Page 11 of Irish Rebel
Brian paused to watch, hands on hips. She was getting her picture in some fancy magazine, he imagined. Royal Meadows Princess. No doubt she’d look fine and glossy in it.
She set the horse into a trot, then a canter, swinging in to sail over a jump. Brian’s lips pursed. She had good form, he had to admit it. When she repeated that jump, then another, for the camera, he heard her laugh float out over the air.
He turned away, dismissing her. Trying to.
He climbed the stairs to the trainer’s quarters, knocked.
“Come in, and welcome. In here,” Paddy called out.
He sat at a desk in a room set up as an office. File cabinets lined one wall, and photographs of horses lined them all. The window was open, and on a shelf beside it sat a computer. If the dust on its cover was any indication, it was rarely, if ever, used.
Paddy’s glasses balanced on the end of his nose as he gestured to a chair. “You and Travis worked out your details.”
“We did. He’s a fair man.”
“Did you expect otherwise?”
“I don’t expect anything from owners, and that way they don’t often surprise me.”
With a chuckle Paddy shoved up his glasses, scratched his nose. “This one might.”
“I want to thank you for putting my name in so Mr. Grant would consider me.”
“I’ve kept my eye and ear on things, though I’ve retired. Well, retired twice now, if the truth be known, and come out of it again as Travis and Dee haven’t been satisfied with the trainers who’ve come along. This time I mean it to stick. I mean you to stick, boy.”
When his glasses slid down again, Paddy grunted in annoyance and took them off. “We’ll be bunking here together, if you have no objection, for the next week. After that, I’ll be off, and the place is yours.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Back to Ireland.”
“After all these years?”
“I was born there. I’ve a mind to die there—though I’ve life left in me, no mistake. I’ve a yearning to spend the last years of it at home.”
“What’ll you do there?”
“Oh, go to the pub to tell lies,” Paddy said with a twinkling grin. “Drink a pint of decent Guinness. You’ll miss that here, I can tell you. It’s just not the same built out of a Yank tap.”
Brian had to laugh. “It’s a long way to go for a pint, even for Guinness.”
“Well now, there’s a little farm in the south of Cork, not far from Skibbereen. Do you know Skibbereen, Brian?”
“Aye. It’s a pretty town.”
“Sloping streets and painted doorways,” Paddy said, a bit dreamily. “Well, the farm’s a bit of a ways from that pretty town. My Dee was raised there, by my sister after Dee’s parents died. When my sister got sickly, the farm fell on hard times with Dee trying to run it and tend to her aunt Lettie. In the end, Lettie passed and the farm was lost, and Dee came here to me. A few years ago, the farm came up for sale, and though she told him not to, Travis bought it for her. The man knows her heart.”
“So that’s where you’re going?” Brian asked, though he didn’t have a clue why Paddy was telling him. “To be a farmer?”
“That’s where I’m going, but I don’t think I’ll make much of a farmer. I’ll have myself a few horses for company.”
He shifted, turned his gaze to the window and the hills beyond where horses grazed in the late-morning sunshine.
“I’ll miss my little Dee, and Travis, and the children. The friends I’ve made here. But I’ve a need to go. An itch, if you follow me.”
“I do.” There was little Brian understood more than an itch to be going.
“I imagine I’ll be flying back and forth across the pond quite a bit—and they’ll come to me as well. I’ve seen Dee married to a man I respect, and love like my own son. I’ve watched her children grow into fine young men and women. That’s a rare thing. And I’ve had a hand in turning out champions. A man who has a Thoroughbred put into his hands is a fortunate man.”
