Free The Hounds and the Fury by Rita Mae Brown

on their pads. No one’s pads had been cut up, as there wasn’t much ice, but Shaker figured an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. The two boys felt important to help with a big job. Sybil appreciated Shaker’s thoughtfulness. Her marriage, a disaster, had left her a single mother. She liked her sons to be around real men, and Shaker was about as real as it got.
    Sari, Lorraine Rasmussen’s daughter, and Jennifer, Betty’s daughter, were home from Colby College on Christmas vacation. They washed down the staff horses and asked to clean tack, but Sister sent them on their way. She knew both girls wanted to primp for a big New Year’s Eve party, although first they had to attend Betty’s party.
    As Betty finished washing the bits, hanging Shaker’s bridle on a tack hook high over a bucket, she asked, “When does Gray start at Aluminum Manufacturers?”
    “Tuesday. Thought Garvey might be with us today, but maybe the roads aren’t as good out his way.” Sister paused. “Iffy won’t take kindly to what she considers a footprint in her garden.”
    “Iffy’s been a pill since birth.”
    Sister laughed so hard she startled Raleigh and Rooster, who barked. “Oh, shut up. It’s just me. Go back to sleep. Betty, savage but true.”
    “She isn’t that bad looking. A bit of a dumpling, but pretty enough. She’s so sour no man would have her.”
    “No woman either.” Sister laughed.
    “Who do you think is pickier? Men or women?”
    “Men.”
    “See, I think it’s women.” Betty answered her own question.
    “Maybe men and women are picky about different things. Men get very distracted by looks. Women get distracted by promises. And both get what they deserve.”
    “Ain’t that the truth. You’d better go into marriage with your eyes wide open.”
    “Betty, you no more did that than I did. When you’re young you can’t possibly know the changes the years bring. Love is blind, for which I suppose we should give some thanks, or there’d be no next generation.”
    “Ha!” Betty wrung out a soft rag before rubbing it on saddle soap, her first step in cleaning the leather.
    “Ha, what? I know that tone of voice.”
    “Sex. Nothing can keep the human animal from sex. No laws, no religion, not even the threat of death. In the old days it was syphilis. Now it’s AIDS. We’re fools breeding fools, and we always were.”
    “I did my share,” grinned Sister, alluding to her very rich past. “You did all right.” Betty wiped down the leather after the saddle soap. “Back to Iffy. I heard she was seeing a lot of Alfred DuCharme. Hard to believe.”
    “Lord.” Sister raised her eyebrows. “Hadn’t heard that. Let’s keep on the good side of Alfred. He allows us to hunt Paradise. Took awhile to bring Binky around to it, so we need Alfred to be especially happy with us. Iffy, on a whim, could toss a monkey wrench into the works. Especially if she gets mad at Gray. She’ll take it out on the club.”
    Binky, Alfred’s older brother, had stolen Alfred’s girlfriend, Milly Archer, a west end Richmond girl, back in 1975. Alfred had never forgiven Binky.
    Regardless of Binky’s entreaties, Alfred refused to attend the marriage. He wouldn’t even wave to his brother or his sister-in-law if he passed them on the road.
    When their father, Brenden, had died he’d kept the land intact. He thought this would force them to cooperate, and thus reconcile, without him alive to be a go-between. He figured wrong.
    Instead, Binky and Milly’s daughter, the bright and spunky Margaret, soon found herself filling in for her departed grandfather and mediating between her father and her uncle.
    Embittered though he remained toward Binky and Milly, Alfred worshipped his niece, a sports physician at Jefferson Regional Hospital.
    The brothers lived in separate dependencies, small houses, near the ruins of the main house. The one time they had been seen together willingly was at Margaret’s graduation.
    “Yep.