“I do so hate disappoint ye, lass, but Carmen made life for herself, her minister, and for a time for her sister Mary Margaret as miserable as she could.”
“But why?”
“I don’t think Carmen was happy in the end with her staid fellow, or the simple life he gave her, and blamed her sister for stealing m’grandfather from under her nose.”
“Oh, but that is too bad of her. Of all the ungrateful, horrid—” Bess started.
He laughed. “Which ends in a moral somewhere if ye want to look.”
“Which moral?” Bess smiled.
“The one about mindin’ one’s business,” he answered glibly.
“Oh!” Bess laughed in spite of herself and said, “How can you say so, you odious man? If Mary Margaret had not helped, or tried to, she and your grandfather would not have made a match of it, and Carmen would still have been unhappy dreaming of a life with her minister. Seems to me it was Carmen with the problem and Mary Margaret that had her head on straight.”
He smiled and touched her nose before he could stop himself. “Wise little lass, and when ye talk like so, ye do so remind me of m’very own dear grams. Aye, ye do, for it was precisely what she concluded when she had told me her story.”
“Tell me more about Mary Margaret,” Bess said, satisfied with this.
He laughed and took her hand. Why did he feel like a boy? A charge too thrilling to endure shot up his arm, through his heart, and into his lungs, stealing his breath. Air, he needed air.
He managed to say, “Not today. Yer father, is, I am certain, wondering what I have done with his daughter.” He led her to the library door, where he immediately dropped her hand and edged her before him. “In with ye, lass,” he said softly.
Their eyes locked, and he realized he wanted to remain alone with her, wanted to have her speak only to him, look only at him. What was wrong with him? He was being fanciful, and he was not a fanciful man.
And then he looked into those green pools of hers and wondered if she cared for him at all or if it was just youthful interest. Why should he care? He had no right.
~ Six ~
“OH!” BESS EXCLAIMED, putting her hands together and stepping back to better view him as he pranced in his stall. “He is a beauty!”
Bold Tim made a sound and nodded his head, which set the assembled party laughing, as he seemed to agree with this compliment.
Bess went to him and rubbed his nose and the white star at the top of his head. Seeing the small wound just over his left eye, she asked, “Oh, but, however did he do that?”
Patty, a small, thin man who obviously took his role at Searington with great pride, shook his head. “The crazy beast got it into his brain to climb out of his stall yesterday. Thrashed and fussed, and what a time of it we had.”
“But why? He seems so quiet for a stud,” Bess remarked, playing with the horse’s nose and finding his bottom lip loose and relaxed.
“Aye, he is quiet, but one of the mares managed to get out of her stall while we were graining up, ye see. What must she do but prance about and catch Tim’s full attention. Well, no need to tell ye what went on then.” He coughed and looked away from her for a moment. “Scratched himself then, but we got her under control and took her away, and he settled right down.”
Patty hooked a lead line to the stallion and led him out of the stall onto the wide aisle of the exquisite barn, which was made of rich woods and highly polished brass. “Mayhap ye would like to see him run in his paddock?”
“Oh yes,” both Bess and Donna said at once.
Robby stuck in, “A prime one—what does he stand, seventeen hands? Must be—he is huge.”
Patty nodded. “Aye, seventeen hands he is.”
Bess cast a quick look over her shoulder as they left. Her mind raced as she followed the groom, who led the stallion down the wide aisle to the back of the stables and across a short grassy walkway to the open gate of a large pasture.
Her father smiled at her but appeared to be engrossed in a deep conversation with the earl. She knew they were arranging for his prized brood mare to be brought over for breeding as soon as she came into season, and she smiled at her father’s bright face. It was good to see her father so animated.
Patty turned Bold Tim around to face him, undid the lead line, and stepped back as he set him free.
Bold Tim raised his head and snorted before he kicked up his heels and ran, head and tail up high.
Bess’s father had arrived at her back, put a hand on her shoulder, and exclaimed with excitement, “My lord, your Bold Tim is one in a million. We should produce a winner between us.”