Tom West stood in the derelict cottage and gazed out of the window across the shimmering lake. "One day I shall carry Sam over the threshold of this cottage and it will be our home forever." he thought. Both Tom's career and life with his girlfriend Sam were taking giant steps. Soon he was to ride the beautiful talented stallion Black Velvet and he and Sam had vowed they would marry on her eighteenth birthday. The British Team Selectors soon noticed Tom and the stallion and his life should have been wonderful but there was a huge black cloud on the horizon slowly drawing nearer and nearer waiting to tear Tom and Sam apart. Their love is strong, but Sam is afraid "It will never be another girl or boy that comes between us, it can only be, a big black horse that haunts us both" she told Miranda Wright-Smith, whose husband Charles was also, disturbed by this horse, who she hated but Tom was, destined to ride Lady Hermione's evil Black Satin on his fast approaching seventeenth birthday.
