Thomas by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grace Burrowes Publishing
Published: 2015-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Loris slept intermittently for nearly eighteen hours, then rose from her guest bed, dressed in clean clothes brought over from her cottage, slipped down the maids’ stairs, and swiped two sandwich halves from a stack on the kitchen counter.

She escaped the manor without encountering either the baron or the viscount, and took the path through the gardens to the stable. Penny and her filly were enjoying the hospitality of the foaling stall, and nothing started a lady’s afternoon off quite as nicely as paying a visit to a healthy baby horse. Then too, Seamus had had a mishap in the pasture, according to Nick, and Loris wanted to look in on her gelding.

The foal was asleep, her mother curled beside her in the straw. The sight sent a queer pang through Loris’s heart, as if the last bite of her sandwich half had got stuck in her throat.

“We should take Penny off to the stud in the next few days.”

Nick’s voice startled Loris, so lost had she been in thoughts of lavender-scented sheets and a tea tray graced with a single rose.

And a baron who’d prowled through her dreams.

“You could talk his lordship out of breeding Penny back,” Loris replied as Nick stretched out a hand to the mare. “I know you disapprove of breeding in the foal heat. Sutcliffe would listen to you.”

Mares, by some unkind quirk of nature, came into season within two weeks of giving birth. When Loris’s father had explained that to her, she’d cringed at the very thought.

“Penny can take care of herself,” Nick said, dropping his hand when Penny didn’t rise to greet him. “The baron is going over to Pettigrew’s this afternoon, ostensibly to try out riding horses. I suspect he’ll discuss breeding Penny while he’s there.”

Discuss it with Claudia Pettigrew.

Perhaps this explained the flowery porcelain tea service and slim volume of Wordsworth sent up to Loris’s guest room not an hour earlier. She was supposed to drowse away her afternoon on a shady balcony, while Thomas…

While Thomas did anything he pleased, because he was the owner of Linden, and entirely his own man.

“You can ask the baron what his intentions are,” Nick said. “We’d all like the answer to that question.”

Nick’s tone was ironic, and unlike him. Since Thomas’s arrival, the quiet, deferential, outsized stableman had become a noticing, articulate fellow who smelled faintly of privilege and secrets.

Where was Nick when the gates were being unlatched? Who had been in the stable with Nick when Rupert’s shoe had been sprung?

Loris’s musings were interrupted by the baron striding into the stable, Viscount Fairly at his side. They were in riding attire, a magnificent testament to London tailoring, though already, the toes of their boots were dusty.

“Miss Tanner.” The viscount greeted her first, raising her bare hand in his gloved one. “You look quite on the mend.”

Loris bobbed a curtsy, which felt damned silly in the stable. “My thanks, your lordship. I am feeling much restored.” Also irritated, that Thomas would undertake this horse-shopping mission without consulting her.

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