Whispers of Heaven by Candice Proctor Read Free Book Online Page A

when he swatted her hand away and rolled, swearing, into a sitting position. Wiping the dust from his face with one crooked elbow, he lifted his head and stared after the retreating hunter. "Don't just stand there, Charlie," he shouted to the wide-eyed boy who had retrieved Warrick's hat and was now holding it out to him. "Get that bloody stallion before he bloody well decides to make a bolt for the bloody parklands."
    "Yes, sir," stammered the boy, his awestruck gaze lifting to follow the action of the stallion's powerful hindquarters. "Only, how am I supposed to catch him?"
    Warrick tweaked his hat from the boy's grasp. "You run after him."
    A shout brought Jessie's head up. One of the convicts working on the new stable had leapt the wall and was already racing across the yard at an angle to cut the stallion off. A leanly built man with devil-dark hair and features she recognized; he ran like a panther, gracefully, powerfully, easily. She heard him purring soothingly to the wide-eyed horse. But then he was shouting something, something about the reins, just as one of the stallion's flashing hooves landed hard on the dangling leather. The bay's head jerked down, catapulting it forward. Squealing, the hunter somersaulted and came down heavily onto its side. And lay there.
    "Oh, my God," whispered Jessie. Pushing to her feet, she picked up her dragging skirts and began to run.
    Gallagher stood well back from the downed stallion's flailing hooves as the bay's head lunged up, and Finnegan's Luck, no longer stunned, scrambled to its feet, its glossy sides heaving in nervous excitement.
    "Easy, boy," he crooned, moving in closer. Catching the reins, Lucas touched the horse's nose, its ears, its shining neck before moving slowly, easily, to run a practiced hand down first the near front leg, then the rear. The horse quivered and snorted, but Lucas kept up that low, soothing purr.
    "Is he hurt?"
    A pair of dainty but decidedly dusty bare feet appeared in the dirt beside him. His head falling back, one hand still on the stallion's rear hock, Lucas looked up into the white, anxious face of Miss Jesmond Corbett. She crouched beside him, her fists clenching in the heavy folds of her limp skirts, her brows drawing together in concern. The wind billowed her loose golden hair around her head, and when she sucked in a quick breath, her firm young breasts, unshielded by the stiff propriety of a corset, rose and strained against the fine cloth of her bodice. For one deceptive moment, she looked as free and uninhibited as if she'd just come from a lover's bed, and nothing at all like the prim and painfully proper young lady he knew she must be.
    He straightened quickly. "Just winded, I think." Turning his back on her, he went around to check the horse's off legs. Then his gaze met hers over the hunter's broad, high withers, and before he could stop himself, he said, "Why did you stand there and let your brother mount this horse in the open yard? You knew Finnegan's Luck was going to buck."
    Even after more than three long, grinding, dehumanizing years in the British penal system, Lucas could still forget himself sometimes. Still forget the humiliating demand for a never-ending outward pretense of servility he hadn't been raised to show. Still forget that an unwary tongue or even a simple, belligerent stare could get him flogged raw for his "insolence."
    He watched the hot color flood the woman's smooth cheeks, watched the startled widening of her eyes before they narrowed in furious indignation. Her chin went up in that haughty gesture he had come to know well from women of her type, and he waited, his jaw set, for the inevitable, degrading reprimand—or worse—to come.
    "You seem to have temporarily misplaced the brogue you used to such ostentatious effect yesterday, Mr...." She paused, her well-bred, carefully modulated, oh-so-English voice rising in a question.
    It wasn't what he'd expected. "Gallagher," he said. "Lucas Gallagher."
    "Mr.