Silverbridge by Joan Wolf

trotted into the room, their nails making scraping sounds on the bare wood floor. Marshal went to take a drink from his water dish while Millie jumped on the sofa and made herself comfortable.
    Harry returned to the kitchen table. Tracy had finished the food on her plate, but he didn’t appear to notice as he sat back down. She wanted to keep him talking to her, so she resumed the conversation about horses. “Whom did you study with?”
    He replied gravely. “I was fortunate enough to spend a year with Nuno Oliviero in Portugal.”
    “Oh wow,” Tracy said, genuinely impressed. “I’ve only seen pictures of him on horseback, but even in a still picture you can see that he was something.”
    “So you have heard of him?”
    “Yes, I have heard of him,” she replied. “I have also heard of Podhajsky. And I once saw Reiner Klimke ride Ahlerich to music at the National Horse Show in New York.” Her tone softened. “I actually cried, it was so beautiful.”
    He folded his arms on the table. “Klimke is my hero. He competed internationally, yet he always remained faithful to the ideals of classical horsemanship. He was able to marry the competition to the art, and that is something I have been trying to do.”
    His brown eyes sparkled in the light of the overhead lamp. The slight line that had drawn his brows together when first they came into the kitchen had vanished. He looked enthusiastic, and devastatingly attractive.
    Tracy felt her back stiffen as she resisted his too- potent appeal. When she spoke her voice was crisp. “By all accounts, you have been successful in doing that. You took a third at the Olympics, which is fabulous, considering the competition from the Germans and the Dutch.”
    He nodded politely and noticed for the first time that she had finished eating. “Would you like something else? I believe there is a pudding in the refrigerator.”
    “No thank you.” Tracy did not share the English passion for pudding.
    He picked up her empty plate and carried it to the sink. Tracy followed with her silverware and glass and watched as he placed everything neatly on the drain - board. She waited, curious to see if he would attempt to wash up.
    He didn’t. He turned to her, and said, “Meg and Mr. Melbourne must have returned by now. Perhaps we should go back upstairs.”
    Tracy hesitated, then brought out the question she had been dying to ask for the last twenty minutes. “Before we do, my lord, I wonder if I could see that picture of Charles Oliver you mentioned.”
    He gave her a curious look. “Why on earth should you be interested in Charles?”
    Tracy was not an actress for nothing. She laughed, and said lightly, “It’s the Regency thing. I’ve grown rather interested in the period, and I’d find it fascinating to see a picture of the man who lived in this house at that time. But if it’s going to be a bother, forget it. We can go upstairs.”
    “It’s not a bother,” he said. “You can see it if you like. Come this way.”
    Tracy followed him into a narrow hallway, which was closed off halfway down, and Tracy guessed that, like upstairs, only a portion of the basement was heated. He opened a door on the left side of the hall, flicked on a light, and motioned Tracy into his office.
    It was a shabby and comfortable-looking room, with glass-fronted bookshelves, several file cabinets, an old leather sofa and two chairs, a large mahogany desk with a computer and a faded red-and-blue Oriental rug on the floor. Over the stone fireplace on the left wall hung the full-length portrait of a man in military uniform. Tracy knew him immediately. It was the man she had seen on the bridle path, the man she had seen in the drawing room with the girl who looked like her.
    Charles Oliver had been painted full-length, wearing his uniform and posed against a backdrop of rocks and trees that suggested the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula. He was hatless, with a sword cradled in his arms and a cloak