Stone Barrington 36 - Scandalous Behavior Read Free

light in the sky when they dropped off Sir Charles at his dock.
    “Do you ride, Stone?” Bourne asked.
    “Yes, Charles.”
    “Then why don’t you wander over tomorrow morning, and I’ll give you a tour of the property on horseback. Stay for lunch.”
    “I’d like that very much,” Stone said, “but I don’t have the clothes.”
    “I can help you with that,” Felicity said.
    “Ten o’clock, then?”
    “I’ll look forward to it.”
    They continued to Felicity’s dock.
    “That went awfully well,” Felicity said as they walked up the path to her cottage. “Just as it should have gone.”
    “I am absolutely thrilled,” Stone said. “Thank you so much for arranging everything so beautifully.”
    Then they went upstairs and went to bed, something to which they had both been looking forward.

3

    T he following morning Stone was wakened by Felicity for carnal purposes, then her housekeeper served them breakfast in bed.
    “I’ll get you some clothes,” she said, when they were done. “You and my father are about the same size. What size boot do you wear?”
    “Ten, American.”
    “That would be nine, British?”
    “I believe so.”
    “Might work.” She left the room and came back a few minutes later with a tweed jacket, a pair of whipcord riding trousers, boots, and a black cashmere turtleneck sweater. “I trust you have your own underwear,” she said.
    Stone got dressed, and everything worked. The boots might have been half a size large, but they would do.
    “You may take the boat,” Felicity said, “if you think you can handle it.”
    “I’ve something similar in Maine. I’ll try not to wreck it.”
    “I’d better get you something water repellent, in case of rain,” she said. “It sometimes happens in England.” She found him a light Barbour jacket.
    The morning was cloudless and the sun bright. Stone tied up at the Windward Hall dock, and Stan met him with the electric cart and drove him to the stables, where two horses had been saddled for them.
    “Take the gelding,” Charles said. “Name’s Toff.”
    Stone slipped into his jacket, and they both mounted. Charles led the way for a short gallop, then Stone pulled alongside him and they continued at a walk.
    “You’ve a good seat,” Charles said.
    “Thank you.” Stone was remembering the last time he had ridden a horse. He and his son, Peter, and his girlfriend, Hattie, had left his wife, Arrington, at her new Virginia house and had taken the morning on horseback. When they returned to the house, they heard a noise like the wind slamming a heavy door, then saw a car drive away. When they entered the house they found Arrington dead in the foyer of a shotgun wound.
    “Stone?”
    “I’m sorry, I drifted away for a moment.”
    “An unpleasant memory, from the look on your face.”
    Stone nodded. “The day I lost my wife. That was the last time I was on a horse.”
    Charles nodded. “Do you have children?”
    “A boy, in his mid-twenties. He’s become a film director, in California.”
    “My son is a hedge fund manager, in London. Both he and his sister took after their mother. They seemed to regard me as an unpleasant, visiting stranger.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I was that.”
    “Peter and I have a wonderful relationship. I don’t see him often enough, since we’re on opposite coasts.”
    Charles rode him past the row of cottages where some of the staff lived. “I’ve made that one my own,” Charles said, pointing at a larger one set apart from the others in a grove of trees.
    “What’s the larger house over near the road?” Stone asked, pointing.
    “That’s the dower house, set apart for the widow of the lord of the manor. It’s not included in the sale.”
    They rode on to the airfield, and Charles led him into a hangar with a gambrel roof and shingle siding. “What airplane do you fly?”
    “A Citation CJ3 Plus.”
    “What’s her wingspan?”
    “Fifty-seven feet.”
    “Height of the