Father Ralph shouted. "Dig your heels in, lad, or you'll drown in the mud!"

  They were soaked within seconds, and so was the hard-baked ground. The fine,- nonporous soil became a sea of mud, miring the horses to their hocks and setting them floundering. While the grass persisted they managed to press on, but near the creek where the earth had been trodden to bareness they had to dismount. Once relieved of their burdens, the horses had no trouble, but Frank found it impossible to keep his balance. It was worse than a skating rink. On hands and knees they crawled to the top of the creek bank, and slid down it like projectiles. The stone roadway, which was normally covered by a foot of lazy water, was under four feet of racing foam; Frank heard the priest laugh. Urged on by shouts and slaps from sodden hats, the horses managed to scramble up the far bank without mishap, but Frank and Father Ralph could not. Every time they tried, they slid back again. The priest had just suggested they climb a willow when Paddy, alerted by the appearance of riderless horses, came with a rope and hauled them out. Smiling and shaking his head, Father Ralph refused Paddy's offer of hospitality.

  "I'm expected at the big house," he said.

  Mary Carson heard him calling before any of her staff did, for he had chosen to walk

around to the front of the house, thinking it would be easier to reach his room.

  "You're not coming inside like that," she said, standing on the veranda. "Then be a dear, get me several towels and my case."

  Unembarrassed, she watched him peel off his shirt, boots and breeches, leaning against

the half-open window into her drawing room as he toweled the worst of the mud off.

  "You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen, Ralph de Bricassart," she said. "Why is it so many priests are beautiful? The Irishness? They're rather a handsome people, the Irish.Or is it that beautiful men find the priesthood a refuge from the consequences of their looks? I'll bet the girls in Gilly just eat their hearts out over you."

  "I learned long ago not to take any notice of lovesick girls." He laughed. "Any priest

under fifty is a target for some of them, and a priest under thirty-five is usually a

target for all of them. But it's only the Protestant girls who openly try to seduce me."

  "You never answer my questions outright, do you?" Straightening, she laid her palm on his chest and held it there. "You're a sybarite, Ralph, you lie in the sun. Are you as brown all over?" 

   Smiling, he leaned his head forward, then laughed into her hair, his hands unbuttoning the cotton drawers;