Legends Lake

by JoAnn Ross

  “Something the matter?”

  “Oh, no,” she lied, forcing her expression to one of supreme calm even as her heart was hammering like that of a spring hare.

  Once, long ago, wolves had prowled Ireland, all gray and silver and black, with yellow eyes that could see in the dark and sharp canine teeth that could rip a stag’s throat open with the same ease as Kate might bite into a ripe blackberry.

  The wolves were no longer, but the lesson early man had learned from them remained in the hearts of the humans left behind: It was dangerous to allow wild things to sense your fear.

  “My farm’s just over the next hill; I’ll walk home and meet you all there.”

  His unnerving gaze zeroed in on hers. This was a man, Kate realized, who took nothing at face value. Which undoubtedly was one of the reasons he’d garnered such success at such a relatively young age.

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” she responded quickly. Too quickly, she belatedly realized as his flinty, unnerving eyes narrowed.

  If she weren’t so bloody nervous, she might have laughed at the way her imagination was running rampant: comparing the man to wild animals and warrior Scots, for heaven’s sake. Alec MacKenna, she reminded herself, was just a man. The same as any other.

  “We can discuss Legends Lake,” he said. “I’ll bring you up to speed on his problem.”

  “Oh, there wouldn’t be time enough for that on such a brief stroll,” she said in a blithe, airy way she was far from feeling. “Go along with the others, Mr. MacKenna. Truth be told, I’d be needing a bit of time to gather my thoughts after my little altercation with Brian.”

  “You didn’t really….”

  She realized he was on the verge of asking her if she’d actually committed an act of magic. Then he shook his head with obvious disbelief.

  “Never mind. It’s not important.” He seemed momentarily transfixed, almost, Kate considered, as if he were under a spell. One she certainly hadn’t put upon him. “Well then, I guess I’ll meet you at your farm.”

  “Within ten minutes,” she promised.

  “Ten minutes American? Or Irish?”

  Despite the strange way her nerves were tingling, as if a bit of lightning left behind from her standoff with Brian had slipped beneath her skin, Kate laughed. Obviously the Yank horse trainer was acquainted with the old Irish saying that when God made time, he made plenty of it.

  “I realize you’re a man accustomed to dealing with time in increments of a thousandth of a second. While I can’t promise to be that prompt, I can assure you that barring any further emergencies, I’ll make it to the farm under the wire.”

  “Fine.”

  He swept a brief look from the top of her head down to the toes of her boots. If he had been under any type of spell, it had obviously lifted because now he was radiating a disapproval so strong she could sense it the same way she could sense a storm building out over the sea, or the first buds of spring beginning to unfold themselves deep within the peat dark earth.

  If he was trying to annoy her, he’d chosen the wrong day. Despite her unease, Kate was feeling almost invincible. After all, she’d faced down not only Brian and his snorting, growling yellow bulldozer, but the entire Ireland highway commission, as well. Surely one ill-humored Yank wouldn’t prove that difficult to handle.

  “Then I’ll be seeing you there,” she said. “Oh, and if you’d please be leaving Legends Lake in his trailer? I’ll want to see how the horse unloads.”

  Lifting up her skirts a bit, she turned away and began cutting across the stone-bordered field. It took every ounce of self-restraint Kate possessed but she managed, just barely, not to give in to the temptation to look back.

  Kate O’Sullivan’s stud was nestled in the lee of a hillock like an infant held in the crook of a mother’s arm. At first glance, Alec thought it looked vaguely familiar, but decided that it was only because it looked like every postcard of Ireland he’d ever seen.

  There was an aura of peaceful harmony surrounding the stone house and barns. Horses roamed the pasture, cropping the grass, and at the edge of a sparkling, reed-fringed lake, the crumbling ruins of an old, moss-drapped Norman castle stood like a silent sentinel of times long past.

  “Nice castle,” Alec said.

  “It’s falling down,” Zoe countered.

  “Aye, more’s the pity,” Kate, who’d arrived just in time to hear the muttered comment, said. “There are similar ruins all over our country, of course. Yet I will admit to a fondness for this particular one. When I was a little girl, I used to sneak away there to visit with the Lady.”

  “What lady?” Zoe asked with obviously reluctant curiosity.

  “Oh, she’s a lough beastie, and there’s a story, which I’ll let my son, Jamie, once he gets home from visiting his cousin, tell you about—how she came to live in the lake.”

  “A beastie?” Zoe echoed. She shot a sharp look Alec’s way, as if to ask Did you know about this? He shrugged. “Like the Loch Ness monster?”

  “A bit, though I certainly wouldn’t be calling our darling beastie a monster. Nor is she as famous as Nessie, of course, but we’re fond of her just the same.”

  Alec suddenly recalled why the Fitzpatrick farm looked familiar. “This is where that horror movie, The Lady of the Lake, was filmed.”

  “It is, indeed. Didn’t my own sister-in-law’s husband write both the screenplay and the novel on which the movie was based?”

  “You know Quinn Gallagher?”

  “I do. He lives just down that very lane. Nora, who made the spice cake for our tea, is his wife. And Michael”—she nodded her dark hair in the giant’s direction—“ whose family has owned that castle for all these centuries, is Nora’s brother. Which makes us all related in an Irish family sort of way.”

  She smiled up at Michael, warmth in her clear blue eyes. “I’d be owing you my gratitude for fetching Mr. MacKenna and Zoe. You’re a darling to take precious time away from your work.”

  “No problem. Besides, with Erin away at her medical convention in Cork, and Shea spending the night with your Jamie and Brigid and the other kids at Nora’s, I was finding myself a bit at loose ends.”

  Her laugh reminded Alec of a silver flute. Amagical flute, he considered, recalling that strange incident in the field. For a suspended moment this rather fey female reminded him of the faeries she’d seemed determined to protect.

  “How lovely that a man who pledged himself to the fatherless existence of an Irish bachelor farmer could be at such loose ends without his daughter and new wife.” Her blue eyes twinkled merrily up at Michael.

  “It’s a surprise to me, as well,” he agreed with a wry grin.

  “And isn’t life filled with surprises?” Kate said. “Which is why we must keep our hearts and minds open to them.”

  She turned toward Alec. “And now that we’d all been properly introduced and gotten our getting acquainted chatting over with, I suppose we’d best be seeing to Legends Lake.”

  She walked over to the horse trailer. “Does he still travel well?”

  “If this trip is any indication, I’d say yes.”

  “Well, now, isn’t that some good news, at least.”

  She opened the back of the trailer and walked up the ramp on the left side until she was standing at Legends Lake’s head. Alec heard her murmuring to him. He couldn’t understand the soft, soothing Irish words, but apparently the colt did because he nickered and began nuzzling at the buttons between Kate’s breasts.

  She laughed softly, reached into a hidden pocket in the scarlet cape and pulled out a bit of sugar, which he took, with equine grace, from her palm.

  Seeming to prefer to give the horse time to remember her, to realize that he’d returned to the farm where he’d spent the first all-important year of his life, Kate took her own sweet time.

  “He’s ready now,” she announced approximately ten minutes after she’d gone into the trailer. “If yo
u could all just be backing up a wee bit, I’ll be bringing him out.”

  Backing a horse out of a trailer was often as difficult as convincing him to enter in the first place. But with Kate at his head, Legends Lake managed the maneuver without any difficulty.

  “I’ll be wanting to take him to the paddock.”

  When she began walking briskly away from the trailer, apparently expecting him to follow, Alec reluctantly decided this was not the time to get into a turf war about which of them would be in charge of the horse’s rehabilitation.

  Kate led Legends Lake past a stone barn that looked as if it had been built back in the seventeenth century. The horseshoe painted on the wooden molding around the open door and a second, whitewashed story were more modern touches.

  “I have his old stall waiting for him after he has a bit of a run,” she told Alec. “I thought he’d be more comfortable in familiar surroundings.”

  She opened the gate and slipped off Legends Lake’s bridle. He took off like a bullet, tossing his mane, galloping joyously over the pasture, obviously relieved to be able to stretch himself at last and release his pent-up energy in a burst of speed.

  “I spent most of last night, when I wasn’t fretting about Brian and his bulldozer that is, pondering on how best to handle his problem,” Kate said as they watched the stallion run. “I finally decided that it would be best if I had a clearer idea of what to expect when we took him out to run on the track tomorrow.”

  “I told you, he jumps fences in the middle of a race.”

  “But not all the time?”

  “Not according to Winifred Tarlington, his new owner. She has a horse farm in Lexington. That’s in bluegrass country.”

  “Having been in the horse business all of my life, I know where Lexington is, Mr. MacKenna. I also know of its famous blue grass. In my opinion, it is not nearly as beneficial to horses as our own rich grass, which, for the point of this argument, is neither here nor there.

  “I also know of Mrs. Tarlington, who won your American Kentucky Derby with Go For Broke, who, if memory serves, was trained by none other than yourself, before you apparently retired from the horse business a few months back.”

  “I didn’t exactly retire.” He was trying not to argue with the woman, but she was beginning to grate on his nerves. “I may have taken a brief sabbatical, but I haven’t quit. In fact, I’ve been thinking about doing some breeding myself.”

  “The Fitzpatricks have always welcomed competition,” Kate replied smoothly. “Though breeding horses is a great deal different from training them, which you’ll no doubt discover for yourself if you give it a try. However, it sounds as if you’ve come out of your brief retirement—sabbatical,” she corrected smoothly, “to train Legends Lake.”

  “I’m only considering training him at the moment. He’s not what I’m used to working with.” Alec knew that he was risking being laughed back out of the business when and if he showed up for the Derby with the tall, bony horse in tow. “Though he does appear to have possibilities.”

  “Possibilities?” The pride was back, burning like a white hot flame. “And they accuse us Irish of being masters of understatement. Legends Lake is a natural, Mr. MacKenna. He carries the love of running in his blood and the strength of thousands of years on Irish soil in his bones.

  “Even a rock-headed Scot such as yourself should be able to look beyond the package and see that you’ve got yourself a champion. One who could set a new standard for all the generations of Thoroughbreds who come after him.”

  “I may be a bit hardheaded, but I’m an American. And, as I said, the horse has possibilities. But he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning even a rural stakes race unless I figure out what the hell makes him glitch out.”

  “Have you established any pattern?”

  “No. Winnie contacted his first owner, the one who bought him from you originally, but he swears he never had any problem.”

  “Well, that’s obviously a lie, since it’s undoubtedly why he put him in a claiming race,” Kate said with ill-concealed disgust. “I contacted him as well, the moment I got off the phone with you. At the time I sold him, I believed Legends Lake was going to a single owner. That’s certainly what he told me when I asked for his credentials.”

  “By credentials, you’re not speaking of his bank balance.”

  She lifted her chin. “I do not breed my horses to be treated poorly, Mr. MacKenna. I asked for references, as I always do, and the ones I received, many from people I’d done business with in the past, settled my mind, despite some lingering doubts.

  “Unfortunately, he’d no sooner taken ownership when he created a syndicate of mostly absentee owners. They, in turn, hired one of you Yanks, a Bobby Jenkins, I believe, to be the trainer, then left him alone.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t have foreseen that possibility in your crystal ball, or whatever you use to tell the future.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “I also did some checking on Mr. Jenkins and discovered some disturbing stories.”

  “He used to have a fair winning percentage. But personally I wouldn’t hire the man to muck out a stall. He died recently.”

  “That’s what I was told,” Kate confirmed. “So there’s no one but Legends Lake to tell us what’s happened to make him explode.”

  “I’ve seen this kind of behavior before in horses that were overbred.”

  “I’m not saying it can’t happen from time to time, but I assure you there’s no overbreeding done here at this stud. Didn’t the French quartermasters travel all the way here to Castlelough to purchase Fitzpatrick stock for Napoleon’s elite cavalry corps?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Precisely the point I was making. We’ve a fine long reputation for breeding champion Thoroughbreds that has continued to this day. Even, if I may be so bold as to say it, grown.”

  The Irish people may be known for their cheerful gregariousness, but Alec had dealt with enough of them over the years to know that their pride was a fierce flame of a thing. “Granted. But there’s still something wrong with the horse.”

  “If there is, and I’m not agreeing you’re right, mind you, whatever happened was done by some man’s hand. After Legends Lake left Castlelough.”

  “I’m not discounting that possibility, either.”

  “He truly never displayed any fear during the year I kept him here at the stud. I do wish I knew if he’d developed a pattern,” she murmured.

  “After watching him go bonkers, I wasn’t all that willing to risk him breaking a leg with another test.”

  She angled her head and gave him another of those searching looks. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with thoughtfulness. Look, Mrs. O’Sullivan, I’d had a bit of bad luck lately and this horse, as screwy as he is, could just possibly be my ticket back to the big time.”

  “And that’s important to you,” she guessed.

  “Hell, yes. It’s the singular most important thing in my life, what I’ve worked toward since I was a fifteen-year-old hot walker. While Legends Lake might not look like much—”

  “Well now, won’t he grow into his height once he has a few more months on him.”

  “That remains to be seen. Personally, I wouldn’t bet my stud on it, if I were you. The thing is, the horse could be as ugly as a plugged nickel and still be worth millions. But only if I can prevent him from getting banned from racing for life. Because if that happens, all the grand bloodlines in the world aren’t going to be able to keep him from ending up in a damn Alpo can on some supermarket shelf.”

  She didn’t respond to that same overstatement he’d scolded Winnie for making. But he sensed her attempting to determine whether he was as coldhearted and venal as he’d just made himself out to sound.

  They stood there, remaining silent, as Legends Lake, seemingly oblivious to the heated discussion concerning him, ran off the excess energy that had built up
during the long overseas trip. His mane flowed in the breeze, his incredibly long legs ate up the ground.

  “He may be glitchy,” Alec said, “and he’s sure as hell the homeliest horse I’ve ever seen, but I have to admit he looks good when he runs.”

  “He may be not as striking as some, at first glance. But his heart is that of a champion.

  “Ever since neolithic people brought the first ponies here, Ireland has always had a marvelous climate and soil for rearing horses. We’ve lots of limestone; this creates a great amount of minerals coming through all our green grass, which makes for good, strong legs.”

  She turned to Zoe. “The Celts invaded with battle chariots drawn by hot-blooded horses five hundred years before Christ was born. As has happened all through this country’s history, those invaders became settlers, allowing the blood of their fiery mounts to meld with that of our indigenous ponies.

  “Successive tides of Vikings, Normans, English, and, of course, St. Patrick and his Christianity, each changed the hearts and minds of our people a bit, yet one thing has never changed. For all these thousands of years and hundreds of generations there’s been a strong bond between the Irish and our horses.”

  She glanced over at Alec and lifted her chin. “Horses like Legends Lake aren’t merely symbols of our heritage, they define us as a people.”

  Alec may not be thrilled at working with a woman who appeared to be as loosely wrapped as Kate O’Sullivan was, but he couldn’t deny that her love of horses was all too obvious. As was her pride in being a part of their world. It was appearing less and less likely that she’d overbred Legends Lake. Still, it remained a possibility he couldn’t overlook. He owed Winnie too much to allow this self-proclaimed druid’s enthusiasm to cloud the analytical part of his mind.

  “You’ve had a long and tiring trip,” Kate said. “Why don’t I show you to your rooms, where you can wash up and take a bit of a lie-down, if you’d like, while Legends Lake begins to settle in.”

  “I don’t want to put you out,” Alec repeated what he’d told her when they’d made plans for his arrival. “We’re more than willing to stay at a hotel.”