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Lady Harriet Inskip tilted back her head and breathed in deeply. She could still smell soot, but at least this early in the day it wasn’t completely blotting out the more wholesome odours of dew-damp grass and leather and horse. It didn’t matter that it was still barely light enough to see the trees and flowers, or the curve of the Serpentine. She hadn’t come here to admire the decorous landscape, after all.
She leaned forward and patted her horse’s neck.
‘Come on, Shadow, let’s have a good gallop, shall we? While there’s nobody to tell us we can’t.’
Shadow snorted and pawed at the gravel path to indicate she was just as eager for exercise as her mistress. And then, with just the slightest tap of Harriet’s heel against Shadow’s flank, they were off.
For a few glorious minutes they flew through the dappled dawn, both revelling in Shadow’s power and vitality. For those few minutes Harriet was free. Free as any wild creature that lived purely by instinct. Unhindered by the fetters with which society restricted the movements of young ladies.
But then her peaceful communion with nature was shattered by a sound that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and Shadow to falter mid-stride. It was the neigh of another horse. From beyond a stand of chestnut trees. A neigh so high pitched in outrage, it was almost a scream.
Harriet slowed Shadow to a canter. ‘Easy, girl,’ she murmured as her mount twitched her ears and rolled her eyes. But Shadow kept fidgeting nervously. And Harriet could hardly blame her when she reared up at the precise moment a black stallion burst from the cover of the trees as though it had been shot from a cannon.
At first she thought the black horse was a riderless runaway. But as it came closer, she could see a dark shape huddled on its back and a pair of legs flailing along its flanks.
‘What an idiot,’ she muttered to herself. For the man clinging to the stallion had not put a saddle on it. Perhaps there hadn’t been time. Perhaps he was attempting to steal the magnificent, and no doubt very expensive, animal. The horse certainly looked as if it wanted nothing more than to dislodge the impertinent human who’d had the temerity to ride him without following the proper conventions first. The stallion had just galloped through the trees as if it had been an attempt to scrape the interloper from his back, to judge from the way he began to buck and kick the moment he got out into the open.
‘The idiot,’ said Harriet again, this time a bit louder, as she saw that the runaway stallion was now heading
