Seraphina didn’t even bother to disguise her skepticism at Mrs. Devine’s excuse, her eyebrows rising upward in perfectly skeptical arches. “Perhaps if you had checked her hooves before we began she would not have stumbled.” Seraphina never rode on a horse who she had not first checked, she’d heard too many stories of men tossed from horses because they trusted the handlers with the tack.

Turning Sorel away from the young bride, Seraphina thought to leave her for better company. Tossing over her shoulder, “With your seating you should be lucky you weren’t tossed from the saddle with a stumble like that.” Again the cat like grin returned to Seraphina, pleased to have delivered a blow to the excuse and seem as if she were offering a kindness.