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The Song pushed at Clare, like a child who knew the answer to a question, if only someone would ask them.
“Colin said you like horses.”
She frowned, shoving the Song aside. “Colin?”
“The carriage driver.” Numair laughed. “You asked for the names of the horses but you didn’t get his?”
“Butterscotch and Daisy were prettier.” Clare looked at the stallion, then at the mare. “Are you trying to breed her?”
Numair shook his head. “A couple stallions have tried, but she gave them the bloody end of her hooves. Never seen anything like it. She fights like a demon and even when she’s in season she won’t let any of them near her. She’s out with Hellack because he’s the only horse she can stand. She picks fights with mares and stallions and geldings alike. Hellack’s the only one with enough sense to let her be, so she doesn’t mind having him around.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want her to be alone.”
“What’s her name?” Clare asked, watching as the mare returned her appraisal with equal scrutiny, ears alert but not back.
“Kialla.”
“She’s gorgeous.”
“Ah, she is that, and well aware of it, too. I thought you might take her for a while. I have a feeling the two of you might be suited to each other.”
Clare blinked and said, innocently, “You think me like the horse that kicks out at everyone?”
“Am I wrong?”
She laughed. “Maybe not.”
“I think you might do her some good.”
“Why?”
“She…isn’t happy.”
Clare hesitated, looking at the horse. “Verol said you’re Deirdren Blessed. You can’t…make her happy?”
“No. I can know that she isn’t. I can understand her. And if I wanted to be a complete ass, I could make her obey me. But no one can make another living thing be happy if they don’t want to be.”
The Song pushed at her again, as if insisting that it knew how to make Kialla happy, and furthermore it was rude of Clare to keep it from this marvelous creature it had just rediscovered.
Clare bit her lip, looking at the mare. She wanted her. Inasmuch as her brittle heart could be stolen, the casual contempt and defiance in the horse’s eyes had already done the work of thievery. She loved horses, had loved them indiscriminately from a young age, though there were few enough in Renault County.
She had known from the start that loving people was a folly. A younger her had thought, foolishly, that loving animals was safe. But loving something, Clare had learned, simply meant that it could be used against you. It could be taken or harmed or killed, and perhaps none of those things would happen to it if only you were not selfish enough to love it in the first place.
But that need, that want for connection, beat beneath her breast. “You honestly believe I could be good for her?”
“I do.”
“She cannot be mine.” She spoke in a tone of such cold certainty that Numair studied her for a long moment before replying.
“No. But she is an intelligent creature, and easily bored. She needs exercise and stimulation. I fear I have not the time to provide her with either, and she has not yet accepted a rider other than myself. If she accepts you, I would be happy to pay you as her exerciser.”
Her exerciser. Oh, that was good. As if Clare, who’d never sat on a horse in her life, was qualified to be an exerciser for one of the prince’s horses. Not that she had any intention of enlightening him on her lack of experience. Especially when he’d termed the offer thus to make it more palatable to her.
“Let us call it an even trade for my leasing her, for however long the arrangement should suit us both.” It was not an even trade by traditional standards, not close. A mare like Kialla must fetch quite a price, one Clare couldn’t hope to afford, but it was not by most standards that she and Numair operated. If she could forge a bond with the horse, she knew that he would consider it an even trade.
He left to get the mare’s tack and Clare took a brief moment to reflect on what an odd noble he was; if she was not careful, she was soon to think all the nobility fetched and carried for themselves, and furthermore that they were actually people. She took advantage of his absence to respond to the Song’s still-pinging insistence inside her.
She had a brief moment to think of how foolish she was being, of how dangerous what she wanted was—and all for a horse. But she did want, and she was tired of wanting and never having. So she thought of that brief flash she’d seen earlier, of hooves flying over sand, and the life that had gone with it. The life of a woman who lived in the desert and knew horses as if she’d been born one herself.
The Song all but tripped over itself in order to fling that other life at Clare. It slammed into her in an assault of knowledge and senses, as so many lives had attempted to overwhelm her at the Song’s insistence. So many over the years that Clare was now well-versed in deflection.
