“You’ll need more than Arrow to play,” Gabriel says, falling into step beside me. “You can use any of the other horses you need. Except Merlin of course. Or you can buy some. I’m going on a trip to Argentina after our opening tournament to see a few horses, and Andrés has a stud over there. You can come with us if you want.”
We stop at the gate and Gabriel opens it for me. I lead Arrow through, turning him back around to face the gate before I stroke his neck and release him. Then I join Gabriel at the gate and we both watch him trot off towards the rest of the herd.
“I’ll think about it,” I reply noncommittally, as I’m not sure I have the finances for buying horses right now. But I am grateful for Gabriel’s generosity. I lean on the gate next to him and we look over at the horses. A few days ago my landscape was a skyline of tall buildings and the constant sound of people in a city that never sleeps. Now all I can hear is the sound of the horses tearing at the grass as they graze peacefully and the chatter of birds in the trees. It feels like a perfect moment.
“Thank you for finding me and offering me all this,” I say. “It’s only been a few days but it feels like I belong here.”
“You’ve always belonged here, Charley. This is your home.” He places a hand on my back, between my shoulder blades. It’s not quite a side hug but I lean towards him slightly anyway, and he doesn’t remove his hand. Its warmth seeps into my bones and one thought drifts into my head.You are my home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GABRIEL
“Is everything okay?” I ask Charley, as he’s been silent for the last ten miles.
“It just feels weird. This time last week I was wanting the weekend to not be over and dreading the thought of having to go to work the next day, wondering what fresh hell was in store for me.”
“That seems like a waste of a Sunday, that you couldn’t even enjoy a day off.”
“It seems a waste of a life,” he says quietly, and then shakes his head as if ridding himself of the memories.
“Well, after today when we’ve emptied your flat you’ll never have to think about it ever again.”
“Yeah.” He blows out a breath of relief.
I take the exit from the M40 to transfer onto the M6 that’ll take us to Manchester, and the horsebox takes a while to pick up speed again. While it makes a decent removal van, the horsebox is not a fast vehicle. Charley and I are in the cab. We’ve also brought along Alfie and Milly, two of my grooms as extra pairs of hands. They’re in the living compartment, no doubt spending the journey on their phones.
Charley falls silent again but he doesn’t look relaxed. I take quick glances at him, reluctant to ask again if he’s okay. Eventually he turns to me as if he’s made up his mind about something.
“What happened between you and Celeste?”
Ah, okay. That’s what’s on his mind. I suppose a three-hour journey seems as good a time as any.
“We broke up.” I give the simple answer.
“But I thought you were in love, you were engaged to her. You told me she was the one.” His voice rises a little in agitation and he leans towards me.
“I thought so too,” I say quietly, and he slumps back in his seat. I continue. “I believed it myself at the time. I guess I didn’t know what love was back then. The way I was brought up by my parents, especially my father, was that duty was everything. I owed it to my family, to my ancestors, to the estate. As if my only role was to serve Monkswood, not the other way around. What I thought love was was mixed in with that duty. I thought they were pretty much the same thing. Celeste was my father’s choice, as was I for her family. It wasn’t like some arranged marriage, nothing was that obvious, but there were plenty of times we were pushed together. I spent many hours being told what an advantage marrying her would be. How it would begood for Monkswood. Always duty, duty, duty. Until I believed it. Believed myself to be in love.”
“I had no idea,” Charley whispers. No, I never told him that. Charley was always my escape from duty. The one person who I felt like I could be me with, where being the heir of Monkswood didn’t matter and his friendship didn’t come with conditions. I didn’t want any of that while I was with Charley.
“Then my father died. He wasn’t old, but none of us knew about his heart condition, not even him. When I was left with the estate to sort out I struggled a lot. It was time consuming and I didn’t have time to spend with Celeste, the estate, and university. I focussed on the estate over everything, then university suffered and so did my relationship with Celeste. I could have done with some moral support and understanding, but she just demanded more of my time than I could give. We broke off the engagement shortly after my nineteenth birthday. All I learned was that living just to perform my duty was a hollow existence. No life at all. I vowed that whilst I would preserve Monkswood and its heritage, I would also live for me. That’s why I worked on my dream, to make that happen.”
I stop talking and glance at Charley. He’s staring straight ahead, biting his lower lip, processing what I’ve told him.
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard for you,” he says.
“It was, but in some ways I’m glad of it. Not losing my father of course. But it opened my eyes to what I might have become, a vacuous automaton.”
“I don’t think you could ever have been like that,” Charley protests.
“Oh, yes you did. You told me as much. You’re the one who saw straight through me. I just didn’t want to believe it myself.” He laughs at my words and I join in, some of the tension which had built over the last few minutes dissipating.
“I lashed out, I was hurting.”
“As you had every right to be.”
“We can blame it on Celeste if you like.”
