Authors: Unknown
The following afternoon, because Charles had telephoned to say that he would be home by three o'clock, she walked down to the stables to ask Natalie for a horse to ride.
"Tara, if you can spare her," she stipulated hopefully when they came face to face. "We got on very well together last time."
Natalie turned towards the row of loose-boxes.
"You can't have Tara," she said. "She's going out with the others. Charles allows me to use her when I need an extra mount for the hotel."
"Oh?" Elizabeth looked disappointed.
"Why don't you take the grey?" Natalie suggested.
"He'd be too much of a handful, don't you think? He's really a man's horse," Elizabeth objected.
"That shouldn't daunt an Australian," Natalie sneered. "I ride him if I have to."
"I don't think Charles would like it, all the same," Elizabeth said.
"Why not? He seems to approve of most things you do."
"Not on horseback! He thought me over-timid on Tara, as a matter of fact."
"A child could ride Tara," Natalie returned scornfully. "I'm taking her out for a six-year-old."
Elizabeth hesitated.
"I'm quite sure I couldn't manage the grey," she said.
"I'll saddle him up," Natalie stepped smartly towards the loose-box where the stallion stood waiting, his ears laid back at her approach. "I may even ride him myself later in the afternoon if there's another horse wanted at the hotel." She flung the saddle over the stallion's back. "You can always use the mounting-block if you feel nervous," she added. "The children do."
The scathing innuendo triggered off a spark of anger in Elizabeth. Natalie had offered her a challenge, feeling certain that she would not rise to it, but why was she troubling at all? What was she trying to prove?
"I'll see how I feel about taking him out once I am up," she decided slowly. "I still think he's too big for me."
Natalie led the stallion across the cobbled yard towards an ancient stone mounting-block at the far end.
"There you are," she said. "Do your worst!"
Biting her underlip to hide her vexation, Elizabeth climbed on to the block, sitting uneasily in the saddle for a moment to adjust the rein. The big stallion whinneyed with excitement.
"He doesn't take kindly to a riding-whip," Natalie observed, "so you'd better leave yours behind."
"I never use one." Elizabeth, still feeling uncomfortable, shifted her position in the saddle. "Quite honestly, Natalie, I've changed my mind. He's far too big a horse for me to ride."
Looking down, she saw the fiendish smile on the other girl's lips. Natalie was like someone possessed for a moment as she stepped closer, her riding-whip in her hand.
"Let's see you ride!" she laughed, bringing the whip down smartly on the stallion's rump.
The big horse took off like the wind with Elizabeth clinging to his back. She could neither call out nor think dearly at first. What she did was largely primitive; she held on like grim death, waiting for the moment when the horse would throw her and praying that it would never come.
The stallion covered the distance to the main gate in what must have been record time. They flew like the wind out between the gateposts and over the glen road to the open stretches of the moor on the other side. They raced across the headier, fording burns and ditches, climbing up and ever upwards while, by some miracle, Elizabeth remained in the saddle. The wind flew past her with the first streaks of rain on its breath, while above the hills the mist began to gather.
I've got to keep my head, she thought. I've just got to, otherwise he'll toss me down somewhere among the heather where I won't be found for days.
The big, powerful animal was in his element, reaching out with all his strength to cover as much ground as he could before the rein was drawn tight again. Used to a man's restraining hand, the light weight in the saddle irked him. Elizabeth was something to be shaken off as quickly as possible. Besides, she had used the hated whip; she had struck him viciously when he had least expected it, an error of judgment for which she must pay.
When the rain came they were far up among the hills, close under a ridge of grey rock where they would be hard to detect from the road below. Elizabeth knew that she was growing tired. The effort to hold on at all costs had gapped her strength and the rain chilled her. She had come out without a headscarf, envisaging a leisurely trot along the burnside on Tara's comfortable back, and soon she was soaked from head to foot. The stallion careered through the mist as if he was part of it, a legendary horse bent on riding the elements to the edge of destruction. Her breath came weakly between her lips.
"Stop, you brute! Please stop!"
The sound of her voice only seemed to infuriate him, remembering the whip. On and on he went regardless, it seemed, of time or direction until he halted suddenly at the far end of the ridge. Elizabeth had time to draw breath, but not time to dismount.
As if bent on some hideous game of reprisals, on he went, but downwards this time, back towards the glen. Relief claimed her as the rain streamed down her face and into the thick neckband of her pullover, chilling her all over. At least they were heading back towards Kilchoan.
All she had been told and taught about horses flashed through her mind, none of it seeming to apply to the horse she was riding now. She thought about Charles and his justifiable fury when he discovered that she had taken the stallion without his permission. She could only try to explain to him, to make it seem like an accident when it was no accident at all. Natalie had struck the stallion in a fit of temper, if not deliberately, succumbing to a blind, uncontrollable rage which had blunted her sense of humanity and turned her into a fiend.
Try as she might, there was no response to her constant pull on the rein, and after a while she knew that she was weakening. Her strength was giving out.
The stallion knew it, too. He tossed his head each time she tried to tighten her grip, snorting derision to the wind. He was a powerful creature and he meant to pit his strength against this feeble woman who had climbed on to his back and then struck him viciously across the rump. His dignity had been sorely tried.
The sound of his hooves thudding across the wet rock drummed like the knell of her own doom in Elizabeth's ears, and gradually they began to have a soporific effect, lulling her into a false sense of security because it seemed that she would go on for ever. On and on, like a Valkyrie.
The stallion found a well-known, defined pathway above the glen, thundering along it while she clung to his back in terror. Then, suddenly and for no obvious reason, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Cradled as she was by the thick heather shoots, her fall was lighter than she expected, but for a moment she lay where she was, stunned by the knowledge that she was now on her own. No horse of the stallion's mettle would stand quietly by, waiting for her to climb into the saddle a second time.
She was wrong. When she looked up he was still there, standing about two yards away watching her out of the comer of his eye.
Slowly and painfully she got to her feet, wondering if she had broken every bone in her body.
"You ungrateful brute!" she cried. "Now see what you have done! I didn't touch you with the whip—you ought to know that."
Getting rid of her feelings helped a little. She halted an arm's length from the horse, who stood his ground, and they remained there, staring at each other in mutual frustration while the rain poured down between them, soaking them both to the skin.
"Let's strike a bargain," she said, at last. "Let me ride as far as the glen road and then you can go home alone."
The sensitive ears twitched, hearing the persuasion in her voice, but she did not move towards him immediately. Waiting in the rain, she realised how pointless it would be, even if she managed to catch him, because she would not be able to re-mount without assistance.
The stallion moved cautiously towards her, his head down, and carefully she reached out and took the dangling rein. She could not believe that he had capitulated so easily, yet there was very little she could do with him except to lead him for miles back to Kilchoan.
By that time the hue and cry would be up. It would be getting dark and Charles would have returned from Glasgow.
Elizabeth shivered involuntarily, leading the horse back along the narrow bridle-path which straddled the hills. There was no sign of human habitation anywhere, only a few sheep grazing along the ridge and cropping the new grass among the heather. A bird flew occasionally overhead as their passage disturbed it, a buzzard or kestrel soaring into the grey sky to drift away down wind in search of peace.
A group of rocks loomed up ahead of them, but she dismissed diem as a source of shelter because she dared not let the stallion go. She was almost past them before she realised what else they might provide. A mounting-block!
If she could coax him near the rocks she might be able to climb back into the saddle without letting the rein go. Would he allow it, she wondered, or was he too wily an individual to be taken in by so obvious a ruse?
Believing that very little would be gained by hesitation, she led him towards a suitable rock, and once again he stood like a docile mare, waiting for her to climb on to the rock.
"You understand," she said, "I'm not going to whip you this time."
Whether he understood or not, he waited till she was in the saddle before he moved off again.
"Please don't gallop," she pleaded under her breath. "I've had enough."
He trudged solidly along the path. She could feel the gentle ripples of his muscles under his skin and knew why Charles had chosen him. He was big and strong and powerful, but he also knew how to obey.
They were half way across the moor before he broke into a trot. The scent of home and a stall full of dry hay had come very near.
"Don't go too fast," Elizabeth begged. "We're so nearly there."
She saw the other horseman coming towards them out of the mist of rain, and suddenly the stallion shied away from the intruder to take off across the heather. He went like the wind again, while she clung to his back, wondering if the other rider had seen them and what he or she would do about it.
Nothing, perhaps, unless they had come out as part of a search and knew that she was lost.
It seemed an eternity before she heard the sound of hooves thundering up behind her, but the stallion had accepted the challenge, increasing his speed with a wild whinney of delight as the second horse dropped behind. Then, as quickly as he had capitulated beneath the distant crags, he began to slow down.
The oncoming horseman veered away to the right and came up ahead of them. Elizabeth saw that it was Charles.
"Charles!" she cried. "Charles!"
The wind carried her words away to shatter them against the hills, and for a moment she closed her eyes, feeling the rain stinging her lids and the wind clutching at her hair. This must be some terrible nightmare which seemed as if it would never end.
The two horses were galloping neck and neck now and Charles's hand was on her rein. She felt the desperate pace slackening until, suddenly, it was all over and Charles was standing on the wet heather beneath her. She slid down into his waiting arms.
"I'm sorry!" she cried. "I'm sorry! I'm always doing the wrong thing."
Soaked and utterly exhausted, she stood shivering in the circle of his arms, feeling the strength and warmth of his body between her and the rain. He held her for a long time, comforting her without the use of words, and when she turned her face up to his he kissed her with a tenderness she had never known before.
"I thought you were dead," he said roughly. "I thought I'd lost you."
If he thought he had lost her it must be because he loved her.
"I love you," she sobbed. "I love you, Charles—"
He kissed her then, roughly, almost savagely, holding her face between his hands, smoothing the wet hair back from her brow.
"I know how it happened," he said. "You don't need to tell me or pretend that it was an accident to shield anyone. Jenny saw it all, but she couldn't follow you. All she could do was to tell Natalie what she thought of her and run for help. She met me on the way up to the house, but the time-lag gave you a tremendous head start. There was no knowing which direction you'd taken or where we might find you." His arms tightened about her. "Thank God you're safe," he said quietly.
"As safe as I've ever been." She laid her head on his damp shoulder. "Oh, Charles, I was so afraid," she confessed, although a great joy was already flooding into her heart "I was afraid of everything; of going away from Kilchoan and never seeing you again, of being really alone for the rest of my life."
"You needn't be afraid of that now," he said, holding her a little way away from him to look into her eyes. "If you'll have me we can be married even before Grand'mere rushes off to Hawaii to reunite Jenny and Jason, as she's always planned!"
"Dear Grand'mere!" Elizabeth smiled. "She's the most wonderful person I've ever met."
"She's a shameless old matchmaker," Charles laughed. "I've half a notion she even planned all this."
Elizabeth looked at him through the rain.
"You and me?" she said. "I do believe you're right"
"Of course I'm right!" he held her close once more. "And now we'll go home in case you catch pneumonia all over again, and have to stay in bed for another week."
"I don't think that will happen," Elizabeth told him. "I'm far too happy to think of being ill."
"We'll change horses," he decided, "although I don't think Corran will misbehave again. He's had a grandstand view of our affection and he's always been very loyal."
They rode swiftly down the glen until they came into view of Kilchoan, but Charles steered Corran away from the stable block.
"I've offered Natalie alternative accommodation." His face was suddenly grim. "She can't go on staying here after we're married. Grand'mere is firmly of the opinion that she'll marry Will Beatty in the end and start a riding school elsewhere. It would be the best way," he added firmly, "because I never want to see her again."