Free An Embarrassment of Riches by Margaret Pemberton

finger remonstratively at her. ‘I am not going to fall into that trap, my pet. As you are well aware I could talk about Napoleon’s abortive Russian campaign for days on end, but that is not the issue at the moment. What do you think the North’s next move is going to be? Are they going to drive south to Memphis and Atlanta, or are they going to consolidate their present position?’
    At three o’clock, when lessons for the day were over, Isabel went to her room to rest and Maura changed into a riding skirt and boots. Horse-riding had become her greatest love and she had arranged to ride with Kieron to the far end of Lough Suir where her mother now lived.
    Her mother’s move away from Killaree had taken place three months after her own move to Ballacharmish. Lord Clanmar, knowing by then that Ballacharmish was going to be Maura’s long-term home, had been unhappy at the thought of her returning regularly to Killaree and being distressed by the conditions in which her mother was living. When the tenancy of a small stone-built farmhouse at the southern end of Lough Suir had fallen vacant, he had offered the tenancy to Mary Sullivan on the understanding that the rent would be paid in kind. Ballacharmish was in dire need of a seamstress and Maura had told him of how skilled her mother was with a needle. From then on, linen needing mending was despatched to her weekly in the donkey-cart, the previous weeks completed mending being then collected and returned.
    It was an arrangement that had worked admirably. Away from the stench of open drains and pig offal, Mary Sullivan had begun to blossom again. She was able to grow all the fruit and vegetables that she needed for herself and Liam Fitzgerald had taken to calling by and paying his respects. There had been a time when Maura had been certain the friendship would end in marriage, but in the autumn of 1859 Liam Fitzgerald had been fatally injured in a tree-felling accident. Her mother lost her new-found radiance, Liam’s collie attached itself permanently to Kieron, and Lord Clanmar appointed Kieron land-agent for Ballacharmish and its estates.
    He was waiting for her now astride a chestnut Barbary. ‘Where on earth have you been?’ he asked in mock impatience as she hurried into the stables. ‘Another five minutes and I would have given you up and ridden down to the shebeen.’
    Maura grinned as she stepped up onto the mounting-block. To the best of her knowledge Kieron hadn’t been near the shebeen since becoming land-agent. At twenty-five he was the youngest land-agent anyone could ever recall and though his responsibilities sat easily on him he took them seriously. Liam had never joined the Flynns and the Murphys drinking home-brewed poteen in the local shebeen and since becoming land-agent he had never done so either.
    â€˜I’ve been discussing what tactics General Ulysses S. Grant should adopt in order to bring the American civil war to a swift conclusion.’
    â€˜A pity it is that he isn’t this side of the Atlantic to hear them,’ Kieron said with an answering grin. He liked to hear of the subjects she and Isabel discussed in their lessons with Lord Clanmar, though it perplexed him a little that the lessons still continued now that Isabel was sixteen and Maura seventeen.
    Maura settled herself in the side-saddle and picked up her reins. She was riding the British hunter that had been bought her for her last birthday. The ride down to Lough Suir was not a stretching one and she was trying to decide which way she should return in order to exercise him to the full. ‘Shall we come back via Glendalough?’ she asked as they cantered out of the yard.
    Kieron’s grin faded. ‘You may not have time for a long return ride,’ he said, his eyes darkening. ‘I had word a half-hour ago that your mother is not very well.’
    Maura’s pleasure in the day and in the ride ahead of her