Free All the dear faces by Audrey Howard

sensual .
    He had been lounging against the station yard wall waiting for the lad from the inn to bring his horse which had been stabled there, when the woman and the child had caught his attention. The clattering of the animal's hooves on the cobbles, the barking of several dogs which were bristling and snarling up to one another by the yard gate, the tuneless whistle of a coachman who waited beside his mistress's carriage, the nervous whinnying of the greys which pulled it, all these sounds penetrated Reed Macauley's state of unfocused abstraction and he shivered slightly as though the ghost of his mother had touched him as she moved back into the past .
    The groom led the tall black mare towards him somewhat gingerly for she was of a highbred disposition and had been known to bite at the hand which held the bridle. A beautiful animal with a coat like satin, rippling as she stepped daintily across the yard, her head tossing, her eyes rolling, eager to be away and at the gallop for she had been stabled at The Fiddler's Arms for three days whilst her master attended to some business in Lancaster. It took all the groom's strength to hold her.
    “ Theer she be, Mr Macauley, sir, an' a right bugger she were an' all. She's not 'ad much exercise seein' as 'ow theer's none cares to get on 'er back an' theer's none she cares to 'ave on 'er back, neither. Jake led 'er up t'road a piece an' into t' field at back o t' church but a right to-do-ment it were. ”
    Reed Macauley smiled. He threw the butt of the cigar to the ground, stepped on it then took the reins from the lad's very willing hand. He patted the animal's arched and quivering neck, gripping her mane, then smoothed his gloved hand down her nose, blowing into her distended nostrils, his lips close as he murmured something to her deep in his throat .
    At once she quietened, standing passively beneath her master's touch, her luminous eyes looking into his, her head beginning to nuzzle affectionately against his shoulder .
    Reed's smile deepened, revealing the perfect white teeth his mother had bequeathed to him with her pints of fresh milk, the blue milk cheese known as `wangy' cheese sliced between thick wedges of home-baked bread which he took to school with him; the fresh vegetables which she had grown in her garden and the fresh herbs she had cooked in her herb pudding. A dish consisting of alpine bisort, nettles, chives, blackcurrant leaves, barley, butter and beaten eggs, made in the spring by most housewives but served once a week on Sarah Macauley's table.
    “ You have to treat a horse as you would a woman, Sam," he told the groom, who looked startled, since no woman he had approached had tempted him to blow up her nose. "They like to be soothed and petted and have little bits of nonsense whispered in their ear. It's quite amazing what a man may be allowed with the female sex if he treats her kindly and it is the same with a horse I have found." He winked engagingly at Sam who began to grin. "They are strange but delightful creatures and cannot resist flattery, can you, my beauty?" running his hand along the mare's flank, "so you must tell them how splendid they are at least a dozen times a day at the same time stroking them as I am stroking Victoria here. Isn't that so, Victoria? ”
    The mare actually nodded her head, the groom told Jake Later when he was recounting Mr Macauley's amazing words, what he could remember of them since many had been too high-flown for his understanding and just plain bloody daft anyway. Mind you, Mr Macauley's reputation with the ladies was legendary, his exploits in that direction — and the results of them, most with eyes the colour of deepest blue — discussed wherever men gathered as far afield as Borrowdale and Rosthwaite at the southernmost tip of Derwent Water, to the east to Penrith and west to Whitehaven. So perhaps what he advised with the mare, and women, was not as barmy as it sounded. Maybe Sam'd try it next time he coaxed