“I find it interesting, the way you and your brothers-in-law have divided the areas of the business, each to his strengths.”

“It works well for us. Merripen is a man of the soil, Cam likes numbers . . . and my part is to do as little as possible.”

Christopher wasn’t deceived. “You know far too much about the entire enterprise for me to believe that. You’ve worked long and hard on this place.”

“Yes. But I keep hoping if I feign ignorance, they’ll stop asking me to do things.”

Christopher smiled and focused on the ground before them as they walked, their booted feet crossing into the long shadows cast by the sun behind them. “I won’t have to feign ignorance,” he said, sobering. “I know next to nothing about timber. My brother prepared for it his entire life. It never occurred to me—or anyone—that I would have to fill his shoes.” He paused and wished he had kept that last comment to himself. It sounded as if he were asking for sympathy.

Leo, however, replied in a friendly and matter-of-fact manner. “I know that feeling. But Merripen will help you. He’s a fount of information, and he’s never so happy as when he’s telling people what to do. A fortnight in his company, and you’ll be a bloody expert on timber. Has Beatrix yet told you that Merripen and Win will return from Ireland in time for the wedding?”

Christopher shook his head. The wedding would be held in a month, at the church on the village green. “I’m glad for Beatrix’s sake. She wants the entire family to be there.” A brief laugh escaped him. “I only hope we won’t have a parade of animals marching through the church along with her.”

“Count yourself fortunate that we got rid of the elephant,” Leo said. “She might have turned it into a bridesmaid.”

“Elephant?” Christopher glanced at him sharply. “She had an elephant?”

“Only for a short time. She found a new home for him.”

“No.” Christopher was shaking his head. “Knowing Beatrix, I could almost believe it. But no.”

“She had an elephant,” Leo insisted. “God’s own truth.”

Christopher still wasn’t convinced. “I suppose it showed up at the doorstep one day and someone made the mistake of feeding it?”

“Ask Beatrix, and she’ll tell you—”

But Leo broke off as they neared the paddock, where some kind of commotion was taking place. The squeal of an angry horse rent the air. A chestnut Thoroughbred was rearing and bucking with someone on its back.

“Damn it,” Leo said, quickening his pace. “I told them not to buy that ill-tempered nag—he was ruined from bad handling, and not even Beatrix can fix him.”

“Is that Beatrix?” Christopher asked, alarm jolting through him.

“Either Beatrix or Rohan—no one else is foolhardy enough to mount him.”

Christopher broke into a run. It wasn’t Beatrix. It couldn’t be. She had promised him that she wouldn’t put herself at physical risk anymore. But as he reached the paddock, he saw her hat fly off and her dark hair come loose, while the infuriated horse bucked with increasing force. Beatrix clung to the animal with astonishing ease, murmuring and trying to soothe him. The horse seemed to subside, responding to Beatrix’s efforts. But in a quicksilver instant he reared impossibly high, his massive bulk balanced on two slender hind legs.

And then the horse twisted and began to fall.

Time itself slowed, while the huge crushing mass toppled, with Beatrix’s fragile form landing beneath.

As so often had happened in battle, Christopher’s instincts took over completely, prompting action at a speed faster than thought. He heard nothing, but he felt his throat vibrate with a hoarse cry, while his body vaulted over the paddock fence.

Beatrix reacted from instinct as well. As the horse began to fall, she yanked her booted feet from the stirrups and pushed away from him in midair. She hit the ground and rolled twice, thrice, while the horse’s body crashed beside her . . . missing her by a matter of inches.

As Beatrix lay still and dazed, the maddened horse struggled to its feet, its hooves pounding the ground beside her with skull-splitting force. Christopher snatched her up and carried her to the side of the paddock, while Leo approached the enraged horse and somehow managed to grab the reins.

Lowering Beatrix to the ground, Christopher searched her for injuries, running his hands over her limbs, feeling her skull. She was panting and wheezing, the breath having been knocked out of her.

She blinked up at him in confusion. “What happened?”

“The horse reared and fell.” Christopher’s voice came out in a rasp. “Tell me your name.”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“Your name,” he insisted.

“Beatrix Heloise Hathaway.” She looked at him with round blue eyes. “Now that we know who I am . . . who are you?”

Chapter Twenty

At Christopher’s expression, Beatrix snickered and wrinkled her nose impishly. “I’m teasing. Really. I know who you are. I’m perfectly all right.”

Over Christopher’s shoulder, Beatrix caught sight of Leo shaking his head in warning, drawing a finger across his throat.

She realized too late that it probably hadn’t been an appropriate moment for teasing. What to a Hathaway would have been a good chuckle was positively infuriating to Christopher.

He glared at her with incredulous wrath. It was only then that she realized he was shaking in the aftermath of his terror for her.