Nightstorm and the Grand Slam by Stacy Gregg Page B

purple pants!”
    Had things really been reduced to this? Who cared what colour jodhpurs Natasha wore?
    â€œActually,” Stella said when she read the article, “I quite like those purple jods she wears.”
    Issie looked at her dumbfounded.
    â€œWhat?” 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.”
    â€œPurple 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.”
    â€œWell 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 matterhow 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 loosebox, 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.
    â€œNo 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