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Tea with Aventis, daughter of Chronos

Her Grace shifts a rose a fraction of an inch in the display on the side table, and steps back to see the effect. The sound of door opening has her turn, to see Barlow, the butler, in the doorway.

“The Lady Aventis,” he announces, and checks the piece of paper in his hand before continuing, “daughter of Cronus, Father of Time.” He steps aside to allow today’s guest into the room.

She is a beautiful young woman in a flowing red and white dress. In one hand, she holds a trident, with the symbol of a red rose. Her beautiful cocoa skin sparkles, and her blue eyes gleams brightly.

Barlow’s usual unruffled air is slightly disturbed by the trident.

Aventis nods slightly, and moves forward. She hands the trident to Barlow, who takes it, looking at it with wonder and curiosity.

The duchess hopes her own discomfort is well hidden, though etiquette bothers her more than the trident. What sort of beverage does one offer to a daughter of the gods? “Would you care for tea?” she asked, “Or can I send for something else?”

“Tea is fine – Earl Grey would do,” says Aventis.” I am happy to make your acquaintance, Duchess. You have a beautiful home.”

“Thank you. Milk? Sugar?

“Some milk, no sugar” Aventis replies, settling herself on the sofa that Her Grace indicates. “Are you acquainted with my father, Chronos?”

“I am not. I think, perhaps, we come from different parts of what my biographer calls the fiction-o-sphere.” She hands Aventis a cup, and begins to prepare one for herself. “Your father is Cronus, Father of Time, the invitation said, and it was addressed to the Realm of Wyrniverdon. Can you tell me more?”

Aventis nods. “Yes. The Realm Wyrniverdon is a collective — a Magical Force — that guards over the universe — a universe –— that has within her many different worlds. Angels, faeries are part of it, but also star goddesses, and so on. We all work in conjunction to defeat the darkness.”

“Defeating the darkness. That sounds important, essential, even.”

Aventis leans forward, her eyes intent. “But there is an impending evil, of a force so threatening that we have to galvanize our forces — including human beings — to defeat them.”

Her Grace’s hands still. For a moment, her eyes look at some inward thought, and they are bleak when she replies. “I have known evil. I work against it when I can.”

Aventis takes a sip before she continues. “There is one, Racine, who will be instrumental in this fight. She is not only human, but also has mystical origins. Soon, she’ll know part of that story – herstory – and more. There is not much time, but my Sisters are working on that front. Books, those papyrical friends, will help us. They are the Spark. They will also be the key. It will all manifest, and all my Sisters are working on this score.”

Her Grace ponders this, and asks, “Tell me what humans can do to support a fight that is waged by gods and angels?”

Aventis has a small smile as she replies. “We have to come together, and show kindness. We have to show empathy, and compassion. We have to uphold the values of community, the collective. We also have to lift up, and hold dear places of community, the public sphere, such as libraries.”

“In my time, and in my universe, libraries are not public spaces, but it is an interesting idea. I must give that further thought.” Her Grace, a well known supporter of education for the masses, looks into her tea as if the answers float on the surface.

“They will also be key in helping to defeat the darkness,” Aventis assures her. “Technology will be an enemy, and humanity will have to decide – is convenience more important, or holding on to what it means to be human? These decisions will have to be made – if not, further disasters will be looming.”

The duchess shivers, as if she can feel the disasters drawing nearer, and Aventis assures her, “Racine will learn about all these things. She will be up to the task. She doesn’t think she will be, but she will. My Sisters will see to that.”

Her Grace seizes on the new subject. “Tell me more about your sisters, Aventis.”

Aventis is only too happy to oblige. “Angelaes created the community, The Collective. She is also a Guardian Angel, watching over those who are in despair. She created the Realm Wyrniverdon, for those who feel like outsiders, who feel like they don’t belong. She is on a mission to make the world a more welcoming place. She has keen insight, understanding, and intuition, all aspects of being an angel.”

“So the Sisters are angels?”

Aventis shakes her head. “Some are. Some are faeries –  others are selkies. Some are both human and mystical – which is the line that Racine is descended from. Many are part of the Realm Wyrniverdon, and whoever asks for assistance, whoever asks for aid, whoever has a heart that is breaking, the Sisters from the Realm Wyrniverdon are there to help. They are all strong – in one way or another. The Word for them is powerful, and is also the Key to answering the mysteries, the questions of the Universe.”

“Then you are prepared for the fight to come,” Her Grace says.

“I am gravely concerned about what is coming,” Aventis tells her, “But, if we all prepare, there is nothing we can’t handle. I am happy that you will join us in this fight. It gives me hope, in this dark hour.

Racine: The Sisterhood Stories

In a world divided by fear, hate, and prejudice, Racine embarks on a journey to discover who she really is. After a life time of alienation and rejection because of the colour of her skin and her Black heritage, she discovers the ultimate truth of good is wrapped up in the magic of the Story. Stories have the power to change the world, but first, the stories need unlocking.

https://www.amazon.com/Racine-Sisterhood-Stories-Alison-Clarke-ebook/dp/B0719TWJZ9/

Meet AC Clarke

www.twitter.com/mythologist200

https://instagram.com/monetlover200

https://www.facebook.com/Alison-Clarke-749948061789271/

 

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Clothing on WIP Wednesday

Today, I’m looking for excerpts that include a description of clothing. I’m not a great one for writing these, but sometimes they really matter to my characters. I recently included in a blog post the clothes that Aldridge wore to Becky; his waistcoat was a subtle jab at Hugh. Often, a person’s clothes (observed by the protagonist) tell our hero or heroine — and the reader — something about that person. Sometimes, the protagonist’s reaction tells us something about them. In House of Thorns, I have Bear making assumptions about Rosa based on her clothes.

Which left him here, with an unknown female under his roof and not another human being within a fifteen minute walk, if Pelman was to be believed.

He peered more closely at the female in question. Could she be Pelman’s sister, come to secure her position? On the whole, he thought not. She looked nothing like the rather fleshy steward, whose receding hair was a dirty blonde rather than this tiny lady’s rich chestnut. Besides, would Pelman dress his sister in near rags, neatly mended and clean, but much washed and threadbare? And the boots displayed by his careless disposition of her skirts were likewise clean and polished, and worn to the point that the woman had tucked cardboard inside the sole.

Poor thing.

And I’ve just written a description of Rosa’s gown for her wedding.

Once Sukie had been despatched with the dressmaker’s maid to fetch Rosa a cup of tea, Rosa asked the dressmaker for directions to a place she could send her letter. Delighted that it was no more than a couple of streets away, she then put the letter out of her mind to focus on the gown.

It was the most beautiful gown Rosa had ever seen; not the light-weight shimmering silk that Bear had initially picked, suitable only for evening, but a figured silk in a slightly heavier weave, made up as a day gown, with a modest scooped bodice and long sleeves. The dusky pink ground bore a repeated motif of stripes and flowers, and the effect had been enhanced by embroidery on the cuffs and hem, using the same shapes and slightly darker colours.

The dressmaker and her seamstresses fussed over the exact fit of the bodice, and the length of the cuffs. There was a pellise, too, short waisted and in a darker rose.

She enjoyed the fitting much more than she had expected, which made the hour fly past. “We have little to do, ma’am,” the dressmaker said, at last. “An hour, no more. You are welcome to wait, or if you have errands…?”

An hour. With the rest of the hen money in her reticule, and a wedding present for Bear to purchase, it would be barely enough.

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Tea with the Duke of Winshire

After a particularly vigorous practice bout with his son Andrew, the Duke of Winshire was mopping the sweat from his torso. He had held his own, Persian art of the samsir against the French sword play that Andrew and his older brother James, Lord Sutton, had been learning here in London.

The three of them were arguing the finer points of the match when the butler entered, his usually bland face unusually anxious, a calling card held high on a silver tray.

“You have a visitor, Your Grace. Two visitors, I should say.”

Winshire lifted one brow. “Am I at home to callers? It is but eleven of the clock.”

Bartlett’s frown deepened. “If you would look at the card, sir.”

Winshire picked it up, and the second brow flew up to join the first. “Her Grace of Haverford? Here?”

“Escorted by the Marquis of Aldridge, Your Grace. Should I tell them you are not receiving?”

“Are you not receiving, Your Grace?” The voice from the doorway had him spinning around and reaching for his shirt, all in one movement.  Eleanor Haverford’s hazel eyes twinkled, not in the least abashed at his lack of attire. “Are we to go away and try again by appointment?” she asked.

Winshire barely spared a look at the tall fair man at her shoulder, though he noted that the slight amused curve of Aldridge’s lips belied the watchful caution of the hazel eyes inherited from his mother.

On either side of him, his sons were also on full alert. The feud between the Haverfords and Winshires  had so far confined itself to insults and legal wrangles between the heads of each house. Winshire would prefer to keep it that way.

And whatever Eleanor wanted, it would not be war between them. She had welcomed his heir into one of her houses (albiet in the absence of her husband). Yes, and supported Sutton’s courtship of her goddaughter, Sophia.

He bowed, conscious that her gaze was not unapproving, and resisting the urge to preen. “If you will forgive my state of undress, Your Grace, and give me a moment to amend it, I will be at your service. Bartlett, show Her Grace and his lordship to the Red Parlour. Order tea and refreshments, please.”

“If I might strain the bounds of my welcome still further, perhaps Lord Sutton and Lord Andrew would be willing to show Lord Aldridge their weapons. I am sure he will find that far more interesting than the conversation of two old friends.”

Aldridge’s startled look lasted a fraction of a second, replaced by the bland expression the English aristocracy practice from the cradle.

Winshire bowed again, and Eleanor followed the butler from the room, leaving the three younger men to cluster around the swords, and Winshire went off to wash and change, wondering what had brought her to him.

He’d been back in England a year, the second son returned to inherit all after the death of the first. He’d spent the previous thirty-four years in exile for daring to love, and be loved, by the lady the Duke of Haverford had chosen for his bride.

Haverford still held a grudge. He had claimed that Winshire’s marriage was invalid, and his sons illegitimate. He had lost the case, and now refused to occupy the same room or even street as Winshire. Haverford’s wife and son clearly had a different view.

And, equally clearly, Eleanor wanted to speak with him alone.

Time to go and find out why.

In Part 3 of A Baron for Becky, Eleanor and Aldridge go to the Duke of Winshire to seek his support to have Hugh Overton’s peerage descend to his daughter. The scene above shows what happened when they arrived. The courtship between James, Lord Sutton, and Sophia Belvoir, mentioned above, is described in The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

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Sunday spotlight on Vicky Adin and her historical fiction

The exciting aspect of writing historical fiction inspired by immigrants is that they all came from somewhere else. I get to learn about and write about all these different places, and since we travel a lot, I can also visit many of these places as well.

Daniel, the protagonist in the time-slip novel, ‘The Disenchanted Soldier’, I tracked down in Derbyshire, even though he was born in Liverpool. The delight in finding family headstones, family houses, and streets named after family members will stay with me always. Follow the researcher as she uncovers the family secrets.

Megan, of ‘The Cornish Knot’, is a modern Kiwi woman through and through. It’s not until she is sent the journal her great-grandmother wrote a century earlier does she learn about her family connections in Cornwall. The journal takes her on a journey from Cornwall to Paris, Florence and Venice as she unravels the secrets Isabel took to her grave. I grew up in Cornwall, so it was even more of a delight to revisit my old haunts and remember my childhood while I was developing a totally different story-line.

Charlotte is English. Preferring her roses to people, Charlotte doesn’t make life easy for her counter-protagonist, Emma. She never quite admits where she was born to the journalist as she delves into the story behind the famous author in ‘The Art of Secrets’.

Lace-making is the skill Brigid uses to find a new life for herself away from the poverty and starvation of her native Ireland. She tries first in Australia, but has better success in New Zealand in ‘The Girl from County Clare’.

If you have a sweet tooth, then Gwenna’s story is for you. The young confectioner is determined to bring her Pa’s dreams to life despite her step-brother Elias, despite Black Jack Jones, and despite being young and female in Victorian New Zealand. She is so determined to succeed she is blind to the obvious and risks losing that which matters to her the most.

My current WIP doesn’t stray beyond the streets of Auckland during the Edwardian era, as the children in ‘The Girl from County Clare’ and ‘Gwenna’ grow up and forge a new life.

Meet Vicky Adin

Multi-award-winning historical fiction author, Vicky Adin is a genealogist in love with history and words.

After decades of research Vicky has combined her skills to weave together the intriguing secrets she uncovered with historical events in a way that brings the past to life.

Fascinated by the 19th Century pioneers who undertook hazardous journeys to find a better life, especially the women, Vicky draws her characters from real life stories: characters such as Brigid, the Irish lacemaker in ‘The Girl from County Clare and Gwenna, the Welsh confectioner, or Megan who discovers much about herself when she traces her family tree in ‘The Cornish Knot’.

Vicky Adin holds a MA(Hons) in English and Education. She is an avid reader of historical novels, family sagas and contemporary women’s stories and enjoys travelling.

For more information, visit her website http://www.vickyadin.co.nz

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Ferry cross the Mersey

Looking to Liverpool from the Seacombe foreshore, in around 1816. The small boat on the right is a ferry.

My current work-in-progress is set in a village on the Wirral Peninsula, across the River Mersey from Liverpool. Which means I’ve been researching the Mersey ferry. Or, I should say, ferries.

It turns out that people have been running a ferry service across the Mersey for well over a thousand years. Historians agree that such a service, by row or sail boat, predates the Benedictine Priory at Birkenhead, but once the monks were established, they did their best to monopolise the trade. Annoying for the other locals, but useful for historians, since we have the records of the court cases they took to try to stop other providers.

The monks charged for the service, which helped to pay for the hospitality they offered travellers at the abbey. Some of the unauthorised providers were less scrupulous, overloading their boats and charging much higher fees.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, the right to offer a ferry service changed hands a number of times, and at tunes several formal services were offered, as well as the age old recourse of the traveller: a request to any inhabitant with a boat: ‘I’ll give you a bob if you row me over the river’. Travellers were advised to set the price before they got into the boat, and not to pay till they got out.

At the time I’m writing about, there were at least five routes operating: Liverpool to Woodside (the original route that the monks established), Liverpool to Seacombe, Liverpool to Eastham, Liverpool to Tranmere, and Liverpool to Rock Ferry.

The first steamship operated between Liverpool and Runcorn in 1815. The Elizabeth was a wooden paddle steamer, measuring 58 feet and 9 inches in length, and with a cabin that could take around a hundred passengers. The cousins behind the service were two teenagers, one a naval officer and the other a member of the local militia. It cannot have had the reception they hoped for, because the ship was sold in 1816 and the company dissolved.

In 1816, the steam packet Greenock replaced the Elizabeth. The Greenock was 85.3 feet in length. She remained less than a month on the Runcorn run, before being transferred to the Liverpool to Ellesmere Port route, taking travellers to and from the Chester canal.

Other steamers also criss-crossed the River Mersey in 1816, and soon more followed. The ferries were no longer dependent on the wind, and could run to timetable, which made the service much more reliable.

And the crossing was quick. The time recorded for the Aetna, which began a service from Liverpool to Tranmere in 1817 and continued for fifteen years, is five minutes.

The steamer service is a plot point in my story, which is set in 1816. My hero has purchased a half ruined manor house, and is restoring it to sell to a Liverpool business man, since steamers mean a regular and reliable service now connected this peaceful countryside to the city.

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Penitence on WIP Wednesday

I had two choices today, since Wednesday this week is both St Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. I’ve gone with penitence, saying sorry, or failing to do so when it was called for.

Do you have that in one of your stories? Share an excerpt. Doesn’t have to be a main character, either, although mine is. In both of my current works-in-progress, my main characters put their foot in things. Here’s my hero Bear realising that he has messed up. Don’t worry, Bear. You’ll do worse before the story is over.

As Bear drove away from the cottage later that day, he was berating himself for being every kind of idiot.

Today, he had failed Rosa not once, but several times. First, he should have realised she had nothing fit to wear to church. He’d see the much-mended and faded gowns she wore every day, and knew she’d had little to no income for years. He’d had not time to repair the matter, since it wasn’t until she paled and stiffened at the church gate that he’d even thought about what she was wearing.

What courage she had. Head up, back straight, she’d marched into church beside him as proud as a duchess in silken splendour, and if her hand trembled on his arm not a soul but him would ever know.

Second, he had not thought about the reaction of the villagers when they heard the banns. Not until the rector started speaking and the whole church went silent. Then came the buzz of whispers, and Lady Hesquith standing. They brushed through it, thanks to the squire’s intervention and the rector’s support, but Bear could have bypassed the risk by simply not taking her to Matins today.

She’d impressed him again after the service, accepting good wishes with a smile and word of thanks, and ignoring those who glowered from the distance.

Third, he’d mentioned her relationship with the squire’s family, and followed up by telling her the full story. Of course she went straight to her father when they arrived at Rose Cottage, and demanded to know whether it was true.

At first, he had been bewildered by the question, then he took one of his erratic dives into the past, and began berating Rosa, calling her Belle.

“All you thought of was yourself, Belle. You knew better than to sneak off with a gentleman, and no true gentleman would have asked it of you. Especially since Pelman was all but betrothed to your cousin. And look where your selfishness led. You disgraced and abandoned. Your uncle sick from the horror of it all, and your cousin so bitter against you that she has had Rosie thrown out of her home. The best thing you can do for any of us is go back to London and leave us alone.”

And after that, he would only say, “Go away,” until Rosa gave up.

His outbreak seemed to confirm the rector’s story, but raised more questions. How did Pelman get into the story? Not the current Pelman, clearly, since he would have been a small child or not even born at the time of the scandal. And which sister gave birth to the baby?

“Ancient history,” Rosa said, her eyes damp but her lips smiling.

Not ancient as long as it had power to affect Rosa. Bear was two weeks away from vowing to love and cherish her all his life, and he was doing a poor job of it so far.

He could fix the wardrobe; had already invited her to take a day trip to Liverpool with him on the first fine day, so they could buy what she needed without the villagers commenting. He couldn’t help but wonder about Lord Hurley’s will. Did the old man truly make no provision for his librarian and the librarian’s daughter? By all accounts, Mr Neatham had been given a pension when he retired, and Rosa had been Lord Hurley’s pet, whatever the propriety of the relationship. It needed further investigation.

As for Rosa and her cousins, he had no idea how to fix it. Rosa’s naive belief that families did feud across generations brought a grim smile. She’d never met his mother.

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Tea with Joselyn

Joselyn, Lady Maddox, had resisted her cousin’s machinations for years, had helped feed the village through the troubled times when the men were away fighting Napoleon and harvests were poor, and had faced down a gang of smugglers.

“But I have never had afternoon tea with a duchess,” she informed the large raven who sat on the window ledge, watching her flutter from one place to another in her anxious preparations. She aligned the cups on the tea table, plumped the cushions on the couch, moved the plate of delicate cakes a little to the right, dusted a spot on the mantlepiece with her handkerchief, and swapped two of the cushions over for a more pleasing colour combination.

The raven made a derisory remark in Raven. “That is easy for you to say,” Joselyn scolded. “She is Felix’s godmother, bird. And I want her to like me.”

“I am already predisposed to do so, my dear,” said Eleanor Haverford, from the doorway. Behind her, the butler was gesturing helplessly. Her Grace had simply swept ahead of him, and what was a butler to do?

“Your Grace.” Joselyn curtsied, trying hard to ignore the blush she could feel heating her face and her chest. “Please. Come in. May I offer you a seat?”

The duchess took her by the hand, and she rose from her curtsey to be engulfed in a perfumed embrace. “You have made my godson a very happy man, my dear Lady Maddox — or may I call you Joselyn? A cup of tea would be lovely, and I would very much like to meet your raven.”

Jocelyn is the heroine of The Raven’s Lady, a short story in my collection Hand-Turned Tales. Hand-Turned Tales is free as an ebook — click on the name to see what other stories are in the book and to find links for download.

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Research, reviews, and erratum

“Don’t read your reviews” is advice I’ve never been able to follow. I love reading my reviews. Most of them are warming. Even when someone doesn’t like the book, they’ll often say why, which either helps me to improve, or lets me know this wasn’t the book for them (vulgar behaviour, one recent reviewer said, when my heroine succumbed to temptation in the person of her hero; on another story, someone marked the book down because there was no on-page sex — you can’t please all of the people all of the time).

I’m really struggling with the very sensible prohibition against opening a conversation with a reviewer whose review is simply unfair, and based on false ideas about which she proclaims with great authority. Hence, this post, which will allow me to vent without (I hope) making a prat of myself.

I’ve written before about what to do with a bad review. And I’ve written about why book reviews matter.

I haven’t written about what to do when a reviewer claims you’ve not done your research. Mostly, the errors in their reviews are pretty obvious, and I’ve winced, picked myself up off the floor, and moved on. Yes, the Roman Baths at Bath had been discovered by 1805. New baths were built on top of the Roman baths in the 12th century, and the original ruins were discovered in 1790, during excavations for the Great Pump Room. And, yes, craftspeople (both men and women) wore  overalls in the early 19th century, for a given meaning of the term (I’m told there were three garments with that name, but I’ve only found two).

It feels different, somehow, when someone makes a claim other people can’t easily check, and justifies a two-star rating on that basis, even though she acknowledged the strength of the writing and the main characters. Somehow, the compliments and rating combined give greater emphasis to her certainty that I had made up the system of advowsons and benefices that existed at the time of the story, and was not reformed until the second half of the nineteenth century.

Yes, reviewer, my rector villain did collect the tithes, and they were his to do with as he willed. No supervision, except that perhaps the person or organisation who had gifted the advowson might use the threat of its removal to change behaviour.  In my story, said landowner had been absent and careless for years, until death brought a new landowner.

I make mistakes, and I appreciate the kindness of the reader community when they send me a message to say ‘I think you meant volunteers, and not militia’. I try hard to avoid errors. I research everything that occurs to me, and take nothing for granted. It’s the stuff that is so much a part of our life that we can’t imagine being without it that trips us up when we look at the past.

So what can I do? I’m thinking about adding Author Notes at the end of a story, listing the pieces of research I’ve done and some of the sources I’ve used. What do you think? Will it help?

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Horse racing in Georgian England

Writing stories set more than a hundred and fifty years ago, especially stories with characters who have a penny or two, means writing about horses — if only to mention them in passing. Many of my books include journeys, so ‘in passing’ has meant researching carriage and riding horses, including how they were bred and stabled. Along the way, I somehow managed to end up with at least two heroes who were horse breeders: almost the only ‘trade’ a gentleman could engage in without attracting social censure.

This week, I went a step further, when a subscriber-only story for my newsletter turned out to be about the heiress to a racing stud, whose marital fate will be decided by a horse race.

But what kind of horse race in the years just after Waterloo? What were the rules? How long was the course likely to be? Even, as it turned out, what might a villain slip to a horse to prevent it from running, and what symptoms of poisoning would the horse show? (Probably night shade, my vet and author friend Lizzi Tremayne and I decided.)

Here are some of the sources I consulted when writing The Fifth Race, which will be available in the newsletter I send tomorrow.

18th Century foundation of the Jockey Club, and silk colours by owner

Going to the races

Horse racing on the Georgian index

Regina Jeffers on Thoroughbred Horse Racing

Training the 18th century racehorse

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Danger on WIP Wednesday

Nothing like a nice fictional piece of disaster to get our heart racing. The heroine or the hero has to survive to the end of the book, which is comforting to know, but meanwhile we authors can put them through all kinds of trials.

This week, I’m looking for excerpts about danger — physical, emotional, moral, societal: you decide. Mine is physical, and is from the subsriber-only newsletter short story I’m writing at the moment, with the plan of getting a newsletter out this week.

One more race, and Rhi would be free. No horse in all of England could catch Atlanta. By the terms of her agreement with her father, she had merely to win next week, and he would sign the new will and rip up the old one.

Her resentment rose, all the more fierce because she understood that Father acted out of love. He wanted to see her married to protect her, he said. She was too young, too inexperienced, too female to own and run the finest racehorse stud in Great Britain. And Father was dying, fading a little more with each day, which she resented more than all the rest.

Atlanta tossed her head and whickered, sensitive to Rhi’s mood. She took a deep breath, and another, letting the anger drain from her with the air she exhaled, emptying herself of everything but the joy of the horse’s movement, the freedom of the gallop, the love of the wild heath across which they raced for the sheer glory of the speed.

***

Cen watched from the shelter of a copse of trees. The mare lived up to all he’d read about her, and the rider too. He had known Rhiannon Enright would be good, but she had more than lived up to the promise she had shown as a child. Back then, she rode astride — and the gossip in London that had sent him here said she did so still, in the races held once a month for the past four months. Today, she was properly and sedately side-saddle, but the way she raced had nothing proper or sedate about it.

She flowed with the horse, the two moving as one beast, all grace, power, and beauty. The horse was magnificent, but Bucephalus was better.

As if on cue, Bucephalus whickered. Cen had tethered him upwind of the mare, and out of sight, but that meant his stallion was downwind, and would be picking up messages on the breeze. Unlikely that Rhi would hear, but better to play it safe. He’d come to find out if Atlanta was as good as they said; if the heiress was as appealing. Not that he had doubted the latter. She had won his heart when she was a baby just old enough to toddle to the stables and he perhaps a year older, if they’d guessed his age right when they found him. She had been just thirteen and his affection beginning to turn carnal when her father exiled him.

No point in dwelling in the past. The army had given him a new name, new skills, friends and a future, and now he had come full circle to the place where he began, able at last to reach out for the prize he had once believed beyond his reach. He had made up his mind, as if there had been any doubt. He would enter the race, and win her for his bride. Yes, and the stables where once he had been the lowliest of stablehands.

But as Cen stood, taking care to stay behind the undergrowth and to move smoothly and slowly, something caught his eye on the valley floor.

There. Beyond the racing mare. Movement in a hollow screened by bushes. He frowned even as he squinted to refine his focus. Horses; two, no three. And men preparing to mount.

And there! Caught in his peripheral vision, two more horses on a hillock like his own, but on the opposite side of the valley. One of the riders raised his hand in a signal to the men in the hollow, and they mounted, keeping low over their horses’ backs.

A threat to Rhi? Cen made up his mind, whistling the signal that told Bucephalus to pull at the tether and come to him. In the time it took for the horse to trot up the hill, and for Cen to adjust the tack and mount, all five of the stranger riders were ahorse and heading on an interception course for the lone female rider. What was she doing out without a groom?

Rhi had noticed her pursuers, and Atlanta was lengthening her stride, aiming for the gap between the two groups. She had the speed, if she was fresh. But Rhi and Atlanta had been racing the heath for an hour. The other horses were gaining.

Cen and Bucephalus, coming from a different vantage, might be able to put themselves between the chasing men and the woman, if they were fast enough, if she kept on the same tack. At the very least, the rogues might hesitate if they knew he was watching, though men who would assault a woman would not hesitate to dispose of such an inconvenient witness.

Atlanta faltered. Ah. Rhi had seen him. He pointed to the other riders and gestured her to keep coming, and after a moment, she nudged her horse on. But the hesitation had the nearest of her pursuers right on her heels.

The look of mingled panic and determination on Rhi’s face as she approached removed any lingering thought that the scenario might have an innocent explanation. Cen pulled the cudgel he kept in a holster hanging from his saddle, holding it aloft as Rhi passed him, and swinging it down on the shoulder of the man immediately following.

The man behind swung wide as the first rider fell, and kept after Atlanta, but Cen faced two more, and beyond them another, muffled in a greatcoat and scarf, shouting, “It’s only one man. Get rid of him.”

Cen grinned. Only one man and his horse. More than enough, though they were coming at him with guns. At his cue, Bucephalus spun around and caprioled, his hind hooves connecting solidly with one of the attacking horses as Cen ducked a bullet and threw the knife from his sleeve at the rider of the other.

A shout from the direction Rhi had fled caught his attention. A party on horseback, and known to Rhi, apparently, for she continued her wild gallop towards them. And the would-be assailant who had followed her had pulled up, and was looking back for directions.

In moments, the attack was over, the fallen men collected by their companions and the group fleeing back the way they had come. Cen let them go. A sting in his arm hinted that he hadn’t entirely evaded the bullet, but it was no more than a scratch.