Riding In the Sky Read online

  “If you say any more,” Mark declared, “I shall go and drown myself and that will solve the problem once and for all.”

  “Of course it would not!” Filipa protested. “You must win the prize, one way or another, so please tell me what to do.”

  She thought as she spoke that if they won any prize, it would only be the third.

  That would be better than nothing.

  Mark went outside and down the steps to where his phaeton was waiting with a groom in attendance who grinned when he appeared.

  “I’d have gone round to the stables, Sir Mark,” he said, “but I wasn’t sure whether you wanted your trunks.”

  “I want them brought inside,” Mark ordered, “but I am afraid there is nobody to help you.”

  He knew that old Smeaton, who was the husband of the cook and had been butler when their father was alive, was now very old.

  The very most he could do was to shuffle round the table with the dishes.

  If there was luggage to be taken upstairs, that was beyond his capacity.

  The groom carried in the two trunks he had brought with him from the back of the phaeton and placed them in the hall. Then he drove round to the stables.

  Mark looked at Filipa and said,

  “Why do we not unpack yours here? Then you can try on the dress to see if it fits you and, if it does, we can put it back into the trunk ready to take with us tomorrow morning?”

  “I suppose we shall have to leave very early?”

  “I am afraid so. There are two races I want to watch and then the race we are taking part in is at noon and afterwards there will be luncheon for everybody in The Hall.”

  He saw his sister’s eyes light up and added,

  “You will have to be very careful!”

  “About what?”

  “In not letting Kilne suspect, if you have a conversation with him, that you are not a Pretty Horse-Breaker.”

  Filipa stared at her brother and then she said,

  “Do you mean I am not – going with – you as your sister?”

  “Good Lord, no!” Mark said hastily. “I thought you understood.”

  “You did say that the competitors had to be Pretty Horse-Breakers, but I did not realise that I had to pretend to be one.

  “Now, listen to me, Filipa, and try to be intelligent,” Mark said. “There will be no ladies present at the Marquis’s rally.”

  He paused a moment and then went on,

  “There may be some among the spectators who come in from the neighbourhood, but he will not be entertaining them.”

  “But why is it so important that no one else can compete but the women you call Pretty Horse-Breakers?”

  There was a little silence before Mark said,

  “He just had the idea, and it is something new, that we each should bring a woman who has taken our – fancy.”

  “Because she rides so well?” Filipa enquired.

  “Yes, that is right, because she rides so well,” Mark agreed, “and, as the Pretty Horse-Breakers have captured the attention of the public, some of them behave as if they were prima donnas!”

  Mark spoke bitterly and Filipa knew that he was thinking of Lulu.

  “I suppose,” she said, trying to understand, “that socially they are in the same category as actresses.”

  She stopped a moment and then went on,

  “Papa used to take them out to supper when he was a young man before he fell in love with Mama, but who, of course, she never met.”

  “Yes, that is right!” Mark agreed. “And that is why no one, and I repeat, no one, Filipa, must realise that you are a lady.”

  “I will try my best,” Filipa agreed, “and Papa always said I was a good rider.”

  “You ride magnificently!” Mark replied. “That is a fact, not just a compliment.”

  “And the nicest thing you have ever said to me!”

  “I will say a great many other nice ones if we win one of the prizes,” Mark replied. “Now let’s have a look at your dress.”

  When she saw it, Filipa gave a cry of excitement. It was lovely, lovelier than anything she could have ever imagined.

  Made on Mediaeval lines, it had long sleeves that reached over the hands and then fell gracefully to the ground.

  The gown was of a pure white material that clung to her body, decorated only with soft white chiffon.

  Filipa ran upstairs and somehow she managed to do up the gown at the back.

  Then she covered her hair, which was very fair, like the golden corn before it ripens, with the long pointed headdress.

  There was the veil, which went from one side of her face to the other, framing her small pointed chin.

  She went down to the drawing room.

  Mark was standing at the window with a frown between his eyes and she was sure that he was thinking about Lulu again.

  She wondered how anyone could disappoint and leave a man who was so attractive.

  Her brother turned towards her as she entered and she knew before he spoke that he was delighted at her appearance.

  “It fits exactly!” Filipa said. “I was afraid it might be too tight, but actually I am slimmer than Lulu.”

  “I had no idea you had such a good figure,” Mark said frankly, “and you look fantastic! At the same time, you will have to use rouge and powder and redden your lips.”

  Filipa stared at him.

  “Why?”

  “Because you are supposed to be a Pretty Horse-Breaker and they use cosmetics in the same way as actresses do.”

  “How extraordinary!” Filipa exclaimed. “I should not have thought that it was something they needed when they are riding.”

  “When they are riding in Hyde Park,” Mark explained as if she was being rather stupid, “they are giving a kind of performance.”

  He paused and then continued,

  “Sometimes there are as many as a thousand people at the Achilles statue waiting to see them.”

  “It seems extraordinary,” Filipa said, “but I expect that the people are really interested in their horses.”

  “Yes, that is right,” Mark agreed hastily, “their horses are usually outstanding.”

  Filipa turned round several times to see that her dress really fitted and there was no need for it to be altered.

  Then Mark told her to put it back in the trunk and leave it in the hall for the morning.

  “You are staying here tonight?” Filipa asked before she left the dining room.

  “Of course!” Mark answered.

  “If Lulu had been with you, where would you have gone?”

  There was a little pause before Mark replied,

  “I expect that one of our friends would have accommodated us.”

  Filipa knew that was not true.

  She fancied, as she left him, that he would have taken Lulu to one of the big Posting inns that could be found on the way to London.

  It seemed strange that they should stay anywhere alone, but she supposed that the Pretty Horse-Breakers were a law unto themselves.

  They did what they wanted to do without worrying if anybody was criticising them or thinking them fast.

  She prayed, as she took off the dress and hat, that she would act the part that Mark required of her without making any mistakes.

  Above all, as he had said, she prayed that no one should guess that she was his sister and therefore a lady.

  It seemed strange, she reasoned, that ladies could not be horse-breakers.

  She remembered, however, that Mark had not been talking of horse-breakers in general, but of ‘Pretty Horse-Breakers’, who were apparently a race apart.

  She wondered how, knowing nothing about them, she could pretend successfully to be one.

  Then she reasoned that the only thing that really mattered was that she should ride well and help Mark to win the race.

  There was so much to arrange that Filipa had no time to think of herself until just before she came down to dinner.

  Sh
e had to make sure that Mrs. Smeaton had the necessary ingredients to cook a dinner that Mark would enjoy.

  She tried also to see that his bed was aired, as he had not slept in it in over a month.

  She hoped that old Smeaton had managed, despite his rheumatism, to get up the stairs and lay out Mark’s evening clothes correctly.

  But when she joined her brother in the drawing room, she said,

  “I have just thought of something important, Mark, which may seem trivial to you. The point is, what shall I wear to arrive in at the place where we will be changing.”

  “My God, I had forgotten about that!” Mark exclaimed. “We will be changing at The Hall. The Marquis made it quite clear that there would be rooms available for each of the competitors to change in.”

  Filipa was looking at him with worried eyes and he said,

  “You must have something fairly smart, in fact very smart, if it comes to that!”

  Filipa made a helpless little gesture with her hands.

  She had not been able to afford a new gown for over a year. Then it had been something very simple which had been made for her by the village seamstress.

  “If you arrive looking as you do now,” Mark said, “they will realise at once that you are not a Pretty Horse-Breaker.”

  “Why should they?” Filipa enquired.

  “Because they have very expensive tastes,” Mark replied, “and are always dressed to kill!”

  “How can they afford it?” Filipa enquired. “Unless, of course, they are paid a great deal by the livery stables.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence while Mark tried to find an answer.

  Then he said, as if he had just thought of it,

  “I think they get a percentage on any horse they ride that sells well because they look so smart on it.”

  He did not wait for his sister to reply, but went on,

  “That is what I was hoping would happen, not with the horse you are riding, but the stallion, which by the way will have arrived by now at Kilne Hall.”

  “So he is staying with the Marquis for the night,” Filipa smiled. “That is very smart!”

  “I hope Hercules, which is his name, thinks so,” Mark replied.

  The dinner was better than Filipa had dared to hope.

  When it was over and they returned to the drawing room, Mark suggested,

  “I think you ought to go to bed, as we shall have to leave here punctually at eight o’clock.”

  “Yes, of course,” Filipa agreed.

  “As it happens, I am damned tired,” Mark yawned. “I spent most of last night arguing with Lulu.”

  He spoke without thinking.

  Then he saw the astonishment in his sister’s eyes.

  “You were with her last night?”

  “Trying to persuade her to change her mind,” he said quickly.

  “I think it is very unfair of her!”

  Mark was walking towards the door.

  “Daverton’s a very rich man and that is something unfortunately I am not!”

  By the time Filipa had blown out the lights in the hall, Mark had reached his bedroom on the first floor.

  “I do hope, dearest, you will find everything you want,” Filipa said. “I am afraid poor old Smeaton is very forgetful, but I will bring up your shaving water when I call you.”

  “You ought to have younger servants,” Mark commented as if he spoke to himself.

  “Who is going to pay for them?”

  She kissed him and said,

  “Forget everything except that we must win the thousand guinea race. Remember Mama always said that, if you want a thing badly enough, you can get it.”

  “Neither she nor Papa had much money.”

  “But think how happy they were and I am sure that they are together now and will watch us win the race.”

  “I hope you are right,” Mark said. “Goodnight, Filipa, and thank you for being a brick and helping me out of a hole.”

  “I am so glad that you have asked me and I am very excited about it,” Filipa replied. “In fact I shall go to bed praying that nothing will prevent us from reaching Kilne Hall and seeing all those wonderful magnificent horses!”

  There was a lilt in her voice that made her brother smile.

  Then, when he was alone, he said to himself,

  ‘This is definitely something I should not be doing! But God knows, there is no alternative!’

  *

  Filipa, on the other hand, was almost too excited to go to sleep.

  She could hardly realise that she was to see the races on the Marquis’s private Racecourse.

  And she was to take part in one.

  Because she had always lived a sheltered life at The Manor, she seldom had any conversation with anyone about their neighbours.

  However, she had learnt something about the Marquis from what her brother had said when he was at home.

  He had last stayed at The Manor for two or three days, trying to find something to sell.

  She had realised then that the Marquis was a hero to him. Also in many ways he was the idol of all the young men of the same age who frequented the Clubs of St. James’s.

  Mark had been enthusiastic although at the same time obviously in awe of the Marquis.

  She thought therefore that he must be a rather conceited man.

  He was someone she would prefer to avoid, except that she longed to see him ride.

  Mark’s description of his horses and the way he rode them made her envious.

  She wanted to think that no one could ride better than her father had or Mark himself did.

  She would have been very stupid if she had not been aware that as a family they were outstanding in the hunting field.

  The difficulty was that she could not afford to hunt, except with what was considered in the County to be an inferior pack.

  Mark belonged to a much smarter one, the members of which wore special facings to their pink coats.

  They held a Hunt Ball, which gave everybody something to talk about for at least six months after it had taken place.

  But the fees were high and Filipa knew that she could not be so extravagant as to pay them for herself.

  It would mean depriving the few people they still employed of their wages and cutting down even more drastically on their food.

  She had almost given up hope of ever meeting anybody from what her mother would have called ‘their own class’.

  The exception was the Lord Lieutenant’s annual garden party, which took place once a year.

  Or the rather boring dinner parties where she was sometimes invited to take the place of a guest who had fallen out at the last moment.

  At these parties she was always the youngest by at least one generation.

  She tried to tell herself that she should be grateful to have been invited.

  Yet she often wondered if it would not have been more enjoyable to sit alone at home and read one of the books in the library.

  This was what she did almost every night and then she would go up to bed still thinking of what she had read and making believe that she was visiting other parts of the world.

  And, of course, making believe that she was meeting the fascinating people who lived there.

  Tonight, she wondered again what she could wear so that Mark would not be ashamed of her.

  Suddenly she remembered that her mother’s clothes were still hanging in the wardrobes in the bedroom she had used when she was alive.

  She crossed the landing to look at them and found a gown that her mother had worn at the Lord Lieutenant’s garden party the last summer of her life.

  It was a very pretty one and Filipa remembered that her father had wanted her to look her best, as the Prince of Wales would be present.

  “I don’t suppose His Royal Highness will look at me, darling,” her mother had smiled.

  “I shall be very surprised if he does not,” Filipa remembered her father replying.

  Of course he had b
een right.

  When they came home, Filipa learnt that the Prince had singled out her mother and talked to her for at least ten minutes.

  ‘It was not really what Mama wore,’ Filipa told herself now, ‘but that she was so lovely and always so smiling and happy that she made other people happy too.’

  She took the gown down and realised that it would make her look older.

  At the same time there was a soft ethereal look about it.

  This, Filipa thought dramatically, was very much in keeping with her dress as a Mediaeval lady.

  Of a very pale soft shade of blue, it was the first gown that her mother had worn without a crinoline and instead was swept back into a bustle.

  This was quite a small one, they had grown larger year by year.

  It looked extremely elegant on Filipa and, although she was not aware of it, it made her body look like that of a Greek Goddess.

  With some difficulty she found the small bonnet that her mother had worn with the gown and she hoped that it was still fashionable.

  It was trimmed with flowers, pale pink roses interspersed with forget-me-nots.

  When she put it on, she thought that it made her look quite different and certainly very much more sophisticated.

  It was better than the old sun bonnet that she wore in the garden.

  ‘If the Marquis does not like it, there is nothing I can do about it,’ she thought.

  Then she closed the wardrobe because the perfume from the gowns her mother had worn made her want to cry.

  She carried the gown and the bonnet to her own room and laid them ready to put on at six o’clock, when she intended to get up.

  She was determined that Mark should have a good breakfast and she also had to make sure that Mrs. Smeaton had not forgotten he had brought a groom with him.

  It was then she remembered something important.

  Mark had told her that as a Pretty Horse-Breaker, she should have her face powdered and her lips reddened.

  She thought this was an impossible demand and then she recalled that once, when her mother was ill, she had seen her put a little touch of colour on her cheeks.

  “Are you using rouge, Mama?” Filipa had asked in astonishment.

  “Don’t tell your father, dearest,” her mother had replied, “but I look so pale that it worries him and I doubt if he will realise that it is artificial.”