Nightstorm and the Grand Slam (8 page)

“Cowards and opportunists!” Avery fumed when Issie came into the kitchen and showed him the email that morning. “They were happy to have their brand names plastered all over you when things were going well, but the minute times get tough, they're gone! They didn't even have the decency to front up and tell us in person.”

“They didn't need to tell us,” Stella said. “I think we would have figured it out once we saw this!” She held up the morning's paper. This time the massive photo of Natasha was taken in front of a Dashing Equine horse truck – and in her hands Natasha held a huge bag of GG horse feed.

“This can't really be happening!” Issie groaned,
slumping down at the kitchen table. The vet bills for Nightstorm's recovery from the stall injury were adding up fast. Victory was gone and now so were the sponsors. At this rate they would barely have enough cash in the coffers to pay the Burghley entry fee – even if Nightstorm had recovered in time.

“We need to keep calm,” Avery was saying as he made himself a cup of tea. “Perhaps it's worth trying to talk to the sponsors…”

A knock at the door put an end to the conversation.

“Are we expecting someone?” Francoise asked suspiciously.

“Maybe we shouldn't answer it,” Stella said. “It could be the paparazzi. I saw a photographer outside the front gates today.”

Issie stood up from the table. “Well, if it is a photographer, I'll just tell them to go away.”

Things were getting crazy, but Issie wasn't going to start living in fear of answering her own front door! She walked down the hallway, trying to make out the figure that she could see on the other side of the opaque glass.

Taking a deep breath, she turned the knob and opened the door.

Standing on the doorstep was a boy in dark blue denim jeans and a white T-shirt. He looked almost as surprised to see Issie as she was to see him.

“Oh good!” He looked relieved. “When I saw the paparazzi I thought I'd turned up at Lady Gaga's country house by mistake!” He smiled. “Well, Issie, aren't you going to ask me in?”

Standing on Issie's doorstep was Marcus Pearce.

The last person in the world Issie had expected to see was Marcus.

“You can't be here!” Issie blurted out. “You're supposed to be in America!”

Marcus laughed, “You're not pleased to see me?”

“No,” Issie stammered, “I mean, yes, of course I am! But I thought you were working for the Valmont Stables out in California?”

“I quit,” Marcus shrugged. “Things kind of fell apart after all the drama at Kentucky. I turned up for work one morning and the head of the stables told me that they were planning to sell Liberty. I figured there was no point in sticking around if they were going to sell
my best horse out from under me, so I resigned.”

He looked at Issie. “I hear you've been having similar problems of your own?”

“You could say that,” Issie replied gazing at this handsome boy with the honey-blond hair and green eyes who had turned up out of nowhere.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Marcus asked.

“I still can't believe you're actually here.”

“Is that why you haven't asked me to come in?” Marcus grinned.

“Oh!” Issie realised that they were still standing on the doorstep. “Come in. Everyone's in the kitchen and I think there's still some bacon and eggs left if you're hungry…”

Avery, Stella and Francoise were just as shocked as Issie to see Marcus. Cups of tea were brewed, breakfast was dished up and Marcus filled them all in on what had happened to him since the Kentucky Four-Star. It turned out that he had only told Issie half the story.

“The day that I resigned I had no idea what I was going to do, and totally no plan,” Marcus told them as he bit into his toast. “Then I get this phone call out of the blue saying that Gerhardt Muller had been injured
on the cross-country at Badminton and did I want to take over the ride on Velluto Rosso?” Marcus lifted up his left arm and Issie saw that it was no longer in a plaster cast. “My arm had healed up by then and I was ready to ride, and Gerhardt is a friend of mine so of course I said yes. Then they told me that the horse was based at the Goldin Farm in Wiltshire. So here I am – back in England for the first time since I left home for Blainford Academy!”

It was a fantastic story. And yet, Issie found herself slightly disappointed by it. She'd been half expecting Marcus to say that he had come all the way to the UK to turn up and surprise her. Hearing that he was in the neighbourhood anyway was strangely a bit of a let-down.

“So, it looks like Issie and I are both going to be riding at Burghley,” Marcus said cheerfully. Then he saw the long faces around the kitchen table.

“What's the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

“It's Storm,” Issie told him. “He's had an accident. I don't know if I'm going to be riding at all.”

After breakfast, Issie took Marcus down to the stables to meet Nightstorm.

“He injured himself three weeks ago,” she explained as they walked down the driveway. “The wound has healed up nicely and he's only got another week on box rest. Then I'm allowed to bring him slowly back into work.”

Marcus frowned, “You'll have a lot of ground to make up,” he said. “A month in the box will mean his muscles are wasted. I see what you mean about cutting it fine for Burghley.”

Issie nodded. “Tom has worked out a training schedule. It's going to be tight but I think we'll have him ready. As long as the leg holds out…”

Issie led the way along the row of loose boxes. In the second-to-last box she had stabled a black gelding called Bonaparte to keep Storm company. Bonaparte stuck his head out and nickered to her when she arrived.

“Is this him?” Marcus asked.

Issie shook her head. She gave a whistle and a moment later, in the box next to Bonaparte's a striking bay stallion stuck his head over the door.

“This is Nightstorm,” Issie said, reaching a hand up to stroke the stallion's broad white blaze.

“Wow,” Marcus looked genuinely impressed. “He's really something, isn't he?”

“I think so,” Issie said, looking doe-eyed at her horse. “I've known him from the moment he was born. His mother was my old pony-club mare and his sire was one of the dressage stallions from El Caballo Danza Magnifico.”

“With bloodlines like that he must be pretty good at dressage, then?” Marcus asked.

Issie sighed. “Yes – and no. Storm is capable of pulling out a great test, but he's unpredictable. Five minutes before we entered the arena at Badminton he'd actually just bucked me off! I got lucky and he behaved himself after that, but I need to figure out a way to make sure he'll always perform – to get some certainty with him, you know?”

“I know,” Marcus agreed. “The best ones are always so complicated.” He reached up to stroke Nightstorm's muzzle, and Issie could see the genuine love and understanding of horses that he possessed.

“Do you want a tour of the rest of the stables?” she asked.

As they walked around the yards, Issie filled Marcus
in on everything that had happened over the past months since they'd last seen each other. The loss of Victory to Natasha Tucker and the fickle departure of Issie's sponsors left him stunned.

“Even with all of those trainers working for her, she'll never get up to speed for Burghley,” Marcus concluded. “Not if she's never ridden a four-star course before.”

Issie wasn't so sure. “She's going to ride Victory at the Luhmuhlen Horse Trials as a warm-up. Apparently – according to the papers – I'm too chicken to face her!”

Luhmuhlen was a famous four-star eventing track in Germany. The timing of the event meant that many of the top UK-based riders used Luhmuhlen as a test run for Burghley.

“It'll be my first competition on Velluto Rosso,” Marcus told her. “If you can't face Natasha then I'll do it for you.”

“So why exactly did Marcus Pearce drop by?” Stella asked when they were all sitting down to dinner that evening.

Issie kept her eyes on her plate, “I don't know. He was in the neighbourhood, I guess, so he came to say hi.”

“The Goldin Stables aren't exactly ‘in the neighbourhood',” Stella said doing air quotes. “They're about twenty kilometres away.”

“He was just being polite,” Issie said.

Stella gave a smirk at the stiffness of Issie's reply. “He likes you!”

Issie could feel herself blushing. “He's just a friend,” she said. “And he's leaving for Germany at the end of the week and by the time he gets back we'll both be frantic in the lead-up to Burghley…”

Issie had a training schedule and it didn't leave any time for boys – not even a boy like Marcus Pearce.

She didn't see Marcus again before he left for Luhmuhlen. She did get a text a couple of weeks later saying that Velluto Rosso had travelled fine in the horse truck to Germany, and that the chestnut mare had settled in well.

Issie had read the papers that weekend hoping that, since Marcus was riding for Great Britain, there might be news on how he was doing. But the only stories were about Natasha Tucker.

The writers in The Sun's sports section had a field day over the so-called scandal when Natasha was banned from wearing her trademark bright purple jodhpurs to ride her dressage test.

“Uptight equestrians!” one Sun columnist opined. “Stop being prissy and let smasher Natasha wear purple pants!”

Had things really been reduced to this? Who cared what colour jodhpurs Natasha wore?

“Actually,” Stella said when she read the article, “I quite like those purple jods she wears.”

Issie looked at her dumbfounded.

“What?” Stella said. “I like purple, OK? In fact, I even think a colourful halter can look kind of cute on the right pony. It doesn't mean I like Natasha – obviously.”

“Purple jods are so not the point,” Issie said. “I'm just sick of them running news stories about her like she's a proper rider.”

“Well it can't go on for much longer,” Stella said. “Tomorrow in the dressage arena they're going to finally see the truth.”

Stella's prediction was startling accurate. It didn't matter
how many expensive trainers and minions Natasha employed, they couldn't paper over the cracks in her performance. Her test at Luhmuhlen was nothing short of a disaster. From the moment Natasha Tucker bumbled into the dressage arena in a disunited canter and made a ham-fisted salute to the judges she proceeded to massacre every single movement. Her final dressage score was the worst on record at Luhmuhlen since the event began.

Rumour had it that Natasha threw such a brat fit backstage afterwards that not one but two of her world-famous instructors quit on the spot.

Natasha went into the cross-country the next day at the bottom of the rankings on a stonking score of eighty-five points. As it happened, her atrocious dressage score hardly mattered. Her cross-country was so bad she was eliminated at fence number two when Victory refused point-blank to jump.

Two refusals was enough to get her eliminated at Luhmuhlen and Natasha was forced to make the walk of shame back to the start of the course. There, she caused a total scene by turning her wrath on the remaining members of her training team who were still on speaking terms with her.

All of this gossip was gleaned second-hand via Stella from the grooms who worked the circuit at Luhmuhlen. According to them, the worst part was the fact that the rest of the syndicate members who owned Victory were right there watching the whole drama.

Eliminated from the competition, Natasha didn't even stay on at Luhmuhlen to watch the showjumping the next day. If she had stayed, she would have seen one of the most closely-fought contests in the history of three-day eventing as the six leading riders came into the ring with less than ten points separating them. In the end, the winner of Luhmuhlen, with a dressage score of 38, and two incredible clear rounds, was the UK's Marcus Pearce on Velluto Rosso.

Meanwhile, back at The Laurels, Nightstorm was finally allowed out from enforced box rest. Issie had started his rehabilitation by taking him for gentle half-hour hacks each day along the bridlepaths on the property. This was trickier than it sounded since Nightstorm, bored and restless after a whole month trapped in the loose
box, was highly-strung and mad keen for a gallop. He didn't take kindly to the fact that Issie was insistent that he stay at a walk the whole time.

By the end of the first week, Issie's arm muscles ached from holding the stallion back, and she was relieved when David White popped around for a check-up and declared that she could now include some trot and canter work in Storm's programme.

“No arena work yet though,” David had clarified. “It's too tough on the legs.”

Far from being frustrated, Issie was relieved to have an excuse to avoid the dressage arena. The Badminton Horse Trials had been a lucky fluke. The stallion remained unpredictable and headstrong – and Issie had no idea what to do about it.

She needed to find a new approach – and she needed to find it soon. Nightstorm's leg was almost healed and when the vet gave him the all clear she would need to begin dressage training in earnest. It was already July so there were only two months left before Burghley.