Read Online The Indiscretion by Judith Ivory - Free Book Online

bushy-tailed ponies flee
him at a gallop. Stupid. Oh, so stupid, Sam. You've known horses all your life,
yet you mistake these for horses twice their size? Up close, they
weren't anything like the coach's horses, except maybe in color; a couple of
them were shiny brown with long black tails and manes. How could you be so dumb
as to see a coach team in a couple of short, shaggy animals? Idiot … pea-green
fool … what a waste of time and energy … all for the wrong horses … a long walk
for nothing…
    He was berating himself pretty fiercely, feeling lower than low as
he trudged up to Lydia . She was
sitting on a big rock there in the twilight, her head bowed, waiting for him.
Oh, she would really light into him now, he thought. And he'd just let her. He
had it coming. She was more than half right. He really was a Wild West cowboy
sometimes – full of show and jingle, wanting not just to fix things, but to fix
them spectacularly, while being so damn stupid sometimes he wanted to shoot
himself. He didn't feel like he was worth spit—
    " Dartmoor ponies,"
she said as he came up. "Two came close enough for me to see them
better."
    He began his litany. "I'm sorry. I should've known they
weren't the right ones. I should've—"
    She interrupted. "You should have what? They were far away.
How could anyone tell from a mile off?"
    "Their proportions were wrong. They—"
    "We wanted them to be the horses, and the light was poor. We
weren't expecting any other horses but ours—"
    Her excuses made him mad. "Listen, you don't have to be nice
to me—"
    "Yes, I do. I have to be nice to myself – I mistook them too.
It was an understandable mistake."
    "It wasn't. I should've realized—"
    "How? Magic? Or are you just God? You know everything?"
    Yeah, he liked to think he did. About horses anyway. He glowered,
trying to see her expression in a face so shadowed by evening he could barely
make out her features. When it got dark in this neck of the woods, he was
guessing, it would get real dark. He doubted they'd be able to see their hands
in front of their faces in a few minutes.
    Sam exhaled a long sigh and pushed his hat back on his head.
"So it's okay with you that we walked for God knows how far, away from the
road, in the wrong direction?"
    "No, I wish we hadn't. But what can we do?"
    "Nothin'."
    "I wonder where our horses are."
    He frowned, looking along the dim horizon as if he might see them.
"Long gone," he said. It was information that should have depressed
him more, but he sighed again and realized, no: The heavy blue feeling that had
walked with him all the way back, like an old familiar companion, had stepped
away from him, fading.
    After a second she asked, "Would you be hungry?"
    "Starved," he said, surprised to realize it. Though he
couldn't think what the hell he'd feed them.
    Immediately Sam started to think: He could build a fire, see if he
could find rabbit trails in the bushes. That shouldn't be impossible, even in
the dark; there weren't that many bushes. He could set snares or traps on the
most likely paths. Why, by morning, they might have—
    "I have two sandwiches," she said and laughed. Like a
little joke, she continued in her meticulously articulated syllables, "One
cucumber, one chutney and cheese. I don't know why precisely, but I do believe
you will hate them both." She laughed again, that delightful, burbly
sound, so feminine, so merry.
    He couldn't figure her out. She could be mean, argumentative,
skittish, but she was … kind: possessed of a genuine kindness, a sensitivity
mixed with good intentions that felt just plain good to stand next to, to be
around. It was at her core.
    "Cucumbers?" he asked. "You make sandwiches out of
cucumbers?" It didn't sound terrible so much as it sounded like nothing to
eat. Like sandwiches made out of water or air. "You eat the
sandwiches," he told her. "I'll set up some traps, see if we can't
snag something bigger for breakfast. Then I'll build a fire, make