Her love of riding had come early. Born the only child of middle-income, doting parents, Cynthia had been exposed to all the right sports. Her parents believed that the entree which would get their daughter into a society far above theirs was a mastery of some sport of the rich, and so she had tried tennis, golf, and finally riding. Her parents just wanted their daughter to have a wonderful, easy life: Cynthia herself, although she never let anyone know, absolutely burned with the desire to enter, and live in, that world of wealth and leisure of which she caught glimpses in Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills. Riding opened the gate to that world.
It was not just the fact that she had a natural seat, and that horseback riding seemed the activity for which her body had been shaped. Some girls were too gentle with their horses, treating them as pets, and the horses soon took advantage, becoming lazy. Others were too harsh, treating the horses only as mechanical means to achieve the rider's end: winning a trophy. The horses became afraid of them, and their nervousness translated into erratic performance. Cynthia, on the other hand, instinctively knew how to combine encouragement for good performance with the discipline of the whip for less-than-optimal performance. She did not love horses, nor did they love her. Rather, the relationship she always created was that of dominatrix and submissive, and she did it so skillfully that none of her instructors was ever quite able to figure out her secret.
Cynthia's desire to get to the inner circle had been strong enough to drive her to keep her grades up near the top. With her success in riding competitions aided by her scholastics, she was given a scholarship to an exclusive private school down in Ojai, where the students kept their own horses and had riding as an important part of the curriculum. Although an outsider initially, Cynthia used the same innate knowledge of how to deal with horses in her dealings with the other girls. She had a face and figure attractive enough to place her in the top echelon in appearance, yet knew how to carry herself to keep her looks from threatening the top clique. A coterie of girls soon took her into their circle, admiring her quick wit, and laughing at the cutting remarks she made about teachers or other students who were not in their group. At school break times she frequently confided that her parents were traveling and she'd be at home alone, and so got invited to spend weekends with many wealthy families. The scheme had worked, and Cynthia had eventually ended up on a country estate in Woodside with a husband who spent a great deal of time at work, made a great deal of money, and seemed to require nothing more of his wife than that she look ravishing at parties, make love passionately after the parties, and keep herself amused the rest of the time. One of her amusements was showing horses.