Page 74 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
The groom walked about her and opened the stall, then walked in as Copper backed up a couple of steps.
Susan followed him in. He took Copper’s bridle from a hook on the side of the stall. Susan patted the mare’s neck, then she took the bridle from the groom and slipped it on. ‘Hello, girl.’ She’d ridden since she was four, and she felt entirely at home around horses. Her father treated them like children, the horses on the stud farm were a part of their family. Perhaps it was why she’d become attached to all animals. She thought of Samson, at Farnborough, and wondered if he was still sitting near the door in the hall, waiting for Henry.
The groom set Susan’s saddle on Copper’s back, and leaned to buckle the girth strap as Susan patted Copper’s neck.
The scent of the horse, the straw and leather had always reassured her, but today it failed to settle the pain or ease her loss.
‘There you are, miss.’ The groom slapped Copper’s rump gently.
‘Thank you.’
He bowed and lifted his cap.
Susan led Copper out into the yard and walked her to a mounting block, as the grooms carried on about their business. She usually rode out with Alethea. They were both confident riders, but her mother still preferred them to be accompanied by a groom. They preferred to ride alone, so unless their mother knew, they did.
She hooked her knee over the pommel of the side-saddle, then settled the skirt of her habit about her. The sharp beat of her heart was now from the expectation of a gallop over the meadows.
Copper sidestepped, sensing Susan’s energy.
She gripped the reins tighter, so they held against the bit in Copper’s mouth, then she tapped her heel to urge Copper into a trot.
‘Have a good ride, miss!’ one of the grooms called out as she rode out of the yard.
As soon as she was away from the house she set Copper into a canter, and then into a gallop as she leaned low against the mare’s neck. The wind blew at her face and whipped the loose strands of her hair from beneath her hat. Energy filled her up, capturing her senses. She would conquer her feelings and she would make a life for herself somewhere away from Alethea and Henry.
The walls of the abbey ruins became visible above a hedgerow when Copper jumped a narrow stream. She rode on, with an urge to stand among the tall walls and feel the passage of time, and her own smallness within it. When she reached the ruins, she slowed Copper to a trot, then ducked down and rodebeneath a low arch into what had once been the nave of the abbey.
She looked up. The walls were still as high as the ceiling must have been in this part, but there was no roof now.
The sky had become almost as dark a grey as the stone, the clouds swirling about in an argument with the wind.
Everything here spoke of time, of how quickly it passed, of how tiny her own perspective of it was. The walls of this building were constructed hundreds of years ago. Life did not centre and revolve around her or Henry. The world was much larger than the two of them and their insensitive infatuation. Love… There were a hundred books on love being won and lost, and hearts warmed and broken.
The arches of an old passageway ran along near the top of the wall. A passage to nowhere… Her life led to know where.
She dismounted, sliding off the saddle.
She let go of Copper’s reins, leaving the mare to graze on the grass that was wet from an earlier rain shower. Once the floor was ornamental tiles, but now it was a meadow of buttercups.
She passed beneath a giant arch which had retained some of its ornate decoration and faced the remnants of the stone altar.
She should set her love for Henry there as a sacrifice. She had given up the thing she wanted most in her life. She missed him. There was a hole within her that ached as though she had been shot through with a bullet. How did such feelings pass? How did anyone survive a broken heart?
She walked on, not really knowing in which direction she was walking. Her fingers clasped the skirt of her dress, lifting it away from the damp grass.
There was a low wall before her.
Many of the stones from the walls in the ruins had been takento build houses, and so there were some walls as low as her hip, and some she could step over.
When Susan reached the wall she could see over the top. This was the border between her father’s land and what would become Henry’s one day. There was a view of his father’s woodland. The ruins were his too.
Jealousy, bitterness and… loss, whirled through her. Someone would marry him. He was the heir, he must choose someone, if not her or Alethea, someone else.
Tears made the view of the valley a shimmering mass of green. She sobbed as the tears ran onto her cheeks, crying noisily with a childlike release of pain. The sounds echoed. But there was no one to hear. ‘I love him!’ She shouted out the words that their father’s plans had forced her to keep silent, yelling them at the walls. ‘I want him! I want to be cruel and selfish! I want to keep you, Henry!’
She breathed steadily. Letting the words echo into silence. ‘But I can’t,’ she whispered.
A raindrop fell onto her shoulder. She looked up. Another dropped on her chin. She opened her lips as the rain fell harder, and let the raindrops fall into her mouth and dampen her face, mingling with her tears.
