clean. Aunt Hester makes me take a bath every night whether I need one or not.”
This Abomination Against the Natural Order—another one of Aunt Hester’s terms—did not appear to impress the man. Fee wondered if anything impressed him—and what a poverty that would be, as Aunt would say, to go through the whole day without once being impressed.
He hunkered before her, and he was even tall when he knelt. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”
Fee complied, finding his shoulder every bit as sturdy as the oak. He unlaced her boot, but when he tried to ease it off her foot, she had to squeal with the pain of it.
“Wrenched it properly, then. Here.” He pulled off his gloves and passed them to her. “Bite down on one of those, hard enough to cut right through the leather, and scream if you have to. I have every confidence you can ruin my hearing if you make half an effort.”
She took the gloves, which were warm and supple. “Are you an uncle?”
“As it happens, this dolorous fate has befallen me.”
“Is that a firmative?”
“It is. Why?”
“Because you’re trying to distract me, which is something my uncles do a lot. I won’t scream.”
He regarded her for a moment, looking almost as if he might say something not quite so fussy, then bent to glare at her boot. “Suit yourself, as it appears you are in the habit of doing.”
She braced herself; she even put one of the riding gloves between her teeth, because as badly as her ankle hurt, she expected taking off her boot would cause the kind of pain that made her ears roar and her vision dim around the edges.
She neither screamed nor bit through the glove—which tasted like reins and horse—because before she could even draw in a proper breath, her boot was gently eased off her foot.
“I suppose you want the other one off too?”
“Is my ankle all bruised and horrible?”
“Your ankle is slightly swollen. It will likely be bruised before the day is out, but perhaps not horribly if we can get ice on it.”
“Are you a priest?”
“For pity’s sake, child. First an uncle, then a priest? What can you be thinking?” He sat her in the grass and started unlacing her second boot.
“You talk like Vicar on Sunday, though on Saturday night, he sounds like everybody else when he’s having his pint. If my ankle is awful, Aunt Hester will cry and feed me shortbread with my tea. She might even play cards with me. My uncles taught me how to cheat, but explained I must never cheat unless I’m playing with them.”
“Honor among thieves being the invention of the Scots, this does not surprise me.” He tied the laces of both boots into a knot and slung them around Fee’s neck.
“I’m a Scot.”
His lips quirked. Maybe this was what it looked like when the Wrath of God was afraid he might smile.
“My condolences. Except for your unfortunate red hair, execrable accent, and the layer of dirt about your person, I would never have suspected.” He lifted her up again, but this time carried her to Flying Rowan, who had stood like a good boy all the while the man had been getting Fee’s boots off.
“I have wonderful hair, just like my mama’s. My papa says I’m going to be bee-yoo-ti-full. My uncles say I already am.”
“What you are is impertinent and inconvenient, though one can hardly blame your hair on you. Up you go.” He deposited her in the saddle, bracing a hand around her middle until she had her balance.
“Oh, this is a wonderful adventure. May I have the reins?”
“Assuredly not. Lean forward.”
He was up behind her in nothing flat, but that just made it all the better. Flying Rowan was even taller than Uncle Ian’s gelding, and almost as broad as the plow horses. Having the solid bulk of an adult male in the saddle made the whole business safe, even as it was also exciting.
He nudged the horse forward. “Where I am taking you, child?”
Fee could feel the way he rode, feel the way he moved with the horse and communicated with the horse without really using the reins.
“Child?”
“That way.” She lifted her hand to point in the direction of the manor, feeling the horse flinch beneath her as she did. “If you go by way of the pastures, it’s shorter than the road.”
“How many gates?”
“Lots. Papa has a lot of doddies.”
“Has your upbringing acquainted you with the equestrian arts?”
He didn’t even sound like a priest. He sounded like nothing and no one Fee had ever heard before. His voice was stern but somehow beautiful too, even when he wasn’t making any sense at all. “I don’t know what equestrian arts are.”
“Do you ride horseback?” He spoke slowly, as if Fee were daft, which made her want to drive her elbow back into his ribs—though that would likely hurt her elbow.
“I don’t have a pony, but my uncles take me up when I pester them hard enough.”
“That will serve. Grab some mane and don’t squeal.”
He wrapped that big hand around her middle again, and urged the horse into a rocking canter. The wind blew Fee’s hair back, and it was hard not to squeal, so delightful was the sensation of flying over the ground.
“Hold tight.” This was nearly growled as the man leaned forward, necessitating that Fee lean forward too. In a mighty surge, the horse leapt up and over a stone wall, then thundered off across the pasture in perfect rhythm.
The sensations were
“Do another one!” Fee called over her shoulder, even as the horse bore down on a second wall.
They did three more, cutting directly across the fields, leaving the cows to watch as the horse cantered by, the placid expressions of the bovines at such variance with the utter glee Fee felt at each wall.
When the man brought his horse down to a walk at the foot of the drive, she leaned forward and patted the gelding soundly on the shoulder. “Good fellow, Flying Rowan! Oh, that was the best! I will write to everybody and tell them what a good boy you are.” She lapsed into the Gaelic, too happy and excited not to praise the horse in a more civilized language than the stilted, stodgy English.
Behind her, she felt the man’s hard chest shift slightly, and she fell silent.
“Mama says it’s rude to speak the Gaelic when somebody else can’t.”
“I comprehend it. Is this your home?”
“I live here. Aunt Hester lives here too, but Mama and Papa are away right now.”
“Shall I take you around to the back?”
He was scowling at the manor as he spoke, as if the house wasn’t the most lovely place in the world, all full of flowers and pretty views.
“Here comes Aunt Hester. I expect she’ll want to thank you.”
Fee felt Rowan’s owner tense behind her. It wasn’t that his muscles bunched up, it was more that he went still. The horse beneath them went still too, as if both man and horse understood that the look on Aunt Hester’s face did not at all fit with Fee’s prediction of impending thanks.
A female thundercloud was advancing on Tye where he sat his gelding, the little girl perched before him. Beneath his hand, he felt the child’s spine stiffen and her bony little shoulders square.
This particular thundercloud had golden blond hair piled on top of her head, quite possibly in an attempt to give an illusion of height. She wore an old-fashioned blue walking dress, the dusty hems of which were swishing madly around her boots as she sailed across the drive.
He’d always liked the sound of a woman’s petticoats in brisk motion, they gave a man a little warning—and something to think about.
“I bid you good day.” He nodded from the saddle, a hat being a hopeless inconvenience when a man rode cross-country. “Spathfoy, at your service.”
