Eighteen

Once Kate retrieved a key, she unlocked the door to a small room with which Evan had once been familiar. As a guest at Whelan House, he’d ridden almost every day, and the tack room had been as bustling as the kitchens.

Now it was silent, a room as restricted as a wine cellar. But it was still a bright and pleasant space, paneled in honey-brown wood and floored in squares of native stone. High windows allowed daylight to filter in, but wall-mounted lamps would be lit if needed at night.

The walls were studded with hooks and gridded with shelves, the floor dotted with saddle horses and storage chests. The space smelled pleasantly of leather and the light oil used to keep it in trim, the scent wafting from sidesaddles, bridles, halters and leads, saddles for men, carriage harnesses. All were hung, mounted, stored, and maintained with admirable care.

Except for a small wooden saddle horse in the corner, its burden covered over with an oilcloth. Kate moved toward it, her hand hovering above the cloth.

Before she spoke, Evan guessed what lay under the cover.

“That was Con’s favorite saddle,” Kate said quietly, as if they were in a Catholic church observing a saintly relic. “Light and strong. Good for hunting or racing. He was using it that day.”

“May I see it?”

“If you like. But it won’t be sound any longer. It was shut up that day. It hasn’t been oiled for two years.”

That day. That day had been endless for Evan, and he hadn’t even known until weeks later that it had marked the end of his friend’s existence. “I saw him in that saddle many a time.”

“I did too.” Kate grasped the oilcloth. “But in the end, it is nothing more than a saddle. It was silly to shut it away, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t silly.” Grief takes many different forms. So he’d told her, and so he believed. If one needed to grieve by hiding a saddle, so be it.

When she whisked the oilcloth off, she sighed. “The cinch was split. That’s why he fell. The leather is quite spoiled.” She stretched the cloth between her hands, ready to toss it over the saddle again. “I shouldn’t even keep it. It’s doing no good here.”

“Wait.” Evan caught the edge of the cloth, kneeling before the saddle. He took the cinch in his hands. Indeed, the leather had gone dry, its surface hard and dark and brittle. But there was something wrong about its appearance. “This didn’t split by accident, Kate. This cinch was cut.”

“Cut?” With a billow, the cloth fell to the floor. Kate was at his side in an instant. “How do you know? How can you know?”

“The same way I can tell a sculpture was carved recently, with modern tools, then splashed with mud. It doesn’t look right. Leather wouldn’t split like this, no matter how brittle it got. Look, when I tug it in a different place, it doesn’t split again.”

Her fingertips reached for the saddle, tentative. “Did someone cut the cinch where it had split? So the saddle couldn’t be used again?”

Grimness settled over Evan. Oh, how he wanted to say yes. “I can’t be sure. Maybe if someone cut it right away, because the damage is old. But I think—look, there is a clean slice through this bit, and then the rest is distorted.” As though its fragile width had been snapped by the strain of a galloping horse, its rider taking a leap over the first jump in a chase.

“What are you saying?” Kate huddled, crouching before the saddle. “That someone cut—no, everyone loved Con. No one—that can’t be. There was an inquest, Evan. It was an accident.”

Her voice held more than a hint of a plea.

The cut and snapped leather was no larger than a pair of braces, but it was weightier than stone. The evidence was real, there in his fingers, but he still could hardly believe it.

“Con didn’t saddle his horse that day,” Evan said. “Who did?”

“One of the grooms. Adam—something. Jones, maybe.”

“God. Not another Jones.” Evan sat back on his heels, dropping the cinch.

“He isn’t here anymore. He packed his bags and left, maybe a month later. But he gave notice. He was going east to live and work with family. I never thought—do you think there was something wrong? Did he…”

“Maybe he…did.” What other word could they bear to put to it? “This Jones couldn’t be certain you’d believe Con’s fall was an accident. Nor could he take the chance of destroying the saddle and raising questions. So he had to leave.”

Kate sprang to her feet, skirts tangling with the fallen oilcloth. “You have developed this theory with mighty speed. You want to murder Con off, when he’s been peacefully dead for two years.”

Evan rose , facing her down. “Of course I don’t want that! But wouldn’t it be better to know the truth?”

“What good would the truth do if it wouldn’t change anything?”

Evan snapped up the cloth from the floor and tossed it back over the saddle. “You’re right. God forbid anything change. God forbid we face an uncomfortable truth, Kate. Best to cover it up and go on as you were. Isn’t that always your solution?”

The words bled, unstoppable. He did not want to stop them, even though Kate went white as if she were the one bleeding. “Have you spoken your piece?”

“No!” Evan slapped a hand against the honey-pale paneling. “I could say it a thousand times, and I’d still not even touch the half of what I want to tell you.”

Kate accepted this, silent. Her gaze was fixed on the heavy brown cloth. She trailed her fingers over it, gently as she had once touched Evan’s face for a kiss. “You’re right, Evan,” she said. “You’re right. If he was—if this saddle was tampered with, then covering it won’t help him. I was shocked at first, that’s all. But I want to understand what happened.”

“And will it help anything, to understand?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him, head held as high and proudly as a racehorse. “Because it’s right. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Yes,” Evan said. “I agree. I think so too.”

That was why he lectured, why he painted fraud onto glass slides. It was right that the truth be understood, the false spotted for what it was.

With a final pat, Kate turned away from the covered saddle. “I want to speak to Driscoll. This didn’t come up in the inquest, and he was the one who examined the saddle.”

“You remember the inquest so well?” Evan asked.

“Every word. Propriety, bless it, kept me from Con’s funeral, but it couldn’t keep me from the inquest. I was shocked, yes, but I was also angry.”

“At whom?”

She nudged a bridle, setting it to swinging on its peg. “At Con, mainly, for leaving me alone. I’d never thought to be a widow at twenty-eight. I thought we’d have another fifty years together.”

“Did you want those fifty years?” He shouldn’t have asked this, but it helped, sometimes, to understand.

“What a question. How could I be so cruel as to say no?” She took another step, set another bridle to dancing. “But now, he’s been gone for two years, and I cannot imagine those two years any differently. Time has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable.”

Inevitable that Con had died? Inevitable that they should all have grown older and beyond him?

It did seem inevitable, now that she put the word to it. Con was the sort of spirit who could never be old. Con had boosted the sheep through the window. Con had led the horse into church. Evan helped, Evan rode along, and Evan followed.

Con wed on impulse, taking on lifelong vows as easily as he changed his clothing. And Evan made the vow no one had asked him to make or keep. The vow no one had wanted at all.

I will love you forever.

There was hardly time to hide the feeling, naked and deep, before Kate turned to look at him with eyes that had seen far too much. “If his death wasn’t an accident, Evan, do I have to come to terms with it all over again?”

“I don’t know.” He closed the distance between them, then plucked a final piece of straw from her hair. “No one knows that but you.”