Nick Saunders hated idiot drivers, especially those drivers who had never seen a horse in the flesh before and had no idea how to act around one. He was still grumbling and muttering under his breath when he trotted into the yard sometime later.
Thankfully, the gelding had calmed down, none the worse for his little outing. Nick was halfway through bomb-proofing the horse for its owner, and although it wasn’t his usual job, he was happy to do it as a favour.
Slipping out of the saddle, he led the horse to a tether point and tied him to it.
‘Good lad,’ he murmured, loosening the girth and lifting the saddle off the animal’s back. The horse flicked his tail, stamping a hoof at the sudden chill on his super-heated flesh. Even though it was a relatively warm late spring afternoon, steam curled into the air from the horse’s damp coat.
After exchanging the bridle for a halter, Nick proceeded to brush the horse down. He loved nearly every aspect of his job and this bit was no exception. He found it soothing and therapeutic, the rhythmic strokes of the brush bringing a shine to the gelding’s coat. He didn’t necessarily like cleaning tack though, so when he spotted one of the grooms, he called the lad over.
‘Can you do me a favour and give Domino’s tack a clean?’ he asked.
‘OK, boss. Do you want me to put him away?’
‘No, I’ll do it. I want to check his tendons when he’s cooled off a bit.’
‘How was he?’ All the stable hands took a very active interest in the animals in Nick’s yard, and Jordan was no exception. Young and keen, the lad lived and breathed horses. Nick did too, but along the way he’d grown older and some of the keenness had withered a bit, experience taking its place.
‘Not bad, until some silly girl in a bright yellow Beetle held up the traffic, and some other idiot in a Range Rover beeped his horn at her, giving Domino the heebie-jeebies. For a minute, I thought he was going to bolt. Then the stupid woman in the Beetle pulled out around him and straight back in, cutting us up. It’s set him back a bit, I can tell you.’
‘Poor lad.’ Jordan gave the horse a pat on the neck. ‘Do you want me to school Achilles after lunch?’
‘Good idea. Put him on a long rein and put up some jumps set on the first hole. Walk him over those a couple of times, then raise it up a notch. Get him used to them.’
‘Right, boss.’
‘After that, you can ride Monte Carlo.’
‘Right, boss.’ Jordan’s grin split his face in two.
Nick continued grooming Domino, with an answering smile on his face. Apart from his own jumping, he also enjoyed bringing on young talent, both horses and riders, and Jordan was a talented lad indeed. The boy had already won several competitions in his age group, and his name was starting to be bandied about as the newest up-and-coming rider in various show jumping circles.
Nick remembered when he’d been in that position, far too many years ago than he cared to think about. He consoled himself with the thought that at least show jumping was one sport where age didn’t have too great a bearing. Take Peter Charles, for instance – he was nearly sixty and still competing. You couldn’t say that about many other sports. Most of them had you on the scrap heap at thirty.
Not that Nick was anywhere near sixty, but at thirty-two his body felt the knocks more profoundly than it had done a decade ago. Thankfully it had been a while since he’d been thrown (although he’d come close to it today, thanks to that idiot driver), but a careless hoof stamped on an unwary foot, or a thump in the face from a horse’s hard head hurt more than it used to. Only last week he’d been crushed against the side of a stall, and his ribs still ached even now. He really ought to be more careful – he, of all people, knew how easily accidents could happen, especially where horses were involved. He was also acutely aware of the aftermath.
No, he definitely wasn’t as young as he used to be. Still, he didn’t want to be anywhere else, or to be doing anything else. Horses were his life, the reason he got out of bed in the morning, and they had been good to him, giving him the lifestyle he loved, a certain degree of fame and a career he was darned good at. But he was forced to admit that he enjoyed the training more than the competing, these days.
He patted Domino on the rump to signal the grooming session was over, untied the horse’s halter and led him into his stall, where Nick unclipped the lead-rope and set the animal loose. The horse went straight to his wall-mounted drinker and sucked up mouthfuls of cool, fresh water, lifting his muzzle every now and again to look at Nick. Water droplets coated the fuzzy hairs on the horse’s nose and chin, and once he’d drunk his fill, Domino sauntered over to the door, hung his head over the top and wiped his face on Nick’s jacket.
‘Thanks,’ Nick said wryly, pushing the large head away.
The horse snorted at him and turned to his feed, those mobile lips pulling strands of dried grass out of the hay net and soon the sounds of contented munching filled the stall.
Nick wished he could have a leisurely lunch, too, but he had paperwork to do and calls to make, so Nick’s lunch would be a hastily made sandwich eaten at his desk. Sometimes he really wished he could swap places with his pampered equines.
‘Nick Saunders,’ he said, answering the phone around a mouthful of ham salad baguette. The baguette was a little stale, but better than the mould-spotted, sliced, white loaf in the bread box. He really needed to do a proper shop but couldn’t seem to find the time. Tia usually saw to the groceries, but lately…
‘Darling, it’s Miranda. How are you?’ A plummy voice drawled down the line and Nick rolled his eyes.
‘Fine thanks, and you?’
‘Much better for hearing your voice, sweetie. I’ve had a dreadful day.’
Nick guessed he was supposed to ask what was wrong, but he couldn’t be bothered. There was always some crisis or another in Miranda’s life, usually of the “my stylist is on holiday for two weeks – what am I supposed to do now?” variety. Miranda could be great fun, was certainly attractive, was well-bred, and had money (loads of it, courtesy of her father, Lord Tonbridge), but she was also rather narcissistic and shallow –although he had to admit, he’d once caught her crying over a TV advert for raising funds for children in Sudan. As he recalled, she’d sold one of her pieces of jewellery and had sent the proceeds to the charity. He’d admired her for putting her purse where her mouth was.
To be fair, the whole family were often involved in local causes, so Miranda often did her bit for the community. But she could be a bit dramatic sometimes.
‘There’s a reason for me calling,’ she continued, after a pause which Nick refused to fill. ‘We’re having a bit of a do up at the house on Saturday evening and I wondered if you’d like to come. Please say yes, because if you don’t, I’ll be stuck listening to Daddy’s old cronies drone on about the last hunt, or their stocks in some frightful company.’
‘Won’t there be anyone else there who you can talk to?’ Nick was playing devil’s advocate, but he just couldn’t help himself. He enjoyed teasing Miranda – she was so easy to wind up. It was one of his little pleasures in life and she knew he didn’t really mean it.
‘Silly! Of course, there will be! Mummy is expected to entertain the wives of the cronies, but,’ she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘listening to them is worse than talking to the cronies themselves. Please, please, come, and save me from a fate worse than death.’
‘You could always invite Tia, have some girly time,’ Nick suggested. ‘She’d love a chance to dress up.’ Actually, Tia probably wouldn’t. Nick scoured his brain trying to remember the last time his sister wore anything other than jeans and trainers and failed. He couldn’t recall the last time she had gone out, either.
‘I’d love to, but Mummy said she had to keep the table even.’
‘Eh?’
‘You know, boy, girl, boy, girl. Tia would mess up Mummy’s seating arrangement.’
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Nick thought. Seating plan? Really?
‘What’s your mother serving for tea?’ he asked instead, and opened a spreadsheet. He tried to read it, but multi-tasking wasn’t his thing.
‘It’s called supper as you well know,’ Miranda replied huffily. ‘I’m not sure what Mrs Abbott is preparing, but whatever it is, it will be delicious, as usual.’
‘In that case, I’ll come,’ Nick said. ‘A man’s gotta eat.’ And it didn’t do to refuse a dinner invitation from his wealthy neighbour, either…
‘Oh, you! You’re nothing but a tease, Nick.’
Mrs Abbott was one of the best cooks around and Nick had enjoyed many a meal at Tonbridge Manor. Supper indeed! Where he came from, the evening meal was called tea, the midday one was called dinner and supper was what you had if you were still hungry just before bed. He found he couldn’t help reminding Miranda of his less-than-salubrious background. Not that it put her off – it didn’t. Miranda was always seeking him out. In fact, Domino belonged to her, and although the horse did need a considerable amount of schooling to give him some manners and to calm him down, Nick had a sneaking suspicion Miranda had placed the horse in his yard purely as an excuse to see Nick. He had to admit there was some attraction between them (Miranda was a gorgeous girl) but not enough for Nick to act on, so he treated her with a certain amount of caution and reserve; he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea…
‘What time do you want me?’ he asked, clicking on an email, and was rewarded with a low chuckle.
‘Anytime, Nick, anytime.’
Nick waited her out. It was his own fault for not thinking about what he was saying.
‘Seven, for seven-thirty,’ she eventually said, with a sigh.
‘I’ll be there,’ he promised, and ended the call.
The penance of having to eat surrounded by Lord and Lady Tonbridge’s friends and acquaintances, was offset by the opportunity to network. They might not necessarily be horsey people but they moved in those circles, and training and riding show jumpers was an expensive business. Nick needed all the referrals and recommendations he could get, and word-of-mouth was an excellent way of getting those.
Turning back to the more immediate problem of which horse to enter for what competition, he enlarged the spreadsheet and stared at it. It was a hefty document, complex and thorough, and he studied it for several long minutes, before leaning back in his office chair.
Nick had fourteen jumpers in his stable, five of them his. The rest he trained for other owners, and sometimes he rode those horses in competition and sometimes they were ridden by other riders. In addition, he had a couple of problem animals (to Nick’s surprise, he found he had an aptitude for turning “difficult” horses into steadier mounts), and one or two youngsters who were being gently broken in.
It was a lot to juggle. The stable hands saw to the day-to-day running of the yard and Nick would be lost without them (he had five, three of them lived on-site and the other two in Tanglewood itself), but it was still a great deal of work. Tia helped as best she could, despite her disability, and she was a whizz at organising the yard and the house, but recently some of her hard-won sparkle had deserted her, and she didn’t seem to be as focused as usual. Take the grocery situation, for example…
He promised to sit down over their evening meal and try to get to the bottom of what was worrying her. But that was later, and this was now, and he had work to do, so he shoved his concerns about his sister to the back of his mind and tried to concentrate on the job in hand.
But one thing still rankled and wasn’t pushed away so easily – the image of a red-headed girl driving a yellow Beetle, waving apologetically at him.
Bloody idiot drivers!