Will and Nav parted ways once they’d escaped the dining hall, but now Will was faced with finding a place to go. He knew that the second Elaine noticed he was gone, she would hunt him down, and he didn’t want to deal with her anymore, not without a break first.

He ended up charging through the tack-room door and almost knocking his riding instructor off his feet.

“Whoa!” Rudy cried in surprise, almost dropping the stack of clean saddle pads in his hands.

“You’ve got to let me hide in here,” Will pleaded. “I just need five minutes without Elaine!”

That sparked Rudy’s interest. “What’s going on?”

Will opened his mouth to explain, then debated what to say. Rudy was Kit’s dad, after all. “Okay, so I wanted advice about”— he fidgeted — “a girl . . . that I like . . . but Elaine thinks she tutoring me, and worse, now I think she might fancy me again.”

Rudy gave him a weird look that looked as if . . . well, Will wasn’t sure what it looked like.

He blundered on. “Yeah, it gets better, by which I mean it gets worse. So I actually used her advice on . . . the girl I like.”

“And how did that go?” Rudy asked, setting the saddle pads on a storage shelf.

“How do you think? I’m hiding in the barn with you.”

“Does this girl know how you feel?”

“No. That’s the point. I acted like an idiot, and now she’s never going to talk to me again!”

The last thing Will expected was Rudy’s response: he chuckled.

“Thanks a lot!” Will snapped.

“I’m only laughing because it’s happened to me,” Rudy confessed. He picked up another pile of saddle pads. “I was about your age. Gabrielle was her name. I’d start tripping over myself and forget how to speak every time she was within a mile of me.” He put the stack on top of the others with a soft whump sound. “And do you know why?”

Will had no idea what this Gabrielle had to do with anything. He shook his head.

“Because I liked her.” Rudy chuckled again. “That’s just how it works. I don’t know why.”

Well, what good was that? Will had a crush on Kit and acted like a complete fool whenever he was around her, and there was no way to fix it? That was simply how crushes worked? What kind of lame advice was that? “So what am I supposed to do?”

“I’d start by being honest with Elaine. You don’t want her to get the wrong idea.”

“That’s the easy part. What about —?”

“The other girl? I think I’d start with an apology. After all, you are friends, right?” Rudy put an unmistakable emphasis on the word friends.

What did he mean by that? “Friends, yeah,” Will agreed.

“Yeah,” Rudy said. “Friends. For a long time.” He put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “A long, long time.”

Oh. Will realized that Rudy knew exactly who the mysterious object of his affections was. He nodded, trying to look like he was casually accepting advice when, in fact, he was accepting Official Advice from the Father.

He had to find Kit right away, but he didn’t know her schedule well enough to know if she had a class right now. The easiest place to check first would be the student lounge, so he headed there.

The second he poked his head through the door, Elaine said, “Hi!” She was seated at one of the red couches exactly as she’d sat during their first tutoring session. “I thought you’d forgotten about our study date.”

Which, of course, he had forgotten. But now Will was glad that he’d stumbled into it. As much as he needed to straighten things out with Kit, he also needed to tell Elaine the truth. It wasn’t going to be fun, but Rudy was right — it wasn’t fair to let her keep hoping.

“I was thinking we could try something new today,” Elaine said as he sat next to her.

“Yeah, um . . .” Will cast a glance around the room. Good, Kit wasn’t there. Funny how he’d come looking for her and now was glad he hadn’t found her. He cleared his throat nervously, wondering how to derail Elaine’s plans without breaking her heart. “Do you mind if I start?” he asked as an idea came to him.

This seemed to delight her. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises! I just knew once you got into the Whiltshire Study Method, you’d be hooked.”

Seeing her so pleased made it all the harder for Will to forge ahead. “So,” he began gently, “we’ll go back to Walt.”

“Okay.”

“And we’ll say that Walt has . . . a friend.”

Elaine nodded, entranced.

“And we’ll call her Frances.”

“Okay.”

This was so hard. Now that he knew what was really going on, he could see Elaine’s crush so clearly. Her eyes sparkled with it. Her whole body radiated it. She was so filled with absolute crushiness that Will forced his vision to go out of focus on purpose, so he wouldn’t see the details of her expression when he delivered the blow. “And Frances is really great,” he resumed. “And she helps Walt with all sorts of things, because she really cares about him . . . as a friend.” He tensed, feeling Elaine’s full attention on him like a lead weight on his conscience. “So, to put this properly, Walt . . . likes . . . another girl.” There it was. The blow was delivered.

It struck home. Elaine looked away.

Will blinked and brought his vision back into focus, feeling like a coward. Here he was, hurting a girl he did care about, just not . . . that way . . . and he was trying to avoid the consequences. The least he could do was be honest, both with her and with himself. “Um . . . and Walt just wants to make sure that he’s clear about that . . . with Frances.”

Elaine’s eyes met his.

Will forced himself to go on. “And I mean, Walt really likes Frances as well, as a friend, and I really appreciate all your help tutoring. I just want to make sure there’s . . . no confusion.”

Elaine seemed flat and colorless now. Her features had gone slack, her happy smile gone. Moving with little jerks, no doubt caused by reining in her emotions, she began to collect her things — her textbook, pen, notebook, tote bag — while saying, “You’ll have to excuse me. There’s only so many times one girl can hear we’re just friends.” She managed to look at him. “I’m very, very, exceptionally clear on that. If you keep bringing it up like this, I’ll have to wonder if you believe it.” With all her belongings gathered, she made a hasty exit.

Will watched her go, wondering if he was a good person or a really rotten one. At this particular moment, he wasn’t sure.

Kit spent the early afternoon moping. When she’d left her last class, she’d decided to sit in the corridor near the main stairway to calm down and gather her thoughts. She was still there, though her thoughts remained distinctly ungathered. In fact, they were swirling willy-nilly around in her head so fast, she was feeling dizzy — thoughts about TK, where he might be, if he was being treated all right, if her dad would change his mind and help her find him, where Anya was, if she was ever coming back . . .

“I was disappointed that you didn’t take Coco Pie for a ride.”

Kit had been staring into space. She looked up at the sound of Lady Covington’s voice. The sight of the headmistress made her instantly angry. “Well,” she practically snarled, “I guess we’re both disappointed, then.”

Lady Covington tried again. “It’s important for a rider’s growth to diversify, to become comfortable on other horses.”

Kit stood up. “I don’t want to grow as a rider! I want TK!”

“I make the rules of this institution, not you. Covington is a riding academy. You will ride, or you cannot stay. Am I making myself clear?”

“Perfectly.” Kit turned her back on the headmistress and walked away.

“Katherine, come back here! Katherine, I’m talking to you!”

Talk all you want, Kit thought as she left. I’m not listening.

Rudy stood before Lady Covington’s desk listening to a lecture, and as usual, it made him feel like he was the student in trouble rather than his daughter.

“She had no right to speak to me like that,” the headmistress finished hotly.

“I’ll talk to her,” Rudy promised, “but first I need you to reconsider this whole TK situation — that’s all.” He knew TK was trouble. That was clear. But it was also clear that Kit’s connection with the ornery gelding was the only thing holding her together right now. Lady Covington refused to even consider that selling him may have hurt Kit more than she intended and in ways she hadn’t anticipated.

As a father, Rudy could see that his daughter needed to be taught a lesson, but Kit was a wild spirit, like her mother. In horse training terms, you don’t tame a spirited animal with threats. You don’t take away things in which it finds comfort. You have to lure the animal to you, earn its trust, and make it want to cooperate. With patience and love, you have to show it that obedience brings reward, not punishment. Otherwise the horse will flee, if not physically then at least mentally. You will never be able to connect with it, and the animal will be useless for any kind of meaningful work.

Lady Covington, however, believed in strict control, period, and she expected it from her staff as much as from her students. In terms of her decision to sell TK, she would not budge. “It’s too late for that,” she said. “Who runs things, Mr. Bridges? You or your teenage daughter?”

“You don’t get it.” Rudy sighed. He truly didn’t want to argue with his boss, but why couldn’t she at least try to see things from another point of view? “We’re a team,” he said, putting as much emphasis as he could into those words because they defined his relationship with his daughter, a relationship that worked, especially now that Kit’s mother was gone. He and Kit were both still trying to recover from total devastation. Their little family of three had been like a three-legged stool, whole and well-balanced. But now that one of the legs was gone, the stool kept falling over. If TK could be a temporary third leg on the stool, maybe that wasn’t so bad. “We’re still figuring things out,” he explained, “and I —”

Will burst through the door. “I’m really sorry to disturb you, Lady Covington, and sir,” he added to Rudy, “but it’s Kit. I needed to talk to her, and I went to her room and the student lounge and the classrooms and — I looked everywhere! And — she’s gone.”