Unforgiven (The Horsemen Trilogy) Read Online Free

convenience’s sake? Was there any affection involved in the match? But it was not his concern. She was not his concern. Eight years was a very long time. A lifetime.
    “It seems,” he said, “that I have come home in time to offer my congratulations.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    He realized something suddenly. He looked back toward the road to confirm what he already knew. “How did you come here?” he asked. “There is no carriage and no horse except my own.”
    “I walked,” she said.
    And yet Penwith Manor was several miles away, down in the valley and inland a couple of miles. Had she not changed after all, then, despite appearances?
    “Allow me to escort you home,” he said. “You may ride my horse.” He wondered what manner of man Sir Edwin Baillie was, allowing her to roam alone through the countryside. But perhaps he did not know she was alone. Perhaps he did not know
her
, poor man.
    “I will walk home—alone, thank you, my lord,” she said.
    Yes. It had been foolish of him to offer. How would it have looked if he had suddenly appeared in Tawmouth for the first time in longer than eight years with Moira Hayes, betrothed of Penwith’s owner, upon his horse? And if he had taken her all the way to Penwith when no one from his family had set foot on the property for longer than any living person could remember?
    He must remember that there was a feud between Penwith and Dunbarton and that it would be a foolish expenditure of energy to try to end it. He no longer wanted to end it, though if he had thought of it in the past few days he would have thought it ridiculous to keep alive a feud that had started with his great-grandfather and hers. He did not want to tangle with Moira Hayes again. And he could see that the feeling was mutual.
    He nodded curtly and touched the brim of his hat. “As you wish,” he said. “Good day to you, Miss Hayes.”
    She said nothing and stayed where she was as he made his way back to the road and mounted his horse. Nelson scrambled to his feet with a hopeful
woof
and was given the nod of release. Kenneth turned inland to ride along the top of the hillside, leaving the main road before it dipped into the valley and through the village of Tawmouth. The sun was still shining, he saw, looking upward in some surprise. It was his imagination that the day had clouded over. He was feeling out of sorts, his mind and his emotions in some sort of turmoil. He resented the feeling. He had been enjoying his homecoming.
    It was understandable, he supposed. There had been something between them, powerful feelings, which in his naïveté he had called love. She had been his first—and his only—love, though he had been sexually educated during his years at Oxford. Really, there had been little to it—one chance meeting, a few planned ones, all of them bringing him feelings of guilt because he should not have been meeting either a Hayes or a young lady alone. He and Sean had been meeting and playing together and fighting each other for years, of course, but that had seemed different. It was the very guilt over Moira that had excited him and convinced him that it was love he felt for her. He realized that now. It was understandable that seeing her again should discompose him somewhat, he supposed, though he would not have expected it. He was a different man now: hardened to life, cynical of romantic sentiment.
    He looked down into the wooded valley below him, at the river that wound its way toward the sea. Soon now he would see Dunbarton. He was not sorry he had come. On the contrary, hewas feeling a pleased anticipation that amounted almost to excitement. How Eden and Nat would tease him if they could know.
    And then suddenly there it was. It could always take a person by surprise, even someone who had lived there for much of his life. One moment one was riding along a plateau that stretched into the distance with much of a sameness, and the next one was looking down into a hollow,