Sara Craven - Outsider

She showered swiftly, then dressed in a simple navy shirtwaister—a compromise, she thought as she tugged a comb through her tangle of copper hair, between the ultra-feminine clothes Grantham preferred her to wear, and the businesslike exterior she wished to present. She toyed with the idea of putting her hair up, but decided that would be carrying the new efficient image too far.

Excitement always made her pale, so she added a judicious amount of blusher to her cheeks, and a modicum of shadow to emphasise the lustre of her green eyes under their sweep of dark lashes.

Daddy’s pretty little daughter, she thought with irony as she surveyed the results of her labours. Only not a cipher any more, but a force to be reckoned with.

She heard the sound of a car on the drive, and flew to the window. It was the hired vehicle Grantham had insisted on, having explosively turned down his wife and daughter’s offers to drive him home themselves.

‘Women drivers!’ he’d snorted. ‘I’m not in line for another heart attack, thank you!’

‘Chauvinist,’ Beattie had teased, squeezing his hand with love, but Natalie found her own smile rather fixed.

Now she hung back a little, waiting for her father and his wife to enjoy their reunion in a certain amount of privacy. Or was that an excuse, because the thought of facing Grantham on his own ground was suddenly a daunting one?

Natalie squared her shoulders and went downstairs.

Grantham was ensconced in his favourite chair in the drawing room. He was a big man still, although he had lost weight since his illness. Here and there in his thick grey thatch of hair, a few streaks of copper like Natalie’s own still lingered. He had a strong face which could look harsh, but was now relaxed in the pleasure of seeing his home, and his wife again. His smile widened for Natalie.

‘Well, my girl?’

‘Very well, thanks.’ She stooped and kissed him. ‘And you look fine yourself.’

He gave her a derisive look. ‘A dramatic improvement on last night, eh?’

‘A dramatic improvement every day from now on,’ she told him steadily. ‘As long …’

‘As long as I do what the doctor tells me,’ he finished for her, his tone quite amiable. ‘Well, I intend to, lass, I intend to. I’ve had a shock, and I don’t mind admitting it. I didn’t think it would happen to me. So there’ll have to be some changes.’ He gave her an enigmatic look. ‘And they’ll involve you.’

Natalie’s heart skipped a beat, but she kept her voice level. No girlish excitement, she told herself fiercely, and no grovelling gratitude either. I’ve worked for this moment, and I’ve deserved it. ‘I thought perhaps we might talk after lunch,’ she said.

‘I can say what I’ve got to say now.’ He paused. ‘I suppose Beattie told you I’ve asked Andrew to lunch.’

‘Yes, she did.’ Natalie ruffled his hair. ‘Bit of a dirty trick, landing her with last-minute guests.’

‘She can manage,’ said Grantham calmly. ‘And I wanted to get things settled—put on a proper footing without delay. Owners are queer folk. They don’t like uncertainty.’

Don’t I know it! Natalie said silently. The hours I’ve spent on the phone reassuring a whole list of them that it’s business as usual, and that there’s no need to take their horses away so close to the start of the jumping season.

Aloud, she said, ‘There haven’t been any real problems.’

‘I should think not,’ he said with a touch of his old asperity. ‘They know when they’re well off, most of them. I train winners in this yard, not also-bloody-rans.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Where’s Andrew? I told him to be here by twelve. It’s these damned motorways—they’re always digging them up.’

Natalie’s brows shot up. ‘But Andrew doesn’t have to use the motorway,’ she pointed out mildly. ‘He’s coming from Harrogate.’

‘I know he is. It’s t’other one, driving up from Lambourn. Andrew’s bringing him here.’ Grantham’s tone was short.

‘From Lambourn?’ echoed Natalie, frowning. ‘Who in the world’s coming all that distance?’

‘Eliot Lang.’

‘Good God,’ Natalie said slowly. ‘The playboy of National Hunt racing, no less! And why is he venturing this far north?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Is he going to ride for us?’

Grantham snorted. ‘Of course not. He’s retired. It was all over the papers two months since.’

She remembered now. It had caused quite a sensation—one of the country’s top steeplechase riders and a former champion jockey retiring in his early thirties. She’d absorbed the information and then discarded it as having no significance to her.

Now, suddenly, she wasn’t so sure.

She said, ‘Then what is he coming for?’

‘He’s coming because I’ve asked him to,’ said her father. ‘It isn’t a decision I’ve made lightly. If I were still on my own in life, I’d probably have said hang the doctors, and carried on as usual. But there’s Beattie to think of now.’ His face softened. ‘We’ve only been married two years, and I don’t reckon on making her a widow quite yet, so I’m going to behave myself, and take the advice I’ve been given as if I was grateful for it—which I’m not. These are my stables, and I built them up from what your grandfather left, and I’d no thought to share them with anyone except my own kith and kin. But with Tony gone, and no grandchild to think of, I had to reconsider. And they tell me I need a partner to take the weight of this place off my shoulders.’

Natalie knew what was coming, and was terrified by it. She said urgently, ‘Dad, I could …’

‘That you couldn’t.’ One brief phrase smashed her dreams to smithereens. ‘You know my views, and they haven’t changed. I need a man—someone who knows jump racing, and can stand shoulder to shoulder with me. Lang’s never ridden for me, but I’ve always respected him, even if he did get his name into the gossip columns more than I care for. Well, a lad must sow his wild oats, I suppose. Anyway, the papers said he was thinking of going into training, so I got Andrew to contact him, and we’ve agreed terms. He’s buying a half share in Wintersgarth.’

She felt numb. There was a fold of her dress between her fingers, and she was pleating and unpleating it endlessly as she tried to assimilate what he had been saying.

The weeks of struggle, of trying to prove herself, had all been in vain. While she’d been working her guts out through all the hours God sent to keep Wintersgarth together, Grantham had been making his own plans. Plans which totally excluded her, she realised.

She ran the tip of her tongue round dry lips. ‘And what’s going to happen to me?’

Her father looked at her as if the question surprised him. ‘Well, you’ll do your normal job, same as always. He’s quite amenable to that.’

She said thickly, ‘How good—how very good of him.’

‘And you’ll be provided for in the long term, naturally, if there’s need.’

If there was need … Natalie’s head reeled. All her life she’d been totally dependent on her father. At school, she’d opted for a commercial course rather than pursue an academic career so that she could work in the stables office. Because in those days, naïvely, she’d thought that might be a foot in the door to better things.

And marriage had changed nothing. She had met Tony shortly after her father had employed him as stable jockey on a retainer, and the wedding had taken place two months later, which meant there were two of them dependent on Grantham Slater instead of one. Tony had been a more than promising jockey, and he had enjoyed the fruits of his success, living for the present. After he had been killed, she discovered he’d been living on overdraft. She had paid it off, but the way the debts had been incurred still rankled … She closed her mind abruptly, and focused on what was happening here in this room, right now.