Free Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley Page A

frowned beside him.
    "We can talk about it over supper," she said firmly. "What is for supper, anyway?"
    Quinnell waved one hand in a nonchalant gesture. "Jeannie said something about a roast. She got it all ready for us to put in the oven."
    "And did you?" Fabia raised an expectant eyebrow and he blinked at her, as though he didn't speak the language. "Oh, Peter, you haven't left it sitting out? A roast takes simply ages."
    Quinnell didn't look too concerned at the prospect of an extended happy hour, but he did mutter some sort of apology as his granddaughter passed him, heading for the kitchen. Then, with eyes that didn't bother to hide their glee, he noticed David's empty glass and rose to fill it.
    Peter Quinnell, I decided, knew exactly how to handle people. And no matter how much breath Fabia wasted tonight trying to persuade him to start his excavation on the ridge, I had no doubt that, come the morning, we'd be just where Quinnell wanted us to be—down in the southwest corner, digging for a ditch that wasn't there.

     

SECOND HORSE
    That we may lift from out of dust
    A voice as unto him that hears,
    A cry above the conquered years
    To one that with us works ...
    Tennyson, “In Memoriam” , CXXX

     

VII

    I woke in darkness, listening. The sound that wrenched me from my sleep had been strange to my city-bred ears. Train-like, yet not a train .. . the rhythm was too wild, too random. A horse, I thought. A horse in the next field over, galloping endlessly around and round, galloping, galloping . . .
    My heavy eyelids drifted shut and I burrowed deeper in my pillows. My mind drifted, too, and the hoofbeats took form and became a pale horse ... no, a dark one, a black horse, pure black like the night, black mane and black tail streaming out on the wind as it passed me by, galloping...
    It faded and wheeled and came back again, steadily, bringing the others behind it—more hoofbeats, more horses, until it seemed the field must be a sea of heaving flanks and white-rolled eyes and steaming curls of labored breath- Snorting and plunging, they came on like thunder, galloping, galloping, and then in one thick stream they rushed beneath my window and I knew that I was dreaming, so I closed my eyes more tightly, and I slept.
    I woke again in daylight. Reaching over in an automatic gesture, I nipped the switch on my alarm clock before the buzzer could sound, and heard the minute hand snap forward: eight o'clock. Yawning, I rolled onto my back, trying to work up the necessary willpower to lift my head.
    This room was marvelous for waking up in. The only window faced east, over the field, but the morning sunlight edged its way in softly through the screening chestnut tree, not stabbing one in the eyes as it did in my London flat. The yellow walls danced with a dappled play of shadow and light as the tree's branches shifted and dipped against an encouragingly blue sky.
    It looked a proper day for early May, warm and clear, but still I shivered in the chill outside my covers. Tugging a shapeless jumper over my standard working uniform of T-shirt and jeans, I quickly washed and went downstairs, where I found Jeannie McMorran alone in the bright kitchen, mixing a bowlful of biscuit dough.
    "Do you never stop baking?" I asked. We'd got on rather well together last weekend, Jeannie and I, and I'd decided I liked her very much. She had a buoyant personality, a deliriously sly wit, and a way of putting Adrian in his place that I found particularly endearing. She turned to face me now and grinned.
    "What, with all these men about? They'd never let me. Your hair-slide's crooked."
    "Is it?" I raised one hand to make the adjustment, then carried on weaving the rest of my hair into its customary plait.
    Jeannie sighed. "It makes me miss my own hair, watching you do that. Mine was never so thick, ken, but I could sit on it."
    "Really?" Fastening my finished plait with a covered elastic band, I let it fall between my shoulder blades. "What