Bridle Path (10 page)

When the last of the competitors had finished the course, it turned out that Nigel had taken third place. That meant that he’d won a nice prize that would no doubt help to pay for the couple’s honeymoon.

The Saddle Club was disappointed that they didn’t get to see Nigel and Dorothy again, but it was late, there was a lot of work to do for tomorrow, and Max was ready to take them all back to Stevie’s.

“You’ll see Dorothy and Nigel tomorrow,” Max reminded them.

That also reminded them about their wonderful surprise for Max. It was going to be quite an April Fools’ Day!

T
HREE VERY SLEEPY
riders arrived at Pine Hollow the following morning at six-thirty. Stevie had kept the girls up until very late the night (morning!) before, and it had been quite a struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Lisa wasn’t sure she could remember having gone to bed at all. Carole could remember it. She remembered it so well that she wasn’t sure she’d actually ever gotten up!

They each carried a bag of flowers, which they took into the tack room where they were going to work. They’d finished making crowns for the bridal party and a bouquet for the “bride’s” rider. All they had left to do was to make the grape arbor into a bower. Stevie
called it the “bridal path,” and the girls liked the pun. It was one of the few things that they liked that early in the morning.

“Come on, let’s get this stuff inside. Max and Mrs. Reg won’t be here for another half an hour, so we’ve got time to assemble the floral bower. Then they’ll be too busy with the weekend riders to notice what we’re up to until Horse Wise starts at ten, right?”

“Of course you’re right,” Lisa said drowsily. It seemed easier than trying to think about how anything might go wrong.

They worked in rare silence for half an hour, chaining the flowers together. Then, as each chain got long enough, two of the girls carried it out to the arbor and put it across the top. Tired as they all were, the girls had to admit that it looked fabulous. It was hard to keep from smiling when something was going to look so pretty—especially when it was finished. There was still plenty of work to do.

The tack room was around the corner from Mrs. Reg’s office—out of her sight, but close enough so that the girls would know when Mrs. Reg got there. That was an important thing to know, because Mrs. Reg was amazing in several respects, one of which was that she always knew everything that was going on in her stable. No matter how secretive the girls tried to be, if
they were still weaving flowers when Mrs. Reg arrived, they were convinced that she’d know it.

An hour and a half seemed like enough time, but an hour definitely was not. When Mrs. Reg broke her pattern and arrived at 7:30, the girls were upset. The whole tack room was still filled with flowers, and the grape arbor wasn’t! They hoped against hope that Mrs. Reg wouldn’t make her usual morning rounds to check everything, and they worked as quietly as mice.

Stevie cracked open the door to the tack room so they could hear when Mrs. Reg might be coming their way. Instead, they got quite a surprise. The person with her was Dorothy DeSoto.

“Probably here to sign the papers to sell Geronimo,” Carole whispered. That seemed logical, but it didn’t explain the fact that there was a distinct sound of crying coming from Mrs. Reg’s office. Was Dorothy
that
fond of Geronimo? She’d be able to come and visit him anytime. This didn’t make sense.

The girls strained to listen. The words were muffled and the message was unclear. They heard things like: “Nothing’s working … Mother … disappointed … all the guests … all the
presents
 … I can’t believe it … six whole weeks!” The girls didn’t like
the sound of this at all. They leaned toward the door of the tack room so they could hear better.

Pretty soon they dropped all pretense of working with their flowers and moved toward the tack-room door to hear better. That wasn’t quite good enough. They opened the door wider.

“… cancel the caterer … minister going on vacation … love him so!”

They stepped out into the hall.

“… honeymoon … Acapulco … Oh, Mrs. Reg, I just can’t stand it!”

That was enough. The girls just had to know. Without a word among them, they walked into Mrs. Reg’s office.

There was Dorothy DeSoto and a whole box of tissues, most of which seemed to have been used and scattered on the floor. Her face was red from crying. It occurred to Lisa that they might be interrupting something rather private, but such thoughts rarely crossed Stevie’s mind. She barged right in.

“What happened?” she asked.

“It’s Camilla,” Dorothy began, but then she was overwhelmed with tears.

“I thought she was going to be all right,” said Lisa. “It’s just a dislocated shoulder, isn’t it?”

“Did something happen to Elementary?” Carole
asked. It would certainly occur to Carole first that the problem might be equine, rather than human.

Dorothy took a deep breath, wiped away two more tears, and tried to explain the situation. “No, they’re both okay. I mean, sort of. Yes, Camilla dislocated her shoulder and she’ll be fine—in
six
weeks. And Elementary is just fine. This morning he was his usual calm, steady, professional self, so we’ll never know what was going on in his mind last night.”

Just the act of having to explain seemed to have set Dorothy on the road to recovery. She sniffed and wiped as she spoke, but at least she was talking.

“The problem is that Camilla won’t be able to ride for six weeks, and the team is competing in some very important shows during those particular six weeks, and they just can’t be a person short. That means that they have to use the alternates, but there are only two qualified alternates at this time, and one of them is eight months pregnant, so she can’t ride at all.”

“So, what about the other one?” Lisa asked.

“The other one was to replace Nigel while we”—here the tears started tumbling again, but Dorothy continued in spite of them—“got married and went on our honeymoon!” The final word overwhelmed her.

“I think I get the picture here,” Lisa said, sorting it out for her friends. “Because Camilla can’t ride, Nigel
has
to. He could probably beg off, but that would be unprofessional, and Nigel is very professional.”

Dorothy nodded vigorously.

“So the problem is that Dorothy’s wedding is scheduled to take place on Long Island next weekend, and it will be missing only one thing: the groom!”

The tears continued.

“Why can’t you get married before that?” Carole asked.

Dorothy blew her nose, tossed another tissue onto the floor, and answered the question. “We can, of course, but it was going to be such a beautiful wedding. It wasn’t going to be big, but it was going to be at my stables, and it was going to be nice. I think that’s what bothers me the most. We can reschedule our honeymoon. Camilla promises she’ll be better in six weeks, and even if she isn’t, the team can be one person short after these next few important shows. So we won’t have a problem then.”

“It’s the wedding part,” Stevie said very sympathetically. “I know how it is. A girl dreams about her wedding for years. She plans it from earliest girlhood—the most important day of her life—and you can’t stand the idea that all your dreams of a perfect wedding
have been dashed against the rocks of misfortune.”

Carole and Lisa looked at Stevie. When she started talking about things like dreams being dashed against the rocks of misfortune, she was up to something. Carole looked down at the flowers she still held in her hand, and she knew what it was that Stevie was thinking.

“Some girls want to have big church weddings with thousands of guests. Others like the idea of a small chapel, maybe outdoors, with a few close friends. Others, like you, want to be surrounded by the people and the creatures you love best.…”

Dorothy nodded. “Yes, I really wanted to get married at my stable.”

“How about Max’s instead?” Stevie asked.

“Here?”

“And now,” Stevie said.

“Now?”

Stevie looked at her watch and shrugged. “Well, maybe around ten o’clock when the chairs will be set up and the hors d’oeuvres will have arrived. You do like apple slices and sugar lumps, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Reg asked.

“Can’t you tell? We’re planning a wedding,” Lisa answered for Stevie.

“For whom?” Mrs. Reg asked.

It was such a totally logical question to a totally illogical situation that the girls could only laugh. It took a minute to explain.

“Wait a minute!” Mrs. Reg said. “I remember now. I even had a mark on my calendar. This is April Fools’ Day, isn’t it? Look what I wrote.”

She held the calendar out. Right there on April 1, in Mrs. Reg’s neat handwriting, it said, “Keep an eye on Stevie!”

That was enough to get Dorothy to stop crying. First, she picked up all of her tissues, then she stood up to hug the girls.

“You three are something else—really something else. I can’t tell you how much you’ve cheered me up with your wonderful, but practically impossible, idea. I know Nigel and I will get married one day, it’s just that circumstances have …” Her lip quivered.

“Well, we have the whole thing planned. We thought Geronimo ought to have a proper welcome, and a wedding seemed like a good idea,” Carole explained, trying to refocus Dorothy on happy thoughts instead of sad ones. Mrs. Reg was almost out of tissues anyway. “It seemed nice and romantic!”

“And it would be,” Dorothy agreed. “Nigel and I will be here for it. I guess we’ll be the only ones on the
groom’s side of the chapel, though?” Dorothy clearly didn’t realize yet that the girls were serious. Stevie’s mind was racing. Her thoughts were interrupted by a new arrival.

“What’s going on in here?” said a newly familiar, very British voice. “I thought there would be nothing but tears. We have laughter!”

“Oh, Nigel, you’ll never guess what these girls have been up to!”

“A miracle cure for a dislocated shoulder?” he asked hopefully.

“Almost as good,” Dorothy said, and then she shared the secret of the April Fools’ Horse Wise meeting.

Nigel smiled as he listened. Once again Lisa was struck by what a warm and wonderful smile he had.

“Doro warned me about you three,” he teased. “Is there nothing you can’t accomplish?”

They looked around at one another. Stevie shrugged. “Nothing so far,” she said.

“Well, I don’t suppose you could come up with a minister for us, could you?”

Naturally, Stevie’s mind clicked into gear. She didn’t think it would be too good of an idea for her to call the minister at her family’s church. He hadn’t
been very enthusiastic about some of her pranks the last time she’d been allowed to go to Sunday school. He apparently didn’t share her sense of humor.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “That’s the one thing we can’t do for you. We do have a photographer, some horses to ride, a bridal bouquet—even a garter, though it’s the right size for Delilah, and I don’t know how Dorothy’s legs compare to hers.…”

“Very well, I daresay,” Nigel joked. Then he patted his pocket. “You know, I just picked up our rings from the jeweler. Do you think they would fit the horses?” Everybody but Stevie laughed. She was still thinking.

Dorothy took Nigel’s hand and stood up. She turned to the girls. “You’re simply wonderful to have come up with this terrific scheme. I know Max is going to enjoy it. A little romance never hurt anyone—even Geronimo. And I love the idea that we can be there, even if we’re not in starring roles. So count us in. In the meantime, however, this stable has a new stallion, and he’s in the van out front. Is there anyone who could leave flower weaving long enough to help us put Geronimo in his paddock, where he can get a really good view of his wedding?”

The three girls volunteered. First they put their unwoven
flowers back into the tack room, and then they went out front where the van from Dorothy’s stable was parked.

Geronimo was quite a handful. Dorothy wouldn’t let the girls hold his lead, but she did let them help her with the van and the ramp, and while she and Nigel led Geronimo to his paddock, the girls put away the ramp and began to close up the van.

A car pulled up behind the van and honked because the van was blocking its way. Stevie and Lisa finished stowing the ramp while Carole went to explain to the driver what was going on.

Carole was dismayed to see that the driver was cranky old Judge Gavin, but he smiled when he saw her.

“We’re just finishing with the unloading, Your Honor,” she said. “It’ll only be a minute.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’m a little early anyway. And I’m glad to see you, Carole. I was looking for you last week because I don’t know how to thank you for suggesting that I ride that mare.”

There was something about the way Judge Gavin said that that made the wheels begin to turn in Carole’s head in a very Stevie-like way. She cleared her throat.

“Actually, Your Honor, I’ve just thought of a way you might be able to thank me. Could I ask you a tiny little favor?”

“Ask away,” he said.

She did.