‘He’ll do. You can start training him tomorrow.’‘It’ll be a pleasure to ride him, my lady.’ Narrowing his eyes in the sunlight, Michael watched the two great wolfhounds gambolling at the colt’s heels. The animal was used to the dogs; he had known them since he was foaled. She was never without her dogs; they followed her everywhere, as did her two little girls.Sliding from his horse, he ducked under its head to help her dismount, but as always she beat him to it, slipping off as gracefully as a dancer, laughing at the crestfallen face of her marshal of horses.Since her husband had sailed for France at the beginning of his trip to the Holy Land Eleyne had moved her base from Fotheringhay to this dower house in the Malvern Hills which her father had given to her on her marriage to John. Behind them the old manor house which she now called home sprawled in the early sunshine, its soft peach-coloured stone walls nestling between the orchards, parks and fields of the home farm.
