Page 33 of A Pure Lady for the Broken Duke

“Now I will have to start all over again trying to find you a suitable husband.”

“Dearest,” Sara spoke up, “Not now. It is your sister’s birthday. Let us celebrate that. We can discuss the other matters another day.”

“Humph,” he growled.

Chapter 12

“Amanda!” he shouted, but his horse kept turning in circles and would not move forward to follow his retreating bride. He called again, but she did not turn back. Her white steed was muscular, strong, almost vicious. While he was looking at her horse close up, she was, at the same time, retreating farther and farther away. And no matter how he directed his black stallion, it would not respond to his command.

Then he called out, “David!” His best friend was standing, or rather floating, on top of a herd of horses—fifteen or twenty—of all colors. Thomas called and called, but David failed to respond as he sped off after the woman he was escaping with.

Then Thomas was engulfed in a storm of falling flowers—swirling and pelting him at the same time—painfully pelting him. He tried to avoid the pummeling flower heads, but they were blinding him, and he spurred his horse forward, but the horse bucked and reared, causing Tomas to fall backward. But he did not hit the ground. Instead, he continued to fall through the storm of flowers—down, down, down...

Thomas bolted upright in his bed. He was sweating and wiped his face with the top sheet. This was not the first time he had dreamt this dream, but for some reason, it now made him giddy.

He got out of bed. It was still dark, but the first blush of morning was bruising the eastern horizon as he threw back the curtains, opened the window, and breathed in the fresh morning air. What a revelation. He now understood. He knew how to use the estate to make it profitable.

He was laughing as he dressed and dashed out of his room and down the grand staircase to the front doors, which he threw open, and raced across the driveway, across the broad lawn, and headed to the open fields to just run and run.

* * *

“George, George,” Thomas called out, as he threaded his way through the stables looking for his friend. “George…”

“Over here,” George answered from the far end of the building in the tackle room.

Thomas found him and stood in the doorway as George, dressed in work clothes, lifted recently delivered sacks of feed into neat stacks.

“Your father got you working, eh?”

George gave Thomas a sour look. “You might say that. What brings you here? Feel like lending a hand?”

Thomas laughed. “I hire people to do that.”

George looked grateful to have Thomas appear to give him a break from the feed sacks.

“Then let us go to the house and grab an ale. I have quite a thirst.”

“Now that sounds like something I can help with,” Thomas said as he followed George toward the house.

Inside the kitchen, George led them to the pantry where he poured two glasses of beer from the cask on the shelf.

“Come, I am too dirty for the sitting room, but we can go to my rooms and visit.”

George led the way through the fine country house to his rooms.

“Sit.”

George took a chair by a window overlooking the front lawn with the drive leading from the county road twisting beyond.

Thomas sat forward in the chair and said enthusiastically, “George, I have a great idea, and I want you to join me in a new venture.”

“I am listening.”

“Remember my mare that your father was interested in?”

“Of course. Have you decided to sell her?”

“Not really.” Thomas then proceeded to tell George about the fiasco with the estate’s finances and his uncle’s part in the affair.