'Now, you may not know the way, and may occasionally get lost, but Toro always knows the way back home. It's too bad you can't tell him where you want to go, too, but like taking a dog for a walk, he has a one track mind. He knows where he is, what he wants to do, and how to get home again, and that is all.

'Now,' Guiseppe said, placing a hand on the small of Kara's back and urging her forward, opening the boot, a hinged box like a steamer trunk affixed to the rear of the trap, 'in here is where we put things we need for the road. There are blankets, a basket for food and drink, a waterproof brass match holder that you screw apart like this, and see? it has matches inside which you strike against the rough part outside; these tins hold oil for the lanterns; this catch at the back is the release for the canopy- a nuisance if you ask me! One day they will invent a canopy that can be opened and closed from the inside! These other tins contain oil and grease for maintenance, but you let me worry about that. This box has brushes for Toro and an oilskin to keep the rain off him should the two of you be caught in a downpour. He knows all about the oilskin, so if he starts getting wet and sees it, he will stay right where he is as you put it on him.

'Now go! Ride! While it is still light out! Otherwise you will be awake all night with excitement.'

Kara needed no urging. Within moments she was waving back at Guiseppe and Maria as she crested the hill in the direction that Pietro had taken her, and was soon following his trail down the other side.

She soon realised the truth in Guiseppe's words about the dray horse's plodding strength. Up or down hill, no matter how steep, he kept the same plodding pace, drawing the light trap behind him as though its weight were negligible. She realised that she must cut a comic figure, a slight girl on a light trap designed for a smaller, sleeker and much faster horse with light feet, being instead towed along by an enormous plodding dray bred and built for pulling commercial wagons, but she couldn't have been happier if Toro had been the world's most prized Arabian stallion, and for a time she was able to forget the impending arrival of her father, and Camilla's edict where Roman was concerned.

She had seen little of Roman since the night he had brought her home in the other trap. She had fallen asleep so soundly within the safe enclosure of his arm that he'd been forced to carry her upstairs, where she'd been undressed and put to bed by the Señora herself with Maria's help. It seemed obvious now that he regretted his decision to fetch her himself, no doubt because it had inadvertently created trouble between Camilla and himself. And Camilla had called him a coward! Was that the basis of her hold on him? That he feared doing anything that might endanger their relationship?




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