Summery: an engagement between two rival families is never easy. Especially when two crazy grandfathers are involved, the fiancée and her mother are obsessed with the wedding and the groom is interested in horses which are trained by a very cute redhead. JL. AU
Disclaimer: the HP characters are riding only on broomsticks not horses, so that probably means that I don't own HP at all. Sigh.
Spiral
By: Ruby89
Chapter one
The black stallion stomped the ground restlessly and moved his head from side to side to shake away the cold water from his skin. The young woman who kneeled next to him, squeezing the wet cloth over a large bucket of water, jumped to her feet with a protested "hey!" when she felt a shower of drops wetting her cloths.
She wiped her sweating forehead with the back of her hand and fixed her best glare at the horse. "Hold still, Oli. How am I suppose to clean you if you move every half second? Boy, you're even worse than a spoiled two-year old who doesn't want to take his bath!"
The horse raised his head and slaughtered in response. He rose on his back legs and with a well aimed kick, sent the bucket flying a few feet away.
The woman crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow. "Oh, now that's mature. What next? You'll refuse to finish your hay?"
Oli stomped the ground again and turned around until his rear faced the woman. "Oh no." she called outrageously, suppressing a laugh. "You did not just do that move to me!" she stomped the ground in imitation of her stallion. "Fine!" she pretended to huff and turned her back to him "see if anyone else is going to slip you apples between your meals from now on, because I'm certainly not going to continue taking care of you!"
She took a few paces and stopped when she heard the sound of hooves and felt a soft breathing near her cheek. She grinned and patted the long nose with affection. "So now you're ready to play nice, huh?" she glanced suddenly aside when she heard someone call her name.
"Lily! You won't believe…-" a plump young girl, around the age sixteen, ran toward her, splashing water from the bucket she held. "-what I just found out…" She breathed and put the bucket down with a sigh of relief. She was momentarily distracted as she gazed with undisguised admiration at the horse. "Hello beauty" she cooed, patting his neck "and how are you this morning?"
"Jumpy. I think he picked up on my nervousness for the race this weekend."
"Don't see why. It'll be a piece of cake for both of you."
Lily smiled and pressed her cheek to Oli's nose. "The news, Niki?" she reminded her friend.
"What? Oh, right!" Niki clapped her hands together in excitement. "I heard from the milkman who heard it from the cook who eavesdropped to Nanna and Mrs. Grant's conversation that-" there she took a deep breath. "-Amanda is coming back home. Today"
"I know." Lily shrugged nonchalantly. "Why do you think aunt Mandy has been ordering around 24/7? She wanted everything to be perfect for her daughter's arrival."
"Well, I didn't know that." Niki waved her hand restlessly. "I thought she got one of her odd moods where she orders the whole house as if she owns it. But this is not what I wanted to tell you. Apparently Amanda is coming here with her fiancé, and you would never believe who he is-"
"James Potter, the grandson of Sir Robert Potter." Lily interrupted her.
Niki's mouth dropped in shock. "You knew? How on earth did you know? I thought Mrs. Grant kept it all in hush-hush just to make sure that Sir Oliver won't find it out before it was too late."
"Kept in hush-hush?" Lily laughed. "honestly, after all these years my aunt still underestimates her father-in-law." she snorted in amusement. "Who do you think told me in the first place? I suspect that grandpa knew about it from the beginning. Won't be surprised if he had something to do with this whole… engagement."
"Why would he do that? Sir Oliver and Sir Robert are arch enemies."
"Rivals, not enemies. It's a simple game of chess between two old men who are playing for fifty years with live people." Lily explained and rolled her eyes. "And there are two perfect reasons why grandpa would agree to this thing in the first place. One of them is greed. If Amanda's fiancé is fool enough to fall hard for her, it'll be easy to convince him to give his grandfather's lands to the family."
"And the second reason?"
"To piss Sir Robert off. I would've had hated to be in the same room with him the moment he heard that his grandson, his only heir, lost his marbles and got engaged to his enemy's granddaughter."
Niki giggled quietly and pushed a strand of honey-brown hair behind her ear. "Odd old men. So maybe that explains why Sir Oliver ordered to prepare a room for the infamous fiancé."
"He did what?!"
"What, you didn't know?" Niki asked, delighted that there was still some raw gossip to tell. "He told Nanna to make sure that one of the rooms in the house would be all clean an' tidy cause a 'new guest' is going to live with you for the next couple of months."
Lily sighed and glanced at the house behind her. "Now what's he plotting…?" she threw the cloth in the bucket and gave Oli a last pat on his nose. "Keep an eye on him, will you? Be right back".
"You finally lost it, didn't you old man?"
Oliver Grant looked up as his granddaughter walked into his study room, making sure to close the door firmly shut behind her, though he could see that she very badly wanted to slam it. He lowered his gaze back to the papers he was reading. "I thought I told you to knock before you enter".
At age seventy-two, Oliver still looked as composed and in charge as he was at the day he inherited his parents' horse ranch fifty years ago. Running the place with a firm hand, he managed to turn the ranch to be one of the most successful in the whole country. He was the tough-but-fair kind of man who managed to earn the respect of his workers and his neighbors. His reputation walked before him. But as honorable as he presented himself, the man was definitely no saint, Lily thought wryly, and she was a living proof of that. Not to mention his ridicules obsession with Robert Potter. She was sure that the two old stubborn fools were fighting each other back and forth for a reason that neither of them remembered anymore.
She placed her palms flat on the table and knocked on the wood in slight mockery. "Happy? Mind to tell me about this insane idea of letting Amanda's fiancé live here?"
"The boy is going to stay under this roof until we make the engagement official."
"Did you warn him that he's entering a madhouse? I think I'm starting to pity the poor block."
Oliver's features hardened instantly. "He's a Potter, of course he knows where he's getting to. And he certainly doesn't deserve any sympathy from you. You're a Grant, don't forget that."
"No, I'm an Evans. And I told you before that I won't get involved in any of your little schemes against them." her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're planning a payback, aren't you? I just want to make sure you remember that Amanda is in this as well."
"If I do plan something, it's none of your concern. The only thing you need to do is keep your mouth shut and obey my orders."
Lily's mouth curved in a scorn. "Don't try to intimidate me. If you want an obedient poodle you can go and find aunt Mandy. I'm sure she'll be more than willing to bark and roll over at your command."
The wrinkles around Oliver's eyes deepened slightly as if he was about to smile, but instead he just growled. "Stubborn wench"
She smiled sweetly at him. "It's running in the family. I know at least one member whose scull is thicker than a brick of wall." she straightened and crossed her arms. "I mean it. I won't be part of anything you'd do to the man. Sir Robert is no idiot and I bet that his grandson is even less". Her voice softened suddenly as she voiced her growing suspicious since the moment she heard Amanda praising her new wooer on the phone. "He's using Amanda through his grandson to get to you, the same way you use Amanda's fiancé to get to him." she shook her head in wry amusement. "You two old crooks are more alike than you'd ever like to admit!"
"Get out" Oliver commanded sternly. "I've got work to do."
Lily raised her hands in mock surrender. "As you wish." She turned around and walked towards the door. "I'm going for a ride this afternoon." she informed him and opened the door.
"I expect you to be on time for dinner."
Lily froze in mid step. Her hand tightened slightly around the handle when she heard the command behind his statement. She didn't look back as she closed the door behind her. There was no arguing with him on that matter, and she knew it well enough. She sighed inwardly, starting to feel the familiar unease when it came to this family's gatherings.
Hopefully this James Potter will be able to survive his first dinner in this house better than she did.
Lily clutched the reins in one hand, letting Oli run at his own comfortable speed without any restrain from her part. She leaned even further, letting herself enjoy the blow of the wind against her face. The quick pounding of adrenaline in her veins tempted her to push Oli's strength to the maximum.
Lord, how much she needed this ride!
She let her mind drift to her earlier conversation with her grandfather. She knew him too well to know that he won't reconsider his decision or plan. Whatever it might be. What she did know for certain, that this whole engagement will raise more than a few eyebrows and more than a few simple speculations of the motives standing behind it.
She could just bet on all her savings that her aunt's friends, the 'gossip flock', would just adore the chance to present this engagement as something similar to a cheap romance novel story. Or they just might take Amanda Grant and James Potter and put them in the rolls of Romeo and Juliet. People loved this kind of soppy stories.
She briefly closed her eyes, shaking those thoughts from her mind. After all, like her mother used to say, there was no use to open the door to problems that didn't arrive yet.
The sudden tense in Oli's muscles and a loud honking was the first and only warning she received.
Lily's eyes flew open in alarm, noticing for the first time the white open jeep that drove right in her direction. Imulsively, she pulled the reins forcefully, making Oli do a weird kind of gallop to the side and managing to avoid the crush without an injury.
The driver didn't have that luck.
Lily watched as the vehicle bumped over a hidden rock and stopped with a sound that indicated to her that one of his wheels got punctured.
She jumped quickly to the ground and ran towards the front of the jeep. The driver's head leaned against the stirring wheel and for a moment Lily dreaded that he was dead. She sighed in relief when she saw his chest move with slow breathing.
"Sir?" she asked gently. "Sir, can you hear me?" she probed him on the shoulder, making sure not to shake him too hard in case he broke a bone. "Way to go, Lily." she muttered to herself. She opened the door from inside and gently eased the man's body against his seat.
"Wonderful." she breathed somewhat dryly when she noticed the blood that was trickling down his face from an open cut on his forehead. "The idiot forgot to buckle his seatbelt." she shook her head in exasperation mixed with the remaining of her shock. "Not that I can't blame myself too…"
She noticed that her hands were trembling as she dropped the man's arm over her shoulder, and half carried half dragged him out of the car. He was heavier than she expected and she stumbled slightly under his weight, landing on the ground flat on her back with the man sprawled on top of her.
She thought she heard him groan a little, but when she glanced at him his face was expressionless. She rose on her elbows slowly and suddenly noticed where the man's dark head was resting. She took a deep breath and the man's head rose alongside with her chest.
Well, that position could win the first price of the most awkward, embarrassing and uncomfortable moment of her life, Lily thought dryly. She watched as his hand which rested on her shoulder, started to slide down and stop at the swell of her breast.
She stared at it for a moment before saying calmly. "You better remove your hand from there or I'll slam the car's door on your wrist and break your fingers."
The hand dropped to her stomach.
Lily smiled. "Still unconscious, huh?"
She laid the man to the ground and removed her jacket from her shoulders, rolling it quickly and putting it underneath him to support his head. She checked gently for any inner injuries by probing his body and watching for any sudden change in the rhythm of his breath.
Satisfied that there wasn't something worse than the cut on his forehead, she started to clean the blood around it with a piece she tore from her sleeve. Finished, she said clearly enough for him to hear. "Well, the good news is that the cut isn't deep and the bad news is that you'll get a nasty little black-blue bruise for the next couple of days." she waited for a few moments and sighed when he didn't answer. Maybe he really was unconscious.
She watched him much closer now. He was rather young. Twenty-five at most. She gently removed a few locks of black hair from his forehead and pressed two fingers to his left wrist to feel his pulse. Slow and steady. That was a good sign.
She checked his pockets before fishing his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans.
"Trying to rob me as well?" a voice asked hoarsely.
Lily glanced at the man and then checked the open wallet in her hand. "For thirteen bucks? I'm not sure you're worth the trouble."
He opened one eye and stared unfocusedly at her. "Was that supposed to be some kind of a joke?"
Lily smiled at him and shrugged. "Vet's dark humor. Relax, I was only checking for your ID"
He raised his hand slowly and touched his nose. "Where are my glasses?"
Remembering that she removed them after resting his head on her jacket, she picked them from the grass beside her and placed them in his hand. "Better?"
He put them on and blinked in her direction. His mouth curved upwards in almost a lazy way as he said softly, "much."
"Good, but I think you better exchange the number on them."
"Why?"
She stared at him as if it was obvious. "Because only an idiot or a half-blind man could miss the huge sign that showed that any kind of vehicle is forbidden to drive in this field unless it's emergency. People use this piece of land for rides and long walks." she smiled wryly. "After all, you wouldn't want to cause an accident, would you?"
"I get it." he answered dryly, rising to a sitting position. He winced slightly when he touched his fingers to his wound.
Lily furrowed in sudden worry. She touched the side of his face with the tips of her fingers and moved his head slightly so she could have a better look at his cut, ignoring his surprised look. "At least it stopped bleeding." she told in her most assured voice. "But you still going to have to be checked more properly. Other than that, I think you'll survive."
"Thanks." he said, watching her carefully. "I suppose I owe you for your help." he stopped before adding sarcastically. "Even though it was partly your fault…"
Lily rolled her eyes before saying dryly. "How gallant of you to remind me."
He smiled suddenly, and she was slightly taken aback at the full force of its charm. To hide her sudden discomfort she glanced at the black wallet that still rested in her lap and took it to hand it back to him when something caught her eye.
Her eyebrows rose upwards slowly and her mouth was shaped in a silent 'O'.
"Is something wrong?" he asked in puzzlement.
She blinked and stared at him with a weird smile on her face. "You're from the city." she said only.
"Yes." he raised his eyebrows in question and then said jokingly. "I suppose you don't get a lot of visitors around here often."
"Mmm." she nodded absently and handed him the wallet. She stood up and brushed her jeans half-heartily. "Do you have a cell?" she asked as he got up as well.
"Here." he gave it to her. "Who do you need to call?"
She dialed and didn't answer question. After the third ring she heard someone pick the phone up. "Hello, George?" she glanced at the white jeep. "Listen, I've got a problem…"
After giving the location and the details of the almost-accident that occurred, she snapped the cell shut, aware of the young man's gaze on her profile all this time. "Thanks." she smiled at him and handed the cell back. "George said he'll be here in a few minutes."
"And George is…?"
"The sheriff." she explained. "Think you'll survive until he gets here?"
"Sure, but why-"
"Than I suppose I can leave you alone." she smiled cheerfully at him, backing away quickly. "If you have any question or a problem, just ask George's help. He's a nice man, I'm sure you'll get along with him"
"Hey, I didn't catch your name!" he called after her.
But she already turned around and almost broke into a run towards Oli who was standing quietly. "And if any common sense is left in me, it's better you won't find out who I am until tonight." she whispered to herself.
With a practiced leap, she mounted her house and kicked his sides to urge him to start running.
After making sure that there was enough space between her and the man, she slowed Oli down and glanced over her shoulder. She chuckled slightly when she imagined her grandfather's expression once he'll hear what had happened.
"Deep down he's probably going to be somewhat satisfied." she muttered aloud. "I'm sure almost causing the man to have an accident was not part of his plan, but he's certainly not going to complain!" she shook her head. "As long as he didn't think that I did it on purpose…" she snorted suddenly and cast another glance over her shoulder. "But to encounter James Potter of all people…!"
