The Lady

by Anne McCaffrey

  Michael left the Willow Grove feeling relieved by his conversation with Jack. He might even luck out if he were careful. The flaw in the evening’s pleasure was Fiona’s absence, but she had told him that she intended to watch the Eurovision contest. He hoped that the whole thing would be over by the time he got back to the house.

  It wasn’t, for the blue television light was visible through a break in the drapes. Also visible was the pale votive light in the master bedroom upstairs. He parked the Austin and went in by the front door, upstairs to the back bedroom, which he preferred to use when Isabel was at her interminable prayers. Easter Sunday should see the end of that.

  Allowed to stay up for the song contest with her aunt, Catriona was actually paying little attention to it. She was sketching. With her mother upstairs, and her aunt engrossed in the songs, she could indulge herself. Her sister Sybil had always thought Catriona’s scribbling was rather good and could be counted on to supply colored and drawing pencils for special occasions. Sybil had felt a broken arm qualified.

  “Good job it was your left arm you broke,” she said, teasing. “Don’t let Mother see these. She’s got the wind up again about you.”

  Now Catriona filled her margins with sketches of Conker in every attitude: looking out over his door in the yard, pawing the ground at the gate in the big field, curving his back in a beautiful bascule over the big gorse bush, scratching his nose on his knee, which showed off the curve of his neck as well as his broad forehead. Daily lunging was beginning to put a top line back on him and tighten up the grass belly.

  Three weeks, especially when they included the spring holidays, were a very long time to wait to ride her new pony. It was depressing, Catriona thought, to realize that the cast wouldn’t come off until Saturday, April 4th, and she’d have to be back in school on the following Monday. She’d only have one weekend to enjoy riding Conker. So, she decided to make the most of that.

  Catriona also decided to be dutiful. She would ask to be allowed to join her mother for the Stations of the Cross because she knew how much the Easter observations meant to her. And Catriona could always pray for her arm to be completely restored. Easter was a time of revival, too.

  Fortunately, the X-rays proved that the bone had knitted well, and as soon as they got back from the doctor’s, Catriona fled down the ride to the big field, unable to wait any longer.

  Conker came to a stiff-legged halt at the gate, and Catriona flung it wide. With dainty steps he came right up to her, snuffling into her outstretched hand. She grabbed a lock of his mane and vaulted onto his back. She felt his muscles stiffen and set herself for a buck. Then he nodded twice and awaited her aids. She squeezed her legs, and he moved forward, neck arched, poll high, dropping his head to obey a nonexistent bit. She squeezed a little harder, urging him forward with her seat on his warm bare back. He glided into a collected trot, a gait so smooth she hardly felt the movement.

  “Oh, Conker, you’re a dream! Oh, Conker, I’m riding you at last.”

  She slid off his back and opened the gate into the main yard.

  “Catriona Carradyne, how often must I tell you to use head collar and lead with that valuable pony!”

  Her father was standing right at the entrance, scowling at her. Could he have seen her dismounting? She tried to remember the angle of vision he’d have had.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. I just had to show Conker that the cast is off!” A very weak reply, she knew, and she grabbed at Conker’s forelock. “But he never resists me. See?”

  “Head collar and lead, Catriona Mary Virginia Carradyne.”

  What she didn’t see was her father’s tender look as she passed him by. He had witnessed everything and indeed would have been disappointed if she hadn’t done exactly as she had.

  9

  SELINA Healey drove her red Lancia coupé into the yard on Wednesday afternoon just as Michael Carradyne and Catriona were heading for the menage.

  “Wednesday is half day,” Mrs. Healey said as they walked to the car. “I remembered. And Catriona is going to school Conker.”

  “I’ve got my arm properly bandaged, too,” Catriona said, displaying it so that Selina Healey could see the thickness of her left anorak sleeve.

  “Good girl. May I watch the lesson? Or would it put you off?”

  “Put me off?”

  “Not much interferes with Catriona’s concentration on a horse, Mrs. Healey,” Michael said in the same instant. And all three laughed.

  Selina Healey was oddly pleased by their deference and flattered by a sudden alertness in Michael Carradyne’s expression. She had not quite appreciated what a handsome man the captain was! So tall and dark. And his brilliant blue eyes were made even more compelling by a marked twinkle. Yes, the captain was a very manly sort of man.

  She pulled the Lancia up by the garage, behind the horsebox, but just as she was arranging a scarf about her hair, she heard someone screaming:

  “Michael! Michael! I prayed for guidance, and the Virgin Mary has given it to me.”

  Startled, Selina caught the entire tableau in the rearview mirror. She could see neither Michael’s nor Catriona’s faces as Isabel ran up to them. But their bodies turned rigid.

  Plainly Isabel was unaware of Selina’s presence in the yard. She looked dreadful, her face very pale, her eyes deeply shadowed, waving the cross of her rosary as if it were . . . a wand, which errant simile sprang inappropriately to Selina’s mind.

  “Catriona is not to ride anymore. It is against God’s wishes!” Isabel cried. “The Virgin Mary told me!”

  During that one afternoon call, Selina had been somewhat annoyed by Isabel’s arch manners, but there’d been no indication then that she was unbalanced. Now Selina took a deep breath and opened the car door.

  “Isabel, I couldn’t wait to come and see Catriona on old Conker,” she said, smiling graciously as she picked her way across the cobbles. “I was telling my husband only this morning that I thought this could be a winning partnership. He’ll be waiting to hear about today’s lesson.”

  She included Michael and Catriona in her smile, ignoring their dismay. She must pretend that she had not overheard Isabel’s raving. All the sparkle had gone out of Michael’s eyes, and lines dragged his mouth down, increasing her resolve to assist. Catriona’s face mirrored her distress and embarrassment.

  For one long moment, her face turning blotchy, Isabel glared at Selina Healey intensely. Then, wheeling abruptly, she scrambled back to the house, slamming the door behind her. Catriona flinched and looked anxiously from her father to her patron.

  “Yes, David actually is interested in seeing you make something of old Conker, Catriona.” Selina pulled her leather coat about her, suppressing a shiver, and regarded them with polite inquiry. Inwardly she was exceedingly pleased to have routed Isabel. Whatever was the woman on about? “I think my husband,” she said, “wants to brag about Conker and you to his friends!”

  “Catriona,” Michael said in a noncommittal tone, and his daughter signaled the obedient Conker to walk on.

  The menage, the outdoor training ring, had once been a second old walled garden, with huge sycamores whose arching branches made it nearly rainproof. It was an irregular rectangle in shape, and constant work on the lunge rein had worn a thirty-meter circular track inside the rectangle. On the wider of the unmatched ends, jump standards, poles, and cavallettis were neatly stacked. It was here that Selina went to stand, in the one sunlit area of the cloistered menage. Catriona began to work the pony in: walking and trotting on both reins, making him turn around her inside leg in first twenty-, then ten-meter circles to make him supple to the commands of her leg and hand. There was no sound but the pony’s rhythmic hoof beats on the ground, for the high walls kept out the sounds of infrequent cars on the road beyond.

  Selina watched, oddly soothed by the intense concentration of girl, man, and pony. Conker was working very well, his ears twitching as he listened to his rider. Catriona, elbow, arm, and hand in the pr
escribed line to his mouth, wore a look of almost painful concentration, on occasion biting her lip as she lightly restrained the pony’s eagerness, keeping him to the crisp, collected trot.

  Catriona was just the right size now for the pony. A pity if she suddenly grew over the summer, Selina thought, but there’d be the Spring Show, certainly: she’d insist on that.

  “Serpentines,” Michael called, leaving the center of the menage as Catriona began to execute the exercise. “And bend him around your leg, Trina.” He took a position beside Selina, arms folded across his chest, never taking his eyes from the working pair executing continuous S shapes from one side of the menage to the other.

  Selina glanced up at him. The muscles of his face had relaxed again. Indeed, the little scene in the yard might never have happened, now that he was again in his element. He really was an elegant man, with fine strong features: those amazing blue eyes with unexpectedly long black lashes framing them. There were just a few flecks of white in his sideburns, and although his hair needed to be trimmed, he managed not to look unkempt, only more masculine. The mustache suited him. He was fit and lean, and there were none of the signs of dissipation with which she was far too familiar. But then, Captain Carradyne always had horses to tend and was unlikely to forget that obligation. Or any other. He made as if to speak, then relaxed with a little smile as Catriona anticipated the correction.

  “That pony’s quick,” he said in an aside to Selina Healey.

  “He used to drop me in a flash,” Selina said ruefully.

  “That’s right, Trina,” he went on, “keep the pace. Look where you’re going.”

  “Well, she’d have a soft landing here,” Selina commented, “if Conker drops his shoulder on her.”

  “He won’t get Catriona off, Mrs. Healey.” Michael turned to her. “She’ll be ready for him, weak arm or not.”

  “She is a very capable little rider.”

  Watching Catriona put Conker through the suppling exercise was for Selina Healey like stepping backward in time to her own girlhood. Except for the fact that Catriona Carradyne was twice the rider she had been and had the dedication she had lacked.

  When Selina had been studying at Burton Hall, Colonel Dudgeon had told her father that all she lacked to become an outstanding rider was the necessary dedication, and she’d be a match for Iris Kellett or Marian McDowell.

  Her father, in a fit of pique at her indolent, party-oriented life, had taxed Selina with that comment. She had answered that learning to ride properly was socially acceptable for a woman, but competition was not. Of late, Selina had regretted not only that remark, but also the orientation that had made a good marriage and social prominence more important than any other achievement in her life.

  This afternoon, just when Selina realized how much time had passed while she watched the warm-up, Michael left her side to set up a small jump grid, using six of the cavalletti poles properly spaced for the pony to bounce over. Catriona promptly transferred Conker to the other end of the menage and continued her ten-meter circling.

  “This might produce some interesting results,” he told Selina quietly as he came back to stand beside her. His rather charming smile reappeared. “I don’t want to overdo Catriona on her first day back in the saddle, but they’ve earned a bit of fun in the lesson. The pony’s been far too well behaved.”

  “Indeed he has! I’ve been thinking that old age had mellowed him beyond recognition.”

  Michael’s grin broadened. “You’re here. He’s got his best foot forward. All right, Catriona, and don’t let him—”

  Catriona had turned Conker, the pony had seen the grid and had charged it with such speed Michael had not been able to finish his advice. The pony flew the grid, and Selina couldn’t help but laugh at the startled expression on Catriona’s face. She cut it off as the two came around again and she saw the flush of angry embarrassment on the girl’s face. Her resemblance to her father had never been more apparent, determined jaw and sparkling eye.

  “Circle him, Trina, and keep circling him until he’s listening. Try the grid again in your own time.”

  Docile enough doing flat work, Selina knew that Conker turned into a different animal when he faced jumps, even ones barely a foot off the ground. She disciplined her expression, but there was now a definite element of excitement in the performance of pony, rider, and trainer. Patience and firm determination finally won out, and Catriona was able to turn Conker into the grid without having him charge for it.

  “Once more, Trina, nice and easy,” Michael directed as the pony, cantering collectedly, once more faced the grid and popped calmly through it. Michael intercepted the pair as Catriona halted Conker. Both trainer and rider slapped the pony’s neck approvingly. “How’s the arm, Trina?”

  “My arm?” Catriona regarded her father blankly for a moment and then laughed. “I forgot.”

  “Well?”

  “It aches, but just a little!”

  “Well, don’t take any chances,” Selina said, stroking Conker’s sweaty neck as she looked up at the flushed and delighted girl. “Conker can take a bit of a hold when he wants to. Take it easy for a few more weeks. Promise?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Catriona said, grinning from ear to ear. “We just have to get a bit more used to each other, but oh, Mrs. Healey, he’s such a splendid pony!”

  “And you’re rather a splendid little rider.” Selina gave Conker a final pat and then turned away.

  “All right, now, Catriona, take him in and let Artie give him a rubdown. Mrs. Healey’s right. We must remember you’re not completely sound.”

  “Sound? Your daughter’s not a horse, Michael.”

  Michael looked down at her. “The term works as well for a human. Can we ever thank you enough for the loan of Conker?”

  “Yes, if you and Catriona can contrive a few wins for me. Conker and I used to do all right, but I’ll never be the rider your daughter already is. Or shouldn’t I mention that?”

  Carradyne frowned slightly, looking after girl and pony as they disappeared under the arch between the yard and the menage. Then he gave an amused little snort. “You are right to remind me. I sometimes forget that the rider is not merely a necessary encumbrance for a horse.”

  “What a boor you are, Michael Carradyne!”

  “No”—the twinkle in his eye suddenly dimmed—“but all too dedicated to horses.” His head turned just fractionally toward the house, and his wife.

  “I prefer that sort of dedication to many others I could name,” she drawled. “It has the merit of being unselfish and harmless.”

  “Harmless?”

  “Oh, yes indeed.”

  They had begun to make their way from the menage, Selina drawing her coat more securely about her, for dusk was settling in, and the wind was chilly.

  “Will Catriona be doing any roadwork with Conker?”

  “Yes indeed. They’ll both need to do a lot of it to get them fit. Is Conker traffic proof?”

  “Cars, yes; even yappy little dogs. But he’s not all that fond of tractors or air brakes going off behind him. If it isn’t inconvenient, I’d like to hack out now and then with Catriona.”

  Michael seemed surprised. “By all means, whenever you will. I had thought to rough your mare off and turn her out for the summer . . . .”

  “No, no, please keep her in a while longer. I’d like an excuse to ride more often. And Catriona and Conker have just provided it.” He had escorted her now to the Lancia, and she extended her hand to him. “Saturday? Eleven? If that’s convenient.” And when he agreed, still slightly bemused, she added: “Thank you very much for a most enjoyable afternoon.”

  No sooner had the red Lancia swung out of the yard than Eithne came running out to intercept him, an afghan over her shoulders against the evening chill.

  “Michael, whatever did you say to Isabel?”

  Michael frowned at his sister-in-law, then grimaced, recalling Isabel’s little scene with a surge of impotent anger. �
��I said nothing to her. Mrs. Healey was here, for which she should be thankful . . . .”

  “Thankful? She’s still in hysterics!”

  “Hysterics?” Disgusted, Michael tried to move past Eithne.

  “Michael, don’t run out on me,” Eithne said with unusual firmness. “Isabel is in a terrible state . . . .”

  “Fortunately, I don’t think Mrs. Healey heard Isabel’s ranting, if that’s what’s bothering her. Isabel went too far this afternoon, Eithne, and you had better know it, too. I will not conduct my affairs according to prayerful messages!”

  His sister-in-law regarded him in total perplexity. “What on earth do you mean, Michael?”

  “Eithne, Isabel is not going to stifle Catriona’s opportunities. Just look at the change in her this afternoon.” Michael pointed to his daughter, skipping out of the yard, her cheeks red with exercise, her face alight. “Does she look unsettled? Unhappy? Abused? Have I ever forced any of the boys to ride against their will? Do I not take every precaution against accidents?”

  Eithne hesitated. She and Michael were talking at cross purposes. Not that she had been able to understand clearly what had happened that afternoon to put Isabel into such a state.

  “You don’t understand, Michael—”

  “On the contrary, I believe I do. Isabel has decided that her darling baby daughter is meant for bigger things in life than horses! Well, she has never been more wrong. Catriona has no religious vocation whatever. Surely you must agree with me in that?”

  When Eithne’s expression informed him that she did indeed agree, he went on heatedly: “I’m fed up with Isabel’s religious fervor, Eithne. It’s excessive to the point of being unhealthy—for Isabel as well as everyone else in the family. And you can convey that message to my wife.” He controlled his expression as his daughter approached and signaled her to go ahead to the house. “I trust she’s immured in her room at her prie-dieu?”