Page 39 of The Viscount's Seduction
He nodded. “Very fine horses. Even some with Connemara blood. And I try to be very good at managing our other investments, since horses are a costly indulgence.”
And didn’t she know that?
His thumb stroked the side of her knee. She clamped her hand over his.
“Where…where is our best Connemara mare? Is she…is she…”
He frowned. “She’s in Kent.”
“Pooka?”
His face went blank, as if he was hiding something. “Yes.”
His family home was in the north, Lady Jane had said.
“Yousoldher?” she gasped.
He shook his head. “I have a small estate in Kent. We moved her because—well, we simply moved her.”
Because Pooka was trouble, and didn’t she know it?
A wave of sadness washed over her. She could have worked with the mare. She could have helped her. Pooka had not had a chance to get better. “Did you…did you get any foals from her?”
“Yes. A few.”
She thought of the sprightly horse trying to shake off the boy in the street. “Your gelding?”
“Yes. He’s one of them. None of them are as ill-natured as their dam.”
Anger flared in her. “And so why buy her? Why were you so keen on her?”
His eyes sparkled and he leaned in close enough for her to see a small scar on his jaw. “It was my mother’s wish that I buy the mare whose granddam had won a first at Thurles.”
Oh, that sly word-for-word remembrance spiked her temper higher. All of the grief of that day roared in her.
She gritted her teeth and forced down the feelings. “Was she happy, your mother, with her ill-natured purchase?”
A shadow passed over him as he backed away. “She died before she got to see your hobgoblin horse.”
She shivered. There’d been nothing but trouble since Pooka had appeared in her mam’s belly. Jamie’s disappearance, her mother’s death from striking her head, her father’s death from the whiskey.
“How did your mother die?” she asked.
“A coaching accident.”
She’d seen one or two mishaps on the rutted roads at home, though none bad enough to take a life. “I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand.
She daren’t ask more, not now. Lady Shaldon was long dead, but the pain of her passing still worked in this man. And though Pooka had taken to him that long ago time at Glenmorrow, his distaste for the mare was clear. He blamed her for his mother’s ill luck, dying too young.
A curse on that name Pooka—why had she picked it?
His gaze met hers and she could see he’d steadied himself, while she was still all jumbled up inside. A bloodless Englishman, he was—horses were a business for him, not a passion. Not his life. He was boring, he’d said, a boring man with his hand on her knee and eyes beginning to glow like dark coals.
Her face picked up the warmth. She was still gripping that firm, strong hand. “Iamsorry for your loss, my lord. And now it’s best you get to your point today, sir.”
His mood shifted again, and he grinned, knocking her off balance. “You’re so lovely when you’re heated, whether from a brisk walk or an angry dispute, or a passionate touch.”
She leaned away from his lips and encountered the back of the chair. With no further escape, she was trapped.
