WidowsWickedWish by Lynne Barron Page B

shoulder before
he burrowed in to sniff along Tom’s neck.
    “Aw get on with you, Romeo,” Tom told the horse before
running one gnarled hand down his neck and along his withers.
    “Romeo?” Jack asked doubtfully.
    “Beatrice named him more than fifteen years ago. She was
reading the Bard. Was a time we had critters of all kinds named from ’is plays.
Constance, Richard, Mercutio, Viola. We even had a pair of love birds went by
Hamlet and Ophelia.”
    “And now her favored mare is Lancelot,” Jack replied.
    “He’s a clown for certain, nothing that gray beastie likes
better than acting the buffoon, but he rides like the wind.”
    “Which horse is Lady Palmerton’s?” Jack asked as he looked
over the horseflesh.
    “Don’t know what she keeps a mount, leastwise she didn’t
bring one with her,” Tom answered, turning toward the doors. “She rides the
gold filly, Mirabel, Mary calls her.”
    Jack eyed the pretty little horse. “How old is Mirabel?”
    “Don’t rightly know. Mary bought her off a fellow in London
when we first come back from foreign parts. She must be more than a dozen years
old. But she’s a lady, she is, and the gentlest mount you’ll find. Fanny’s
learning to ride on her. Girl has the makings to be a fine horsewoman.
Leastwise if she survives growing up. Never known a child but was so all fired
up to grow up quick like. Been that way since she was a wee mite and her mum
first brung her to Idyllwild.”
    “She’s quite a handful,” Jack agreed diplomatically.
    “A handful she is, and make no mistake,” Tom agreed with a
rumbling laugh. “Her mum has the right of it, I’m thinking. Some says idle
hands be the devil’s workshop. Me, I’m thinking it’s an idle mind what leads a
body to mischief. And Fanny has a mind can turn to trouble quicker than spit
even while she’s working her sums whilst practicing her scales on the pianny.
Girl needs to be engaged, her ladyship says, before she tears the house down
around us all.”
    “Tears the house down?” Jack repeated in some alarm.
    Tom waved his beefy hand in the air. Unsure whether he was
waving away Jack’s concerns or motioning him through the stables doors, Jack
walked outside.
    “Now, her ladyship,” Tom said as they bent into the wind
once more. “She’s a whole other kettle of worms.”
    “Lady Palmerton? She’s as proper as they come,” Jack replied
in surprise.
    “All the more reason she needs someone to keep an eye out,
I’d say,” Tom argued good-naturedly. “Sometimes it’s the quiet ones ends up
making the most mischief, thems the ones who take a man by surprise and slap
him upside the head when he’s just traveling through his life, not stopping
along the way to read the signs ’cause she’s never given him reason to.”
    Jack followed Tom into the house not a little taken aback by
the man’s words.
    “Mary, she were just such a one, never did give her father a
lick of trouble,” Tom continued as he divested himself of his coat and tossed
it over a brown peg. “Perfect angel was Lady Mary right up ’til the day she
sweet-talked a groom into saddling her horse afore the rest the household was
even outta their beds.”
    “Mary Morgan?” Jack asked in surprise.
    “Lady Mary she was then, only daughter to the Earl of
Dunstan.”
    Jack draped his coat over his assigned peg, his mind
spinning. He knew the present Earl of Dunstan, a sanctimonious ass if ever he’d
met one. And he was Mary’s brother?
    “That groom knew she weren’t up to no good…” Tom tossed the
words over his shoulder as he ambled into the parlor and made straightaway for
the whiskey decanter on the sideboard.
    “And still he saddled her horse?”
    “She’d have saddle the beastie herself,” Tom answered a bit
defensively.
    “You were that groom,” Jack guessed.
    “Watched her ride off into the rising sun, didn’t I?” Tom
poured amber liquid into two glasses before turning to face Jack. “Next I knew
she was