Storms Over Blackpeak (4 page)

‘Really?’ She stared at him, stunned. ‘You could — I mean, you’d do that?’

‘Sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Why not?’

Turning his full attention back to the horse, Ash spoke briefly and inaudibly into Windy’s ear before feeding him the bit. Smoothly, he slipped the bridle over the horse’s ears. Windy flattened them, snorted, champed at the metal in his mouth, and then appeared to decide it was all okay. Ash patted his neck.

‘It’s going to be pretty quiet here for the next few months,’ he said, looking over at Cally. ‘I could do with a winter project.’

Well, it would make a change to have a guy like Ash try to teach
her
something. Usually it was the other way round. Maths, physics, chemistry — all through high school, she’d been an unpaid tutor of all those subjects and more to guys with great smiles who could carry a rugby ball better than a decimal point.

Thoughtfully, she watched Ash secure Windy’s reins to the saddle and clip what looked like a very long lead to the bridle.

‘What’s that?’

‘A lunge rein.’

‘What does it do?’

Ash grinned. ‘It saves a few bones.’

Cally frowned, mystified, as Ash led Windy back into the paddock. After the horse had obediently run — and walked, and jogged — circles around Ash at the end of the rein for fifteen minutes or so, Ash returned Windy to the yard, hitched his halter to the rail, and began to tack him down.

‘You’re not …’ Her brow furrowed further. ‘You’re not getting on?’

‘Not today.’ Ash glanced up at her with a smile. ‘But I think it’s about time you did.’

Half an hour later, Cally found herself on horseback and heading up a dirt track into the hills, her mount securely tethered to Ash’s saddlebow. Behind her, she could still hear Windy, left alone, making noisy protest laps of the paddock. The chaos of dogs that had erupted when Ash opened their runs had settled into an orderly pack alongside, and although the rocky ground she could see passing below her still looked a long way down, Cally was getting over the idea that she was going to fall off for no reason. She did, however, feel more than usually clumsy and — well, burdensome. Watching Ash up ahead, she tightened her stomach, unclenched her shoulders, and tried to imitate the fluid way he occupied the saddle. From the moment he’d swung up there, he’d looked every inch Carr Fergusson’s son.

Ash glanced back. ‘You’re a natural.’

Yeah, right. Cally tried to remember if anyone had ever said that to her about anything. Oh, yes — Mr Harris. Year Three Maths. Their first day of long division.

Over her own horse’s frothy cream mane, she watched
the graceful way Ash’s horse picked up his dark feet. With his deep black coat, he was almost as beautiful as Windy. ‘What happened,’ she asked, ‘to the Quarter Horse stud?’

‘Oh …’ Ash sighed heavily. ‘I guess it was more Mum’s thing. She liked to show. After she left …’

Left? Left
Carr
? And that house? Was she insane?

‘… Dad pretty much gave the stud away. He’s not really your Breed Standards type of guy.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, he was trying to run this place without shepherds back then. With Mum and me gone as well, he wouldn’t have had much time.’

‘You?’ Cally was taken aback. ‘You mean, you went with her?’

‘Yep. All the way to Auckland. I’m a Grammar boy. Can’t you tell?’

Jeez. Could his mother have taken him further away?

‘So your father lost both of you?’ Cally’s indignant imagination flew to the deserted Carr in his empty, echoing house. ‘He must have been devastated.’

She heard a small snort — was it Ash, or the horse? ‘Yeah.’ Ash kept looking ahead. ‘He really put up a fight to keep us.’

The horses stepped on, hooves echoing as they struck the schist. Cally watched the set of Ash’s shoulders.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, after a while, ‘Dad ended up selling most of the stud horses on. He kept Rizzo here, and old Pooch’ — he nodded back at Cally’s mount — ‘and Barry, of course. But these days he just breeds what we need for the station.’

‘Rizzo,’ Cally echoed, swallowing a thousand questions in her relief that Ash had found his way back to a happier subject. ‘Being short for …?’

‘Windscleugh Arabica Ristretto,’ Ash confessed.

‘So … Pooch,’ she guessed, looking down at her horse’s
café-au-lait
coat, ‘would be — Cappuccino?’

‘You’ve got it.’

She worked her way down an imaginary blackboard menu. ‘Barry?’ she asked, stuck.

Ash grinned back at her. ‘Dad’s go-to stallion. Windscleugh The Barista.’ His eyes moved over her. ‘How are you getting on up there?’

‘Good,’ she told him, as surprised as anyone to find it was true. She frowned. ‘Shouldn’t I be doing something, though?’

‘You are.’

Like … sitting on a horse? She was starting to feel she might have that down.

‘You’re learning to want to ride,’ Ash smiled. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t always be this easy.’

He wasn’t kidding, as she would find out the following day.

Having deliberately slept in to give Carr and Lizzie some space, Cally got up to an empty house. She made herself a coffee, and then, feeling unusually hungry, decided to have a slice of toast. Since it seemed a shame to waste the other slot of the toaster and she had nothing better to do, she put in two slices, spread some Marmite over the spare slice, quartered it, and took it down to Windy.

The horse looked at her in an alarmed sort of way when she walked up to his fence. But as soon as she held out the toast he hurried over and took it from her gently with his big, soft mouth, his few spiky whiskers tickling her hand. Cally rubbed his forehead and scratched his ears, and then, just to see what would happen, ran her hand under his halter. Still chewing happily, Windy didn’t react at all. Taking hold of the halter more firmly, she fed him the last quarter of toast. Windy snorted a few crumbs down her shirt, but seemed otherwise unmoved. Thinking of how much trouble Ash had gone through to catch him
yesterday, she frowned to herself. Wasn’t this an easier way to go about it?

‘Very good.’

She looked up to see Ash leaning on the top rail of the gate, a lead rope draped around his neck, watching her from the yard. He appeared amused.

‘Now let’s see you do it without the toast.’

‘You had toast yesterday.’

‘Yes,’ Ash said. ‘But he didn’t know that.’ He opened the gate. ‘You’d better let go now.’

‘You don’t want me to hold onto him?’

Eyes on the horse, Ash shook his head. ‘That would make it a trick. It has to be an agreement.’ Casually, he began walking towards them. ‘Doesn’t it, Windy mate?’

Seeing him, Windy tensed. Cally let go of his halter. Immediately, Windy swung around to face Ash head-on, but to her surprise, he stayed beside her.

‘He seems to think’ — looking equally surprised, Ash clipped the lead rope to his halter — ‘that you’re on his side.’

‘I am.’ Cally rubbed the horse’s nose as he mouthed the sleeve of her shirt.

‘We all are, mate.’ Running a hand over Windy’s dappled neck, Ash produced his own quarters of toast. ‘We all are.’ He glanced over at Cally. ‘How did you get down here? Is Dad with you?’

‘No, I walked.’

‘You walked?’ Ash looked astonished. ‘From the house?’

She laughed at him. ‘It’s not
that
far.’ In fact, she’d had to walk to bus stops further away. But then, she supposed the Fergussons weren’t so familiar with public transport.

Which had reminded her: ‘Who lives in that other house back there? The one tucked into the trees?’ So tucked in,
in fact, that she hadn’t even noticed it when they’d driven down the day before.

‘The cottage? Nobody, at the moment. It’s usually the head shepherd’s house, but’ — Ash had shrugged — ‘I guess that’s me, so …’

Cally nodded. Who wouldn’t rather live in the homestead, if they could? She watched Ash saddle Windy again, the horse appearing much less worried about the process than the day before.

After his lunge-rein workout, instead of tacking him down, Ash tethered Windy beside the mounting block. Then, watching Windy toss his head against the rope, he untied it again and handed it to Cally.

‘Here, you hold him.’ He gave her a very serious look. ‘Don’t let go, okay?’

Struggling to radiate calm, she held Windy’s halter as Ash climbed the mounting block — an aid he’d disdained the previous day — and lay across Windy’s back. The horse shifted a little under his weight, then let out a sigh of what sounded suspiciously like boredom.

‘Okay.’ Easing himself back down onto the block, Ash looked thoughtful for a second. The next, he was in the saddle. Windy’s head jerked up, but he stayed where he was.

After a minute or so, Ash got off and took the rope back from Cally. ‘That went better than I expected,’ he said. Windy nosed his pocket hopefully.

‘Can I do anything?’ she asked, as Ash slipped the bridle over Windy’s ears.

‘Yeah,’ he told her, rubbing Windy’s nose. ‘You can get another rope from the tack shed and bring in Pooch. It’s your turn.’

It was during the highly technical lunge-rein session that
followed that Cally discovered there was more to sitting on a horse than she’d thought.

She had hoped they might go for an actual ride at the end of it all, but instead, she ended up soaping tack inside a dimly lit shed that could have doubled as a saddlery museum. And a spider retirement village.

Cally sighed to herself. But it was about time she cleaned something, she supposed. And really, she thought, watching Ash’s forearms work as he rubbed oil into a saddle, there were a lot worse ways to spend a Sunday. He looked so right there in his battered shirt and jeans, sleeves rolled up above his elbows, surrounded by the smells of hot horse and old leather. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen anyone belong in a place so completely. Her brow furrowed at the thought of how hard it must have been for him to leave it.

‘How old were you,’ she asked, ‘when your— when you went to Auckland?’

He looked up with an expression that suggested he’d forgotten she was there. ‘Twelve,’ he said, going back to his work. ‘It was just before I started high school.’

Cally tried not to stare down his shirt as he leaned over the saddle. ‘Did you live right in the city?’

She averted her eyes quickly as Ash glanced up.

‘Why do people always ask me that?’ he grinned. ‘Yeah, during the week we did. My stepfather had a block out at Karaka, though. Weekends we went out there.’

Stepfather? ‘Did you get on?’ Cally asked, curiosity overcoming her manners. Ashamed as she was to admit it now, as a kid the mere thought that her mother might marry someone had cost her a lot of sleep.

‘Paul and I?’ Ash smiled. ‘Or the three of us?’

Cally waited, watching his eyes.

‘Mum and I had our moments,’ he joked, his gaze sliding
away. ‘She and Paul did, too. But Paul and I were pretty solid. He’s a good guy. Anyway, being out there meant I got to keep up the horses.’

Crossing behind her, he hung the saddle back on the wall. Cally willed her pulse not to quicken as he leaned in over her shoulder.

‘Want me to have a go at that?’

‘No, it’s okay.’ Finally easing the swollen strap from the buckle of the bridle, she gave him a quick smile. ‘I’m good.’

Ash moved off. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him pick up a scrubbing brush and get to work on the girth of the second saddle. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Where did you grow up?’

‘Christchurch.’ She could think of nothing to add. Why did this always happen to her? Cute guys and recruitment agents — she could never come up with anything interesting to say to either of them.

‘Family still there?’ Ash suggested into the silence.

Cally nodded gratefully. ‘Mum is. And my Aunt Di — that’s Hannah’s mother.’ She thought hard. ‘A few cousins, too.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘He lives in Perth.’ At least, she presumed he still did.

‘You see much of him?’

She shook her head. ‘He and Mum split up when I was a baby. I don’t remember much about him, to be honest.’

‘He didn’t keep in touch?’

‘Oh, you know, cards, stuff like that.’ She worked her way along a rein. ‘He and his wife have got four kids of their own, so I guess he’s pretty busy.’

Cally glanced up to see Ash watching her, his brown eyes clouded with concern. She felt sorrier for him. She couldn’t miss what she’d never had. But Carr — now
there
was a man who would leave a hole in your life. One you couldn’t entirely
fill with horses. And as for being ripped out of this place …

‘You must have been so homesick,’ she found herself saying out loud.

‘As hell,’ he admitted, still looking at her.

She waited.

Ash shrugged, appearing to remember who he was talking to. ‘I was headed for boarding school anyway, so I guess it didn’t really make much difference.’

Cally nodded, letting the lie pass. ‘You had the holidays,’ she said encouragingly.

‘Yeah.’ Ash frowned at the saddle. ‘Well, once I got past fourteen, I did. For the first couple of years, Dad was flat out between the station and charter work and Mum didn’t—’ He stopped. ‘She was worried that I’d get left alone. She had kind of a thing about that after the accident.’

‘Accident?’

‘Oh’ — he shook his head dismissively — ‘I came off Rizzo and managed to bang myself up a bit. It was my fault, not his. He was just a young horse. He didn’t know any better.’

Cally’s eyebrows rose. ‘Did you break anything?’

‘My shoulder, mainly.’ He stretched it reflexively. ‘Smashed the top of the blade and the ball. Cracked a few bones in my wrist, snapped the radius, did a couple of ribs.’ He thought hard. ‘I think that was it … Oh — plus my nose and a cheekbone.’

Jesus. She stared at him. ‘I’m surprised your mother ever let you back on a horse.’

‘It wasn’t the horse she blamed.’

Ah. Cally took a guess. ‘You were with your dad?’

‘I was supposed to be. He got called away.’

‘So you decided you’d go for a ride by yourself?’

‘Dad had just ridden Rizzo for the first time. I thought I could, too.’ Ash grinned. ‘Turned out I was wrong.’