"My stable boy quit last week. How'd you like to work for me?"
"For you?" she murmured weakly.
"That's right. You'd take your orders from my head man, Magnus Owen. He doesn't have your lily-white skin, so if that's going to offend your Southern pride, you'd better tell me now, and we won't waste anymore time." When she didn't reply, he continued. "You can sleep over the stable and eat in the kitchen. Salary is three dollars a week."
She kicked at the dirt with the toe of her scuffed boot. Her mind raced. If she'd learned anything today she'd learned that Baron Cain wouldn't be easy to kill, especially now that he'd seen her face. Working in his stable would keep her close to him, but it would also make her job twice as dangerous.
Since when had danger ever bothered her?
She tucked her thumbs into the waist of her trousers. "Two bits more, Yankee, and you got yourself a stable boy."
Her room above the stable smelled agreeably of horses, leather, and dust. It was comfortably furnished with a soft bed, an oak rocker, and a faded rag rug, as well as a washstand that she ignored. Most important, it possessed a window that looked out over the back of the house so she could keep watch.
She waited until Cain had disappeared inside before she kicked off her boots and climbed into bed. Despite her nap in the stable, she was tired. Even so, she didn't fall asleep right away. Instead, she found herself wondering how her life might have turned out if her daddy hadn't made that trip to Charleston when she was eight years old and taken it into his head to get married again.
From the moment Garrett Weston had met Rosemary, he'd been moonstruck, even though she was older than he and her blond beauty had hard edges any fool could have spotted. Rosemary didn't make a secret of the fact that she couldn't stand children, and the day Garrett brought her home to Risen Glory, she'd pleaded the need for a newlywed's privacy and sent eight-year-old Kit to spend the night in a cabin near the slave quarters. Kit had never been allowed back.