Eden dashed out of the sitting room and into the hall. By the time she reached the porch, Donal had disappeared. Her first thought was that he had gone to Hartley.
Halfway to the stable she caught up with him. He heard her coming and turned, flinching as if he expected a blow.
Eden’s heart dropped into her stomach. She sank to her knees on the path and opened her arms.
Donal rushed into them. She held him until her own heartbeat had slowed. Only then did she set him back so that she could see his face.
“Do you want to tell me what happened between you and the marquess?” she asked. “I promise that I will not be angry, but I would prefer that you tell me the truth.”
Donal searched her face. It was a terrible thing to see such conflict in a child so young. Eden wanted to weep.
“I… I told the marquess that I could hear his horses talking,” Donal said in a small voice. “He didn’t believe me.”
Oh, Lord. She smiled encouragement. “What did you think the horses were saying, Donal?”
“They told me that he makes them go too fast on the roads, because it’s too bumpy and hard here, not like where they come from.” A flicker of mischievous spirit danced in his eyes. “I had to show him that I could talk to the horses, so I asked them to dance for me.”
Eden remembered the rearing and head-tossing. “You… wouldn’t let the groom catch them.”
He shook his head. “The first horse wanted to run away. Then the second horse told the first one that he shouldn’t think bad things about their master, but the first horse said that the man wasn’t so much better than they were. The marquess chases fillies all the time, and sometimes he takes off his boots and stockings and picks between his toes, like he has thrush. Then I told the marquess what they said.”
Eden was speechless. For a moment she didn’t even question that the horses had, in fact, said what Donal claimed.
That was madness. But she had witnessed it all with her own eyes. Evidently Francis had believed it. How else to explain his look of horror and his hasty escape?
“What did the marquess say to you then, Donal?”
“Nothing. He was afraid. He just ran away.”
Eden drew him close again. “Why did you do all this? Is it because you don’t like the marquess?”
His body stiffened. “He doesn’t like Hartley. Hartley said…”
“What did Hartley say?”
But Donal shut his mouth and would not answer. She didn’t compel him. Altogether, the implications of what he had said were more than enough to worry her. She had been through this before. Either he was a master, at five years old, of entirely credible lies, or he was capable of something no child should be.
No human child.
“It will soon be time for dinner,” she said with as much authority as she could muster. “Go to your room, and please remain there until Mrs. Byrne brings up your meal. Will you do as I ask this time?”
With a look of relief, Donal nodded.
She cupped his cheek in her hand. “We will talk more of this later, but I think both of us have had enough excitement for one day. Off with you.”
He ran a few steps, paused, and looked back over his shoulder. A pair of turtledoves circled down out of the sky. One made a perfect landing on Donal’s thatch of brown hair and balanced with a flap of its pale wings. Its mate settled at Eden’s feet and bobbed a bow.
Eden looked from the bird to Donal. “Did you…” The question lodged in her throat. Donal gently removed his dove from its perch and cradled it between his hands. He held its darting head close to his.
“I promise,” he said, and cast the bird skyward. Eden’s dove followed, its wings nearly brushing her face.
Donal smiled at Eden and continued for the house as if nothing had happened.
With the feeling of walking on quicksand, literally and metaphorically, Eden made her way back into the house and to her room. She sat down at her dressing table and stared into the mirror.