Page 108 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

‘Do as you like,’ he said agreeably.

She looked the pony over carefully. ‘He’s still a bit thin, probably not very strong. But I don’t expect I’d be too heavy for him, not for a short time.’

‘No, he’d carry you all right.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a saddle that would fit him. I’ll just try him bareback.’

‘Want a leg up?’

‘No, I can manage.’ She smiled. ‘I haven’t done this since I was little, but you never forget, do you?’ She leaned on the pony’s withers and hitched herself quickly across his back. Axe was holding his rope, but Cobnut made no objection, only looked round at her curiously, then went back to stoically waiting. ‘Give me the rope,’ Alice said, and taking it, pressed her knees, and then her heels into the pony’s sides. He walked forward a few steps, then stopped again. Increasingly urgent signals from her heels didn’t induce him to move again. Not wanting to be harsh with him, Alice slipped down.

‘Well, he’s perfectly quiet, at least,’ she said, leading him back to Axe. ‘I can’t tell if he’s saddle broken or not, but he’d make a nice pony for a child to begin on. What do you mean to do with him?’

‘Hadn’t thought,’ Axe said, taking the rope back from her. ‘Feed ’im up, clean him up, that was as far as I got.’

She nodded. ‘The trouble is, if you sold him, you wouldn’t know what sort of home he’d go to. It would be awful if he got starved and neglected again, just when he was thinking he was going to be happy at last.’

He gave her a bemused look. Who knew so much went on in a horse’s head? ‘What’d you like me to do with him? Didn’t cost me but five bob, so it doesn’t matter too much to me.’

‘I can’t take him,’ she said regretfully. ‘I’d have to explain to Josh where he came from and—’ She stopped, aware in an unspoken, complicated way, that this would not be a good idea.

Axe’s conscience stirred. He had meant to do what Ruth told him, and tell Lady Alice she mustn’t visit him any more, but somehow, when she turned up, he couldn’t send her away. She was so open and straightforward and unsuspecting, he couldn’t mar her innocent pleasure by suggesting to her what less pure-minded people would think. Suppose he gave her a hint and she didn’t get it, and he had to spell it out? It would be horribly embarrassing, to him as well as to her. So he let it slide. But sooner or later, someone would say something, someone who mattered. And Ruth was right, he would get into more trouble than her. He ought to discourage her – but how to do it? And he would miss her if she didn’t come any more. He had never felt lonely before, had never considered solitude as anything but a natural state, but she had brought something into his life, and he knew that, now he had had it, he would mourn it if it was gone.

Maybe, if he just let things be, she would naturally stop coming in time. She was at the age when things changed for young ladies. Other interests would fill her life, and she’d forget all about the woodsman’s cottage, and Dolly, and Della, and the animals – and the woodsman himself. That was what ought to happen, what would naturally happen. He was nobody and nothing, and she’d forget him; and if it happened naturally like that, he would live with it. He’d still miss her, but he’d have to live with it.

‘I can keep him,’ he said, looking at her, because he was still licensed to do so, thinking how lovely she was, with the clean simplicity of a young animal, all her movements unstudied and graceful, her smile, the tilt of her head, the trusting, easy way she was with him. He’d had a fawn once that he’d brought home injured and looked after till it was sound. It had never been wholly tame, and he hadn’t wanted it to be, because he’d always meant it to go back into the woods, but it had come to accept him, and it had turned its head to regard him when he went in to tend to it, a bit like the way Lady Alice turned hers to look at him now.

‘Would you?’ she asked, doubtful but hopeful.

‘Once he’s fit, I can work him. In the woods, same as Della. He can pull the lighter logs, or carry stuff for me. I can fit him up with a couple of saddle-bags, and he can carry my tools and my lunch and a bit of feed for him and Della and so on. He can be useful all right.’

She looked relieved. ‘Oh, yes, he’d need to be that. I mean, he’d be happier working – and I’d worry if you’d paid money for him and it was wasted.’

‘’Twould never be wasted, Lady Alice, to save a creature from harm.’

‘That’s how I feel – not that I have any money, but if I did, I’d want to do good with it. And I know he’ll be happy with you.’ She stroked the pony’s nose, and said, without looking up at him, ‘But you never call me Lady Alice any more. Why did you call me that?’

His heart ached. He wanted to reach out and touch her, just brush a finger along her cheek. But some things you couldn’t touch, however gently, without damaging. Like a butterfly’s wing. ‘No reason. It’s your name, isn’t it? Same as his’un is Cobnut. Good name for him, that is. Once we’ve got him fed up a bit, so he’s rounder. Toast Rack’d suit him better at the minute.’

She laughed, and the perilous moment was past. ‘Oh, that’s so unkind! Poor Cobnut! Anyway, you can hardly see his ribs now, so it isn’t true.’

But still she didn’t look at Axe. She’d felt something all right. She’d felt it.