A Man For All Seasons by Jenny Brigalow Read Free Book Online

tickle?
    She looked at him. “You let me win.”
    He smiled then. “Never.”
    She patted her horse's sweaty neck and some of her exhilaration trickled away. If she turned up at the yard with Pollyanna like this, everyone would know she'd been galloping around the countryside. Of course that meant by morning tea half the neighbourhood would know, and by lunch her father would have informed her mother. Inwardly she groaned. Their well-meaning censuring drove her to distraction. Not that it happened very often.
    “Chad, do you mind if we take a detour on the way back, you know, to let the horses cool a bit?”
    He shrugged. “I'm not going anywhere.”
    Relieved, her spirits lifted again as they slopped back through the bridle way and onto the road. She turned right and headed down to the village of Little Bottom. Chad found this pretty hilarious, and wanted to know where Big Bottom was. She showed him the old well, the Saxon church and the big house whose giant yew hedges were artfully pruned into animal shapes.
    When he laughed he seemed younger somehow. “How old are you?” she asked, then felt herself flush, ashamed of her rudeness.
    But he seemed unperturbed. “I'm nearly twenty-six.”
    She was astounded. Why, he wasn't much older than she was. Yet she knew from her father that he ran his own business, and successfully too. Added to that was the recent revelation about his former rodeo shenanigans. His family must be loaded. Curiosity consumed her. “Do you have a big family?” She was pleased with her choice of words. It seemed a nice, inoffensive question.
    But after a minute, when he didn't reply, she looked over at him. Her heart sank, for despite the beard she recognised a tightness around the eyes and a certain tension in the strong lines of his neck. She realised she'd somehow made a blooper.
    He didn't look at her. “No,” he finally said.
    They rode on in silence but she felt as if the easy camaraderie that they had established had been erased. She acknowledged that this upset her but refused to look any deeper.
    Salvation came in the form of a herd of cows milling around a row of hay racks. There he stopped and observed them. “Bloody nice.” His tone was light and casual; he seemed his usual relaxed self.
    She wanted to hop of Pollyanna, vault over the four rows of barbed wire, and kiss each curly head fervently. Instead she nodded vigorously, torn between her delight in his return to good humour and her desire to disguise her ignorance regarding the livestock. The only breeds she really recognised were fillet steak and roast beef.
    He pointed at one large animal nearest to them. “I like the Herefords. Good tempered. Mind you they do better crossbred at home. Bit of Brahmin blood helps in the dry and with tick resistance.”
    “I see,” she nodded wisely as she lied valiantly, desperate to keep the conversation alive. Actually she just loved to listen to the alien cadence of his voice. Dreamily she envisioned herself out in the Australian outback, bringing in the cows with Chad, riding side-by-side kickin' up the dust.
    But then the church bells began to peal the hour. Dresden skittered across the road.
    “What the hell's that?” asked Chad, after he'd brought the horse back in hand.
    She was surprised. She barely heard the bells, they were just part of the background noise, like vehicles and wind. “It's just the church bells. It's eight.”
    Soon they where home, clip clopping over the pebbly yard surface. They dismounted and she had a rather inelegant tug of war with one of the grooms as he tried to take Pollyanna from her. She clung onto the rains with grim determination. “Let go,” she hissed.
    The boy stood back thoroughly alarmed. Breathless but victorious she led the mare over to her stable and untacked her. Beneath her saddle and bridle the brown coat had become hard and dark with dried sweat, the white legs caked in dried, flaky mud. She made her way swiftly to the tack room and