In The Name Of Love

Chapter 23

I'd known the man who owned the riding school since I was three. His name was Jeremy Owen, a thin but muscular man with dark brown hair and eyes. It was a pretty sunny spring and with the tan he'd built up he looked Romanian. I'd forgotten about that. But I got out of the car anyway and put my feet down on the gravel and dirt of the parking area and got out.

I still wasn't sure if this was a good idea when I was trying to get over Mircea, but this was the thing I'd been driving around looking for, for three hours. We were at the base of one of the big hills so the school was protected from the wind and the worst of the rain that came, but was for most of the day still exposed to the sun.

I was glad that it was dying down today. I wasn't sure if I would have been able to do this if it was hot like it had been that day in Romania. I was already feeling a bit less confident about this. But I had to do this. It was the only way I was going to be able to look at horses and not think solely about him. At least, that's what I hoped.

There was a class going on at the moment which didn't surprise me at all. Jerry did lessons for people on holiday as well as his regulars. Mostly he found the holiday lessons a bit boring and pointless knowing that they weren't going to be coming back for a second lesson for the most part, but it generated the money to keep the place open so he didn't grouse too much.

He had ten horses here that were his and another five stables were rented to other horses. The stables were built around, you guessed it, a horse shoe shape, five on each side with a hard standing area in the middle with a mounting block in the middle of that. The horses were all out either in the school or the overgrown field next to it. The four horses in the school were all the really big ones, the ones who were owned by other people. They were all different colours too, shining black, glossy brown, gleaming tan, pure white and stone grey. The people on them were in proper riding gear, hats and polished boots. They looked a little... posh to me. A little too polished and refined. They moved with perfect synchronisation up, down, up, down, up, down, but they weren't the most perfect person on a horse I knew.

Mircea... I hadn't been in the right frame of mind to realise it at the time, but he was born for the saddle. He had the aristocratic features, the confidence and self assurance that he knew what he was doing and that he was in control. God, he'd looked good. Too good. He looked like a man out of history, an army general or, or a prince from the old fairy tails. He was Prince Charming and I was Cinderella. Only the ball wasn't to be and there would be no happily ever after. Not for us.

I sighed and closed the car door. The crunch of gravel underfoot shattered the memory which was good. There hadn't been any gravel there. This was good, it was different. I took a breath in, a huge one, and carried on walking forwards out of the shadow of the stables and into the sunlight. I tilted my face up to the sky. The sun was gentler over here. More like a steady stream than a thundering train.

Watching the lesson was kind of soothing. They worked in regular patterns, took turns at doing things and Jerry's deep voice barked out at regular intervals. It was soothing and the regularity of it gently passed the time. I wasn't sure how long I sat there watching the women doing diagonals along the paddock or how long they spent cantering around.

After a while someone brought in a horse from the field and put her in a stable and then just left. I wasn't sure why, but I didn't feel like questioning it. When the woman who'd put her in the stable had walked off a good distance I walked over to the horse. She was dark brown with black locks, eyes that were bright as a button, just like Buttercup. Even her name was Buttercup.

"Why are you here, Wyn?" Jerry asked heavily. He was stood by my shoulder, leaning against the stable wall with his arms crossed.

"It's just something I have to do, Jerry," I said quietly.