Page 41 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
“Badly,” Penelope answered, with disarming frankness. “I can just about stay on the horse if the horse decides to let me.”
“Samuel and I were talking of going on a ride tomorrow, but of course, if you don’t enjoy it…”
Mrs. Green’s eyes crinkled up as she smiled. “Oh, I might manage something. The weather looks to be glorious. Samuel, do you still have Dancer in the stable?”
“Good heavens, Penelope, that gelding is as old as I am!”
“Yes, and we understand each other very well.”
Cordelia had been twisting her napkin under the table and hoping that her mother wouldn’t swoop in with some other jab, when suddenly Mrs. Green had turned and looked across the table. “Cordelia, my dear, do you ride?”
“I… uh…”
“She does,” said Evangeline coolly.
“Wonderful. Then please, I beg you, come with us.” She waved her hand at the Squire and Cordelia’s mother. “That way when these two gallop off like proper equestrians, flying over fences, we can amble happily along.”
Cordelia had wanted to protest that she had never ridden any horse but Falada, but of course she couldn’t. No one knew that Falada wasn’t an ordinary horse. And she could remember, at that awful obedient dinner, all the chatter with the Squire about horses and riding horses, so what choice did she have?
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. Thank you for inviting me.”
The shocking thing was that it hadn’t been bad. The groom had brought her a pony named Minnow, who was round and placid and good-natured. Cordelia had mounted and immediately learned that she had no idea how to control a regular horse. Fortunately Minnow followed Dancer, who was just as good-natured, and Mrs. Green chatted gaily about the weather and the scenery while Cordelia tried to sort out what to do with the reins and how hard to squeeze with her knees.
A snort had shaken her from her concentration, and she’d looked up. Falada walked beside her, lifting his head high so that he looked down at her on Minnow’s back. Cordelia looked up into Falada’s eye, light green framed with dark pink skin that stood out against the shining whiteness of his coat. The paleness of his eyes made it easy to see what most people forgot—that a horse’s pupils are slotted like a goat’s, and Falada’s held sly mockery that would have put any goat to shame.
He gazed down at her, her mother’s familiar, so much taller than Minnow, and then very deliberately, he winked.
A spasm of fury had clenched like a fist around Cordelia’s heart. All the old betrayal washed over her. She’d dropped her eyes and stared at Minnow’s mane, the long black hairs trailing over her riding gloves, and thought I loved you.
She could not remember ever thinking that about her mother.
Luckily, Evangeline had then announced that she wanted a good gallop, “to shake the fidgets out,” and the Squire said “Capital!” and the two raced off across the field. Cordelia reached out and patted Minnow’s neck, which was warm and solid and ordinary, and felt the fist at her heart unclench a little.
Penelope had looked over at Lord Evermore, who was looking after the riders wistfully. “Well, go on! Don’t sit here when you really want a good run.”
“And leave you lovely ladies unattended?”
Penelope made a rude noise. “Samuel’s estate may not be so well run as yours, but there aren’t brigands lying in wait twenty yards from the house. Go on.”
“Well… if you insist…” He had grinned at them both, looking briefly much younger, then galloped off after the other two.
“Just as I suspected,” Penelope said cheerfully. “Richard is a lovely man, and occasionally gallant to the point of obnoxiousness.”
“Mother wants me to flirt with him,” Cordelia confessed. “But I don’t know how.”
The older woman looked over, startled. “There’s not much point to it. He’s hopelessly in love with Hester.”
Cordelia blinked. “Really?”
“Really. Now listen to that bird singing in the trees. I’ve absolutely no idea what it is. Do you?”
Cordelia shook her head.
“Then it is probably a new species, and we shall name it for science. Does it sound like a crested mouse-warbler to you?”
Cordelia was beginning to understand Penelope’s sense of humor by now. “I think it’s a white-throated babbler,” she said solemnly.
“My goodness! At this time of year? Well, you may be right.” Mrs. Green adjusted her riding habit. “That, however, was definitely a willowy frog-warbler, don’t you think?”
