'Pooh,' said Will, coming into Chessie's bedroom with his new polo stick, and breathing in the collective reek of Duo Tan, Immac and nail polish.

'Don't touch,' screamed Chessie as he trotted purposefully towards the make-up bottles on her dressing table. She loathed being distracted when she was getting ready - it was all Ricky's fault for not being able to afford a nanny. Nor could she start washing her hair until he'd gone. Then she found the water hadn't been turned on. She also dried her hair upside down too long so it stood up like a porcupine. She didn't know if she was more nervous of seeing Bart or Ricky finding out. It was so cold, she put on a pale pink cashmere dress, which was near enough flesh tones in colour, to make her look as though she was wearing nothing at all. Sticking her tongue out at Herbert's portrait, she ran down the stairs.

Out in the yard, she was relieved to find that Louisa, Ricky's youngest and most amenable groom, had been left in charge. Plump, pink-faced, always smiling, Louisa had been described by Chessie in a b.i.t.c.hier moment as looking like a piglet who'd just won the pools. She was a complete contrast to Ricky's head groom, Frances, who, scrawny, angry and equally obsessed with Ricky and the horses, was always finding fault with the other grooms' work. Chessie had nicknamed Frances and Louisa 'Picky and Perky'. Perky was now trying to coax Mattie to eat a carrot.

'Can you look after Will for a couple of hours?' Chessie asked her. 'I'm just popping out to lunch with a girlfriend.'

'Pooh,' said Will. 'Mattie's leg smells awful.' Then, realizing Chessie was getting into the car without him, started to cry.

'Mummy won't be long. I'll bring you a present,' called Chessie as she drove off.

'Girlfriend indeed,' muttered Louisa, catching a whiff of Diorissimo. 'Mummy's gone a-hunting.'

Ten miles from Robinsgrove the wind dropped, the sun came out and the temperature rocketed, shrivelling the wild roses hanging from the hedgerows. Chessie could see her face reddening in the driving mirror and feel the sweat trickling down her ribs. It was all Ricky's fault for not being able to afford a car with air-conditioning. There were no shops on the way for her to buy something cooler. Her mouth tasted acid with nerves.

Rubens' Retreat, once a large country house, now an hotel, was set in lush parkland. Reputed to have the best food and the softest double beds in England, it was a favourite haunt of the rich and libidinous. Inside it was wonderfully cool. Chessie nipped into the Ladies to remove her stockings, tone down her flushed face and clean her teeth.

'I've just had gastric flu and keep getting this terrible taste in my mouth,' she explained to the attendant who'd seen it all before.

She found Bart in an alcove, screened by huge plants. On the telephone, he only paused to kiss her and wave her to the chair beside him. He was very brown and wearing a cream silk shirt, a pin-striped suit and an emerald-green tie, which matched the greensward on which naked ladies were sporting with cherubs on the mural round the walls.

'I don't care if the price is rising, keep buying, but spread it around; we should have control by tomorrow lunchtime,' ordered Bart, waving to the waiter to pour Chessie a gla.s.s of champagne.

While half his mind wrestled with the complicated finances of one of the fiercest take-overs Wall Street had ever known, his eyes ran over Chessie. She was as flushed as a peony, that pink dress emphasized every curve like a second skin. As the waiter laid a dark green napkin across her crotch, it was as though he was putting on a fig leaf. Bart wanted to take her upstairs and screw her at once.

'Sorry about that,' he said as he came off the telephone.

'Aren't you drinking?' asked Chessie, noticing his gla.s.s of Perrier.

'I'm driving.'

'Perrier don't make you merrier,' said Chessie idly. 'Just looking at you makes me drunk,' said Bart. 'Where does Ricky think you are?'

'At home. I was terrified the match might be cancelled.' 'It isn't. I checked it out,' said Bart. 'How is he?' 'Preoccupied. Mattie's deteriorating; Kinta won't stop.' 'Sure he hasn't got a bit on the side?' asked Bart as they studied the menu.

Chessie laughed sourly. 'The only bits Ricky's interested in go in horses' mouths.'

'How was he when you got home after Lady Waterlane's reception?'

'Asleep in the hay beside Manie.'

'That figures. He thinks he's Jesus Christ anyway.' The telephone rang.

'Choose what you want to eat,' said Bart picking up the receiver. 'I'd like poached salmon, zucchini and no potatoes,' he told the waiter.

'Why are you so keen to take over this company?' asked Chessie, as he came off the telephone five minutes later.

'Chief Executive, Ashley Roberts, blackballed me at the Racquet Club ten years ago.'

'You are are into revenge,' said Chessie, taking a slug of champagne. into revenge,' said Chessie, taking a slug of champagne.

'Never forget a put-down. That all right?' He brandished his fork in the direction of Chessie's fish pate.

'Fraction too much fennel,' said Chessie. 'OK, OK, that wasn't a put-down. I used to cook for a living before I got married. I'll cook for you one day.'

Bart ma.s.saged her arm. 'I sure hope so. I'm sorry about Grace.'

'Did the b.l.o.o.d.y Mary come out of her shirt?'

'No. She called Ralph. He's making her another one.'

'I suppose that's what shirty means. How was the wedding? Is Grace still Biddling while Rome burns?'

Bart tapped her nose with his finger. 'You must not take the p.i.s.s.'

'How did you two meet?' asked Chessie as the waiter took away her hardly touched pate.

'I was a test pilot at NASA. Great life, none of us thought we'd live beyond thirty. You can't imagine the joy of testing an airplane, learning its personality, talking to it, poking and probing, finding new things. I was a little boy from nowhere, but when I flew I felt like a G.o.d.'

He blushed, ashamed of betraying emotion. 'Grace came to visit the plant, and that was that. She grounded me but she backed me.'

Chessie was fascinated: 'How come you got so rich?'

Bart shrugged. 'I build the best airplanes and helicopters in the world and I bought land when it was worth $300 an acre. Now it's going for $10,000. All markets go in cycles, the skill is knowing when to get in and when to get out.'

Chessie breathed in the sweet scent of white freesias and stocks in the centre of the dark green tablecloth.

'How were your children when you went back?'

'OK.' Quite unselfconsciously Bart got photographs out of his wallet.

'That's Luke. He's twenty-two.'

'Nice face,' said Chessie.

'Comes from my first marriage. Doesn't live with us. He's been working his way up as a groom in a polo yard. Very proud. Won't accept a cent from me.'

'Sounds like Ricky.'

'More sympatico than Ricky,' said Bart flatly. 'This is Red.'

Chessie whistled. 'Wow, that's an even nicer face. He really is beautiful.' Then, sensing she'd said the wrong thing: 'Nearly as good-looking as his father.'

Bart looked mollified: 'All the girls are crazy for Red. He's kinda wild. He got looped at the wedding, and threw his cookies all over his granny's porch. Plays polo like an angel. If he'd quit partying he'd go to ten. And here's my baby, Bibi.' Bart's voice softened.

'Now she is like you,' said Chessie. 'What a clever, intelligent face.'

No one could call her pretty with that crinkly hair and heavy jaw.

'Bibi is super-bright. Harvard Business School, only one interested in coming into the business. She's Daddy's girl. Doesn't get on with Grace. She might relate to a younger woman,' he added pointedly.

He is definitely putting out signals, thought Chessie, as their second course arrived.

'D'you often have affairs with men who aren't your husband?' said Bart, forking up poached salmon. 'Not since I was married. And you?'

'Occasionally. They weren't important.'

Chessie examined the oily sheen on a red leaf of radicchio. 'Is this?'

'I guess so. That's why I didn't call you before.'

Elated, Chessie regaled him with scurrilous polo gossip, knowing it would delight him to know how other players ripped off their patrons. Aware she was dropping the twins in it, and not caring, she told him about them selling one of Victor's own horses back to him.

'Are you going to Deauville?' asked Bart as he came off the telephone for the third time.

'Not unless Ricky forks out for a temporary nanny. The grooms get so bolshy about baby-sitting and Deauville's no fun unless you can go out in the evening. We haven't had a holiday since we were married,' said Chessie bitterly and untruthfully.

Bart traced the violet circles under her eyes.

'You need one. Don't you ever get any sleep?'

'Not since I met you,' said Chessie, who had drunk almost an entire bottle of champagne.

It excited her wildly that this man at the same time as dealing in billions of dollars could give her his undivided attention. All her grievances came pouring out: 'Having been dragged up by a succession of nannies himself, Rickythinks Will ought to be brought up by his mother.'

Will's a nice kid,' said Bart. 'He's only whiny, overadrenalized and super-aggressive because he's picking up tensions from your marriage. You're both too screwed up to give him enough attention.'

'That's not true.' Chessie dropped her fork with a furious clatter. 'If you're going to talk to me like that, I'm going.' Bart caught her wrist, pulling her back.

'Stop over-reacting,' he said sharply. 'You haven't done anything wrong. Will's playing up because you're miserable.'

'Does your son Red throw up in porches and no doubt in Porsches because you and Grace aren't happy?' spat Chessie.

'Grace no longer excites me. Let's go upstairs,' said Bart calmly and he opened a door hidden in the romping nymphs behind him which led straight into a lift. 'The beauty of this place is you don't have to go through Reception to get to the bedrooms.'

It was a most unsatisfactory coupling. Bart was too anxious to get at her. Chessie was too angry and uptight to get aroused. Despite her moans and writhings, Bart knew she hadn't come. Sick with disappointment and frustration, she got dressed. Here was just one more failure because she was not able to tell people what she liked, that she never came from straight s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, and never with Ricky.

'Poor little Rick's girl,' said Bart, kissing her forehead. It's all over, thought Chessie miserably.

As they went outside, Bart's telephone rang again. He talked so long that Chessie was about to wander off without even saying goodbye when he hung up in jubilation.

'I've got forty-nine per cent. By tomorrow lunchtime I'll have nailed him.'

'What's your next take-over target?' asked Chessie sulkily.

'You are,' said Bart. He glanced at his watch. 'They'll just be throwing-in. We're going for a ride.'

Like all polo players, he drove too fast, overtaking with split-second timing, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on Chessie's thigh. As the limo swung round the hangar, the helicopter standing on the ap.r.o.n was as blue as the Flyer's polo shirts and as the sky above. On its side in dark blue letters was written: 'Alderton - your friend in high places'.

Chessie sat in the pa.s.senger seat with the full flight harness biting into her pink dress. Having gone round turning on switches and tightening screws as a pre-flight check, Bart had taken off his jacket and his green silk tie, and was secured by just a seat belt round his waist.

Satisfied everything was in order, he started up the engine. There was a thrilling roar as the jets took a grip on the rotors which quickly accelerated to their operating speed. With a last look round to see everything was clear, Bart alerted the control tower, who asked for his destination and initial reading.

'We're going to do local flying towards the south-east, not above a thousand feet,' said Bart.

As they flew over yellowing fields and rain-drenched woods and villages, Chessie gave a scream of joy.

'Isn't it heaven, just like a child's farm? If you picked up the houses they'd be hollow underneath.'

She longed to run her hand up and down Bart's pinstriped thigh, hard as iron like Ricky's.

'There's David Waterlane's place,' said Bart. 'You can see them stick and balling.'

Down below Chessie could see the dark, silken flash of the lake flecked with duck, and the dark brown oval of the exercise ring.

'If you look closely,' she said, 'you may see Clemency sunbathing in the nude, or Juan getting his back brown on top of her. Talk about One flew over the Cuckold's Nest.'

Bart laughed. The sun was beating down on the gla.s.s bubble. Oh h.e.l.l, I'm getting too hot again, thought Chessie.

Five minutes later Bart pointed out a beautiful, white house with a green roof, set in a clearing thickly ringed with woodland. He flew so low that Chessie could see the cars glittering outside the front door and white figures leaping on the tennis court. The swimming-pool glittered in the sunshine like an aquamarine.

'Gorgeous place,' breathed Chessie.

'Belongs to Ashley Roberts,' Bart's voice thickened with excitement. 'When I take him over tomorrow and fire him later this year, he'll be forced to put it on the market. How'd you like to live there?'

Chessie went very still.

'We rattle enough in our present house,' she said lightly.

Ahead loomed a huge, apparently substantial, whiteand-mushroom-brown cloud which had formed into turrets, icebergs and snow drifts.

'Let's go through that archway,' said Bart, not even touching the snow-white edges. Now he was flying alongside a ma.s.sive, pinky cliff, just clipping it, laughing as Chessie flinched away. 'I used to play around for hours like this when I was a boy. Now I'm going right into this cloud. This is the most scary feeling in the world,' he added, as they were enveloped in dense fog. 'Even after years of flying it still scares the s.h.i.t out of me. You can't figure if you're upside down. You have a total disregard of what the brain is telling you. It's completely disorientating.' Then, as he came out into brilliant sunshine, he smiled at her, powerful as he was handsome. 'Pretty much like meeting you.'

He does like me, thought Chessie in ecstasy, and I'm mad about him. He's tied up in a mega-take-over, and he's fooling around in the air with me.

The sun was beating down on the bubble again. The shimmering fields and woods seemed to stretch for ever. Sheep huddled under the trees like lice.

'I'm baking,' gasped Chessie, wishing she could find some shade like them.

'Take your dress off,' said Bart idly. 'Just undo the harness and take it off.

'Ker-ist,' he said a moment later, as Chessie threw the dress behind her seat. 'Oh, Christ.'

She was only wearing a pair of rose-patterned white pants. The slenderness of her waist emphasized the fullness of her thighs, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s soft and white-gold in the sunshine with the nipples pink and spread. Her cheeks were very flushed, her eyelids drooped over eyes leaden with l.u.s.t.

She'd put Victor's bimbo in the shade, thought Bart. She was more beautiful than any of the girls his son Red attracted.

'Two joysticks,' murmured Chessie, putting her hand on his c.o.c.k. 'I know which one I'd like best.'