Touchstone by Laurie R. King

Author:Laurie R. King [King, Laurie R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553904482
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-25T23:00:00+00:00

He found a partial set of tools in the back of the Morris, and a more complete set on a shelf that had originally been designed for tack. The magneto problem was soon resolved, resolving the back-fire and the smoke, but he cocked his head and listened, and decided to adjust the valves as long as he was here.

Going back to the shelves he found some rags and a coverall nearly large enough for him, if he took care not to bend over.

Whistling happily, he laid out his tools on the cloth-covered fender, and got to work. He did, in fact, enjoy tinkering with machines. And the smell of the engines seemed to grease his thought process as well.

He had half the car’s guts on the stable floor when he heard voices. He walked over to the doorway, wiping his hands on one of the rags, to see Grey and Laura Hurleigh coming down the road, both of them resplendent in formal riding gear, from polished boots to riding hats. The Cornish woodcutter had seemed more suited to the shabby garb he wore when Stuyvesant met him than he had to the proper clothes he’d worn since, but now, in this borrowed finery, he was revealed as what, in fact, he was: a gentleman, bred and born. Were it not for his light coloring, he might have been one of the Hurleighs.

Stuyvesant let loose with a wolf-whistle. “Well, ain’t you the peachy pair?”

Grey halted, startled. “I can’t say the same for you, I’m afraid.”

Stuyvesant looked down at the grease-spotted garment straining across his chest and shrugged. “To each according to his abilities,” he said.

“Mr. Stuyvesant,” Laura said, “are you sure you want to do this? Wouldn’t you rather come for a ride? Gallagher can outfit you.”

“I like fixing motors, and horses and me, we never really clicked,” he told her. It was not entirely true, but he did not think the benefits of a ride would outweigh either the credit he’d get with the Duke of Hurleigh or compensate for the state of his thighs after a day of horse-straddling in an English saddle. All in all, he thought it better to let Bennett have her on his own. “Besides, if the car’s needed at noon, it doesn’t give me much time to put her together again.”

“Alex will happily take one of the other motors,” she said. “Especially if you’d lend him yours. He adores new motorcars.”

“Good to know. You two have a nice time.”

The one-time lovers continued down the drive towards the stables proper, leaving Stuyvesant to wonder if he was making a mistake, not to glue himself to them. Then he shook his head: If he couldn’t trust Grey, it was best to know it now.

He returned to his engine, and his thoughts.

Sometime during this week-end, he’d like to get Laura Hurleigh to himself for a bit, and burrow into her beliefs a little more closely. Nothing better in getting to know a suspect than to pick his girlfriend’s brain.

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