A Conquest Impossible To Resist by Stephanie Laurens

Author:Stephanie Laurens
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: 0
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The following morning, Pru completed her assessment of the final two stallions in the Glengarah collection.

After luncheon, as she, Deaglan, and Felix made for the library to finally begin discussing a breeding arrangement and Felix asked how she’d fared that morning, she admitted, “I was glad that I had an entire session to examine those two stallions alone. Of all the horses I’ve ever assessed, they rank as the two that, being the most perfect, therefore necessitated the greatest and most lengthy scrutiny.”

“But they passed?” Felix asked.

“With flying colors.” She glanced at Deaglan. “As your brother can attest, I became quite crotchety when I couldn’t find the slightest fault with either of them.”

Deaglan grinned and, setting the library door swinging, waved her in.

They made themselves comfortable in the armchairs before the hearth.

“So,” Deaglan said, his gaze on Pru, “horse breeding being rather different from breeding dogs, where do we start?”

“It’s customary to begin by outlining what each side would expect to see in the deal.” Pru met his eyes, then glanced at Felix. “In this case”—she returned her gaze to Deaglan—“the Cynster Stables would want an exclusive license to breed from the Glengarah horses. Exclusivity is going to be very important to us.”

Sober now, Deaglan inclined his head. “I can understand that, but in return, there would have to be some degree of reciprocity with breeding stock, and of course, the breeding fees would need to be commensurate with exclusivity.”

Pru signaled her agreement with a dip of her head. “Regarding fees—which is, generally, the simplest matter to decide—we’ve found it easiest for both sides to use as a base figure the average cost of upkeep per horse per annum.” She looked at Felix. “Do you know what that figure is?”

Felix blinked, then glanced at Deaglan. “Ah…no. We’ve never had reason to work that out.”

Pru nodded. “So that’s one thing you’ll need to do before we can get down to specifying the details of our agreement.” She met Deaglan’s eyes. “This is the purpose of an initial discussion—to highlight those matters we need to clarify before we can commence detailed negotiations.”

He looked at Felix. “We should be able to extract those figures from the stable accounts.”

“And,” Pru continued, “while you’re doing that, I’ll need to go through the acquisitions ledger. I need to learn from whom your father bought each horse and confirm the entries in the General Stud Book. That will provide provenance of the bloodlines of each horse and will clear them for entry into the Cynster breeding program.”

Felix frowned. “You still need to do that even after your assessment?”

“With horses such as those here,” Pru explained, “confirming the GSB listing is a mere formality—my assessment counts for more. Unless a horse passes my assessment, we don’t bother checking its registered bloodlines.”

“So”—Deaglan straightened his legs—“we all have preparatory work to do before we can settle into actual negotiations.” He caught Felix’s eye. “Are the stable accounts and ledgers still in the stable office?”

Felix replied with a resigned air, “Still where Papa insisted on keeping them.

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