Surrey Stable
"Dressage instructor Victoria takes on a nervous new student. What starts as riding lessons becomes something neither expected to saddle up for."
The stables sat in the Surrey Hills like something from a period drama—old money, old buildings, old traditions that my family had maintained for four generations. I ran the dressage program now, teaching wealthy amateurs who wanted to pretend they were in Downton Abbey.
"Your three o'clock is here." Martha, who'd run the office since before I was born, appeared in the arena entrance. "New adult beginner. Nervous."
"They're always nervous."
"This one's different. Phobia, apparently. Inherited money, finally decided to face it."
I found him standing at the paddock fence, watching the horses with an expression that was equal parts terror and determination. Tall, well-dressed, the kind of handsome that public schools produced and London refined.
"Edward Ashworth?" I approached carefully. "I'm Victoria. I'll be your instructor."
"The Victoria?" He turned. "Martha said you're the best."
"Martha's been saying that for thirty years. At some point, it became true."
"You're also nothing like what I expected."
I knew what he meant. My build was generous—thick thighs from a lifetime in saddles, strong arms from managing horses, curves that traditional riding clothes struggled to contain. Most people expected willowy.
"I'm exactly what's needed," I said. "Now, let's talk about this phobia."
The phobia traced back to childhood—a fall he couldn't remember clearly, fear that had calcified into avoidance. He'd spent thirty years pretending horses didn't exist, until a therapist had suggested confrontation.
"I don't want to be afraid anymore," he said. "I'm tired of fearing something so beautiful."
"Then let's start with groundwork. No riding today. Just meeting."
I introduced him to Duchess, my oldest and calmest mare. Walked him through approaching, touching, understanding. By the session's end, he'd brushed her mane while tears tracked silently down his face.
"Same time next week?" I asked.
"Every day if you'd let me."
I let him come three times a week. Groundwork became sitting in the saddle, became walking the arena, became trotting with a confidence that grew each session. His fear didn't disappear, but it transformed—acknowledged instead of avoided.
"You're good at this," he said after session fifteen. "The teaching."
"I've been teaching for twenty years."
"Not just the riding. The... patience. The seeing what people need." He was grooming Duchess, a task he'd taken to with devotion. "I've never had someone understand me so quickly."
"Horses teach you that. They don't have words, so you learn to read everything else."
"And what do you read in me?"
I set down my own brush. "Someone who's been afraid of more than horses. Someone who's spent his life following expectations. Someone who came here because it was the one thing he chose for himself."
"That's very perceptive."
"That's very obvious. To someone paying attention."
He kissed me in the stable, smelling of horse and hay and something expensive underneath. I should have stopped him—instructor-student boundaries existed for reasons—but his mouth was warm and the wanting was mutual.
"I've been thinking about this for weeks," he admitted.
"So have I."
"Is it inappropriate?"
"Deeply."
"Does that matter?"
"Not as much as it should."
We didn't rush. Lessons continued—he was actually learning dressage now, body and horse communicating—but evenings became ours. Long walks through Surrey countryside, dinners in village pubs, conversations that went deeper than any I'd had in years.
"Come to the house," he said finally. "I want you to see where I come from."
His house was everything mine wasn't—Georgian grandeur, staff who appeared and disappeared, the particular silence of spaces that had never known financial worry. I felt out of place until Edward took my hand.
"This isn't home," he said. "It's just buildings. Home is where you feel something."
"And where do you feel something?"
"With you. At the stables. Around the horses." He led me upstairs. "Let me show you something."
His bedroom was simpler than the rest—a deliberate choice, he explained. A space that was his rather than inherited. The bed was wide and the curtains were drawn and when he pulled me close, I understood what he'd been waiting for.
"Victoria." He undressed me with stable-gentle hands. "You're extraordinary."
"I'm a riding instructor."
"You're the first person who ever taught me not to be afraid." He laid me on the bed. "Of horses. Of feeling. Of wanting things I thought were impossible."
He worshipped my body like he'd learned from our lessons—patient, attentive, reading what I needed without words. When he finally moved inside me, it was with the rhythm I'd taught him: controlled, connected, communicating through movement.
"There," he breathed. "God, you feel—"
"Don't stop. We've waited long enough."
We hadn't waited that long, but it felt like a lifetime of appropriate distances collapsing into something necessary. I came with his name on my lips, feeling reins-free for the first time in years, and he followed immediately—both of us gasping like we'd completed a demanding course.
"Stay," he said.
"At the house?"
"In my life." He pulled me closer. "I've spent thirty years being afraid and thirty minutes knowing what I should have had all along. I'm not interested in going back."
I stay at the house now. Not every night—I have my own life, my own stables—but enough. Edward's become a decent rider, good enough that I don't cringe when he takes Duchess through her paces. And every evening, in whatever bed we find ourselves, we practice a different kind of communication.
The dressage world raised eyebrows when the posh new student started dating his instructor. Let them. We're too busy finding our own rhythm—in the arena and out of it—to care what anyone thinks.
Some fears are worth facing. Some boundaries are worth crossing. And some connections, formed in hay-scented stables between people who had no business falling for each other, are worth every rule they break.