The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

as if he’d wanted her to suffer. But that didn’t make sense, either. If he wanted that, he wouldn’t have healed her foot. If she ever saw him again, she’d make him stand still and answer her questions.

TR yelled from the yard, “Mrs. Fraser, let’s ride.”

“Coming.” She smiled at Mrs. Sewall. “Thank you for everything. I’ll see you in a few days.”

He was holding the reins of two unsaddled horses. He gave her the reins to a dun, and he kept the piebald. “You might believe your gold horse can make it thirty miles of hard riding, but I’m guessing he can’t. You’ll want to change mounts at some point.”

“Thank you. It’s not worth risking my horse’s welfare to prove I’m right.” She tied the dun’s reins to her saddle and checked one last time to be sure everything was in order. Satisfied, she glanced around. “Where’s that man?”

“He changed horses and rode out.”

“I’m sorry I made you wait. You could have gone with him.”

“He preferred not to wait for me.”

“We should get to Medora before James Cullen leaves. He’ll be able to help if you want another pair of hands.”

“We’ll manage. I don’t want your husband to miss his train.”

She wasn’t sure she could bear to say goodbye to JC again. Watching him wave from the train car window might be even more traumatic.

I won’t worry about it now.

They rode off the property at an easy trot. “I can keep up with you,” she said. “You set the pace.”

“The river is too high. We can’t cross it today. But if we could, how would your horse manage it?”

“Turkmen bred Akhal-Teke horses for the desert, but I doubt he’ll have a problem with a river crossing.” She wasn’t worried yet, but she was concerned for the man who rode hard to get a message to TR. “If your man is riding back toward Medora, that’s a seventy-mile ride in one day.”

“With all the back and forth and chasing down strays, a hundred miles is a reasonable distance for a cowboy on a roundup to ride in a single day. Then you add in staying up all night on watch and then back at work after gulping down a three a.m. breakfast. You get used to it.”

She cringed at the idea of a hundred miles and breakfast at three in the morning. Maybe she oversold herself.

“I’ve been in the saddle for nearly forty hours before—” TR continued.

I’ve been on three-day hunting trips. Does that count? Nope. I slept. But I can do it.

“—wearing out five horses and winding up in a stampede. I’ve roped steers till I flayed my hands—”

I’ve roped steers, but I wore gloves.

“—wrestled calves in burning clouds of alkali dust—”

Okay, I can do that.

“—and stuck like a burr to bucking ponies with my nose pouring blood, and hat, guns, and spectacles flying in all directions.”

And I can do that, too.

“And I bet you thought all that was great fun.” She didn’t have to ask because his grin said he thought it was just bully.

They reached the first of several river crossings, and she nudged Tesoro down the bank and into the rushing water, keeping her hands and legs relaxed so he wouldn’t pick up any tension from her. Like Mercury, Tesoro took to the river as if he crossed one every day. Since she knew nothing of his past, he might have.

Coming out on the other side of the river, she asked, “If the bulk of the cows are coming up here, where are the rest going?”

“To the Maltese Cross Ranch. It’s located about seven miles south of Medora and is the base of my cattle operation.”

“Who takes care of it when you’re up here?”

“My two partners, Ferris and Merrifield. They manage the place. They’re good, honest men and don’t know much more than I do about the cattle business. But we’re learning. They built a one-and-a-half-story ranch house out of Ponderosa pine, complete with a shingled roof and a root cellar. It’s nice by Dakota standards.”

“Where are Ferris and Merrifield from?” Like most of her questions, she already knew the answers. She’d been to the Maltese Cross Ranch several times to visit the restored cabin.

“Merrifield came from the East five years ago. He’s a keen sportsman. A good-looking fellow, daring, confident, a good rider, and a first-class shot. He’s been my fidus Achates of the hunting field.”

“Everyone should have a companion like Achates. Aeneas was very fortunate to have him, as you are to have Merrifield.”

TR laughed. “Bully! I figured Mr. Fraser would be familiar with Virgil, but I wasn’t sure if you also enjoyed the Greek classics.”

She gave him a side-eye. “So you were testing me?”

He gave her a classic TR grin. “I might have been.”

“Well, Mr. Roosevelt,” she said, “the ancient classics played an essential part in the development of English literature and are some of Europe’s earliest and best works in fiction, history, and philosophy. The Odyssey by Homer, Medea by Euripides, Hippolytus by Euripides, Antigone by Sophocles, Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Meno by Plato, The Histories by Herodotus, The Poetics by Aristotle, The Metamorphoses by Ovid, and The Satyricon by Petronius were all required reading in my curriculum.”

“Curriculum?” He raised his eyebrows. “Where’d you attend school?”

Harvard.

She couldn’t tell him that, so she went with another Massachusetts school. “Smith, but you probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a small school in Northampton, Massachusetts, with only a few students and faculty.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

She needed to change the subject. While she knew a few women who attended Smith, she didn’t know much about its history. “And what about Mr. Ferris? Was he a hunting partner, too?”

“He’s a tall, fine-looking fellow and the best rider on the ranch, but not a particularly good shot.” He glanced at her. “You’re a fine horsewoman. What kind of shot are you?”

“I hit what I’m aiming at,” she said with a laugh. “I hope we’ll get a chance to go hunting.”

“Did your husband teach you?”

“To ride or shoot?

“Both.”

“I learned to ride