Callie stood looking up at the bits of straw and cobwebs that dangled from the boards. She swallowed a slight, strange ache in her throat, anticipation and pleasure and pain all mixed, and turned away.

"Can you use the mounting block?" he asked, his voice oddly gruff.

"Yes, of course." She didn't look back, though she heard his boots hit the dirt of the stable f loor as she led her horse outside.

"You'll have a message from me," he murmured. The door closed behind her with a wooden growl and thump.

Being cordially disliked by Lady Shelford did not afford Callie any relief from attending the teas, dinners, and house parties that the countess—once released from the punctilious obligations of mourning—had begun to host at Shelford Hall. This unaccustomed invasion of county society was only slightly less daunting, in Callie's view, than the full round of gaiety in London during the season, but somehow she was a little less reticent than usual. When she found herself feeling intimidated amid a group of strangers, she thought of Trev feeding Hubert a tomato and grinning at her in the demolished kitchen of Dove House, and her lips would curl upward in a smile that seemed to make some guest smile back at her, and they would exchange a word or two, which was more pleasant than she would have expected in the circumstances.

She had never been obliged to suffer such a bustle of social doings at her home before. After harvest time, autumn and winter at Shelford had always been quiet. Though the Heythrop country was near enough for convenience, her father had held mixed opinions regarding foxhunting. He was by no means averse to the destruction of foxes, but he had the inborn objection of a true farmer to seeing his fences and cattle overrun by cavalcades of youngbloods on their bang-up high-bred hunters. So there had never been any proper hunting parties held at Shelford, only a few of her father's close friends who stabled their extra mounts there when the stalls were full at Badminton, and stayed over a day or two from time to time when they came to retrieve their second string.