Chapter Two
The moment Mr.Pratt had departed down the drive on his pedestrian-looking roan cob, Miranda abandoned the parlor and hastened to the door that led out into the gardens. No sign of either the girls or their dogs. Perhaps they’d abandoned their game and progressed to their universally preferred location. The stable yard.
As she’d expected, raised voices and laughter coming from the direction of the tack room indicated that this was where she would find her daughters. She slipped into the wide passageway that ran along the front of the looseboxes and approached the partly open door at the far end.
The girls were gathered around the central table engaged in cleaning their tack, something Miranda had encouraged them to do for themselves since they’d been tiny children riding on Pickles, the garden pony. “A good horseman, or horsewoman, always takes care of their own horse and its tack,” she’d taught them. “So only she can be blamed if any kind of accident occurs.” And it had been a lesson well-learned.
For a moment Miranda paused, unobserved, happy to watch without disturbing them. She’d never tired of doing so throughout their lives, nor of admiring how pretty they all were with their wavy blonde hair, blue eyes and flawless skin, all of which they’d inherited from her and not from their rotund and balding father. If they’d been escorted to a London ball, the older two, Melissa and Miriam, at eighteen andsixteen, would have turned the heads of every young man present. Had they but dowries to their names, of course, or even the money to buy the necessary frills and furbelows. Margaret, the youngest at only twelve, showed promise of being as beautiful as her two sisters, but was still very much a child in both manner and outlook.
Right now, all three wore grubby canvas aprons over their riding habits, no doubt furnished by young Archie Miller, the groom. He was a simple lad whom Miranda suspected of being smitten by not just Melissa’s looks but also her outgoing personality. He, however, was nowhere to be seen, thank goodness. That was something that might need nipping in the bud with a few quiet words to the young man, although Miranda was sure any feelings were not reciprocated by Melissa.
Right now, the girls seemed to be engaged in some sort of tussle as to who would get their tack cleaned first.
“Pass me the saddle soap, can’t you, Lissy?” Miriam scolded, her tone one of annoyance. “You’ve been hogging it far too long.”
“I need some too,” little Margaret chimed in. “My bridle took ages to clean because you two made me ride at the back and Banshee and I were quite covered in mud when we galloped. But the mud’s wiped off now, so I need the soap.”
“In a moment. Just wait a second, you two. I’m nearly done.” Melissa gave a final polish to her side-saddle and handed over the pot of best Windrush saddle soap. This was a concoction made to an old family recipe by Joe, Archie’s father, who was also the coachman and had been at Windrush since he was a boy.
Margaret made a grab for it. “Let me have a turn, Mims.”
“Wait your turn, Megs,” Miriam snapped and scooped out a small dollop with her cloth. With her usual industry, an industry that was notable by its absence anywhere but in the stable yard, she applied herself to rubbing the soap into the skirt of her saddle.
Megs leaned over, with a resigned huff, and helped herself.
Miranda pushed the tack room door wider open and stepped inside.
All three girls turned to look at her, faces expectant and curious.
“Has he gone?” Melissa asked, straightening up from where she’d been bent over her bridle buckling it back together again. She was an inch taller than her mother and they could easily have been mistaken for sisters rather than mother and daughter.
Miranda nodded.
“Was he that fat man I saw riding off on that frightfully ugly cob?” Megs, ever the least tactful of the three, asked with a mischievous smile. “Lissy and Mims sent me into the kitchen just now to ask Mrs. Barnes for cake, and I spied him leaving.”
She did indeed have cake crumbs down the front of her blue riding habit.
“Yes, that was Mr. Pratt.”
Miriam, the most perceptive of her daughters, narrowed her blue eyes. “Was it bad news, Mama?”
Miranda closed the door behind her. The last thing she wanted was any of the servants overhearing what she was going to have to say to her children, although she rather suspected their impending penury was common knowledge throughout the district. They all knew about Mr. Pratt’s search for an heir, and they’d be finding out soon enough, but for now, she wanted to keep it to herself and the girls. She sat down on the wooden bench that ran around the outside of the room and which lifted to provide storage for all manner of horse related objects. “I want you all to sit down and pay proper attention.”
The girls exchanged wary glances.
Miriam put down the saddle soap pot and wiped her dirty hands on her apron.
Megs rubbed a hand across her forehead spreading the spots of mud she’d no doubt acquired on their ride in a dirty streak across her skin.
Melissa sat down beside her mother and took her hands in hers. “Tell us, Mama, we’re all old enough to know if something bad has happened. Did Mr. Pratt find the lost heir?”
“The lost heir?” Megs asked, taking her place on the other side of her mother. “Are we to be thrown out of Windrush? Is he a monster?”
Miriam drew up a low stool so she could sit in front of her mother, her brow furrowed in earnest concentration. “Tell us, Mama. Best to get it over with.”
Miranda regarded her three beautiful daughters, her unruly heart fluttering in her chest despite her best efforts to quell it. She licked her lips. “I think you all knew that we were assuming your papa had no male relative living, didn’t you? And that there just might have been a very distant relation who could be the heir.”
Three blonde heads nodded.
