‘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.
‘I suppose I must be grateful for small mercies. At least I still have a roof over my head.’
‘There’s no need to take that tone.’ His voice was repressive. ‘And don’t tell me you’d thoughts of filling my shoes here, because I know it already. And you know my opinion on the subject. Or did you think a heart attack would soften my brain as well? The stables are no place for you, Natalie. They never were, and they never will be, so make your mind up to it. And keep off the backs of my thoroughbreds,’ he added. ‘A time or two I phoned here to be told you were out with one of the strings. That stops as of now, although I won’t deny you the exercise you need. Maybe old Jasmine’s bit tame for you. I’ll find you a good hack …’
‘No, thanks.’ Natalie shook her head. ‘Jasmine suits me very well.’
An hour ago, barely more, she had sat on that hill with the world at her feet. Now, everything she had ever wanted had been snatched away from her and given to a stranger, although that was surely a misnomer applied to Eliot Lang. His career and lifestyle had been described so often in the newspapers as to make them totally familiar.
Unlike Tony, who had been an apprentice, Eliot Lang had started his racing career as an amateur. He’d enjoyed a meteoric success, which hadn’t prevented his wealthy family protesting volubly when he became a professional. And he had been making headlines ever since. He’d spent several seasons riding for Kevin Laidlaw, and then had left in a blaze of publicity and innuendo which said that Laidlaw had dismissed him because he couldn’t keep his hands off his wife. The Laidlaws had vehemently denied the rumours, but Eliot Lang had said ‘No comment’ and gone to ride for Duncan Sanders, who was divorced. At least from then on he’d seemed to keep away from married women, perhaps because of the horsewhipping Kevin Laidlaw was alleged to have threated him with. But he had never maintained a low profile. The good life was there, and he enjoyed it, in the company of a succession of models and actresses, few of them distinguishable from their predecessors. And at the same time, he took more winners past the post than his rivals thought decent. His cottage in Lambourn had been the subject of a colour spread in a Sunday supplement.
Her mouth curling in distaste, Natalie thought, He’ll find Wintersgarth dull.
Aloud she asked, ‘Does Beattie know what you intend?’
She was thankful when her father shook his head. If Beattie had known, and not told her, that would have been another betrayal, and she felt bruised enough.
She got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and see if we’ve got any of Andrew’s favourite sherry.’
‘That’s a good lass.’
That was what he approved of, she thought bitterly as she went out into the hall—her ability to deal with small domestic details, to shelter him from unwanted phone calls