Waltzing In Ragtime Read Online Free

outside your door this morning. Land, that boy is skittish!”
    Olana slammed the cupboard door. It caught her thumb. Her screech of indignation was not discreet. The woman ran to her side. “Let me see. Oh, that’ll be a nasty bruise, beneath the nail, too.”
    “I should like to walk a bit.”
    “Of course. Go on, I’ll manage.”
    Mrs. Goddard’s hand rested on her shoulder. Olana’d had enough of these people and their uncalled for touching. Didn’t they know their place?
     
     
    As she wrapped three biscuits in a bright chintz napkin, Olana heard the matron outside her bedroom door, walking down the corridor, ringing the men out of their beds with her schoolmarm’s bell. How far had Matthew Hart gotten, especially loaded down with a winter’s worth of supplies? She didn’t have to know where his camp was, precisely, she reasoned. She’d find him long before he reached his destination, and get the interview Sidney demanded. Farrell’s bay mare would do for her excursion.
    Olana eagerly slipped off her simple day gown. She stared, dismayed, into the wardrobe’s mirror. Was there a trace of freckles on her face? And her shoulders rose up a little thinner out of the ample bosom nature and her corset still provided. Not at all fashionable, showing bone. How she would love to get out of this place and back to steaming baths and French wine sauces at home. She frowned. Perhaps that’s the reason Sidney and her father had allowed her to come. Were they hoping she’d be discouraged by physical hardships? Didn’t they know that fears of her mother’s neurasthenia were stronger than any hardship she could imagine? Due to her illness, Dora Whittaker languished in darkened rooms with headaches for days at a time. Olana buttoned her russet riding ensemble and spread out the elegant French lace of her blouse. She was not her mother. And she would not become a hothouse countess like her friends, either.
Sidney was her model, she would be as devil-may-care as a man of independent means. She would show off her horsemanship to that tight-lipped ranger. Meeting him on the trail with her picnic lunch, her daring would either cool his anger or fan it hotter. Either prospect had its charms.
     
     
    By noon Olana spotted a steep, overgrown trail splitting off from the main road. She was doing so well, why not? How lost could she get, with the crucial direction being up into higher elevations? And wouldn’t it be delicious, skimming ahead, meeting Matthew Hart triumphant? She slapped her quirt against the mare’s flanks.
    Hours later her hands began to hurt inside the soft kid leather gloves. Cooler. And dark. It couldn’t be getting dark this early. Olana pulled her gold watch from its place pinned to her blouse and stared at its Roman numerals. Three-fifteen. What had happened to the sky? It was gray, getting grayer. Olana stared just past her mouth. Her breath was fogging. Thunder sounded in the distance. No fear, she reminded herself, don’t let a horse smell it. But the air itself was charged. “Easy,” she soothed, reaching for the mare’s mane. But with the streak of lightning and thunderclap, the animal turned and bolted. Her shoulder hit the ground first, taking the brunt of the fall.
    She rose to her knees. “Damn you for a weak-livered pole cat!” she railed, shaking her fists, realizing she’d repeated language she’d been surrounded by at the boarding house. Olana didn’t even know what such a feline looked like. A giggle bubbled up her throat and burst into the cold, damp air.
    What did Farrell call the mare, she wondered, rambling through the dense underbrush. Something sentimental, keening, like the Irish. Rosaleen. Olana called out the name, then listened. Nothing. She called again when the drops pelted her hat netting.
    Soon the rain had soaked through every layer of her clothing. Olana had thought the mare would seek a level area, a meadow, to slow her frightened charge. If the beast could find