A WILD INHERITANCE

A WILD INHERITANCE Chapters 3 - 5

How he'd hated her closeness to Saul. 'The gypsy invader', he'd called him. 

It was Aunt Carol she felt really guilty about. Not telling Saul had been an automatic, reflex decision. Not telling her aunt had been unavoidable, but very painful. In order to ensure that Saul hadn't found out, come barging back to Hill Mead with questions and judgements and arrogant interference, she'd been prevented from telling the one person in the world she'd longed to tell most of all, the person whose tolerance and sheer earthiness could have helped her through so much. 

And the pain must have worked both ways, Francesca thought miserably, thinking of the older woman's expression during dinner last night. Francesca opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at the cream curtains billowing in the draught through the window-frame. Her aunt was deeply hurt, but too considerate to show it. And there was still so much left unsaid. 

Last night, when the rest of the guests had gone and Lowenna was safely in bed, the three of them had sat down to dinner and, while Saul had remained taciturn, his thoughts and feelings completely unreadable, she and Carol had made polite, wary conversation about coping with small children alone, the logistics of being a single working parent, and so on. But, with Saul's ominous calm and scant contribution to the discussion, it had seemed impossible to say the things she wanted to say. When her aunt had announced that she was off to bed, Francesca had made a cowardly dash for her own room at the same time, so keen to avoid Saul that she'd contented herself with the briefest of goodnight's to Carol before locking herself away in her room. 

It was the longest night of her life, even worse than those endless nights when she'd longed for some word from Saul to show how he felt, yearned for the telephone call, or the letter that never came. 

The minutes seemed to stretch into hours, with her tired brain alternately justifying, analysing, reasoning and panicking. She wasn't sure if she finally slept for a short while or not, but when the clock by her bed read five-thirty a.m. she abandoned the effort and, after a quiet peep into Lowenna's room when she checked that the small sleeping figure was still warmly tucked beneath her Paddington Bear quilt, she hurriedly showered, plaited her hair in a long rope down her back, and flung on breeches and scarlet sweater. Creeping past the guest room with her heart in her mouth, she made for the stables, snatching boots and an ancient tweed jacket as she went, hardly pausing in her haste to escape from the house before Saul or his mother woke up.

Chapter Four

Vengeance's loose-box was dark and warm, and Francesca inhaled the musky smell of horse and hay, too preoccupied, as she groomed and fed and saddled him, to talk to him, only acknowledging her mistake when the horse gave her a sharp kick on the shin. 

'Behave yourself, don't kick the person who feeds you!' she advised him reproachfully, collecting her hat from the tack-room and jamming it firmly on her head before leading Vengeance quietly out into the deserted yard. The horse was one of her father's very last acquisitions before he'd become too ill to work at all, a six-year-old Cleveland Bay gelding he'd bought almost wild from a farmer up in Dorset. He was an enormous horse, over sixteen hands, with powerful hindquarters and hocks, and had an unpredictable nature, but his wild streak appealed to her. With patient schooling, hopefully he'd become a superb show-jumper. 

There was an audible whickering and stamping from the other loose-boxes. They'd all have to wait, Francesca reflected, rapidly tugging Vengeance out onto the lane. She didn't want Kelly, a particularly highly-strung mare, to start kicking her water-bucket around in frustration, unsettling all the others. The students would be arriving at seven-thirty a.m. with Gina hot on their heels, and the first pupils began arriving later still, any time from nine-thirty a.m.