Several girls burst into laughter.
“What?”
Caitlyn demanded.
“You’re speaking Italian!” one girl shrieked, and collapsed into hysterical giggles.
Madame rolled her eyes and heaved a put-upon sigh.
Caitlyn shrank in her chair, confused and humiliated. She didn’t
know
any Italian.
Madame wrote out
devoir
on the board and, whacking each conjugation with her stick as if by so doing she could beat the words into Caitlyn’s brain, angrily enunciated each form and made Caitlyn repeat them, over and over, while the rest of the class snickered.
When the torture was over, Caitlyn subsided into the misery of the linguistically ungifted and struggled to focus on the lesson. Her disobedient mind, however, kept abandoning French grammar in favor of two unnerving questions: Who was Raphael? And why was he haunting her?
CHAPTER
Twelve
FEBRUARY 12
Caitlyn’s riding lesson the next morning, Saturday, was destined to be even worse than the disastrous French lesson.
The day started well enough. With her mind still half lost in thoughts of Raphael, Caitlyn walked with Amalia through the chill morning air to the stables, where Amalia would practice dressage and Caitlyn and the other novices would get their first chance to saddle and ride a horse. The lesson the week before had been focused on the care of horses and tack, and Caitlyn was both excited and nervous finally to get to mount a horse.
“You’ve truly never ridden before?” Amalia asked her.
“Not in real life, but I used to have a recurring dream that I was friends with a pioneer girl in the 1800s, and we’d ride bareback together on her horse through the woods and fields.”
“A dream doesn’t count!”
“It felt very real at the time,” Caitlyn said with mock seriousness. “I’m sure I learned all about riding a horse. How hard could it be?”
Amalia clucked her tongue and shook her head.
“I thought you were going to Sarlat today, with Daniela and Brigitte,” Caitlyn said, changing the subject. Daniela had invited Amalia and Brigitte on the lunch and window-shopping outing during last night’s dinner, then looked at Caitlyn and added, “You can come, too,
if
we can all squeeze into the taxi.”
“
Bien sûr
, she’ll fit!” Brigitte had said. “You
have
to come, Caitlyn. It is a very charming town.”
A taxi and lunch would have meant money, though, and Caitlyn didn’t have any. She’d murmured an excuse about having too much homework.
Amalia shrugged. “I’d rather stay here and ride. And Daniela …”
Caitlyn tilted her head. “What about her?”
“Sometimes she forgets to show her better side. She is a good person, but has a bad home life. At the start of every term, it is the same. After a winter break with her family she is full of unhappiness, and makes herself unbearable to others. In a few weeks she will settle in, though, and you will see her true self.”
“I hope so,” Caitlyn murmured. “Brigitte seems nice, though.”
“She is …” Amalia nibbled her upper lip.
“But?” Caitlyn asked curiously.
“Mm. It’s a little embarrassing.”
“What?”
“I went out with her brother Thierry a few times, just to annoy my mother and show that I was a rebel at heart.”
Caitlyn couldn’t help laughing. “A rebel? You?”
Amalia looked mildly annoyed. “Rebellion is a relative thing. You have not met my mother. She’s German, so for her the way to show affection is to control me, for my own good.” Amalia shuddered. “She calls me on my cell every Sunday to talk about the dog, her travel plans, and everything I’m doing wrong.”
Caitlyn smiled wryly. “I get to read e-mails about the cat, my brothers’ sports, and questions about whether I’m emotionally able to handle being here.”
“Our parents are not so different, then.”
“I guess not.”
Give or take a couple billion dollars,
Caitlyn silently added. “So what’s Brigitte’s brother like?”
“Thierry? He’s a player. Or he was, anyway,” she added in a mumble.
“Is he cute?”
“Gorgeous. But he was also a complete jerk. I only went out with him to prove that I wasn’t … How do you say it? A log in the mud?”
Caitlyn giggled. “Stick. Stick in the mud.”
“Stick, yes. Thank you. Despite my best efforts, though, I can’t seem to escape being the type of orderly, controlled person who is afraid to act on impulse. I have no spontaneity.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Caitlyn protested. “I’m sure it keeps you out of trouble.”
“Thierry told me I was cold. He wasn’t the first boy to say that, either.”
Caitlyn winced. “Ouch.”
Amalia turned toward Caitlyn. “I wish I could be more like you.”
“
Me
? Are you kidding? Why?”
“You let your emotions show on your face. They’re right on the surface, for all to see.”
Caitlyn grimaced. “I thought I’d learned to control that.”
“See?” Amalia copied her grimace. “Right on the surface!”
“Mmph,” Caitlyn grunted unhappily.
“Mmph,” Amalia copied.
Caitlyn threw up her hands in defeat, then cast a quick warning look at Amalia. “Don’t you do it!”
Amalia chuckled.
They’d reached the stables and parted ways. As Caitlyn headed toward the small group of girls waiting for their riding instructor, she went over the conversation with Amalia, feeling bemused.
How strange it was that a beautiful, wealthy, intelligent princess would want to emulate the very trait that had once earned Caitlyn the hated nickname Moan-n-Groan. Amalia seemed so perfect to Caitlyn’s eyes, she’d never have guessed that she had her own share of insecurities.
Princesses really were just people, weren’t they? Who knew?
She joined the other girls, all of them looking tense. The small, wiry, bad-tempered riding instructor, Madame Pelletier, was no one’s favorite. Caitlyn and her classmates were wearing burgundy breeches, tall boots, navy sweaters, black helmets, and had their hair pulled back in French braids. They were finally going to ride. The thought sent a fresh shiver of excitement through Caitlyn. She’d never been on a horse, but some hidden part of her insisted that it would come naturally to her. To paraphrase Daniela and her comment in the art class, she felt like she had a good horsewoman locked inside her.
Unfortunately, that lock was the size of a bank vault, as Madame Pelletier soon made clear.
Before she would allow anyone to mount her horse, each girl had to lead the horses out of their individual stalls and into the wide corridor that ran down the center of the stables, where ropes attached to both walls were tied onto the horses’ halters, to keep the animals in place. Then they had to groom their horse, clean its hooves, properly attach a saddle, and fasten on a bridle.
Caitlyn struggled with the terror of being kicked as she lifted each hoof of her horse in turn and used a pick to clean out bits of dirt and gravel wedged between hoof and metal shoe. When the last hoof was clean, she released it with a sigh of relief and rested her head against her mount’s warm neck, breathing in the comforting scent of the horse. The smell tickled a distant memory, buried somewhere in her brain and associated with good feelings, even though she’d never been this close to a real horse before.
The good feelings dissipated as she struggled with the riding gear. The hornless English saddle and bridle were a confusion of leather straps and bits of steel, and the more Caitlyn fussed with them, the more her mount began to dance sideways, growing nervous with Caitlyn’s ineptitude.
“Caitlyn!” Madame Pelletier barked, and strode toward her. Her black slashes of eyebrows drew down in a frown. “What are you doing? You have the bridle inside out!”
“I’m sorry!” Caitlyn cried, and removed the tangle of straps from the horse’s face.
“Settle down! You are alarming your horse.” Pelletier glared at her, her hands on her angular little hips. “Have you no sense of animals? Eh?”
Caitlyn cringed under the assault; it seemed unfairly harsh. “
Non
, Madame!”
Madame Pelletier inspected the saddle that Caitlyn had put on her mount, a chestnut named Rosamund. “You have the saddle pad backward. Take this off and start over. From the beginning.”
Caitlyn’s heart sank. “
Oui
, Madame.”
Madame moved on to the next student, and Caitlyn heard her voice soften as she instructed the other girl.
Caitlyn put the simple halter back on her horse and tied it to the walls, using the special quick-release knot they’d been taught. “Sorry, Rosamund. I think Madame Pelletier has it out for me.”
The other girls had finished and were leading their mounts to the arena when Madame Pelletier came back to inspect Caitlyn’s work once again.
“What is this?” Madame asked incredulously, and flicked her fingers at the saddle.
“What?” Caitlyn asked in alarm, her nerves on end. “What’d I do wrong this time?”
“Regardez!”
Look!
Caitlyn looked. It took a moment, but then the scale of her mistake hit her. This time the saddle itself was on backward. Her shoulders slumped. “Crap.”
One of Madame’s eyebrows rose. “There is no ‘crap’ in France, mademoiselle.” Her mouth twisted. “In France, there is only
merde
.”
“Merde!”
Caitlyn repeated, growling the
R
sound.
“Merde, merde, merde!”
This was one piece of vocabulary she would remember.
“At least you have learned
something
today. I must go to the other girls now. If you ever get Rosamund properly tacked up, lead her to the arena. But if you do not manage in the next twenty minutes,” Madame said, glancing at the dusty clock high on the stable wall, “then you will not be riding today.”
The threat sent a bolt of panic through Caitlyn’s heart, and she set to speedy work. The more she hurried, however, the more mistakes she made, and the more jittery Rosamund became, her movements making Caitlyn’s work harder. With each twisted strap and wrinkle in the blanket, Caitlyn became more desperate and closer to tears. She pulled all the gear back off Rosamund, determined to get it all right from the start. She wanted to ride. She didn’t want to have to wait another week, the sole student too clumsy to put a saddle and bridle on a horse.
Caitlyn looked up at the clock: eighteen minutes had gone by. She wasn’t going to make it.
“Rosamund, what am I going to do?” Caitlyn asked, her vision blurring with tears.
The horse nickered and shifted her weight.
Caitlyn closed her eyes and took a deep breath, accepting that she was defeated. She wouldn’t be riding. She had no natural horsewoman locked inside her.
With the acceptance came a strange peace. Caitlyn gave up struggling and thinking. With vague intentions of putting Rosamund back in her stall, Caitlyn undid the ropes tied to her halter and then removed the halter itself. She felt curiously calm, as if she were floating slightly outside herself, watching as her hands took a plain rope from a peg and looped it into an odd configuration. She slid the looped rope over Rosamund’s nose, then draped the ends over the horse’s neck, like reins.
As if in a trance, without consciousness of her own actions, Caitlyn grabbed a handful of mane in one hand and put the other hand on Rosamund’s broad back. In one easy motion she pulled herself up, lying across Rosamund’s bare back before swinging her right leg over and sitting upright.
Caitlyn gathered the rope reins and nudged Rosamund forward, riding her down the corridor and out into the arena with its soft floor of sand and sawdust. She was dimly aware of her fellow students gathered in the middle of the arena with Madame Pelletier, practicing mounting and dismounting. Advanced riders were a distance away, tracing figure eights. As if the others did not exist, Caitlyn nudged Rosamund from a walk to a trot, and a moment later nudged her into a canter. Caitlyn moved with easy, flowing grace along with the rolling gait of the horse, guiding Rosamund less with the rope reins than with the balance of her own body.
The lost memory that the scent of the horse had stirred in her came suddenly to life, melding with Caitlyn’s vision of the arena.
Caitlyn was mounted behind a pioneer girl named Emily, her hands wrapped around Emily’s waist as the two of them cantered bareback down a dirt road. Emily’s long cotton skirts were gathered around her thighs, her dirty bare legs hanging down the horse’s sides in front of Caitlyn’s. There was dust and noise up ahead; Emily guided the horse onto the grassy verge as they passed a man driving a wagon pulled by a team of oxen.
“Emily!” the man called. “Get yourself home, girl! You should be helping your mother, not riding to hell and yonder!”