The Prize by Stacy Gregg

disappointed,” Dominic Blackwell said, “…in fact, she’ll be thrilled when you tell her that I have appointed you to the role of head girl.”
    Head girl.
    Georgie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. In a professional stables the head girl was a very important and senior position above all the other grooms. The head girl was an experienced horsewoman who knew everything about workout routines, stabling, feeding regimes, and the general business of running a yard. Making Kennedy the head girl on the first day like this was a joke!
    â€œJulie,” Blackwell said turning momentarily to Georgie. “Grab a pitchfork and start clearing the dung out of the boxes.”
    He turned back to Kennedy. “Let me introduce you to the horses, Kennedy, and then you can help me with the afternoon workouts while Julie does the feeds.”
    â€œMy name is Georgie,” Georgie muttered. But Blackwell didn’t hear her. He was too busy introducing his horses to the new head girl.

Chapter Five
    A lice Dupree sat in the minibus with a sense of impending doom. Ever since she had been assigned to apprentice to dressage rider Allegra Hickman she’d decided there was just one reasonable conclusion to be reached.
    Tara Kelly must hate her.
    What other explanation could there possibly be for lumbering Alice with the very worst assignment in the whole class?
    If dressage was a vegetable, it would be Brussels sprouts. It was like torture – Alice had Caspian sitting idly in the stables when they should be doing cross-country lessons and here she was stuck with dressage grooming for a whole term!
    With a thundercloud hovering over her head, Alice got off the minibus at Allegra Hickman’s front gates. She was in such a foul mood that it took her a while to notice how nice the place was. There was a little white cottage with a wraparound veranda at the front, and a driveway edged by a hedge smothered in tiny white flowers led to the barn and stables out the back. The stables were big enough for eight horses and there was a concrete wash-down bay and a space to park the horse truck. It was all very basic, except for the dressage arena which was Olympic-sized.
    In the arena, astride the most enormous black horse Alice had ever seen, was Allegra Hickman. She was wearing white jodhpurs, an old faded yellow shirt and a baseball cap on her head instead of a helmet. She sat in her dressage saddle with her legs long and straight, her hands held up delicately in front of her, as if she were proffering a silver cocktail tray filled with drinks. She had the most amazing posture, her spine erect and her eyes dead ahead as she came down the long side of the arena in a lovely extended trot and then headed towards a long bank of enormous mirrors that lined the far end of the arena. Once the black horse was positioned in front of the mirrors, Allegra Hickman slowed him down and began to trot on the spot, looking at herself in the mirror to check her position and the movement of the horse. The black horse lifted his white-bandaged legs in a perfect piaffe, then Allegra urged him seamlessly into a canter and began to weave sideways across the arena in a balletic half-pass.
    As they reached the long side of the arena, Allegra spotted Alice standing and watching them. She pulled the black horse to a halt and then relaxed the reins so the horse could stretch his neck as she walked over to join her new apprentice.
    â€œHi!” she said. “I’m almost done. There’s a seat over there.”
    Alice looked over beyond the flowering hedge and saw a cute white wooden shed that looked a bit like a bus stop – a dinky shelter with a wooden bench seat at the side of the arena. She made her way over and sat down on the bench to watch Allegra finish the workout.
    Allegra picked up her reins and the black horse elevated into the air like a hovercraft and floated across the school. The dressage trainer drove