Page 64 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

What they had found had been rare.

Yet it was all sullied now.

She followed him into the stables, but stood back as he checked on the animals.

‘This is Noghré.’

Violet stood back as he patted the stallion he’d ridden this morning.

‘Now, you have to see his foal.’

Violet followed him further into the stables, and closed her eyes at the shaded cool.

A stable hand let out a tiny foal. She was white, prancing, and she bounded to Violet with enthusiasm.

Violet took a step back.

‘You can stroke her...’

‘No, thank you.’ She declined the nudges from the foal. ‘I don’t want to get fond of her.’

Wow, she knew how to guard that heart, Sahir thought, and it hollowed him out, thinking of the trust she’d placed in him the other night and how badly she’d been let down since then.

As the stable hand took the foal back to her pen he glanced over at Violet, still refusing to look at it, and he walked over to another stall and gave a low whistle.

The sweetest head popped out.

‘Hey, Josie,’ he said. ‘You’ve been cheating on your diet, I hear.’

‘Don’t be mean,’ Violet said as she went over.

Then she giggled when she looked in—because, yes, Josie was rather the exception to the muscled horses she’d seen so far.

Nervously, she patted her lovely nose. ‘I’ve never stroked a horse before,’ she said, and smiled, feeling the hot air from the mare’s nostrils.

‘She’s gentle...nice to ride, if you want?’

‘No, I’m fine stroking her. I always wanted a pet.’

‘You’ve never kept an animal?’

‘No.’

‘What pet did you want?’

It was Violet who shook her head now.

She wasn’t going to be telling him her thoughts and her hopes.

There was something, though, that Violet knew she should tell him...

Bedra prepared her a bath before dinner. Violet tried to help her with the jugs of water, but she shooed her away, telling her to sit down.

Violet couldn’t, so she rinsed out her knickers and bra instead and felt so guilty. Everyone had been lovely. Well, apart from Aadil. But, given he’d told her that Sahir was to be married, perhaps it was a case of shooting the messenger?

She hadn’t been mistreated. Not in the scheme of things. And she didn’t want to get anyone into trouble.

‘Shukran,’she said to Bedra. ‘Bye.’

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