Free Whispers of Heaven by Candice Proctor Page A

leaned his forearms along the top rail of the fence and watched as the Irishman brought the bay back down to a fast trot. "Marvelous. Have you ridden him yet, Warrick?"
    Warrick caught Jessie's meaningful glare behind her be- trothed's back and flashed her a wicked grin. But all he said was, "I thought I'd let the groom work him for a few days."
    "Hmmm." Harrison's eyes narrowed as he watched Gallagher skillfully keeping the horse always between his two, outstretched hands. "New man, isn't it?"
    Warrick nodded. "You don't often find a convict as good with horses as this one."
    By now, Gallagher had brought Finnegan's Luck to a stand. Harrison continued to watch, his face unreadable, as the Irishman walked forward to unsnap the longeing rein, then began to walk in a circle himself, the stableboy trotting behind him, and the horse, no longer restrained by the rein, obedient at his side. "Perhaps he's a horse thief," said Harrison.
    Warrick laughed out loud. "Perhaps. Although I suspect treason and rebellion are more likely crimes. He's Irish, after all. And he used to be a gentleman. You can hear it in his voice, when he forgets to lay on the brogue."
    As they spoke, Gallagher began to step back, moving gradually farther and farther away from the hunter until he stood again in the center of the paddock, the stallion still moving obediently in a wide circle around him.
    Jessie glanced up at her brother. Used to be a gentleman. It was an expression she'd heard all of her life, applied to those in degraded circumstances who had been born into better situations. But she'd never liked it, always thought it contradictory that the acquisition of wealth and fine clothes could never turn a base-born man into society's concept of a gentleman, yet the loss of those two requirements was nevertheless considered enough to send a gently born man tumbling from the ranks of the godly. Rather like a fallen angel, cast out of heaven.
    "What a singularly ridiculous expression," she said, voicing her thoughts aloud. " Used to be a gentleman. Really, Warrick; think about it. I can understand saying a man used to be a vicar, or used to be a doctor. But how does a man stop being a gentleman when he was born and bred as one?"
    Warrick made an impatient sound in his throat. "You know what I mean. Look at him, for God's sake."
    Jessie looked. Despite the morning chill, the Irishman wore only a drab waistcoat and a rough cotton shirt, his uncut, dark hair hanging long and ragged over the shirt's open, collarless neck. The years he had spent working ten- and twelve-hour days in the hot Australian sun had tanned his face dark and left clearly defined muscles in his forearms. He stood with his booted legs astraddle, his slim body turning in a slow, tight circle that matched the horse's wider ring as he now controlled the big stallion with nothing but his soothing voice and the inescapable power of his personality. He looked wild and dangerous and faintly menacing, but not like a gentleman. Not like a gentleman at all.
    "Frankly," said Harrison, removing some infinitesimally small particle of lint from the sleeve of his fine wool jacket, "I've always thought of such men as even more contemptible than those convicts from the lower classes. After all, a man born to privilege could have made of life whatever he wished. Instead, he brings himself to this." Harrison threw a speaking glance in the direction of the man in the paddock, and sighed. "It truly is a sad comment on such an individual's character and moral state."
    She had forgotten how pompous Harrison could sound sometimes, or the way his nose quivered when he contemplated something or someone he held in disdain. Looking at her betrothed now, she thought how very much he was the embodiment of everything an English gentleman was supposed to be, with his determinedly cool demeanor and inflexible, self-righteous attitudes. She couldn't imagine him ever doing anything that might set at risk the privilege and