A Difficult Disguise by Kasey Michaels

basket to unearth the meat pies. “But I have heard of foxes eating chickens, and sheep, and all sorts of farm animals. Surely you aren’t against fox-hunting? They’re vermin and the bane of every landowner.”
    Fletcher accepted one of the meat pies. “ Thank you. No, Billy, I don’t object to shooting foxes. It is the civilized method that perturbs me. And I don’t just mean the obvious rules, such as not shooting one’s host, one’s host’s hounds, any other dogs, or lastly, keepers and beaters, the keepers and beaters being not quite so important to the exercise but still not to be considered a fair trophy.”
    “Not to mention being terribly hard to carry home in a sack or mount on the wall of the study,” Billy put in, relaxing for the first time that day.
    “Exactly, for that is the way all dedicated fox-hunters think. Just consider the logistics of the thing, Billy. Thirty men on horseback—thirty men who are almost always the worse for drink, hurtling their mounts pell-mell over the countryside behind a slobbering passel of baying, fox-crazy hounds—and all to capture and rend limb from limb one tiny red animal. I just can’t call that sporting—not unless we can find some way to arm the foxes.”
    Billy closed her eyes and had a sudden vision of a small army of foxes, their hind legs easily fitting astride immense hunters, blunderbusses tucked in their front paws as their pointed ears and long noses twitched and their black eyes twinkled, on the alert for their two-legged quarry. This was followed by a second vision of that quarry: a red-coated covey of large-bellied, tipsy fox-hunters, scampering across the fields on all fours, their tongues hanging from their mouths as they huffed and puffed in fear, a pack of hounds nipping at their heels.
    Surely she should share this vision with Fletcher. Laughing, she reached across the blanket to lay a hand on his arm, to gain his attention.
    Fletcher pulled his arm away as if stung, got to his feet, and turned his back to her. “I think I’m going to take a walk before I eat,” he said, already moving away from her.
    “But the meat pie is not going to last forever and should be eaten soon,” Billy pointed out, looking up at his departing back in confusion. Fletcher’s mood, which had been running hot and cold all day, had gone suddenly cold again as she had reached out to touch him. There could be only one reason.
    It was her. Something had happened last night at the inn that had made him dislike her, she decided as Fletcher disappeared down the path, leaving her behind with nothing but the birds and the falling water to keep her company.
    “I guess he liked Beatrice more than I thought he did,” she mumbled to herself, looking down at the meat pie, her appetite gone. “And it’s such a pity, for I am beginning to believe I could like Fletcher Belden very much.”

Chapter 5

    T he fire Fletcher had built still burned steadily as he and Billy sat across from each other, lost in thought. The silence, broken only by the cheerful babbling of the brook, might have been comfortable if it weren’t for those thoughts: Billy nervously remembering her reaction to Fletcher’s touch, and a shaken Fletcher doing his best to banish his treacherous feelings from his tortured brain.
    “Mr. Belden?”
    “What?”
    She hesitated, wondering what to say now that she had opened her mouth, her eagerness to break the silence outstripping her preparation for what would come next.
    “Well, what?” Fletcher’s voice sounded strained, his tone curt, and he sighed and added more gently, “You’re feeling bored, I suppose. I understand. It isn’t every man who appreciates a good silence.”
    Instantly, as had become usual since meeting this man, Billy felt her hackles rise. How could Fletcher Belden be so boorish as to tell her how she felt? He didn’t know how she felt; he couldn’t know. And how did she feel? Billy thought about that for a moment, then hung her