She is five years old and she is the best-mannered mare I have ever bred and she will stand like a rock for a rider who is not the strength she once had. She is not for sale. Ambrose's head came up. Madam, she is not for sale, said Tabitha Ren, because I will not sell a horse to a man who has not seen her on a day when he is too deep in grief to judge clearly. You would give me £1,000 this afternoon and hate me by Christmas.
She met his eyes. Stay until tomorrow. Look at her. Sit on her. If she is right for your sister, you shall have her for what she is worth, and not a shilling more.
And if she is wrong, I will find you one that is right, if it takes until spring. And if you are going to shout at me again Your Grace, kindly do it now, so that we may have it over before the brandy comes. Ambrose Vane looked at the plain woman behind the oak desk for a long, long moment. No, he said at last, and his voice was not quite steady. No, I do not think I shall shout at you again.
He stayed until the next day. Then he stayed until the day after that. The mare was gray as a winter sea and stood 16 hands and turned her head to the gate when Tabitha Ren whistled and Ambrose, who had ridden all his life and been bored by horses since he was 30 stood in a wet paddock in borrowed boots and watched a woman in a gray gown put a 5-year-old mare through her paces on a leading rein and thought that he had never seen anything done so well by anybody. She was born in that box behind you. Tabitha said at two in the morning in a snowstorm and I sat up with dam for 9 hours and got frostbite in two toes for my trouble.
The dam, Sorrel, would have died. I did not let her. She rubbed the mare's nose. Everything at Renfield was born here or came here half dead. It is the only kind of stock I can afford.
Where did the money come from? Ambrose asked. He expected her to bristle. She did not. Me?
Where else? she said. He learned it in pieces over 5 days because she did not tell stories about herself and had to be quarried. Her father had been a country attorney who died owing more than he owned. At 17, she had gone out as a governess to a family in Yorkshire who paid her £22 a year and once memorably forgot her at an inn for a day and a half.