Farre was content to follow Nick at a distance, for their talk had set him thinking once again about a problem that appeared to have no solution. How was he to get the boy out among his own kind? The boy was free of Haverly after ten years a virtual prisoner there, but there were lingering effects. A man couldn't abuse a young horse for years and expect him to be sweet-tempered for a new master. The old earl had worked hard to deaden the boy's sense of humor and to teach him to hold himself above everyone else. So here was the lad, starved for real companionship but knowing nothing about how to get it. And as Farre had guessed, that healthy young body was sending Nick nightly messages of its desires. So what was Farre to do? The earl's pride would not allow him to mix easily with the sort of wenches who would be glad enough to instruct him, and he wasn't going to hire a mistress. Hired love spoke too much of the ways of the boy's dead parents.
