Unbridled

by D. Jackson Leigh

  That’s the big question. Only I can answer the bigger one. Do I convict or acquit the Marsh character in my manuscript?

  Chapter Sixteen

  We’re going to take you back to basics,” Marsh says. She gives me a leg up to mount Fancy. “This mare has a very smooth, floating trot. If you can’t eventually get how to post on her, then you’re a lost cause.”

  “No pressure there.” I’m whining, but I really, really don’t want to disappoint Marsh. Will she still want me if I turn out to be hopeless as an equestrian? Will she see me as her one failure? Maybe she’s had other failures, so it won’t be a big deal if I can’t get the hang of this. Yeah, right. The softer Marsh, the one who hugs the kids she teaches and talks to horses and plays with Alex and Harrison’s little terrier mix, has transformed into the other Marsh. The other Marsh is a general in the training ring, a stickler about a clean and orderly stable, and a dominating sex partner. I shiver at the last thought and shift in my seat to relieve the instant throb in my crotch.

  “Are you listening to me?” Marsh’s stern tone brings me back to the present. “Because if you’re not focused on this lesson, then I’ve got a lot of paperwork I could be clearing from my desk.”

  I suck in a deep breath, clear my mind, and then visualize correctly posting Fancy’s trot. “Sorry. I’m totally focused now.”

  “Good. We’ve talked about leads, which leg strikes forward first.”

  I nod. “And changing leads.” Maybe I can impress her with how much I have learned as opposed to how much I can’t do.

  “Right. So, when you post a trot, you want to rise and sit in sync with the outside foreleg of your horse. Keep your hands steady and your legs from the calf down stationary.”

  I’m trying to cram the instructions in my head into muscle memory. Damn. It’s a lot to remember. It’s like that swimming lesson when you first learn to freestyle and have to remember to stroke with your arms, kick, and turn your head to breathe.

  Marsh puts her hand on my thigh. “Relax, Lauren. You’re already tensing up. Maybe I should feed you a couple of my favorite shots beforehand, so you’ll be relaxed.”

  I don’t think she’s aware her fingers are tapping out some tune on my thigh as she seems to mull something over. Is that the Jeopardy tune? I want to laugh.

  “Before I forget to ask, we have another big show in three weeks. You were a great help at the last one. You game to do it again? It’s out of town, though, so you’ll have to spend a couple of nights in a hotel.”

  My brain cuts right to the good part—several nights in a hotel with Marsh. Surely she wouldn’t want separate rooms. “Yes. Definitely, yes. I enjoyed helping out. I’d be glad to do it again.”

  “Great. Now close your eyes,” she says. “Think about how you rise from a chair. You bend forward just enough to put your center of gravity over your heels, and then you straighten to a standing position. Try that now in the saddle.”

  I open my eyes.

  “No. Keep your eyes closed, and imagine you’re getting up from a chair.”

  I close my eyes again and visualize sitting in a straight-backed chair. Then I rise.

  “Now sit. Don’t flop into the chair. Sit softly.”

  That’s easy. One of the things my mother drummed into my head is that ladies do not flop into a chair.

  “Very good. See? You can do this.”

  I open my eyes and beam a smile at Marsh. “I can do this.”

  She lets General Marsh retreat long enough to return my smile. Then the general is back. “I don’t know why Alex thinks you’re hopeless.”

  “Maybe I don’t take direction well from men…a subconscious thing.”

  Marsh ignores this comment. “I want you to start off walking clockwise. When you’re ready, ask Fancy for a trot. When she puts her front leg on the rail side forward, you rise out of the chair. When her back leg comes forward, you sit…not completely, but with about a third of your weight on the saddle.”

  I take a deep breath. I’m swimming again. Stroke, kick, breathe sounds simple in contrast to rise with leg, sit with leg, don’t sit all the way, hands steady, shins stationary. I’ll never remember it all. Timidly, I direct Fancy into a clockwise walk. Marsh moves to the center of the training ring and waits. I’m two-thirds around the ring when Marsh barks the order.

  “Trot, Lauren.”

  I’m not sure I would have ever asked Fancy for a trot if Marsh hadn’t ordered it. The past five years have been a rebellion against taking orders from anyone, but I find that I want Marsh to tell me what to do. I know I don’t need someone to do that, but it’s different with her. It’s like she’s taking the heavy load of decision off my shoulders. I feel like she’s my protector, my shield from the world. I want to relax and put myself in her hands. Oh, yeah, her hands. Warm and sure. Her long fingers. Shit. I’m supposed to be posting. I rise when I see Fancy’s left front leg go forward, then sit, then rise, then sit.

  “Don’t force it. You look like a jack-in-the-box. Let your horse’s motion carry you forward until your legs are straight, then sit…softly. That’s better. Keep your hands steady and don’t swing your legs back when you sit. Your lower legs should stay stationary, shins perpendicular to the ground.”

  I lose my rhythm when I try to concentrate on my hands and legs. Fancy shakes her head at my awkward efforts.

  “Stop, stop.” Marsh walks over to me and takes my hand.

  I’m sweating more from nerves than effort, but she doesn’t seem to mind sweaty hands. Or maybe she does because she’s frowning.

  “You need to be wearing gloves.” She pulls her riding gloves and the bandanna I gave her from her back pocket. “Give me your hands.” When I obey, she dries my sweaty hands with the bandanna, then hands me the gloves. “Put these on, and then bend down here.”

  Yes! She’s going to kiss me to get me to relax. I’m totally into that, so I hurriedly pull on the butter-soft, thin leather gloves and lean down while offering her my most sultry smile. She reaches up for me and everything goes dark. She’s tying the bandanna over my eyes.

  “I can’t see, Marsh.” Being blindfolded indoors, in Marsh’s arms, is one thing, but I’m outdoors and sitting on the back of a horse. I don’t feel secure on horseback yet even when I can see. I grab her forearms to steady myself, but she peels my fingers from her arms, puts the reins back in my hands, then guides the heels of my hands to rest on the pommel.

  “After you pick up your hands to ask for a trot, then barely rest your pinkie fingers on the pommel and let the contact keep your hands still when you post.”

  Okay. That grounds me a little. Park my pinkies on the pommel. I wonder how many times I can say that really fast without tying my tongue up, but I voice it only once. “Park my pinkies on the pommel.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How will I know when to rise if I can’t see her step forward?”

  “Feel her, Lauren. Let her lead the dance. When we danced, you stopped trying to anticipate my moves after I blindfolded you. You concentrated on the motion of my body to let me move you. Fancy has been schooling riders for more than seven years. You can trust her to stick to the rail of the ring and to keep her pace. Relax, and you’ll feel the shift of her shoulder and the forward flow of her motion. You can do this.”

  “Let her lead. I can do this.” I vocalize these instructions to reassure myself as much as Marsh.

  I feel a tug on the reins as Marsh turns Fancy in the correct direction, then hear her click her tongue to set the horse in a calm walk. After a moment, I began to relax. I can’t see, but Fancy can. She won’t let me fall. I screw up my courage and ask for a trot. Fancy responds immediately. Pinkies on the pommel. I feel her shoulder shift, but is that forward or back? Hell, I don’t know. I quiet my mind and concentrate on her motion. I can feel as she propels forward, so I rise, then sit. I’m doing i
t!

  “That’s it. You’ve got it.”

  Then I lose her rhythm. Marsh sounds far away, so I figure I’ve reached the other end of the ring.

  “You had it. Sit for two beats, then rise. You’ll find her rhythm again. That’s right. Remember how to do that because that’s how you’ll follow her when she switches leads.”

  Her instructions make me think too far ahead, and I lose the rhythm again. I sit two beats and manage to pick it up again, only to lose it after three or four steps. My legs are already aching. Then Fancy suddenly gives a little buck and dances sideways. I rip off my blindfold. Yellow-jacket wasps are swarming around us.

  “Wasps! Run for shelter.” Marsh is already opening the gate when I turn Fancy toward it. The wasps aren’t that easy to shake. They’re back again, and Fancy takes off, bucking every second step. Before I realize it, I’m flying through the air. Damn English saddles. Nothing to hold on to. And damn, that ground is hard. I land on my back, and all the wind is knocked out of my lungs. Marsh is at my side when I open my eyes.

  “Are you okay?” For the first time, I see a flash of panic in her eyes, so I nod. She presses on my diaphragm, and I suck in air on my third attempt because five or six wasps are swarming around us, and one stings me on the neck. Marsh slaps one that latches onto her cheek, and it buzzes away, only to come back and sting her forehead. She slaps harder this time, and when it falls to the ground, she squashes it with her boot.

  “Fancy.” I gasp out her name. Are they still chasing and stinging her?

  “Can you make it into the barn by yourself? I need to get her.”

  I struggle to my feet. “Go. Hurry.” Then I stagger away, slapping at the wasps dive-bombing me.

  When I reach the barn, Marsh is already running my way with Fancy in tow and a huge swarm of wasps following. I know they’ll follow us into the barn, and while Marsh and I can hide in the office, we can’t seal a stall to protect Fancy. I run into the barn office. My breath is still shallow, but urgency is pumping adrenaline in my muscles, and I shove against Marsh’s desk.

  “U-u-u-uh.” I don’t know why, but yelling seems to help. I don’t have incredible upper-body strength, but my legs are pure muscle, and I use them now to push the heavy desk against the wall. Thank the stars for my running addiction. I’ve gone from panting to gasping as my diaphragm loosens.

  Marsh and Fancy are just reaching the barn door, and I wave them into the office. Marsh looks confused but doesn’t stop her forward momentum. The wasps are still following, so I grab the hose coiled in the wash stall.

  “I cleared enough room for Fancy in the office,” I yell at Marsh as they pass me. I turn the water wide open and adjust the nozzle. They aren’t quite past me when I start knocking down wasps with my water cannon.

  “We’re in. Come on,” Marsh yells from the door.

  I feel like I’m in a sci-fi novel, shooting down aliens as I back away to the wash stall, shut off the water, then run into the office. Marsh slams the door behind me.

  “Are you okay?” Marsh is checking my arms, face, and neck. “You’ve got a few stings.”

  My adrenaline is waning, and I’m starting to feel them. “I’m all right. What about you?” Marsh has several red welts on her neck, forehead, and cheek. “And Fancy?”

  She’s running her hands over Fancy. I see four or five swelling bumps on her rump. “There’s a set of clean sheets in the trunk over there. Get the flat sheet out, and then look in the bathroom closet for a sleeve of two-by-two gauze, tweezers, and the steel bowl. They should be on the middle shelf.”

  I’d always thought the office was roomy, but it got small really quick with a thousand-pound horse taking up space. I edge around Marsh and Fancy to get the sheet. The closet mostly holds meds and other first-aid items for horses and people. Something tells me to grab the scissors, too, because three of us have stings, and I’m pretty certain Marsh intends to divide the sheet. I take the items to her.

  “Thanks. It looks like they got Fancy in five places on her rump, once on the inside of her leg, and once about midway up on her face. You’ve been stung twice on your neck, once under your jaw, and once on your arm. You’re not allergic, are you? Any shortness of breath? Can you swallow fine?”

  I catch her hands in mine to stop them from continuing to check my scalp and under the collar of my polo shirt. “I’m not allergic, and the only places stinging are the ones you mentioned.” I start my own exploration of her body. “Stand still. You’ve got four stings on your neck, one on your cheek, and one on your forehead that I can see.”

  She grimaces. “One got in my shirt and stung me a couple of times. The one in my armpit really hurts. But let’s help Fancy first.”

  Marsh pulls away from my examination and rummages in the bottom drawer of her desk before holding up the object she’s been looking for.

  “Meat tenderizer and a magnifying glass?” I’m stumped.

  “A few hours from now, you won’t even know you were stung,” she says, taking the steel bowl from me and going into the bathroom. She fills the bowl with water and dumps a handful of the gauze pads in the bowl to soak. “The best thing to draw their poison from the flesh is to wet the spot, make sure no stinger is left in there, sprinkle a lot of meat tenderizer on the sting, then cover it with a damp cloth for a few hours.”

  We go to work. I hold the bowl and tenderizer while she searches for stingers with the lighted magnifying glass and tweezes them out. Then she takes a square of gauze and wets the swollen tissue, sprinkles on the tenderizer, and lays another wet square of gauze on top to let it cook. We find a rhythm to our work—check, wet, sprinkle, cover. We joke about Fancy looking like an appaloosa before we lay a huge piece of wet sheet over her rump to hold the individual squares in place. We tie strips of the sheet around her leg and jaw to secure those squares.

  I doctor Marsh first because she has more stings than I do and is feeling a bit nauseous. She slips her shirt over her head without hesitation. Much to my disappointment, she doesn’t have any stings under her black sports bra, so she keeps that on. I don’t find any stingers still in her flesh except for one of the two stings in her armpit, which she said hurt way more than the others. I tie a strip of sheet around her head to hold the gauze against her forehead sting and tape the square to her cheek sting because we can’t figure any other way to secure it.

  Then she doctors me, her hands gentle and sure. Our necks are easy to wrap in sheet strips, but the sting under my jaw is a conundrum. We don’t have any paper tape, and I’m very allergic to the adhesive in other kinds. So Marsh wraps a sheet strip under my jaw by tying it in a bow on top of my head. She smiles as she leans back to observe her handiwork. “Very cute.”

  I slap her shoulder playfully, then snatch her phone away when she picks it up. “You are not taking a photo of me like this.”

  She chuckles. “I was going to call Alex and have him send out messages that the stables are closed tomorrow for extermination.”

  “Oh.” I hand her phone back to her.

  “But since you mentioned it…”

  I whip around to stand at her side and wrap my arm around her waist to hold her there. “Only if you shoot a selfie with me and send it only to Alex. And both of you have to promise this photo will never show up on any social media or real media without my explicit consent.”

  Marsh holds up her phone for a selfie. “Done.” She snaps the photo.

  We are a sight to behold—like walking wounded in a World War II movie.

  She texts the photo to Alex with an explanation and instructions, specifying that the photo cannot be shared because of my celebrity status. Harrison is an exception.

  “The wasps should be gone back to their nest now,” Marsh says. “Will you put Fancy in her stall and give her a scoop of feed and fresh water?”

  “What are you going to do?” I don’t want Marsh to
put herself in danger again. Even if she isn’t allergic, I’ve read that too many stings can make you very sick.

  “These wasps that make their nest in the ground are particularly mean. Alex and I have a system for getting rid of them.”

  “Just be careful.”

  “It’s nearly dusk, a time of day when they’re sluggish. They’ll have retreated to their nest.” She stares at me for a moment, something between hunger and…and…something else I’ve never observed in her eyes. “You be careful, too.”

  After I take care of Fancy, scoop up the manure gift she left in the office, then mop the area, I search for Marsh. She’s just returning to the stable. What the hell? “Is that the shop vac sitting in the ring?”

  She’s plugging a long orange cord into an outdoor electrical outlet, and I can hear the vacuum come on. “It’s pretty simple and very effective. You lay the nozzle of the vacuum right next to the hole leading to the underground nest and leave it running for twenty-four hours. As the wasps fly out of the nest to feed, they’re sucked into the vacuum. If any are still outside the nest, they get sucked in when they try to fly back into it. You cap the hose so they can’t come out through it after you shut the vacuum off and set the vacuum in the sun for a few days. Kills all of them without using insecticides or anything else that might poison the ground or harm people, pets, or wildlife.”

  “My dad used to pour gasoline down the hole and toss in a match.”

  “First of all, that’s dangerous. Gasoline can explode on you. Second, that doesn’t take care of any flying outside the nest, and they’ll just dig in somewhere else. Third, gasoline pollutes the ground for a long time.”

  Marsh looks in on Fancy, who’s already cleaned up her grain and is taking a standing nap.

  “I didn’t know you were such an environmentalist.” I toss the tease over my shoulder as I go into the office but stop when I realize Marsh isn’t behind me. I poke my head back into the barn’s corridor and find her staring at the entrance leading to the wasp ring. It’s never going to be the training ring in my head anymore. It’s the wasp ring. “Marsh?”