Must Love Scotland (Highland Holidays)

by Grace Burrowes

  “He tried to shoot my horse, and would have done so except I came by to make sure the gelding was continuing to recover.”

  Amid the pleasant dusty, horsy scents of the stable Thomas picked up a whiff of roses coming from—her?

  “Let’s have a look, shall we, Miss Tanner?”

  Oh, she did not want to allow a stranger into her horse’s stall, but the realm’s only female steward—and possibly its most stubborn—defied her new employer at her peril.

  “Miss Tanner, I will not shoot the animal without your permission. You could have me charged before the king’s man for such behavior, baron or not.”

  Thomas preferred the ‘or not,’ though that choice had been taken from him.

  Still, he refrained from physically moving the lady aside, reaching past her to open the door, or otherwise disrespecting her authority as owner of the horse and de facto steward at Linden.

  Standing this close to Miss Tanner, Thomas could see she was worried for her horse, though Chesterton had been about to use his bullwhip on the lady.

  “The gums tell the tale,” Thomas said, quietly. “Your horse is not trying to get down and roll, and that’s a good sign.”

  Outside the stable, Rupert’s hoofbeats went clip-clopping by on the lane.

  “Tell the fools to walk your horse out in the shade,” the lady said. “They should get his saddle off too.”

  Miss Tanner was trying to distract Thomas, trying to wave him off for however long it took her to inspect her sorry beast. Thomas was not willing to be distracted, not as long as Chesterton and a half dozen of his dimwitted minions lurked about.

  “Rupert walked the last two miles from the village,” Thomas said. “He’s barely sweating, and will manage well enough. I wanted to make a point to my stable master, and you, my dear, are stalling.”

  That chin dipped. “Chesterton could be right. I don’t want to put the horse down.”

  A spine of steel, nerves of iron, and a heart of honest sentiment. Interesting combination.

  “Miss Tanner, the last time I saw a horse shot, I cried shamelessly.” Thomas had been twelve years old, and Grandpapa’s afternoon hunter had broken a foreleg in a rabbit hole. The twins had sworn off foxhunting and Theresa had cried loudest of all.

  Grandpapa, for the only time in Thomas’s memory, had got thoroughly inebriated.

  Miss Tanner opened the stall door, and the horse lifted its head to inspect the visitors. A horse approaching death would have ignored them or turned away.

  “Matthew, this is Baron Sutcliffe,” Miss Tanner informed her gelding. “His lordship says he won’t shoot you.”

  “A ringing endorsement.” Thomas let the horse sniff his glove. After a moment the gelding craned his neck in the lady’s direction.

  “Shameless old man,” she murmured, scratching one hairy ear.

  Uncomfortable the gelding might be, but he was not at death’s door if he could flirt with his owner. Thomas lifted the horse’s lip and pressed gently on healthy pink gums. A horse in the later stages of colic would have dark or even purple gums.

  “He’s uncomfortable,” Thomas said, “but not in immediate danger. He should be on limited rations—hay and grass, not grain—and no work for several days. Was this Nick person among those watching Chesterton threaten your horse?”

  Had Thomas not come along, the men might have started exchanging bets, or worse.

  Miss Tanner scratched the beast’s other ear. “Nick, Beck and Jamie have gone into the village to get the last of the provisions for the house in preparation for your arrival. Chesterton timed this confrontation for their absence. None of them would have allowed Matthew to be fed oats.”

  The lady did not want to leave her horse undefended, and Thomas did not blame her, but she would have to learn to trust her employer’s authority.

  “Come, Miss Tanner. I’ve yet to see my new house, and as my steward, you are the first among the staff with whom I must become better acquainted.”

  “You’ll want to eat,” she said, tousling the horse’s dark forelock. “To change, and Mrs. Kitts is doubtless in a taking that you’ve tarried in the stables this long.”

  Thomas did want to eat, also to drink a large quantity of something cool, and to bathe—God above, did he want to bathe.

  “You there!” Thomas called to a skinny older fellow pushing a barrow of straw and muck down the barn aisle. “Your name?”

  “Hammersmith, my lord.”

  “Hammersmith, if Miss Tanner’s horse shows any signs of renewed distress, or is taken from his stall for any reason by anybody save Miss Tanner, you are to alert me immediately. Not Chesterton, not the local magistrate, not Wellington himself is to handle that animal without Miss Tanner’s permission.”

  “Aye, milord.”

  “And when you’ve dumped that barrow, please see to it that the horse has half a bucket of clean water.”

  “Aye, milord. At once, sir.”

  “Now will you accompany me to the manor house, Miss Tanner?”

  She gave the horse’s chin a deliberate, thorough final scratching. “Yes, my lord.”

  Order your copy of Thomas—The Jaded Gentlemen, Book I, here.