to understand than people. They made their wishes clear. They bestowed their affection without conditions. They didn’t love you for a time, then stop loving you for no apparent reason.
Annis knew Bits loved her. She sometimes thought the two of them must be connected by an invisible ribbon of emotion, one that drew her to the stables every day, to be in his presence, to savor the warmth of his big body, to breathe in the peppery scent of his hide, to bask in the trust shining in his eyes. Mounted on his back, she became one with his power and speed and beauty. No one scolded her while she was seated high in the saddle. No one nagged about her clothes or her hair or her manners. Riding Bits set her free.
She released Bits’s hoof, and he put it down gingerly. She patted his shoulder in sympathy. Robbie said, “Walk him a bit, and I’ll watch.”
Annis led Bits down the aisle of the stables and into the paddock for a turn inside the fence. When they stopped, she stood stroking his neck. “What do you think, Robbie?”
“Not sure yet. Let me have a look.”
Annis stood back, the lead rope slack in her hand, as Robbie lifted Bits’s forefoot and inspected it. When he released the hoof, he ran his hand from the horse’s shoulder to his knee, on down the cannon to the pastern. “Ah,” he said. “Feel this, Miss Annis. See how warm it is?”
She reached past him to touch the back of the horse’s leg with her fingers. “Oh, it is,” she said. “I didn’t notice that.”
“Aye. It ain’t that bad. Bit o’ tendinitis, I’m guessing. Just need to wrap it and rest him for a few days. No canter or gallop.”
“Should we ask the farrier to come? Or the veterinarian?”
“Only if it don’t get better.”
Annis straightened, and Bits dropped his head to bump his chin against her shoulder, asking for his treat. She dug a chunk of apple from her pocket and fed it to him. “It’s going to be all right, Bitsy,” she told him as he munched. “Robbie says it will be all right.”
“A poultice should do it,” Robbie said. He took off his flat cap to scratch at the gray bristle of his hair. “You can make that, lass, right?”
“Yes. I’ll do it now.” She handed off Bits’s lead. “Will you put him in his stall? I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
Robbie touched the brim of his cap, then spoke a soothing word to Black Satin as he led him away. Annis picked up her hat from the ground and slapped it against her thigh to shake off the sawdust before she went indoors.
She let herself into the house by the door nearest the kitchen and hurried down the short hall to the pantry.
Robbie was her favorite servant outside the house. Indoors, Mrs. King, the cook, held that honor. She had been with the Allingtons since before Annis was born, and when Annis’s mother died of a fever when Annis was not yet two, Mrs. King stepped in, though she was a servant. She always had a handkerchief for a little girl’s tears or a plate of cookies to quiet her when she was anxious. She saw to it that Annis had clothes that fit, and she ordered new shoes as Annis outgrew the old ones. She listened to Annis’s tales of triumphs and disappointments at school and helped her with her homework on the rare occasions that she needed it.
Mrs. King kept Annis as close as she could on the day of her father’s remarriage, despite being needed in the kitchen and the dining room. That had been a hard day. Papa acted strangely, laughing at odd times, gazing at his new bride in a way that confused and embarrassed his little daughter. The people who came for the wedding breakfast cast such pitying glances at seven-year-old Annis that she thought something terrible must be happening.
But now she was seventeen. She had graduated from Brearley with good marks. She no longer wept into Mrs. King’s handkerchief, and she didn’t need cookies for comfort. What she needed from Mrs. King was her own corner of the pantry to make remedies for her horses, and Mrs. King provided it with good humor.
Annis wished she knew more about how to heal injuries and wounds. Her poultices and salves helped, but they hardly worked miracles. She would make the poultice for Bits with witch hazel and