The Pretty Horse-Breakers Read online

  “You are a bad example to me, Grandmama,” Lord Manville said affectionately. “If I listened to you I should get a worse reputation than I have already. Even Adrian told me that he was ashamed of what his friends said about me at Oxford.”

  “Ashamed!” the Dowager exclaimed sharply. “Silly young popinjay!”

  “Adrian informed me that they have a nickname for me. Do you know what it is?”

  “Of course I know,” his grandmother replied. “‘The heartbreaker’! There is nothing much wrong with that, it shows you have a hit of spirit about you.”

  “As I have already said, ma’am, you are a bad example,” Lord Manville laughed. “I gather that you are now returning to the country. If I find the heat of London too exhausting, I will come down and stay with you.”

  “Better spend your time at Manville,” the Dowager suggested. “I don’t like to think of the house empty. Besides, when the Master is away, the servants get out of hand.”

  “I shall heed your advice, Grandmama.”

  “And what is more,” the Dowager went on as they proceeded slowly down the stairs towards the hall, “don’t leave Adrian sulking at Oxford too long without seeing him. Remember there is only one antidote for a love affair and that is another.”

  Lord Manville’s laughter echoed round the hall.

  Then he said quite seriously,

  “I will write to him tonight to come and stay at Manville as soon as the term ends.”

  “Ask some girls to amuse him,” the Dowager advised. “A ‘Pretty Horse-Breaker’ should be able to take his mind off the Parson’s daughter.”

  “You are the wisest woman I know,” Lord Manville said as he helped the Dowager into her carriage.

  It was old-fashioned and comfortably padded with a coachman and two footmen in their brightly coloured liveries and crested buttons who had grown grey in the Dowager’s service.

  They greeted Lord Manville with a beaming smile when he asked how they were and remembered to enquire after their wives and children. Then he stood back and the coach rolled off, the old lady waving her mittened hand to him from the window.

  The coach was no sooner out of sight than the grooms appeared leading Thunder, a spirited stallion with white markings who was prancing, rearing and bucking just to show his independence.

  The butler handed Lord Manville his top hat and riding whip. There was a little difficulty in getting into the saddle, but once he was there, Thunder seemed to settle down and they set off towards the Park.

  Lord Manville had a good deal to think about as he trotted down Hill Street. He ignored a salute from several friends before he reached Park Lane and entered the Park through Stanhope Gate. As he did so, he heard Big Ben strike and realised that, despite the interruptions this morning and his unexpected visitors, he would still be on time to meet Lais, who would be waiting for him at the Achilles statue.

  The cynical twist of his mouth lifted a little at the thought of her. She was very alluring with her dark hair and slanting eyes, which seemed somehow to have a hint of mystery in them. Lord Manville had not yet found out the truth of her birth or her antecedents. It always took a little time before women were honest about themselves. Anyway, he was not interested.

  The one thing that was irrefutable was that she could ride amazingly well. Already he had decided that he must buy her a horse that was worthy of her looks and which would be the envy of her friends. He remembered she had already told him of one she liked, but he could not recall where she had seen it. Perhaps it was at Tattersalls.

  ‘I must remember to have a look at the catalogue,’ he said to himself.

  He would, he thought, enjoy spending money on Lais. She was a new acquisition and already she had shown her gratitude very prettily for the diamond earrings he had given her. He knew it would not be long before he would have to add to the collection.

  Money was unimportant. He was rich, he could afford to spend and, if a woman amused him, he was only too willing to pay for his entertainment. He remembered the anxiety in his grandmother’s face as she had spoken of Lady Brompton.

  ‘That is the last time,’ he told himself, ‘that I will get involved with someone of my own class. It always means trouble.’

  Nevertheless it had been exciting while it lasted and rather intoxicating, because it had flouted the established conventions. But now there was Lais with her slanting eyes and inviting red mouth, excluded by no social barrier.

  The thought of seeing her again was pleasing.

  Lord Manville gave Thunder a little flick with the whip and trotted towards the Achilles statue.

  Chapter Four

  As Candida entered Hyde Park on Pegasus by way of Marble Arch, she looked about her with interest.

  On her left was Park Lane, where she had already learnt were the houses of the Nobility and in the Park, moving amid the beds full of colourful flowers and under the great trees with their spring leaves, were the aristocrats themselves, travelling in shining carriages drawn by splendid horseflesh or walking over the smooth grass.

  Candida stared entranced at the gentlemen in their top hats carrying gold-topped malacca canes and at the elegance of the ladies whose crinolines swayed seductively as they moved.

  ‘This,’ she thought excitedly, ‘is London!’

  This was the gay world she had heard so many people talk about, but which, until now, she had never seen.

  Yet she had now lived in London for three weeks and it had been the strangest three weeks that she had ever spent.

  Mrs. Clinton had said to her the night she arrived,

  “You understand, dear, you cannot see anyone or meet anyone until you are properly dressed.”

  “Does that mean I cannot ride Pegasus?” Candida had asked quickly.

  “Of course not,” Major Hooper interposed. “There is a great deal of grooming to be done to Pegasus by my stable hands, but you must keep him fit. I will arrange for you to ride very early in the morning. People are not usually about until the world is well dusted.”

  She had laughed at the joke and Mrs. Clinton had joined in.

  “No indeed,” she agreed, “and Candida will find that the programme I have planned for her may be dull, but well worth the effort.”

  Candida had no idea what Mrs. Clinton had meant at the time. She had thought at first that she would be confined to the house except when she was riding and hoped that she could somehow obtain some interesting books to pass the hours. She need not have worried, for she found that practically every second of the day was filled, and by the time she did have a few moments to herself she was almost too tired to read.

  She was called at five o’clock and at five-thirty Major Hooper took her from the stables, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by the grooms on other horses, into Regent’s Park.

  Pegasus could canter to his heart’s content and Candida loved the pale mist rising over the lake, the shrubs bursting into bloom, the fragrance of lilac and the ground sprinkled with pink and white cherry blossom.

  “I had no idea London could be so lovely!” she exclaimed not once but a dozen times and Major Hooper had smiled at her enthusiasm.

  By the time the streets were growing busy with drays, the high butchers’ carts, the milkmen with their sleepy ponies and the muffin men crying their wares, Candida would be back in the riding school.

  There she helped Major Hooper with the young horses that were not fit for ladies to ride until they had been properly broken in, accustomed to a sidesaddle and taught to walk proudly over the cobblestoned roads and not to shy at unfamiliar objects. It was hard work, Candida found, although extremely stimulating.

  Mrs. Clinton had provided her with a riding habit which she could wear for her morning rides. Made in dark blue whip-cord with satin revers, it had seemed resplendent to Candida. But Mrs. Clinton said scornfully,

  “It’s only a working habit, you will want something far different when you go into Hyde Park.”

  At first, until a new
pair was made for her, Candida had to wear her own disreputable, almost out-of-toe, riding boots.

  The first morning she appeared in them Major Hooper said,

  “I doubt if your boots will hold a spur.”

  Candida raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t need a spur,” she protested.

  “Of course you need one,” Major Hooper said sharply. “All women use a spur.”

  Candida remembered with a shudder Firefly’s bloodstained flanks after Lais had ridden him that first evening when she had been watching from the gallery.

  She had also turned away from the Queen’s bootmaker, Mr. Maxwell, with a gesture of revulsion when, after he had measured her for her riding boots, he opened a box for her inspection. In it, arrayed like jewels on velvet, were a number of spurs.

  “I don’t know which is your choice, ma’am,” he said respectfully, “but most ladies favour this one.”

  He had taken out a long vicious spur of the type that Candida suspected that Lais had worn.

  “This,” Mr. Maxwell explained, “is a straight-necked spur with a five-pointed rowel. The points are long enough and sharp enough to penetrate the thickest riding habit should it intervene between the lady’s heel and the horse’s side.”

  Candida said nothing and Mr. Maxwell took another spur from the box.

  “This is even more popular,” he continued. “A long single spike covered by a spring guard to prevent it tearing the habit. The ladies tell me it is twice as effective as the rowel spur.”

  “Take them away,” Candida said quickly in a tone that for her was almost harsh. “I would never insult any horse with horrible weapons like that.”

  Now she looked up at Major Hooper defiantly.

  “I have never used a spur on Pegasus,” she said, “and I don’t believe that, if one schools a horse properly, there is any need for such brutality.”

  “Some women enjoy being severe with an animal,” he had said, almost without thinking who he was speaking to. “The more feminine they may be, the more they enjoy subduing the animal on which they are mounted.”

  “Then they are not worthy of being called women,” Candida cried hotly.

  Major Hooper shrugged his shoulders.

  “Have it your own way,” he said, “but there are a number of spurs you can borrow if later on you come to realise the need for them.”

  He had to admit after watching Candida at work for the first three or four mornings that she had been right in saying that she could school a horse without severity.

  She seemed to achieve better results from his horses than any of the other horse-breakers, who came in later in the morning and who used the spur vigorously and without compunction, just as they always insisted on riding with a painful curb-bit.

  It was impossible for him not to compare the methods of this young unsophisticated girl he had found in the country and the experienced horse-breakers who were either paid by him for their work or earned die privilege of riding his horses in Hyde Park in return for breaking in the new additions to the stable.

  But Candida saw nobody at the riding stables except the grooms and Major Hooper.

  By eight o’clock she was back at Mrs. Clinton’s house, eating breakfast and wondering what lay ahead of her for the rest of the day. She did not wonder for long. There were clothes fittings, long, tiring and innumerable.

  She had no idea it could be so exhausting to stand for hours having delicate fabrics pinned into place, nor had she imagined that she would require so many gowns for what she believed was to be her job of showing off Pegasus to an admiring world.

  “Why do I need evening gowns?” she asked Mrs. Clinton.

  “I expect you will be asked to parties,” was the reply. “Gentlemen who are interested in horses are, I assure you, amongst the richest and the most important in the land, besides being the gayest. You cannot be riding all the time.”

  “No, of course not,” Candida answered, looking at the gauzes, the satins, the laces and the brocades that Madame Elisa had brought for Mrs. Clinton’s approval.

  There were also quantities of lace-trimmed underwear, stockings, gloves and reticules, hats and sunshades, cloaks and wraps, in fact so many articles that Candida lost count.

  “I must ask you,” she said to Mrs. Clinton at length, her eyes troubled, “who is going to pay for all this? You know I have no money and I cannot allow you to spend so much on me.”

  Mrs. Clinton had turned away from Candida’s questioning face.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “leave all those problems to me and Major Hooper. All you have to do is what you are told and see that your horse is worthy of the admiration Major Hooper has already accorded him.”

  Candida’s face softened immediately.

  “I am not afraid of how Pegasus will look,” she said, “I am much more afraid that I will let him down or that you will be sorry you have spent so much on me. You see, I am not used to beautiful things.”

  “You look well enough in them,” Mrs. Clinton said, while Madame Elisa went into raptures.

  “Never have I dressed a more beautiful, more elegant young creature,” she said to Mrs. Clinton in private, “and so sweet there is nothing my workroom will not do for her. She is too good for those autocratic young swells with their roistering and their drunkenness.”

  “I don’t have a young swell in mind for her,” Mrs. Clinton commented.

  “I am glad about that,” Madame Elisa replied, “She is nothing but a child! How did she come to be with you?”

  Madame Elisa, with her fashionable clientele, might be a privileged person, but Mrs. Clinton was exchanging her secrets with no one.

  “What we have to do, Madame Elisa,” she said, “is to see that Candida is the sensation of the Season and you know as well as I do how much clothes count when it comes to catching the public eye. That is why I am sparing no expense.”

  “It’s a pity the Prince of Wales is too young to take an interest in her,” Madame Elisa smiled.

  “There are other men just as important,” Mrs. Clinton retorted, “and much more likely to pay their bills.”

  That was all Madame Elisa could get out of her, but it was enough to make her take even more pains over the gowns until Candida felt she would sink on the floor from sheer exhaustion if she had to stand any longer for the fittings.

  Finally, when the wardrobe in her room was filled to overflowing, she began to realise that the day of her debut into the outside world was looming nearer.

  Apart from the clothes, however, there were innumerable other things for her to learn. A dancing teacher came to show her the latest steps and, in the afternoon, when the house seemed very quiet, the servants would roll back the rug on Mrs. Clinton’s polished floor and Candida was taught to dance.

  This she enjoyed and it was not long before her dancing teacher, an elderly man with grey hair and a drooping moustache, declared that if all else failed she could become a dancer at the theatre.

  “That sounds interesting!” Candida said to Mrs. Clinton. “Do you think I could really become a dancer?”

  “Certainly not,” Mrs. Clinton said sharply. “I have better things in store for you than that.”

  “What are they?” Candida asked, but she received no reply.

  Candida was rather surprised that her teacher, on Mrs. Clinton’s instructions, taught her the polka. She had heard of it, but had understood that it was considered rather middle class. Her father had once called it ‘Bohemian, the type of thing one would expect from Paris!’.

  “Gentlemen find it very gay,” Candida’s teacher said almost apologetically and he half sang the words to Offenbach’s music,

  “Why don’t you dance the Polka?

  Won’t you dance the Polka?

  Joys of earth are little worth,

  If you don’t dance the Polka.”

  “Oh it’s fun!” Candida cried, “and as tiring as a two-mile gallop!”

  Mrs. Clinton herself taught Candi
da how to behave at a dinner party where there were a dozen of more different dishes and five or six different types of wine. She also instructed her on ordering from a menu and seating a table.

  “Most gentlemen,” she said, “like to have the parties which they pay for well arranged. Food and wine are extremely important, never forget that.”

  “I thought all those matters were organised by a housekeeper if people were rich?” Candida replied. “And then, of course, my husband would choose the wines, would he not?”

  For a moment Mrs. Clinton did not reply.

  Then she answered,

  “A knowledge of how to run a house will be useful sometime in your life.”

  “Yes, of course,” Candida agreed, “but I expect, really, if I marry it will be somebody quite poor and I will have to look after everything as Mama did.”

  “Who wants to be poor?” Mrs. Clinton enquired with a sudden edge in her voice. “It is something I have always been afraid of.”

  “Have you?” Candida asked in surprise. “It is bothersome when one cannot pay the bills and worrying if you know you owe their wages to servants who are so devoted that they go on working despite the fact you don’t pay them. But nothing matters as long as one is happy.”

  “I cannot imagine it is possible to be happy under those circumstances,” Mrs. Clinton said coldly.

  “My Mama and Papa were very happy,” Candida replied, “and so was I. It was only when they died that there was nothing left and I did not know what to do.”

  “Then realise now that money is important,” Mrs. Clinton insisted. “Save it – be sure that you get every penny to which you are entitled. Don’t be extravagant, there is no point in it. Let other people pay for you.”

  Candida laughed.

  “I don’t suppose anybody will ever want to pay for me,” she said. “Why should they?”

  For a moment Mrs. Clinton was speechless and then she remarked,

  “You are very pretty, child. You will find that gentlemen who admire you will want to give you presents and perhaps money. If you are sensible you will accept them.”