The Valentine Legacy by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page A

night.”
    She clicked Benjie forward. To her relief, James didn’t come after her again. She wanted to look back, but she forced herself not to.
    James wondered, as he rode Lilac toward Marathon farm, why he’d come after her. His sister would be unhappy with him that he’d left so early. Giff would tease him and pokehim in the ribs, all sly and obnoxious, wondering if he’d gone to see someone special. Like Connie Maxwell, who hadn’t been in attendance this evening. James could have told him that Connie’s son was visiting her from Harvard and thus the two of them would wait until Danny returned to school.
    A raindrop landed on his nose. Damnation. He clicked Lilac forward, and she, hating rain more than exerting herself, ran like the rising wind toward her stable.
    If Jessie was concerned he would make a good husband for her sister, then people must think he was being particular in his attentions to her. He hadn’t been; he knew it. He didn’t like Glenda. She made him nervous because her right hand played over him whenever they danced. She annoyed him with her downcast eyes and her talk of seeing beautiful England, in the spring, in the summer, even in the winter, it didn’t matter to Glenda. To hear her recite poetry had constituted the most painful twenty-two minutes of his life. He shuddered at the thought of having to sit still while she played the harp.
    He urged Lilac to go faster. When he reached the house, he was soaked to the skin, in a bad mood, half afraid that Glenda Warfield was on his heels, and ready to lash out at anyone who crossed him.
    He was met by pandemonium.
    Oslow and ten stable lads were pacing around, oblivious of the rain, obviously waiting for him. Old Bess was holding a large, black skillet. To protect whom? Thomas was standing in the open doorway, looking stately, his arms crossed over his chest. Even he looked ready for action. Beneath the shelter of the front overhang stood a very angry Allen Belmonde. It seemed someone had stolen Sweet Susie from the paddock while James had been at the Poppleton party. Allen was here because he had ridden directly to Marathon whenone of James’s stable lads had come to the party to fetch James and found only Allen.
    This, James thought, as he was surrounded by shouting stable lads and a furiously cursing Allen Belmonde, was going to be a fine end to his evening.

5
    J ESSIE ’ S HAT , A long-ago gift from her father, kept most of the rain off her face, but the rest of her quickly became wetter than the moss beneath Ezekiel’s Waterfall.
    She rode with her head down, feeling two parts miserable and one part angry. Damn James anyway.
    But damn him for what? What had he done? Nothing, and that’s why she was damning him.
    When she heard the neighs and hoofbeats of several horses coming toward her, she pulled up Benjie. “It’s nearly midnight. Who the devil is out in this wretched rain besides me?”
    Then she heard men’s voices. They were arguing, cursing the rain, cursing the foul-up with their partners, cursing the mare who was teasing the horse Billy was riding.
    Billy was yelling, “The damn bloody mare’s still in heat. Damn ye, stay away from me poor old boy! He’s too old fer the likes o’ ye and yer blood is blue besides, not all mottled and common like my ole boy here.”
    What damned mare?
    â€œShut yer trap, Billy,” the other man yelled back. “Move yer horse, or we’ll be in for it. Jest look, both of them want to mate here, in the road, in all this rain. Damned buggers.”
    Jessie heard a horse scream, then the man, Billy, scream even louder. She heard a wet thud. His horse must have thrown him to get to the mare.
    She clicked Benjie forward, tugging him to the grass-edge of the road. She came around a bend, pulling him quickly to a halt.
    There was Sweet Susie, butting against a horse whose rider was sitting in the middle of the road, wet