In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance (25 page)

32

They Were a Team

D
ays and weeks
passed and they were a team. It took just under two months, the amount of time they had. The strange collection of over the hill, broken down polo ponies, untrained racehorses of dubious pedigrees, and rank youngsters with no particular breeding but the bodies of athletes it took someone like Leroy to see melted into a phalanx of equine conquerors. And the riders no longer needed liquid fixes; they needed Leroy, and their own souls.

“The uniforms are here!” Leroy announced, pulling a helmet out of a big carton. The black helmet had a stylized red buffalo skull emblazoned on the front. Black knit polo shirts and traditional white pants completed the ensemble. “Watches Ranch” was embroidered in red across the shirts’ backs, up by the collar. Each had a red, old-fashioned pocket watch embossed on the heart. Their scarlet numbers covered most of the shirts’ backs.

“We are the Watches Ranch Wild Buffalo!” Leroy made war cries while the men took their uniforms and added Scottish and Irish clan war screams.

One of the grooms came running out. “Stop! Stop! Y’re makin’ the horses crazy!”

Two days before they were to pile on the train to go to the match—horses and men alike—Leroy took Lightning out for a ride. He’d dubbed the laird’s horse that. He was his favorite horse; he’d last into this thirties, with any care. Leroy needed to clear his mind.

He’d done this crazy thing and gotten an anti-British team together. He’d somehow thought word of what they were doing wouldn’t spread. It had spread
everywhere.
Tom reported through the valet information network that if the Ballentyne estate had been a hotel, they would have reached record occupancies with people coming for the match. As it was, everyone in England with a drop of even potentially noble blood was packing into the mansion. Commoners of all stripes had jammed the local hotels and inns. They were hoping to see the polo match on closed circuit TV, and maybe a bit of the hunt the next day.

Leroy was ready for polo game and the hunt. He had trained himself a jumping horse with the help of the polo players. He thought jumping was great fun, but stupid. What horse didn’t know that a fence was something to keep cows in, not jump over?

He couldn’t understand what was going on in Ballentyne Manor. Why the crowds? Why the hype? It was an informal match, as was the hunt the next day, both out of season and on a private estate.

“Someone’s spreadin’ the word, sir, Leroy,” Tom said. “Someone important. Lord Lancature’s moved into the Ballentyne estate, sir. And they’re all to go off to his friend’s place in Spain after the match.” Leroy felt like Tom had slugged him in the gut. “It’s bad, sir, isn’t it? This is real war.” He could only nod. He needed to be alone.

The forest was deep out in the folds of the mountains. Not many trees out in the open in Scotland, but the mists and rains grew trees where the soil would support them. They weren’t the majestic sequoias of his home, but the trees comforted him.

He took a trail he’d not traveled before. Leroy had tried to keep up his inspection of local monasteries, but had fallen away during his stay at the castle. Scotland had so many old ruins and holy places, cloisters and priories; looking at them all was impossible. Besides, Kathryn Duane’s spirit had told him to give up time and again.

He pushed a leafy branch out of the way and headed down a steep incline into a fairly wide valley, and then into the uplands of Scotland. Pretty. Taking a new way was worthwhile. A brook gurgled by Lightning’s feet. The place was hushed; a hum of insects, the little creek … just what he needed. He needed quiet solitude to search for an answer.

Last March, he had left his ranch to help his dad bullfight at one final rodeo. That resulted in the FBI chasing him to the Meeting in New Mexico. Where he met Will Duane, who called up the President of the United States and got him to call off the feds. Since then, his life had been crazy. Nuts. Insane.

He’d found and rescued his soul mate, only to lose her to her own father. He’d been turned into
My Fair Leroy
, charmed society, danced with debutantes, found and lost his other soul mate, met a living saint, who died on him, helped at an economic summit, searched for a mystical lady, and gotten a mongrel polo team together.

Why? That’s what he was trying to figure out on this ride. Getting out in the woods on a horse was often the way to hear the voice of Spirit. “I don’t understand, Great One. Why have you sent me on this strange pilgrimage?” He’d heard stories of the spirit journeys of many famous shamans. None had included Le Hotel Meurice or Hannah Hehrman.

What was it about him that attracted such bizarre occurrences? Leroy realized that maybe that’s why all Grandfather’s friends, and his Grandpa himself, looked at him askance and laughed. His was a crazy passage, uncharted with a big hint of Coyote, the Trickster. Where was he going? What was the next step after the polo match? He wouldn’t go back to Will. What craziness was up ahead?

He sent his horse down the path, wherever it was taking him. Green, leafy, brook burbling, insects humming. He crossed a stream, pebbles lining its bottom.

Lightning stopped dead, raised his head and let out a monster-sized whiney.

Why? Horses whinnied to acknowledge other horses. He didn’t see any. Riding around a bend showed why the old horse had opened its mouth. A farm with stone-walled pens was nestled into a hollow. He rode up; no one came out, so he rode around the animal enclosures. A few shaggy Highland cattle. He loved them.

A grey-white mare raised her head to answer Lightning’s call. She stopped him in his tracks. “Come on, Princess. Come over here.” She was in a rock-walled paddock.

The mare approached, ears pricked, showing as nice a disposition as anyone could want in a horse. He watched her. Perfect chunky conformation. What was she? Not a Thoroughbred, a hot and speedy racehorse. She was some kind of a pony. A big pony.

She reminded him of the horse Cass had been riding in that picture Will had shown him so long ago. She once had liked to ride. When she was well, she’d want to again, he was sure of it. He had not forgotten her for one minute as he struggled to build his polo team.

Longing gripped him. He had enough money to buy this horse at any fair price. He would ride her and make sure she was right. If she was, he’d buy her for Cass and ship her home.

“Hello!” he rode around the farm calling out. “Is anyone here?” He found the farm’s occupants out in a field digging something. They were women, all dressed in natural homespun dresses to the ground with long sleeves. Their heads were bound with cloths. Seemed like particularly inefficient clothes for working a field.

“Excuse me, ladies. My name is Leroy Watches Jr. I’ve been living hereabouts for a couple of months. I’m getting ready to leave, but I wonder … Who owns that mare? She’s lovely.”

All of them but one turned her back to him like he was something forbidden.

“You’ll have to forgive my sisters, Mr. Watches,” said an Irish-tinged voice. “Our order has very little to do with the outside world and we have nothing to do with men at all.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize there was a cloister near here.”

“Very few do. That’s the point, you see. But the Priory is an ancient refuge for those who find the outside world intolerable. This is our land.” The nun had a plain, good-tempered face and coloring that blended in with the homespun of her kerchief and clothes.

“I see, well, I’ll bid you good day in that case.” He reined Lightning away.

“Wait, you asked about the mare. Mother is keeping her for her real owner. But I believe she said that she’s given up waiting for her owner to claim her. She wishes to find a home for the mare with someone who will appreciate her. She’s very fine, as you can see.”

“How do I get to see your Mother Superior so I can discuss the mare with her?”

The nuns tittered. “She is not our Mother Superior, Mr. Watches. We call her Mother, because she is a mother to us all, and a mother of our faith. She is really our Anchoress. Her position is seated with her faith and holiness, not the Church. She stays within our cloisters and is in deep contemplation most of the time.”

“I’d like to buy the mare for the woman I’m going to marry. I’d import her to the United States.” He looked down. “My fiancée’s name is Cass.”

“I will send a messenger. Wait.” The young woman went into what he had thought was the farmhouse. It was a medium-sized stone house with a big coop attached. When he was listening for them, he could hear the pigeons inside. A pigeon flew out the back and up the mountain, out of sight. The nun returned. “We’ll know what Mother says in a moment.”

“Can I ride that mare? She needs to be gentle for my fiancée.”

“Yes. You do need to know if she will be suitable. She hasn’t been ridden in years.”

Leroy got on her with a halter and lead rope for guidance, after touching every inch of her body. Healthy, sound, no physical ailments. She was
beautiful.
Big black eyes rimmed with black. Her white eyelashes said she was a true grey; she’d once been darker but turned white with age. She was about eight, he thought, looking at her teeth. The perfect age for a riding horse.

They had a flat area beyond the mare’s paddock. He took her over there. He put her into a walk, jog and lope, in both directions, and did some circles and figure eights. She was as good as he thought she’d be. Well trained with no vices. She was perfect for Cass.

When he got back to where he’d tied Lightning, he was ready to get on the gelding and storm the monastery’s gate. Proved unnecessary. Another pigeon had returned.

The nun took the message off of its leg. “Oh. Mother wants to find a home for the mare. You may ride to the monastery gates.” She pointed at a small rut in the grass, that led to a track barely visible through the trees. Not a high traffic route. He followed the trail. The monastery was out of sight.

He rode Lightning up the pathway and around the corner. The nuns disappeared behind him. His heart began to beat, banging away in his chest. His breath quickened when he rode around a bend and the convent was above him, halfway up a sheer mountain face.

The three-quarter angle of the tile roof with the odd little gargoyle beneath it was just above him as he rode in. You’d have to be at the height of a person on horseback to notice it; it would be invisible from any other angle. The tall chimney stood in the background, with stair-steps on each side, the flat parts tiled. He’d never seen that kind of handmade tile anywhere before, except on Fr. Marco’s photo.

Kathryn Duane was here. Tears streaked his cheeks.

He kicked Lighting into a gallop and rode for the abbey’s door.

All this traveling, all his visiting monasteries, had not prepared him for the stone jewel before him. It rose up the side of a steep rock, a mountain, really, cleaving to it as though emerging from it. Moss covered the building, the rock it sprang from, and the trees. Bright stillness surrounded him, but for the trilling birds. The abbey was the purest place he had been, apart from anywhere Grandfather lived. He could hear angels’ voices. Leroy shook his head. Was he hearing nuns singing or angels’ voices ringing the ancient stone? Protecting it? Kathryn was protected here.

The trees accompanied him almost to the door, but fell back to reveal the ancient wooden portal with the half-round top. The whole was bound by iron. Hand-wrought hinges reached from one side of the heavy wood, almost to the other. The building had a single-wide entrance; portals were not thrown wide here.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m here to see the …” What did they call her? … “the Anchoress. About a horse.”

“Come in, Mr. Watches. You may tie your horse to the ring by the entrance,” a middle-aged voice said through a grate in the door.

Six stout, hand-forged rings were set into the stone of the walls. Once, the abbey had had more visitors. He tied Lightning by his lead rope, glad he’d left the halter over his bridle. “Lightning, you stay here. If I get lucky, we may be able to bring a present home to Cass.”

When he turned around, a nun was standing by the open door. She wore the oatmeal homespun the others had and her hair was covered with something like a scarf.

“I’ll take you to Mother.”

He walked through the entrance and into a wide hall. Bigger than he thought it would be, the walls were stone, but the beamed ceiling was wood. Very old tapestries hung on a few of the walls, but the place wasn’t like one of those royal palaces on TV. It was like a medieval hall, all stone and very plain. Just what he thought an ancient abbey should look like.

The nun took him to the chapel. Its walls were plastered, the wooden ceiling high and peaked. Little boxes were arranged around the sides.

“Mother will talk to you in that confessional.” She indicated which one and left.

Leroy crept toward it. Kathryn Duane was the Anchoress, he knew
it.

The confessional was made for medieval nuns, not late-twentieth century Watches. Leroy jammed himself in. When she saw what trouble he was having, the Anchoress laughed.