"So your name's not Opal."
To my absolute horror, when I stumbled into the stables a few mornings after the party, yawning and scratching my belly, I found the Young Master waiting for me.
"Uh…"
I froze. My two options at that point were:
1) admit I had lied to the Young Master or-
2) admit I was lying to everyone else
My young, still half-asleep brain couldn't decide which was better, so I decided to try a different tactic entirely.
"Good morning, Sir," I bowed. "Pardon my rudeness but I don't believe we've ever met before. Please tell me how to address you."
"Ha."
It was faint, but I definitely heard it. A single chuckle from the Young Master as he was perched atop one of the stable gates, looking down on me with his giant emerald eyes.
"I can't tell if you're clever or stupid." He jumped down in front of me, dusting his hands on his pants. "Very well, I'm happy to play along. I am Easton Wulfstan, and I'd like to ride my horse, Kid."
"Oh Young Master!" I bowed again, rubbing my hands and hoping I appeared as surprised as I was trying to look. "Of course! I'll get your horse ready right away!"
What I should have said was 'I'll go find someone to get your horse ready right away'.
Because I'd never actually gotten a horse saddled before. I fed them, cleaned their stalls, and watched the older stable hands work with them, so I figured I couldn't be that hard. The horses seemed to like me and all I had to do is copy what I'd seen.
As I approached the saddle and tack storage, I realized another problem. I had no idea which horse was the Young Master's.
But Opaline Hayes—or Jeremy Bernt as the case may be—was nothing if not a problem solver. So I grabbed a fancy-looking, small-ish saddle, and opened the gate to a horse that seemed to fit it best.
"... that's not mine."
Only after I had approached the chosen horse and begun the struggle of trying to outfit it, did the Young Master speak up.
"Ah, it's not. Silly me," I offered a weak smile.
Did he mean the horse or the saddle? I didn't know, and I most certainly wasn't going to ask, so I chose a different saddle and different horse.
"That's wrong."
"Wrong again."
Over and over I tried different saddle and horse combinations while the Young Master simply watched, only alerting me to my mistake at the last minute. Finally, when I had a simple brown saddle in hand and was approaching a palomino mare, he didn't stop me.
Trying to set up the saddle was an entire other ordeal. But again, that rude Young Master did nothing but watch, the tiniest hint of amusement painting his expression.
When I finally had the horse ready to go (though she was quite annoyed with me by that point and I was afraid she'd turn and kick me), I led her out to the boy.
"Here you are, Young Master," I bowed graciously, resisting the urge to wipe the grimy sweat from my forehead.
"Hahaha."
This time it was a full-on laugh that came from the Young Master's mouth.
"This game is proving to be rather amusing, so I'll keep playing," he grinned, turning to leave the stable. "By the way, I don't feel like riding after all. Unharness that horse for me please."
A senior stable hand ran in moments after the Young Master left. "I just saw the Young Master leaving, is everything ok?" he panted. When he saw me with the horse, he stopped. "Wait, what are you doing?"
"The Young Master asked me to saddle his horse and then left saying he'd changed his mind," I grumbled, beginning the process of undoing everything I'd just done.
The senior stable hand joined me, clicking his tongue as he examined my saddling work. "It's a good thing he changed his mind. This is such a mess, he would have fallen off the moment he tried to mount!"
Then I received a swift bop on the head but was finally taught how to properly saddle a horse. And after all that, I still had to do my regular duties.
As I grabbed the rake and bucket and headed toward the palimino's stall, I paused. "So, which horse is the Young Master's?" I asked the senior stable hand as he was headed out the door.
"Huh? What do you mean? All of them are his," the man scratched his head. "After all, this is his personal stable."
From that day onward, Easton Wulfstan, who had hardly shown any interest in horses so far in his life, made it a habit of going to visit his stable regularly.
On his next visit, I had responded to his 'saddle my horse' request with 'which of your horses do you want to ride?' and then actually did a decent job saddling the one he picked, thanks to my lesson with the senior stablehand.
And after that he never asked me to saddle a horse again.
I assumed that meant he was no longer amused with me, but still, he continued coming. He'd sit and watch me work, only occasionally patronizing me. I grew used to his unpleasant attitude, and I dare say we formed a sort of friendship.
Though, I still thought he was a stuck-up spoiled brat.
I mean, he had literally everything in life—money, family, looks, his own personal stable for crying out loud!—and still he acted like everything was tedious and boring. It sometimes drove me so crazy I wanted to give him a good whack on the head.
But I kept my complaints to myself, and we got along well enough.
Then one day, when I was absently watching the maids frolic through the fields and splash water at each other during their laundry duty, the Young Master said, "your name really is Opal, isn't it?"
And, well, I really did whack him on the head.