by Ward, J. R.
A.J. thought about it and began to see Devlin’s point. She saw how she’d played into Marceau’s hands and started to feel like a fool.
Watching her deflate, Devlin couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It was the first time he’d touched her since the night they’d kissed. His hand lingered on her cheek.
“The best technical rider doesn’t always win,” he said gently. “And Marceau’s star has risen a lot higher because of it. He’s great at unsettling competitors. I’ve seen him do it before.”
She heaved a sigh. “How could I be so gullible?”
“Look, you should take it as a compliment. The man never wastes time on riders he’s sure he can beat.”
A.J. stayed silent for a moment and then he watched as she pulled herself together, those arresting eyes of hers relighting with purpose.
“Well,” she said sharply, “the man’s getting no more from me. Let’s walk that course.”
“Hey,” he said.
She looked at him.
“I’m proud of you.”
She flushed and a slow smile spread over her features. It was like watching the sunrise over his mountains at home, he thought. Beautiful, glowing, magical.
“Thanks,” she said, and then started back for the crowd around the billboard.
“Don’t worry about going into the fray,” he said, stopping her. “I’ve already sketched out the course and you’re going second to last in a field of fifteen.”
“That’s great.”
Together, they bent over his clipboard and analyzed the course order. There were eleven fences, with two combinations. Mercifully, Devlin’s prediction that there wouldn’t be a water obstacle was correct. After A.J. was familiar with the layout, they went inside the ring and walked the course, pacing off the distances between the jumps. Taking three-foot steps, they counted four as one of Sabbath’s strides. Other competitors and trainers were doing the same and the lot of them looked like a platoon of confused soldiers, high-stepping in different directions.
After they’d walked the course once, Devlin coached her on how to handle the turns.
“The first three jumps are straightforward. Going into the turn that follows, get him into a lead change as soon as you can before heading over to the first combination of uprights. Six is going to be the first real test. It’s a tight crank and he’s going to fight you for his head. Seven and eight are relatively easy but then comes the cruncher. He’s going to get barreling fast during that straight shot before the turn into nine and ten. You’re going to have to hold him as best you can so you don’t go cockeyed into the corner and miss that last combination of oxers. Get through them and you’re home free with the wall at eleven.”
A.J. nodded and asked him some specific questions about where she needed to take jumps at an angle in order to get the stallion into the best position to handle the turns. She knew that her late start position was going to be an advantage. She could watch the first couple of jumpers and see where they were having problems. Typically, courses had one or two fences that the competitors tended to fault on, and discovering where those were was important information. Sometimes, it was surprising where the problems came up.
The goal in competition was a “clean round,” which meant the horse and rider made it over all of the fences without knocking down a rail. A point system, made up of “faults,” measured any deviation from a clean round. If a rail was knocked down, it would mean four faults for the rider, and there were other transgressions such as a horse refusing a jump or failing to cross the start or finish line. There was also a time limit on the course, and if a rider’s time came in above it, they would be disqualified.
After all the competitors finished the first round, if there was only one clean round or only one rider with the lowest number of faults, that competitor would win and the others would place accordingly. If there were multiple clean rounds or lowest number of faults, there would be a jump off, a timed round over a half dozen fences. The rider with the fastest timed clean round would then win or, failing any clean round, the rider with the lowest number of faults would take first place.
A.J. and the competitors all knew the rules by heart. They also knew the standards were the only predictable thing in an event. There was no way of knowing what would happen when someone went into the ring. During the two minutes it took for a rider and horse to go through a course, anything and everything could happen. It was this kind of triumph and tragedy that kept them all, competitors and spectators alike, coming back for more.
As she ran the course order through her head again, A.J. was thinking she had no idea how the stallion was going to behave. Well, she knew what the downside could be. Putting Sabbath into a foreign ring and surrounding him with people, some of whom would be moving around while he was jumping, was asking a lot. It would be visually arresting, a feast for the roving eye, and she knew how easily he lost concentration.
After walking the course one more time, she and Devlin headed back to the competitors’ paddock. By the time they returned to the trailer, Chester had wrapped each of the stallion’s lower legs to prevent injury if he knocked a rail, and had already put A.J.’s saddle on his back.
“We’ve got a good position,” Devlin said as they approached. “How’s he been behaving?”
“I think he’s engaged to that mare over there but I can’t be sure.”
Devlin laughed. “Maybe you’ll get that spring wedding after all.”
“I’m hopin’ for one.”
A.J. shot them both a curious look but the subject was dropped.
Going inside the trailer, she retrieved the bag that held her show clothes. In one of the empty stalls, she tossed aside her barn boots and undressed, feeling chilled by the early-morning air. In a hurry to get warm, she quickly put on a crisp white shirt with a priest’s collar and tucked it into a pair of tan jodhpurs. Fishing around in her bag, she found her good-luck socks. Bright pink, they had pigs with angels’ wings flying in formation and she covered them up by stepping into a pair of highly polished black boots that came up to her knees.
Out of her purse, A.J. retrieved a gold pin, which she affixed at her throat in the front, and then she plaited her hair into a long braid that she twisted tightly into a bun at her neck. Looking around for a mirror, she didn’t find one so she tried to get a sense of what she looked like by using a compact.
Frustrated because she couldn’t see herself, and feeling conflicted because she was wondering what Devlin would think of her outfit when she should have been focusing on the event, A.J. took her blazer from its wooden hanger and put it on with a smooth motion. The tailored black jacket was lined with red silk and had two brass buttons on the front engraved with the Sutherland logo. She tried not to dwell on the insignia as her fingers did up the blazer. With a crisp tug at the double vents in the back, she was armored in genteel battle gear and she emerged, velvet helmet dangling from one hand, ready to go into the ring.
Devlin’s eyes went dark as he looked up from adjusting Sabbath’s martingale. With all the preparations and chaos of an event day, he hadn’t been thinking about what he was missing but it all came back to him as she stood in the early sunlight, dressed in her show clothes. He knew how she felt, wearing that jacket. The marbles in her stomach, the course order she’d be memorizing like a treasure map, the delicious agony of waiting for her time in the ring. Those were things a competitor never forgot. And even though he was happy for her, he ached for what he’d lost.
“You all set?” he asked as she approached.
A.J. reached out and put a hand on his forearm. “Hey, are you okay?”
Devlin was surprised at her concern, having assumed he’d kept his emotions to himself.
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“You look like you’re hurting.”
He debated whether or not to brush off her concern. The last thing she needed to be burdened with as she headed into the ri
ng was his problems, but he found it hard to keep things from her. With those piercing blue eyes staring up at him, seeing through him, into his pain, he couldn’t help but respond.
His eyes drifted toward the show ring. “I miss it. I really miss…all of this. I haven’t been to a show since…”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said. “If it’s too hard—”
“I would never leave. I’m here for you.”
Their eyes met and held. Abruptly, the crowd evaporated, the teeming noise around them stilled, the competition ceased to exist. For the span of a heartbeat, they were the only two people in the world.
And then Sabbath stamped a hoof and Chester called out a question about the tack and someone behind them let out a curse as a bucket of water was knocked over.
As he fought the urge to take her into his arms, Devlin nodded toward the stallion. “So what do you say—shall we find out if we can work and play well with others?”
The two looked at Sabbath, whose eyes were darting around his head like Ping-Pong balls, and then toward the practice ring. Already, there were riders scaling jumps and trotting at the rail. All competitors shared the one ring and the same three or four fences for warm-up. At the same time.
“Any chance we can put a bag over his head for this?” she quipped as they went over to the horse. After taking the reins in her hands, Devlin gave her a leg up.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If he misbehaves, he’s grounded. No phone privileges, no TV. We’re taking a hard line.”
She laughed.
“A.J.,” he said softly.
She was still smiling as she looked down at him. “What?”
“Thanks for knowing me so well. For understanding me.”
His hand squeezed her leg.
“I…care about you,” she said softly.
“That makes me a very lucky man.”
They started out for the practice ring, A.J.’s heart swelling with joy.
Even though it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than Devlin, Sabbath demanded, and got, her full attention as soon as he entered the ring. Rearing up and letting out a royal holler, he announced his arrival to the other horses who were warming up. As A.J. struggled to get him under control, she thought again how getting romantically involved with her trainer was dangerous.
“Let’s get him loosened up at the rail first,” Devlin told her.
With some difficulty, A.J. coached the stallion into a trot. Head cocked like a gun hammer, he was eager to start something and everyone else in the ring knew trouble when they saw it coming. They all gave Sabbath a wide berth.
While she was trying to keep the stallion as calm as possible, the first competitor was ready to go into the big ring. A.J. kept one eye ahead of her and one eye on the event course, anxious to see what was going to happen. When the buzzer sounded, the rider was off, the woman’s mount eating up the distances between jumps and sailing over the fences with great bursts of strength. It was a strong round but not a clean one. The horse had faulted over the second combination, the trouble spot Devlin had predicted.
Even though she would have liked to watch more of the event, A.J. knew she had to focus on Sabbath, and by the time the first eight competitors had gone through the course, she’d managed to muscle him over a few practice fences. The results weren’t promising. The stallion was skidding out from under her commands, fighting her at every turn, running free from under the bit. They looked like amateurs, as if she didn’t know what she was doing and the stallion didn’t know any better.
Bringing him to a halt at Devlin’s command, she wrung out her arms and tried to keep the string of curses in her head to herself. She was feeling like she’d made the worst mistake of her life and was showing it off to a peanut gallery that wasn’t inclined to be charitable even on a good day.
“Let’s get away from here,” Devlin said.
“But my turn’s coming up fast.”
“I know, but trust me on this. Your eyes are glassy and you look as if you’ve already lost. You need to focus.”
A.J. let him take the reins and lead the stallion out of the ring to a shaded area. Hidden by the side of a barn, they had some privacy.
“Look at me,” he said.
She turned slowly, like she was coming out of a dream.
“At this point, you’ve already lost and not because of the horse. If you don’t pull yourself out of this funk, you’re going to have more to be sorry for than the fact you took a chance and right now are feeling rocky about it.”
“I’m so embar—”
“Stop it. Going into the ring as you are now, this horse is going to plant you in the ground like a marigold. He’s going to hit those jumps and go hell-bent for trouble and you’re going to wish you were back here, in this moment, making the choice to pull it together instead of pity yourself.”
A.J. shook her head, visions of failure swirling in her mind.
“What have I done?”
“It’s too late to rehash a decision you made weeks ago. Quit with him after this event if you have to but don’t throw in the towel ten minutes before you’re supposed to be in the ring. It smacks of cowardice and you know it.”
It took her a moment to absorb the advice. He was right. Turning away wasn’t the answer because she’d only end up with more regrets later. In her mind, she pictured returning to the stables without having gone into the ring, knowing she’d backed down.
Whatever happened, A.J. decided it couldn’t be worse than how she’d feel if she walked away.
With a nod, she began to wheel Sabbath around.
“It’s going to be okay,” he told her.
As she looked at him, Devlin was facing her with such conviction, she felt herself buoyed by his confidence in her. She wondered how she could possibly go into the ring without his support. In the midst of her chaos and self-doubt, he was as steady as bedrock. She didn’t think for a moment he wouldn’t be there to encourage her, coach her, pick her up if she was to fall.
“With you here,” she said, “I believe that to be true.”
Her mind wandered as they went over to the show ring. There was a feeling in the middle of her chest that defied easy description. It made her wonder whether true love wasn’t a combination of the calming warmth of security backed up by the intense heat of passion. It was a hell of a mix, she thought.
Together, they paused in front of the show ring’s main gate and got updated on the competition. There hadn’t been a clean round yet and there were two riders left ahead of her with one of them about to start the course. When she heard Philippe Marceau’s name, A.J. didn’t bother hiding her disgust.
The Frenchman was astride a tall roan mare, one of his frequent mounts. A good jumper, the horse was at the top of her form and, from the moment the buzzer sounded, she took the jumps with ease and power. Up on her back, Marceau was in total control, angling the mare well and driving her over each fence with confidence. As he led them into the final sharp turn, and barreled around to confront the oxer combination, A.J. held her breath with the rest of the crowd. If the two made it through, they’d end with a clear round; she was sure of it.
The mare took the combination and the last jumps perfectly and, as the two galloped over the finish line to a smattering of applause from the crowd, A.J. looked over to Devlin. “For a miserable human being, he sure can ride.”
“No, that’s a good horse. You could have put a bag of doughnuts on her back and she’d have done just as well.”
She grinned.
There was one more rider before her and A.J. waited impatiently for her turn. Sabbath began to feed off her tension, so she tried to hold herself as still as possible, regulating her breathing. The last thing they needed was any more juice in his blood.
When her number was called, she swallowed her fears and jogged the stallion into the ring, bringing him to a skittish pause in front of the judges. As she looked around, she noticed that all activity on the fairg
rounds had come to a halt. It seemed as if every pair of eyes in the whole place were trained on her and the towering black stallion.
So this was what fifteen minutes of infamy was like, she thought, removing her hat and bowing her head to the judges.
What A.J. didn’t know was that people might have glanced up once to see what all the gossip was about but they stared because of how spectacular she and the stallion looked together. Sabbath’s imposing power and height as well as his midnight coat and flashing eyes would have been noticed anyway. But teamed with A.J.’s long-limbed grace and classic beauty, the two were a knockout.
Putting her hat back on, A.J. guided the stallion out to the rail. When she heard the buzzer, she coached him into a canter and approached the first fence. He fought hard for his head but she didn’t let him get away with much and they cleared the jump well enough. Going into the second, he tried to skid out of bounds but she held him firmly and they went on to take the next several fences with no faults.
Underneath her saddle, A.J. could feel Sabbath surging over the ground, his great barrel chest drawing in gallons of air to feed the enormous muscles of his haunches. Pounding over the ground and then leaping off for moments that lasted an eternity, she could feel a rhythm growing between them. His power became her own as they leapt free of gravity and then crashed back down. It was a thrilling, pumping, harrowing journey.
And for a moment, she was grateful.
Unfortunately, her joy was short-lived. Heading into the straightaway before the final tight turn, A.J. defensively tried to slow their velocity but the stallion had no intention of giving in. No matter how far back she threw her weight, he charged ahead as if he were getting ready to jump out of the ring itself. They came into the turn out of control despite her efforts, and he fought her as she tried to bring him around, throwing his head and skipping out from under his hindquarters.
There was no way they were going to make the oxers, A.J. thought desperately as she tried to rein him around. The angle was all wrong.
She tried once more to shift her weight back and to the side. Sabbath’s breath was coming in great steamy explosions and she felt his body heaving under the tremendous pistons of his legs. She knew if they didn’t slow down, they were going to get hurt. Missing the turn at that kind of speed meant they would have to jump the ring’s fence or crumple into the corner in a heap.
