Free A Lady of the West by Linda Howard Page B

again. All of us would. Do you think you could select some nice mounts for us? You have some lovely horses, and I know you would make good choices. Though not, of course, if you need the horses for ranch work.” Her face revealed none of her thoughts as she gave him a small smile, one that managed to be reserved despite its surface warmth. He wasn’t sensitive enough to tell the difference and beamed at her compliment to his equine knowledge.
    â€œOf course, my dear.” He patted her hand. “I should have thought of it myself.” He’d tell Roper to pick out three mounts suitable for ladies. No one on the ranch knew horses better than Roper.
    Emma’s quiet face had its own glow at the thoughtof riding again, and Celia all but bounced in her chair. “When I’ve practiced and I’m really good, may I ride Rubio?” she asked.
    He laughed at her foolishness. “You’ll never be strong enough to control Rubio,” he said, boasting of the horse’s strength. “You just stay with the quiet nags, and let the men handle Rubio.”
    Just as quickly as that the brightness was gone from her small face, but she didn’t argue. Celia seldom argued about anything. She looked down at her plate and pretended to concentrate on her food.
    For once Victoria was glad the Major was so heavy-handed, because she was terrified Celia would take it into her head to try to ride the stallion. She picked up her spoon again and thanked him for the use of the horses, then made a commonplace remark to Emma, who had been trained in the same social graces and immediately picked up the conversation.
    McLain looked around him at the three genteel, pretty-mannered women, and swelled with pride.
    Victoria knocked on Celia’s door, but no one answered. Worried because her sister hadn’t recovered her spirits all evening, she opened the door and looked in, expecting to find the girl soundly asleep. Her heart sank when she saw the empty bed. Quickly she crossed to Emma’s room, hoping that Celia was visiting with their cousin. Her knock brought only a nightgown-clad Emma to the door.
    â€œNo, I haven’t seen her. I thought she was in bed,” Emma said in reply to Victoria’s anxious query. “I’ll get dressed.”
    Celia had a lifetime habit, when upset, of finding a hidey-hole and burrowing into it. The refuge had never been in her own bedroom, but always in a smaller, tighter place, as if she needed the security of closeness. In the past Victoria had never been alarmed, but they were no longer in their old home.
    Emma reappeared in little more than a minute wearing a plain skirt and shirtwaist, with a shawl knotted around her shoulders and her hair haphazardly pinned. “Do you remember the time the two of you were visiting us, when we found her in the chicken coop?”
    Celia had been all of three at the time, and brokenhearted because she had been scolded. At other times she had been found in the storm cellar, a closet, under a bed, or a buggy, burrowed in hay (again, when they were visiting Emma), and once, when she was small, under a washtub. After an hour or two she would emerge sunny-tempered again, so they had ceased to look for her unless she was actually wanted for something.
    They swiftly searched the house and found nothing. Victoria even poked her head into the Major’s room; he had gone out after dinner, so she knew he wasn’t in there. Neither was Celia. Carmita and Lola were sitting around the kitchen table and Lola said that she hadn’t seen the señorita since dinner.
    â€œPerhaps she is talking to the … the—” Lola stopped, frowning as she tried to think of the English word she wanted.
    â€œThe man who sells things from his wagon,” Carmita said.
    â€œA tinker?” Victoria asked.
    They both smiled at her.
“Si,”
Carmita said, relieved. “The tinker.”
    â€œI didn’t know a tinker