s as if his smoke-lined lungs can finally draw breath again.
Then she laughs. A giggle, quiet and slightly helpless, and he watches, fascinated, as her mouth curves around the word. Apocalyptic. Brows furrowing slightly as she stumbles over the syllables in concentration.
“You can say that again,” she muses, glancing up at the ceiling for a second before her eyes snap back to him. “Mmm. Well, I can't say that. What's it, apoca... apoca…”
“Apocalyptic,” he repeats, grinning in spite of himself.
The memory of a tennis court flashes before his eyes. Bright afternoon light, her hair wild and flaming, those furious blue eyes deliberately fixed on his as she stuttered over abhorrent. It feels like a lifetime ago.
It feels like yesterday.
He still remembers thinking she was pretty, in that first unguarded moment when they met. Lithe and flushed and indignant, this improbable creature that had marched into his land to dress him down for burning his fields. It would be a lie if he said he hadn’t been charmed, the way he was often charmed by most things that were young and bright and new, and then thought nothing further of it. Rupert had not known, then. Had not the faintest idea that this girl could take up so much space inside a person.
Taggie laughs again, shaking her head, mouth moving silently. Tomorrow's word of the day, maybe? If he's lucky.
Somewhere deep within the house, a clock chimes. Twelve, he counts, and reality comes rushing back. He can hear again the storm hurling itself against the windows. Can feel on the side of his face Cameron’s gaze.
Rupert clears his throat.
"Well," he begins, straightening slightly, and something knocks back into place in his bearing, an old armour finding its joints, "come on then. I'll drive you home."
Taggie blinks, as if she too had momentarily forgotten where she was. Then she’s scrambling to her feet, the tartan blanket falling away, his jumper swamping her frame as she mutters, “Oh, okay.”
Turning to Cameron, she adds, “Bye, thanks.”
He does not hear Cameron reply. With a nod in her direction, and what he hopes resembles a smile—though suspects it lands closer to a grimace—Rupert follows Taggie out into the corridor, pulling the drawing room door shut behind them.
A sigh escapes him as they weave through Penscombe.
By the door, Taggie sinks onto a bench, reaching for her boots with clumsy movements; she’s clearly running on the last fumes of a very long day. Her fingers find the zipper of her red jacket next and he watches her fumble with it, the metal tag refusing to catch. Every muscle in his body is straining to move toward her. He can see it clearly in his mind’s eye: walking to the bench, batting her hands away, zipping the jacket himself. But she feels so far away, and he doesn’t move. Even dear old Rocky can’t help him leap across the chasm that Rupert’s ripped open between them.
He’s half relieved, half disappointed when the zipper catches at last.
All too soon, Taggie is drawing in a deep breath before pushing herself upright and sending him an awkward little smile that twists something terrible in his chest.
Wordlessly, he pulls open the front door. Wind rushes at them, snatching at her hair and whipping it across her face. From the corners of his eyes, he sees Taggie duck her head into it without complaint, and he steps out ahead of her, into the dark, the chill biting at his own cheeks as he leads her down to the Jaguar waiting on the gravel.
His hands stay clenched in his pockets.