Page 118 of Nikolay

Then he straightened, reached for the coffeepot, and asked someone three seats down whether they intended to keep hoarding the strawberry preserves all morning like a tyrant.

The table laughed. I took another sip of coffee and tried not to think too hard about how easily he had gotten what he wanted.

He had met me in the front hall after breakfast with two pairs of gloves draped over one hand and a stable girl’s efficiency in the way he assessed what I was wearing.

“You’ll freeze in that,” he had said of my own jacket.

I had looked down at it. “You say that like I showed up in a lace shawl.”

He had taken my sarcasm without offense. “I say it like I know these trails better than you do.”

Fair.

He equipped me for an expedition I was clearly meant to enjoy. By the time we stepped out into the late morning cold, I wore borrowed riding boots that actually fit, gloves lined soft at the palm, and a dark leather jacket with fur at the collar that made me feel like I was ready for a fox hunt.

The horses waiting in the stable aisle were already saddled. Mine was a blue roan with a patient eye and the kind of solid, no-nonsense build that said she would tolerate foolishness only up to a point. Sage’s gelding stood taller, dark bay and elegant through the neck, as if even his horse understood presentation.

“She likes honesty and apples,” Sage grinned, laying a hand on the mare’s shoulder. “In that order.”

“I can work with that.”

He glanced at me. “Can you?”

“Usually.”

Mounting pulled me into my body in a useful way—the swing of the leg, the settle of the saddle, the quiet contract between animal and rider. By the time we cleared the stable yard and turned toward the lower trails, some of the jangling energy in me had begun to smooth out.

The woods took us in quickly.

For a while, we rode without much talk.

That suited me. Sage seemed to understand the difference between silence that needed filling and silence that offered itself as kindness. He kept his horse half a length back when the trail narrowed, then brought him up beside me when it widened again.

The path dipped through a stand of fir where the ground darkened with shade, then rose along a ridge from which the hills opened in pale blue folds beyond the trees. Fog had long since burned off.

“Do you ride often at home?” Sage asked, eventually.

“Often enough,” I said. “Not as much as when I was younger. Work got in the way of pretending I belonged in a western.”

His mouth moved slightly. “You wear it well enough.”

“I assume that was a compliment.”

“It was.”

I glanced over. He looked irritatingly good on horseback. Straight-backed, easy-handed, all that composed masculine competence old movies had lied and told women was extinct. The fur collar of his own coat darkened the line of his throat. Sun kept catching in his hair when branches let it through.

I looked away before my thoughts started to get carried away.

Once we crossed a narrow stream where the horses picked their footing over flat stones slick with cold water. A rabbit broke from the brush and darted white-tailed across the path, startling my mare only enough for one offended toss of her head.

“You’re good with her,” Sage said.

“She’s good with me.”

“She was not good with everyone this week.”

I patted the mare’s neck. “That’s because she has standards.”