‘What the fuck — lemme go!’ Fighting tears, she clawed fruitlessly at the imprisoning wooden arms, until she nearly pulled the chair over.

‘It’s a debtor’s chair,’ mocked Rannaldini, as he closed in on her. ‘Eighteenth century. Used to trap debtors like you. I’ve been looking for one for ages. You owe me two grand for your journey home, remember.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’ Tabitha flinched away.

When she could retreat no further, she allowed his fingers to caress her cheek for a second, then dropped her head like a snowdrop.

‘My father’s such a bastard.’

Rannaldini shrugged.

‘Maybe he’s pleased Marcus is gay. Probably never wanted a son competing with him.’

Having left pawmarks all over Helen’s pale blue Regency sofa, Sharon was now attacking a cushion Helen had embroidered of a virgin and a unicorn. Neither Tab nor Rannaldini took any notice.

Rupert’s remark about gaining a daughter when Marcus had shacked up with Nemerovsky had been the one that had hurt her most, confessed Tab.

‘He’s got a daughter, for Christ’s sake.’

‘And what a daughter,’ said Rannaldini lovingly.

‘I want to make him madder than he’s ever been before.’

‘Let’s find something really to worry him.’

Rannaldini moved fast. With his Polaroid memory, he had not forgotten four and a half years ago, his leading jockey, Isaac Lovell, and Tabitha exchanging an impassioned eye-meet in the paddock before the Rutminster Cup. Isaac had been riding Rannaldini’s vicious but generally victorious horse The Prince of Darkness, who’d fallen at the last fence. Tabitha had been the groom looking after Arthur, a big grey gelding, trained by her father, Rupert.

Tragically Arthur had died of a massive heart-attack, way ahead of the field but just the wrong side of the winning-post. Slumped sobbing over Arthur’s body, Tabitha had been too distraught to feel the hand of sympathy Isaac Lovell had dropped on her shoulder as he led home the unhurt but shaken Prince of Darkness.

The Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells had been feuding for nearly forty years, since Rupert had bullied Jake at prep school for being the cook’s son and a gypsy with a wasted leg. Gyppo Jake and Rupert had slogged it out on the international show-jumping circuit throughout the seventies, with Jake finally getting his revenge during the Los Angeles Olympics by running off with Rupert’s then wife Helen.

Later Jake had returned to his wife, Tory, Helen had eventually married Rannaldini, Jake and Rupert had both switched to training, but their feud had not abated. One reason, apart from loathing Rannaldini, why Rupert had disinherited Tabitha and Marcus was because photographs had appeared of both of them smiling at Jake Lovell, who as the Maestro’s trainer had been a witness at Rannaldini’s wedding to Helen.

If Helen and Jake had once fallen so passionately in love, reflected Rannaldini, might not history repeat itself? By a delicious coincidence, Isa Lovell was coming to lunch tomorrow, which would give Tab a decent night’s sleep.

Unhampered by scruples, Rannaldini didn’t give a stuff that Isa was already living just outside Melbourne with a tough little tomboy called Martie. They had invested in a yard that had done brilliantly its first season but which still needed capital. For this reason, Isa had come home to make serious money in the National Hunt season and also to help his father, Jake, now increasingly debilitated by the polio he’d had as a child. Rannaldini had several horses in training with Jake, and had invited Isa over to try out two mares he had bought in France and to plan for the future.

As usual Rannaldini had another motive. During the winter in Melbourne, Isa had won three of Australia’s biggest races, including their Grand National, for Baby Spinosissimo, the young tenor, whom Rupert had suggested should play Don Carlos. Isa would know if Baby was sufficiently broke to accept the part for a quarter of Fat Franco’s fee.

There was nothing youthful about Isa Lovell. Money had always been tight when he was a child: at six he was helping in the yard and jumping at shows, at eight coping with very public trouble in his parents’ marriage, and his mother’s attempted suicide. Despite having been champion jockey three times, he was aware at twenty-six that he would soon have to support his parents, and was therefore considering moving into training.

Isa had trendily tousled black hair, lowering black brows, and slanting, suspicious dark eyes dominating a pale, expressionless face. He looked like the second murderer in Macbeth and had a Birmingham accent you could cut with a flick-knife. But at five foot eight, he was tall for a jockey, with an undeniable brooding gypsy glamour. Not above dirty tricks on the course, where he was nicknamed the Black Cobra, he was as arrogant as Tabitha and, as champion jockey, had had his pick of the girls.

After fourteen hours’ sleep, a long, scented bath and a raid on her mother’s bedroom Tab, unaware Isa was coming to lunch, wandered into the Blue Living Room. She reeked of Helen’s favourite scent, Jolie Madame. She was wearing Helen’s new dark green cashmere polo-neck, which turned her turquoise eyes almost emerald. Her newly washed hair flopped arctic blonde over her white forehead, as she sidled over to the drinks tray to get stuck into the vodka.

‘That is not a suitable breakfast and that’s my roll-neck,’ began Helen furiously.

‘Shut up,’ murmured Rannaldini, but with such venom that any further reproach froze on Helen’s lips. ‘We have a guest. Tabitha, my dear, I don’t think you’ve met Isaac Lovell.’

Tab halted, tossing her head so haughtily Isa could see up the nostrils of her long Greek nose and the curling blonde underside of her lashes. But as he breathed in her scent, he was so unaccountably overwhelmed by foreboding that he found himself trembling.

Tab in turn saw a young man as dark and narrow as the gallows, and as still as the embracing Cupid and Psyche on the plinth beside him. His eyes were filled with hostility and in his hand was a glass of tomato juice as blood red as the feud between the two families.

‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ she demanded in outrage.

‘Discussing my horses,’ said Rannaldini.

Everyone jumped as the door crashed open and a furiously growling Sharon the Labrador backed into the room frantically worrying a sheepskin slipper. Hanging on to the other end, growling equally loudly but looking more sheepish than the slipper because he knew the drawing rooms were out of bounds, was Tabloid, Rannaldini’s senior Rottweiler.

‘Get them out of here,’ screamed Helen, as a rose-garlanded Chelsea bowl circa 1763 smashed into a hundred pieces. ‘You know those uncontrollable brutes aren’t allowed in the house.’

‘How did he get in, then?’ spat Tab, scowling at Isa.

‘Don’t be so goddam rude,’ shouted Helen.

Ignoring such brawling, Isa picked up Rannaldini’s Times and turned to the racing pages.

Lunch was predictably unrelaxed. Isa, who had the conversational skills of a Trappist monk, who had never visited Sydney Opera House or seen the Nolans and the Boyds in any of the art galleries, and who had never forgiven Helen for nearly destroying his parents’ marriage, turned his back on her and talked horses with Rannaldini. Watching his weight, he drank only Perrier, picked the bits of lobster out of the delectable mango and shellfish salad and had no tartare sauce or vegetables with his Dover sole. Tab just drank vodka and, horrified she was so violently attracted to Isa, disagreed with everything he said. Rannaldini watched them in delight, an evil smile flickering over his lips like a snake’s tongue.

After lunch Rannaldini, Isa and Tabitha rode the new French horses and the dappled-grey Engineer round Paradise. Tab, who had put on a blue baseball cap and an indigo bomber jacket, with ‘Can’t Catch Me’ printed on the back, proceeded to show off, executing dressage steps as gracefully as a ballerina, jumping huge fences and five-bar gates, beating Isa easily as they thundered down the long ride past Valhalla lake.

Passing the gates leading to Hermione’s beautiful mill, River House, Tabitha noticed her fiendish son Little Cosmo Harefield touting for a ‘fiver for the guy’, who looked surprisingly like Rannaldini’s fearsome PA, Miss Bussage.

‘What’s that obnoxious brat doing at home?’ she asked, knowing perfectly well that Little Cosmo was Rannaldini’s son. ‘I thought he’d gone to prep school.’

‘Cosmo has been suspended for bullying.’

Tab was shocked by the pride in Rannaldini’s voice.

‘Like son like father,’ she said disapprovingly.

Rannaldini laughed.

On the village green, parents and children were happily building a huge bonfire. As the horses clattered down Paradise High Street, lights were coming on in the cottages. Seeing people companionably having tea and watching television, Tab was overcome with longing for Penscombe.

‘What date is it?’ she asked.

‘October the thirtieth,’ said Isa.

‘It’s Daddy’s birthday tomorrow,’ she said bleakly.

Mist was rising from the river as they turned right towards Valhalla. The house itself was hidden by its great conspirator’s cloak of woods, but ahead in a dense copse known as Hangman’s Wood, they caught a glimpse of Rannaldini’s watch-tower.

The roar of a tractor taking hay to Rannaldini’s horses was accompanied by deep complaining from the rooks. An early owl hooted. In the dusk, Tab kept losing sight of Sharon the Labrador as the dog plunged into a stream choked by leaves as yellow as herself.

Entering Rannaldini’s estate down a little-used back lane, The Engineer stopped, and trembled violently, sweat blackening his dappled coat, his big brave eyes rolling. Even when Isa and Rannaldini rode on ahead, he refused to follow them between two gnarled oaks into a tree tunnel in which blackthorn, hazel and hawthorn intertwined overhead like a guard of honour.