Free The Ringmaster's Wife by Kristy Cambron

how you might try.”
    “Well, I don’t think there will be any danger of that.” He got to his feet. “What little I know of horses is that you don’t break the spirit. Just bend the will if necessary. Kind of like dealing with people, I expect.”
    Rose had pulled her hair back, but some strands had escaped and fallen down around her face. She was still winded too, and her cheeks were red from the crisp morning air.
    Colin placed his half-eaten apple on the top of the stall and reached out, easing the reins from her gloved hand.
    “You’re tired. Here.” He nodded toward the chair. “Have a seat.”
    To his surprise she obeyed, tucking her skirt underneath her and crossing her legs at the ankles. Colin noticed how she studied him as he opened the stall door and led the horse in.
    The mare’s gentle murmuring neighs were the only sound to cut the silence that had fallen between them. Colin busied himself by easing the bit from Ingénue’s mouth, then unhooking the girth and slipping the saddle from her back. He edged out of the stall, depositing the saddle on the stand near the wall.
    “You must think me spoiled, to fall apart over the sale of a horse.”
    Colin paused, hands still on the saddle. “I think nothing of the sort.”
    “Ingénue was a gift from my late brother. He had her shipped to me shortly before he was killed in the war. And now you’re here to buy her . . . so that’s why . . .” She tore her gaze to something out the window nearby, trying to withstand the emotion that had hitched in her words. “We were very close,” she added. “He was the one who always called me Rose.”
    Colin shook his head, bracing his hands on his hips as he stared down at the straw-covered ground. “I’m sorry.”
    And he was.
    It wasn’t her fault. The horse’s either. They were caught up in the aftermath of the Great War, in which so many families were navigating the reality of grief and loss, and the tangled web of inheritances that now must go to a distant cousin in the family tree. Though he had no estate to claim, Colin knew the aftermath well. He’d been to war too. Had seen comrades fall all around him like sparrows in winter. Friends, not unlike Rose’s brother, had died in the war-torn fields of France. And that reality changed more than just the men at the Front. He realized it now, watching her, as she kicked at a bit of straw under her boot.
    Rose was caught up in the fray of England’s more traditional world, where a patriarch’s buying and selling was often done without regard to the wishes of the female members of his family. He knew it wasn’t always the case, but it seemed to be the rule at Easling Park. If it wouldn’t have complicated things, Colin might have liked to give the earl a swift kick in his tailored trousers for so callously breaking his daughter’s heart.
    Colin shook his head and walked over to pull a bucket of water from the corner of the stall. He knelt and began to bathe the horse, washing the mud from her legs up to the hock—anything to keep from looking back at the pain in Rose’s eyes.
    “I should have known how much you care for Ingénue. The communion the two of you have is rare, and I apologize for not realizing it sooner.”
    He glanced over his shoulder to see if she’d heard him.
    “You’re apologizing to me?” she asked, clearly surprised.
    “I am. And if it were up to me now, I’d leave her right here in this stall.”
    “But it’s not up to you.”
    “No. By his own admission, if your father doesn’t sell her to my employer, he’ll sell her to someone else. If she has to go, I’d rather she sail with me.” He picked up what remained of the apple and offered it to Ingénue, who munched on it without hesitation.
    He patted her nose in return, as if to punctuate his last words before turning back around. What he didn’t expect to find was Rose, all five feet two inches of her, standing but a few steps behind him, blocking his path through