Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,28
horses are trained for barrel racing and team roping.”
I wasn’t even sure what barrel racing and team roping were. The window over the sink gave a view of the paddocks behind the house, and I spotted a pair of foals beside the barn, nibbling grass behind a post-and-rail fence, plus a handful of older horses grazing in the distance.
“You breed as well?”
“That’s my favourite part of the job—bringing on the babies. But this year… We lost one at birth, and I’ve had to sell some of the mares to make ends meet.”
“How many horses do you have here?”
“Thirty-one of our own, plus another three geldings for training. Two stallions, eleven broodmares, eight colts, seven fillies, and three Arabians left over from Daddy’s heyday. He liked to show them when he was younger, but we’ve gradually switched over to quarter horses. Nine live in the barn, and the rest are out at pasture. And we have a dozen Corriente cattle.”
Thirty-four horses? I found it time-consuming enough looking after one. Where did Harriet get the energy? She was a good six inches shorter than me, and she didn’t look particularly strong.
“Sounds like a lot of work.”
That was borne out by her scuffed jeans and faded shirt. She clearly spent a reasonable amount of time outside with the animals.
“It is, and now I only have Rodrigo left plus Rusty on the weekends when he’s not at school. And Stéphane, of course, but he takes care of my father’s affairs and the house, not the animals.” She leaned in a little closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “In fact, he’s quite scared of them. You really don’t mind helping?”
“Not at all.” I’d only be sitting alone in a rented house otherwise, missing Chaucer. I wouldn’t get to see him until the middle of June when I flew home to watch my little sister get married. “Where do you want me to start?”
While Dan got stuck into the investigative work, I headed out the back with Harriet. She proved to be easy company, and by the time we’d mucked out the horses in the barn and given them their lunchtime feed, I’d learned the basics of barrel racing—basically, you galloped your horse around three barrels in a cloverleaf pattern, competing against the clock. Team roping wasn’t her main focus, rather something she did to stop the barrel horses from getting stale, and it involved two people on horseback catching a steer with ropes. Dressage seemed so much safer.
But the horses were docile, even the stallions, and although I was technically working, it felt more as if I were on holiday. People would pay thousands to wake up with that view—pastures and shade trees, and in the distance down a gentle hill, fields of tobacco and a winding river.
“This place is beautiful. Have you always lived here?” I asked.
“I was born in that bedroom up there.” Harriet pointed at a window on the top floor of the house. “For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted to do was breed horses. How about you? Did you always want to be… Uh, never mind.”
She was right. No little girl grew up dreaming of a career as a PA, perhaps with the exception of being Girl Friday to a famous movie star or a billionaire—I’d binged romance novels as a teenager, okay? I understood how it worked.
“I wanted to event in the Olympics. But my parents sold my three-star horse while I was injured in the hospital, and that was the end of that.”
Harriet gasped. “They sold your horse? Without you knowing?”
“I still miss him. My ex-husband bought me a dressage horse as a consolation prize, and between the physio and my father’s constant browbeating, I didn’t have the energy to fight.”
“Were you injured badly?”
“I had to have my left ankle pinned. It wasn’t even Polo’s fault. A fox shot out of a bush during the cross-country, and he swerved to avoid it. I just fell off the side and landed badly.”
“I broke both of my legs at different times when I was a teenager, and Daddy helped me back on again as soon as I could hobble. I even rode in a cast.” She stopped sweeping for a moment and leaned on the broom handle. “I realise what you must think of Daddy. That he’s a liar and a cheater and a thief. But he wasn’t a bad father. I just didn’t realise how awful he’d gotten with the money side of