A Curious Courting by Laura Matthews Read Free Book Online

to talk about the vale. After this, I doubt I shall make any headway about purchasing the land at all. Lord, but she’s a termagant!”
    “Nonsense,” Penrith snorted. “She’d just been given a nasty spill. What did you expect?”
    “I hardly expected her to rake the young cub over the coals that way. She would have done justice to my father, and he was an expert at ringing a rare peal over one’s head. Doesn’t she like the boy?”
    “Didn’t your father like you? Of course she likes the boy! You’d understand better if you’d watched your mother raise a parcel of younger children, like I did. Pity you’re an only child, Gareth.” Penrith stomped his boots on the lowest stair to rid them of the clinging snow.
    “I have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
    “No, I don’t suppose you do.” Penrith studied his friend’s scowling face for a moment and shrugged his shoulders. “I remember a time when Cassandra was a child, maybe six or seven. She had found a half-crown near the flower border and in her excitement to show it to m’ mother she dashed across the drive without looking, and right in the path of my horse. Very nearly snuffed her, I did—might have, if I hadn’t been on Trooper—and my mother’s face went white with horror. Thing is, as soon as Mother saw there was no harm done, she lost her temper. With Cassandra, with me, though God knows it wasn’t my fault. It was just a way of venting her emotions. Loves us, you know, and it scared the devil out of her to see such a near thing. Parents are like that.”
    “Miss Easterly-Cummings is not the boy’s mother.”
    Penrith regarded him disgustedly. “Oh, never mind. If you don’t want to understand, I can’t make you.”
     
    After a warm bath, Selina felt much better physically, though her emotions were still tumultuous. A trace of fear remained, and even some anger, but uppermost was embarrassment. She was not accustomed to making scenes, or hurting people’s feelings, or misdirecting blame. As she toweled her hair dry, she mentally composed a note to Sir Penrith apologizing for her hasty words. There was no reason he should take responsibility for her cousin’s actions. Really, only Henry was to blame for the whole episode. But no, she could not excuse herself so lightly. The boy had been in her care for five years and surely it was her duty to instill in him some sense of caution, some care for his own neck and for those of others.
    But she had done so, she thought desperately as she tossed the scarlet shawl about her shoulders. Ordinarily Henry was a reasonable, thoughtful young man, polite and good-humored, accommodating to the utmost. Studious and gentle, yet high-spirited as well, she was inordinately fond of him and thought of him as her brother. There must be some dividing line between indulging in riotous spirits and doing something downright dangerous. How was she to teach him that, if he didn’t know it instinctively?
    Her tap at his door was hesitantly answered, and she entered to find him seated by the window. He rose but did not come to her, his face a polite mask. That in itself was unusual, for he was too unaccustomed to hiding his feelings to have much experience at it. Selina silently seated herself on the sofa and gestured for him to join her there, which he did with a formality foreign to their relationship.
    “First, Henry, I should like to apologize for scolding you in front of Sir Penrith. I had forgotten his presence, in the heat of the moment, or I might have put a curb on my tongue. As to the rest. . . I feel no differently now than I did then. I can understand your desire to race the horses, but not the foolhardiness of the way you went about it. We could have checked out a course for obstacles, and then gone about it properly. You had no way of knowing what the drifts of snow covered— rocks, holes, bushes, any number of things which might have caused an accident. The horses are unharmed,