Page 49 of The Society Catch
‘Yes, Hickling. Is there a problem? She isn’t lame is she?’
‘No, Miss, nothing like that. It’s just that the Colonel ordered her rested and to have extra oats because of the long journey when you arrived here.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, Miss, now she’s as fresh as paint and ready to jump out of her skin. I don’t know as how you really ought to be riding her. Perhaps I ought to send one of the lads out on her today, shake some of the mischief out.’
‘Nonsense, I can manage her,’ Joanna said, walking firmly up to the mare and pulling on her gloves. ‘I am only going to ride in the paddock.’
She gathered up the reins and stood waiting for Hickling to give her a leg up. ‘Thank you.’
Giles arrived in the yard just as she was hooking her right knee over the pommel and flicking her skirts into order. Apparently he had come straight from the breakfast table, hatless. Joanna pulled down her veil and made a business out of gathering her reins.
‘Hickling, is that mare fit to be ridden?’
‘Fit? Yes, Colonel. I was just saying to Miss Joanna, she’s jumping out of her skin after all that rest and oats.’
‘Jo...Miss Fulgrave, I think you had better dismount. Perhapswe can find another horse for you this morning.’
‘You think I am an incompetent rider?’
‘You know I do not, but Moonstone–’
‘But Moonstone is about to become a birthday – or is it a bride-gift? Surely you would not deny me one last ride on her, Colonel?’
‘I am not giving Moonstone to Suzanne if that is what you mean.’
‘No? Then you will have no objection to me riding her, will you?’
‘Joanna…’
But as he spoke Joanna dug her heel into Moonstone’s side. The mare needed no encouragement. From a standing start she was cantering as they reached the stable yard arch. Joanna took her under it in a sweeping turn towards the front drive all thoughts of a gentle hack in the paddocks forgotten.
Luckily the fine weather had given way to showers during the night and had softened the ground just enough to cushion the hard pace as she took one of the rides that headed deep into the dense beech woods, following the very edge of the Chilterns before they plunged steeply down into the Vale below.
As she rode Joanna caught glimpses through the trees of the fields and hedges, the curls of smoke over the villages, but her attention was far too concentrated on Moonstone to admire the view. The mare was proving just as much a handful as Hickling had warned and Joanna was aware that she was riding at the very limit of her skill and strength.
Not that there was any spite in the mare, but she had been bored standing in a strange paddock and the sensation of a familiar rider and wide open rides stretching before her was too much to resist. Joanna sensed that if she was allowed her head she would calm down of her own accord after a mile or two and there was no point in indulging in a fight.
The concentration needed to keep balanced and maintain at least the illusion of control helped blot out the memory of Giles’s face as he read Lady Suzanne’s letter, but try as she might Joanna could not stop the words,Announcement…very soon,repeating themselves over and over again to the rhythm of the hoof beats.
Then Moonstone burst out of the ride into a small clearing where four ways met and ran straight into a herd of fallow deer which had been grazing on the clipped turf. The hinds bounded away but the stag, his spread of antlers broad and menacing, stood his ground, head lowered.
Moonstone stopped so abruptly that Joanna almost went over her head. Somehow she scrambled back into the saddle from her sprawl on the mare’s neck, groped for the reins and thrust her foot back into the wildly swinging stirrup. The mare tossed her head, allowing Joanna to grab a handful of mane and rein, then took off down a ride at a flat-out gallop.
Joanna had never ridden so fast. Hauling on the reins did nothing to stop the panicked animal and only threatened to unseat her. At this speed a fall could be fatal. She gave up and clung to mane and pommel and prepared to hold on until Moonstone calmed down.
Finally they reached a point where the ride curved in to skirt the edge of a deep dell, an old chalk pit, she guessed with what part of her mind was free from controlling the horse. Now it was simply a deep depression lined with years of fallen beech leaves, crisp and tan in the sunshine.
Joanna had regained the reins as Moonstone slowed and had begun to pull on them, talking to the mare as she did so. ‘Come on, girl, steady, steady now, that’s enough.’ Moonstone slowed and halted as Joanna heard the pounding of hoof beats behind them.
Moonstone put back her ears and reared, right on the edgeof the dell. Under her hooves the chalky soil crumbled and the mare slipped, recovered, twisted and Joanna went over her shoulder, tumbling head over heels through the thick leaf mould to the bottom as Moonstone bolted into the depths of the wood.
Joanna looked up from where she lay flat on her back in a deep mattress of leaves and saw a plunging black horse and then Giles swinging down from its back.
‘I am all right!’ she called. ‘Just give me a moment to get my breath, there’s no need…’
But Giles was already over the side of the dell and half-sliding, half-jumping down towards her. He reached a shelf in the slope where the grass grew thick and checked the slope for a moment before stepping forward again.
