For three hours, Hebe had concentrated upon the technical aspects – head formation, chest musculature, how a horse’s glorious mane caught the midday sunlight, and for the first time, she’d been able to accurately draw how the carpus muscle moved.
“My thanks, Mr Skelton, for allowing me to sketch your beautiful horses,” she declared as she sorted the drawings by category upon the harness room table.
“Not at all, Mrs Locke. The duke has revitalised this area and any guest of his is a guest of mine.”
Hebe twisted with a smile, for Squire Will Skelton was all that a squire should be.
Lean hounds lolled and his boots were muddied. His manor house was genteel but shabby and his stables were prodigious but without ostentation.
He assisted her into her riding pelisse and then raised her hand to his lips, his lemon cologne purging the scent of horse from her nostrils.
With ruffled mahogany curls and dancing chestnut eyes, a slender build and straight cravat, the squire, according to Lettie, caused many a female heart to skip a beat when he tipped his hat in town.
Hebe prettily thanked him once more before they sauntered from the harness room, the Skelton maid who’d acted as chaperone gasping deep of the fresh air.
Daniel and Thos had accompanied her on the journey and they now set about packing the many drawing folders and books into her saddle bags, squabbles brewing.
“Good day, Mr Skelton.”
“Au revoir, Mrs Locke,” he replied. “Do give Lord Ernest my regards. As lads, we used to swim in the moat and catch grass snakes in the meadow, would you believe?”
“I would in fact.” Smiling, she accepted his hand to alight Mrs Salter, a chestnut mare named after a scandalous Rothwell who’d run away with a sailor, although Redmond had promised that the horse’s temperament was anything but flighty. “And I will pass on your regards to Lord Ernest.”
Hebe set her steed to a sedate walk, Thos and Daniel trailing on blood-bay fillies.
For the outward journey of some half-hour to this neighbouring estate, Daniel had guided them via the river and through the woods, a flowing, twisting path with rich beams of sunlight casting this ancient scape to vivid green and mellow brown.
“Take tha left there, madam,” called Daniel. “Otherwise, thee’ll meet the gibbet tree. And tha ain’t no sight for a lady.”
Hebe frowned, gently tugging the reins as instructed. “Do they still display bodies?”
“Nah, but it be haunted ground.”
“My pa, when he were young,” chimed in Thos, “saw the Burford Highwaymen in that gibbet. Hung there for months, they were – all rotting.” He sniffed. “Three brothers. Tom and Harry were hung till dead in Gloucester, but Dick were missing on account of his brothers chopping his arm off.”
“Really?” Hebe scrunched her brow, peeking over her shoulder at them.
Daniel winced.
“Aye. A robbery went wrong and Dick got his arm trapped so his brothers chopped it off.” Thos scratched his whiskerless chin. “He died.”
“I’m not terribly surprised.”
“Scourge of Burford, they were,” enthused Thos, who’d never looked so animated, arms windmilling, much to the consternation of his filly. “’Twere said they shod their horses back-to-front, if thee can believe, so their pursuers followed the tracks in the wrong direction. And they had secret lairs all over this here forest. Course nowadays, they haunt the byways in their rattling chains.”
“What a tale,” Hebe replied. Ghosts were no horror to her but even so…
“There be mighty more, for the haunted manor be only a hundred lugs or so from here and the lovers that were struck by lightning are–”
“Thos,” interrupted Daniel with a sullen frown. “If thee have no luck with Beth at the Wychmere inn, this is why.”
Thos fell silent and Daniel fell grouchy, so Hebe merely fell to admiring the secluded dells and primeval trees, allowing Mrs Salter to leisurely pick her way through the forest.
The scent of wild mint arose from the ancient, leafed ground – a woven tapestry of roots and fallen branches. A serene divine place with hues of green that no artist could ever recreate, an ageless woodland that had doubtless seen every shade of man tread this path – warrior, princess, priest, maiden and king.
She imagined the young Ernest and squire, pushing and shoving through the bracken and brambles, catching frogs and lizards as boys were wont to do.
Her own upbringing had been in the smoke and bustle of London, constrained by governesses and the chimes of a clock, but she so enjoyed the gentle timelessness of this countryside, its dappled peace and scampering creatures.
