Riding Star

by Stacy Gregg

  Daisy King had been the only rider that Georgie actually knew before she arrived. Back in England, Daisy had been Georgie’s stiffest competition on the eventing circuit. Unlike Georgie, Daisy could afford to board her own horse at Blainford. She had travelled her big, grey Irish Hunter, Village Voice, all the way from the UK.

  Apart from Cameron Fraser, the other eventing boys included Shanghai-born and Oxford-raised Alex Chang and his grey gelding Tatou; over-confident Australian riding phenomenon Matt Garrett with his stunning dun gelding Tigerland; and the arrogant but extremely talented French rider, Nicholas Laurent and his horse Lagerfeld.

  The eventing riders gathered together at their usual table in the dining hall for the first lunch of the new term. They were close friends, but also rivals, each of them striving to come top in the class. Class rankings were considered important in every subject, but in Tara’s class they were especially crucial. Cross-country was the only class where the bottom-ranked pupil was routinely eliminated at the end of every half term.

  Tara Kelly justified eliminations because of the very real danger involved with riding cross-country. If a student wasn’t making the grade in her first-year class then she needed to be eliminated before getting hurt – or worse.

  As they sat down to eat lunch, Emily, Cameron and Daisy were vigorously debating the new school rule that made air-tech inflatable jackets compulsory at all times on the cross-country course. At the other end of the table, Nicholas, who had just returned from Bordeaux, was raving to Matt Garrett about his brand-new Butet, a French close-contact saddle made from tan calfskin leather, insisting that it gave him superior lower leg contact.

  Georgie, meanwhile, sat and picked listlessly at her lasagne. She looked up at the clock. It was almost time for the afternoon riding classes to begin. In a moment they would all be heading for the stables to tack up for their first cross-country ride of the new year. But Georgie wouldn’t be joining them.

  “So, you still haven’t told me,” Alice said, leaning forward conspiratorially across the table to her, “what option class are you taking now?”

  The rest of the table suddenly went quiet. It was the question that they’d all been dying to ask Georgie, but none of them had been brave enough to broach the subject.

  Georgie didn’t have to answer because at that moment Mitty Janssen came over to join them.

  Mitty was a dedicated dressage rider who had aced the Netherlands auditions. Her two best friends, Isabel Weiss and Spanish rider Reina Romero were also dressage fanatics and boarders in Stars of Pau. All three girls were swotty and serious and known throughout the school as the ‘Dressage Set’.

  “Hi, Georgie,” Mitty said.

  “Oh, hey, Mitty, how are you?”

  “So,” Mitty smiled, “I heard the news that you’re joining us! Do you need to borrow a pair of Carl Hester training reins? They’re compulsory for first years—”

  “Uh, thanks, Mitty,” Georgie said, cutting her off. “I already bought some.”

  “OK,” Mitty said cheerfully. “Well, I’ll see you in class!”

  “Yeah,” Georgie muttered. She didn’t look up from her lunch. She could feel the eyes of the rest of the eventing clique staring at her with horror. Georgie Parker had joined the dressage class!

  *

  “You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about,” Alice insisted as the girls walked towards the stables. “I mean, dressage is an important part of eventing. It’s one of the three phases. So of course it makes sense to join the dressage class!”

  “Do you really think so?” Georgie was relieved, “I thought you’d think it was—”

  “Wussy?” Cameron offered.

  “Totally lame?” Daisy suggested.

  The eventers snorted and giggled.

  “Yeah, great, guys, thanks for that. I knew I could rely on your support…” Georgie groaned. “Look, what else am I supposed to do? Dressage is something I need to learn, and besides, it fits the options timetable.”

  “It’s a good choice,” Emily said, trying to be supportive. “I mean, really we should all be taking dressage as an option. You live and die by your dressage points these days. Eventing’s not just about showjumping and cross-country any more.”

  “Hey,” Georgie said, “if you wanted to drop cross-country and join dressage too, I know that there’re still a couple of spaces…”

  “Are you kidding?” Emily was horrified. “Trotting in circles like a nana? I’d be bored to tears!”

  Georgie knew what she meant. An eventing rider lived for the thrill of galloping across country, tackling any obstacle that presented itself. After the wild, reckless excitement of Tara’s class, she was well aware that Bettina Schmidt’s dressage lessons would be rather… sedate. Even so, she had to stay positive.

  “Bettina is a great dressage teacher,” she told the others. “It’s going to be cool.”

  *

  “For our lesson today,” Bettina Schmidt said, “we will be spending the entire hour and a half at the walk to focus on our lower leg position.”

  “Strangle me with a martingale and put me out of my misery,” Georgie groaned. Beneath her, Belladonna shifted about restlessly. The bay mare had just spent the past two weeks being spelled for the school holidays and this was their first ride together. What Belle really needed was a decent canter to blow out the cobwebs. Instead, they were going to spend their whole lesson at the walk!

  Georgie joined the back of the ride and resigned herself to her fate, but Belle wasn’t so biddable. As the other dressage horses began to circle the arena, walking politely on the bit, their necks arched and their strides neat and regular, Belle began skipping about with frustration.

  Despite Georgie’s best efforts to calm her, the mare kept racing past the others and spent the first half of the lesson in a constant jiggly-jog.

  When she finally got the mare to walk on and could concentrate on what Bettina was saying, Georgie realised that she didn’t actually understand most of Bettina’s instructions anyway.

  “Ride from the hindquarters!” Bettina kept telling her. “Now try to feel each stride. Volte! Stay off the forehand!”

  For all Georgie knew a volte might be a handstand! As it turned out, it was just a little circle. They spent the lesson doing endless little circles at the walk, and then bigger ones, also at the walk.

  It was all so precise, so detailed and so… very, very boring.

  “That was a brilliant lesson!” Isabel Weiss’s eyes were bright with enthusiasm as they led the horses back to the stables after class. “I really noticed how deep my seat was by the end of the session, didn’t you, Georgie?”

  “Uh-huh,” Georgie agreed, stifling a yawn. “Do you want to come back to Stars of Pau with us after we unsaddle?” Mitty offered. “We’ve got a DVD that shows you how to do a piaffe in ten easy steps. We were going to watch it before dinner.”

  “Umm, maybe some other time,” Georgie said. “I’ll catch you guys later, OK?”

  It was a relief to be alone again in the loose box with Belle. As Georgie unsaddled the mare she was surprised to see that she wasn’t even sweating under her numnah. Mind you, Georgie thought, why would Belle break a sweat when she had only been dawdling around for the past hour and a half?

  Georgie looked at her watch. It was quarter to five. It would be dark by five-thirty; she should really be untacking and heading back to the house. But she felt as if she hadn’t really had a proper ride.

  “Come on, Belle,” she murmured to the mare, flinging the saddle over her back again and tightening the girth once more. “Let’s go – just you and me.”

  *

  Snow had begun falling as Georgie set out along the bridle path at the back of the stables. She watched the white flakes floating down from the sky, landing on Belle’s jet-black mane. Georgie usually kept it neatly pulled so that it was short and tidy for plaiting, but over the holidays it had grown lustrous and long. Belle’s hunter clip was growing out too. It had b
een almost a term since Georgie clipped her in grooming class.

  Georgie’s own hair was braided in two thick, blonde plaits and as she put on her helmet to leave the stables she came up with the genius idea of twisting her plaits and shoving the ends through the ear-hole sections at the sides of her helmet so her hair would cover and protect her ears from the cold. It looked a bit weird with her plaits poking out from her helmet at odd angles, but Georgie figured that no one was going to see her.

  She rode past the snug indoor arena where they had spent their dressage lesson. It felt good to be outdoors, to feel the icy bite of the winter chill against her bare cheeks.

  As soon as they were clear of the stables and had passed through the gateway where the bridle path led to the open fields, Georgie urged Belle into a trot. The mare had lovely, floaty paces and she lifted up beneath Georgie like a hovercraft, arching her neck and taking the reins forward. She snorted and pulled, keen to canter.

  “Steady, girl,” Georgie cautioned the mare. The track was twisty and turny, and the ice had made the surface slippery – not ideal for canter work. Georgie decided to turn off the track, riding the mare across the open pasture towards an uphill stretch that led to the woods. As soon as they reached the hill Georgie tipped up into two-point position, put her legs on and Belle responded eagerly, her legs working like dark pistons making holes in the white snow.

  Belle knew the terrain here well and, even though it was covered in snow, Georgie trusted the mare to be sure-footed as they cantered on. It felt so good to have some fun instead of walking around getting in touch with your seatbones!

  As they crested the top of the hill, Georgie pulled Belle back to a trot as she saw the rider up ahead of her. At a distance all that Georgie could make out was the colour of the horse – a chestnut – and the rider’s jersey – ice blue, the colour of Burghley House. Knowing her luck it would be Conrad Miller, and he would find some pathetic school rule about not being allowed out in the snow and give her Fatigues.

  She had just decided to turn round and give them a wide berth, when the rider on the chestnut horse waved to her.

  Georgie steadied Belle and peered at the horizon. The rider on the chestnut waved once more and then urged his horse on into a canter, coming up the hill from the other side towards her. Georgie watched the way he rode, completely fearless, relying on his perfect balance to control the horse, with reins held so long they were almost at the buckle. And then she realised that she knew him.

  It was James Kirkwood.

  James cantered right up to her and pulled his horse to a halt. “Hi, Parker. Have a good holiday?”

  Suddenly face to face with him, Georgie’s first thought was her hair. The hair earmuff trick had worked – her ears were nice and toasty. But she knew that she must look ridiculous, like some sort of demented Pippi Longstocking. And here she was for the first time with the boy who had dumped her last term.

  “My holidays?” Georgie said, self-consciously trying to flatten her sticky-outy plaits. “OK, I guess.”

  James grinned. “Don’t give me too much detail, will you? We might end up having a conversation.”

  Georgie wanted more than anything to pull her helmet off and fix the plaits, but she was certain she would have helmet-hair underneath. Luckily James didn’t seem to have noticed the weird hairdo.

  “I went back home to Little Brampton,” she said. “Dad cooked a massive Christmas dinner and everyone came over. Apart from that I was at Lucinda’s helping out at the stables. How about you?”

  “The usual Kirkwood family Christmas,” James groaned. “The stepmom spent the whole time planning cocktail parties for people that she doesn’t even like. Dad disappeared with the hounds every day and Kennedy and I managed to stay in different wings of the house most of the time so we could avoid speaking to each other.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Georgie said dryly.

  “Belvedere misses you,” James added, referring to the big brown hunter that Georgie had ridden when she had stayed at the Kirkwood mansion. “I took him for a hack to cheer him up and we went down to the edge of the woods – you know, where we went that day?”

  He gave Georgie that cute lopsided grin of his. She knew the woods that James meant. They had been out hunting and they had somehow ended up there alone. That was when he kissed her. Georgie felt herself blush. Was James flirting with her again?

  “So anyway,” James tried to sound casual, “are you still seeing that guy? The one you were with at the School Formal? What’s his name again?”

  “Riley,” Georgie said. She wasn’t about to tell James that she hadn’t spoken to Riley since the Formal, or that she wasn’t even sure if she was still dating him.

  “He doesn’t go to Blainford, does he?” James asked.

  “No,” Georgie said, “he’s at Pleasant Hill High School.”

  “So this Riley,” James said. “How did you meet him if he doesn’t go to school here?”

  “He’s Kenny’s nephew,” Georgie said. “He was helping me to school Belle.”

  “So, he’s some kind of horse whisperer?” James sneered.

  “No,” Georgie said, “He rides trackwork. Racehorses.”

  “Does he have his own stables?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions about him,” Georgie frowned. “You’re acting like my dad.”

  “Am I?” James said, a fraction too quickly. “I’m just wondering what you see in him, that’s all. A guy like that…”

  “Like what?” Georgie said.

  “You know,” James said. “He’s not one of us, is he?”

  “I didn’t know there was an ‘us’,” Georgie said.

  “Oh, yeah,” James said. “Totally. There’s a ‘you’, and there’s a ‘me’ and I definitely think there’s an ‘us’…”

  As he said this he reached out a hand and gently touched Georgie’s cheek. “You’ve got a snowflake on you,” he said. “I thought I’d better wipe it off.”

  Suddenly Georgie’s cheeks burned so hot they could have thawed a snowdrift.

  “I better get back,” she somehow managed to get the sentence out. “It’s getting late.”

  “I’ll come with you,” James said. “This snow is getting pretty heavy.”

  They walked back down the hill, both of them staying off the subject of Riley. Instead, they talked about their new classes for the term. James was a year ahead of Georgie and he was a showjumper. But he’d already decided that next year he would switch his option and major in polo.

  “I tried to fight it, I guess,” he said. “It was just such a cliché, what with my dad being on the school polo team when he was at Blainford. I wanted to be different, but I’m playing for Burghley this season and Heath Brompton, the polo master, thinks I could go pro one day. I guess it’s in the blood, you know. Like with you and your mom and eventing.”

  “Not so much,” Georgie groaned. “I’m out of the cross-country class this term, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” James winced. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. What are you taking instead?”

  “Dressage,” Georgie said.

  “And it’s not going well?” “It’s so boring,” Georgie said. “And everything is complicated. It’s like she’s speaking a foreign language.”

  “German?”

  Georgie giggled. Bettina was also her German teacher. “I’ll get used to it, I suppose,” Georgie said, trying to sound positive.

  They had arrived at the turn-off that led to her stables.

  “Well, this is me,” she said.

  “I guess I’ll see you later.” “I guess you will,” James said. He turned his chestnut to ride away and then he halted the horse and looked back at her.

  “By the way,” he gave her that killer grin, “love the Princess Leia plaits.”

  *

  Georgie didn’t know quite what to make of her conversation with James. He’d seemed jealous at the mention of Riley – but he was the one that had split up with her! Althou
gh, it wasn’t actually James’s fault that they’d broken up – it was Kennedy’s meddling that had caused it.

  Her heart was still thudding as she unsaddled Belle and rugged the mare up for the evening, letting her loose with her hard feed. Did James want to get back together again? And was that what she wanted too?

  It must have been freezing cold as she walked back from the stable block to Badminton House, but Georgie didn’t notice. She felt as if she were floating like a snowflake, light and ethereal. It was getting late and the skies were darkening. As she walked along the driveway the lights above her began flickering on. They glowed overhead, lighting her way like a row of tiny moons illuminating the road between the school and the boarding houses.

  Still walking on air, Georgie bounded up the steps of Badminton House. She was about to open the door when she heard the voice behind her.

  “Georgie!”

  She turned round. There was a boy, his dark brown hair squashed underneath a woollen beanie. He was wearing a blue and black checked shirt and dark denim jeans. Swinging the door shut on his red pick-up truck he walked up the path and that was when Georgie saw the bunch of white flowers in his hand that were clearly intended for her.

  It was Riley.

  Chapter Three

  “Welcome back,” Riley said, holding out the white lilies to her.

  Georgie had never been given flowers before – apart from the time her dad bought her a pot plant when she was in hospital having her tonsils out, but that didn’t really count. The lilies had a deep, musky perfume. Snow was falling on the petals. They were still standing there on the doorstep and no one was saying anything.