Rake Most Likely to Thrill

Their coach turned in to the docks, the horse slowing obediently to a trot to match the pace. Archer jumped down the moment the coach stopped. The horse still wore the rope bridle, but thankfully no lead line dangled dangerously at his hooves. Archer held out his hand and approached slowly. ‘Easy, boy.’ The horse blew out a loud snuffle, flecks of foam at his mouth. The running had started to wind him. A horse like him should be able to run for miles, but poor nutrition and hard labour had taken their toll on his natural endurance. They had not, however, taken their toll on the horse’s sense of a good man. The horse stood patiently, letting Archer put a hand on his long nose and another on his neck.

Archer stroked the sweaty coat and spoke in soft, reassuring tones. ‘I’ve got a good home for you. The ostler at the hotel is going to take you there after you have had a rest. There are green pastures. You can run all day and eat orchard grass.’

‘He doesn’t understand you, Arch.’ Nolan chuckled, coming to stand on the horse’s other side. ‘He sure is a game fellow, though, to chase after you. Smart too. You’ve got to respect that.’

And wonder at it. Archer leaned his head against the horse’s neck. People only left when there was no reason to stay. He knew that perhaps better than anyone. His mother had kept him bound to England when he would have left perhaps years ago. Now she was gone and so were his reasons. Were horses any different?

Archer walked the horse to the back of the hired coach and tied him on behind. He gave instructions to the driver and a few coins to deliver the animal back to the mews at the Antwerp Hotel. The ostler would be expecting him. He gave the horse a final pat. ‘Trust me,’ he whispered. ‘Everything will be fine.’

‘Except that you will be five pounds poorer.’ Nolan gestured with a laugh towards a tall, dark figure standing alone on the pier. ‘Haviland’s already here. I told you he would be, and look, he’s got his fencing cases with him. He couldn’t be parted from them for even a night.’

Archer gave an exaggerated grimace and handed over the money, more concerned about the fact that Haviland was alone. ‘Where’s Brennan?’ Nolan called out as they joined Haviland.

‘Did you expect him to be here, scholar of human nature that you are?’ Haviland teased and then his tone tensed. Archer could hear the worry. ‘I had hoped he was with you.’ Haviland motioned to the boat. ‘We have to board. The captain is ready to leave. There’s no more time. I was worried I’d be sailing alone.’

‘Well,’ Nolan said cheekily, ‘we were rescuing horses.’

‘And throwing knives at people’s shoulders. Don’t forget the knives part,’ Archer added crossly. He was tired, concerned about the horse and Brennan. It seemed an ominous note to leave on. Perhaps it was an omen that he should stay behind? He could take a few days and deliver the horse himself to Jamie Burke over in Folkestone. He could find Brennan. They could catch a boat together. It was a sensible solution. He should offer...

No, he told himself firmly. He wasn’t going to give in to the excuses no matter how practical they seemed. He’d put this off long enough, put others’ needs ahead of his own long enough. He was getting on that boat. Perhaps he prevaricated out of cold feet at the last. If he took this step, there would be no turning back. His step would be larger than the others. He was going to find a new life, a new family.

The trio boarded the boat reluctantly and took up positions at the rail, their eyes glued to the wharf, each of them lost in their own worries about Brennan. The glances they exchanged with each other all communicated the same thought: What could have happened? Brennan had been with them last night at dinner. It wasn’t, Archer knew, a matter of where Brennan was, but a matter of whether or not he was safe. Nolan tried to keep everyone’s spirits up by wagering on Brennan’s arrival, but to no avail. By the time the anchor’s chains began to roll up, there was no sign of their fourth companion.

Archer bowed his head to the inevitable. Brennan wasn’t coming. It wouldn’t be the same the trip without him. It might be a whole lot safer, but it would lose something all the same. Wherever Brennan went, there was life and fire, he made everything exciting.

A blur of movement on the wharf caught his attention. Archer lifted his head. Beside him, Haviland saw it too. It was Bren! Haviland began shouting and waving madly. Brennan was running full tilt without his coats, white shirttails flapping like sails in the growing light. Haviland sprinted the length of the boat, yelling instructions: ‘jump,’ and ‘don’t jump here, it’s too wide, jump at the back of the boat where it hasn’t left the dock yet’. The back of the boat was flat for loading and there was a section that sported no railing. It would be Brennan’s best chance.

That was when Archer realised Brennan wasn’t alone. In his excitement, he hadn’t noticed the two men racing behind, one of them armed. There was something more too. Behind the men was a horse, thundering past them, jumping knocked barrels, headed straight for Brennan and the drink. That wasn’t just any horse. That was his horse. Archer exchanged a look with Nolan and they dashed off after Haviland.

The stern of the ship was chaos. Haviland was yelling, Brennan was running, the horse had pulled up alongside him, matching his pace to Brennan’s, but the two men in pursuit were gaining. As long as they kept chasing him, they couldn’t get a worthy shot off. It was when they stopped that worried Archer and that would be soon. There wasn’t anywhere else to run. The ship had nudged away from the dock, leaving a gap of cold dark water between itself and the pier. Archer gauged the distance. Even with Brennan’s speed, it would be close. Not close enough. Bren would need some help.

‘Get on the horse, Bren!’ Archer shouted into the wind, gesturing wildly towards the animal. It would be beyond dangerous. What if the horse refused to jump? What if they both missed the boat deck? Like him, Brennan had been born to the saddle. If anyone could do this, it would be Bren. There was no other choice unless Bren wanted to face pistols. Haviland and Nolan joined him in the wild charades. They held their breaths as Brennan Carr grabbed mane and swung himself up on the running steed. He put his feet to the horse’s sides.

They leapt.

They landed.

Just barely.

Another foot and they would have missed. The shock of the landing and the uneven movement of the deck beneath him brought the horse to his knees. Archer and Haviland raced forward.

Brennan rolled out of the saddle. Haviland was there to catch him, but Brennan pushed him down with a rush of incoherent words. ‘Stay down, Hav! Arch, the horse, keep him down!’

The first bullet whined overhead, missing Haviland by inches. Archer crouched beside the frightened horse, using his words and his hands to keep the big animal from becoming an accidental target. Now that they were all safe, Archer wished the boat would move faster. There was suddenly not nearly enough space between them and the dock. It wouldn’t surprise him to see Nolan’s man from the hotel show up. Everyone else was here, even the horse. Thanks to Nolan and Brennan, the morning had got off to quite a start.

Assured they were out of range, the foursome picked themselves up cautiously, brushing off their clothes and exclaiming over Brennan. Archer exchanged knowing glances with Haviland. It was going to be quite a trip with those two along, but Haviland was smiling as England disappeared. Archer nodded to the reins in his hand. ‘I’ll go speak to the captain about where we can stable this boy.’ As he moved off with the horse, Archer could hear Nolan drawl at the rail, ‘The real question isn’t where you’ve been, Bren, but was she worth it?’

Brennan’s laugh drifted over the wind, as if the mad chase had been a simple lark, as if there hadn’t been bullets fired. ‘Always, Nol, always.’ Sometimes, Archer envied Bren and Nolan their nonchalant ways, not seeming to care too much. They were proof that perhaps the unexamined life was underrated.

There was a makeshift stall above deck where the horse would be relatively safe. The Channel crossing was short. Just twenty-one miles of water separated England from France, but the water could be rough. Archer didn’t want to risk the horse doing further injury to himself, so saw the horse installed and ran a hand down each of his legs to make sure there’d been no damage from his leap.

Satisfied the horse was no worse for his morning adventures, Archer placed a hand on the horse’s neck. ‘I guess you’ll need a name if you’re going to stay with me.’ Archer thought for a moment. ‘How about Amicus? It means friend in Latin, and you were that today. You stood Brennan in good stead when he needed you.’

‘Especially since Cleveland Bays are carriage horses.’ Haviland’s voice was quiet behind him. Archer shrugged. He’d long since stopped caring if anyone heard him talking to the horses.

Archer smiled and stroked Amicus’s long nose. ‘Especially because of that.’ He gave Amicus a considering look. ‘I wonder if you might have been a hunter once, boy? It looked like you knew what you were doing when you made that leap.’ Fearlessly, as if he’d taken hedges and logs, heights and wide spreads, before. Cleveland Bays were the preferred carriage horse of royalty, and Archer knew a few breeders who enjoyed riding to the hunt on them.

Haviland stepped up beside him and petted Amicus. ‘Why do you suppose he did that? It was an extraordinary leap. I know horses that would have balked. He could have been killed.’

Archer gave Haviland a solemn look. ‘He decided England could no longer hold him.’

‘Like you, old friend?’ Haviland ventured. ‘Are you still determined to do this thing?’ Nolan and Brennan might not know of his choice to stay in Italy, but he’d confided in Haviland.

Archer nodded. ‘And you?’ Haviland had done some confiding of his own. Archer wasn’t the only one using this trip as an escape.

‘Yes. I want to taste some freedom, I want to know my own power, to see what might have been before...’ Haviland shrugged, his sentence dropping off. Haviland didn’t have to say it. Archer knew how that sentence ended: before he had to go back and give himself in an arranged marriage to a woman who did not inspire his passions.

Archer silently thanked the heavens again that he wasn’t firstborn. He at least had choices. He just had to make them. He and Amicus had something in common. He too had decided England could no longer hold him.

Chapter Two (#ulink_66436de6-08e5-5692-af06-aa3aa8253248)

The Pantera Contrada, Siena, Italy—early July, 1835

Tonight, nothing could hold her! Elisabeta threw her head back and laughed up to the starry sky. She let the wildness loose, humming through her blood in time to the musicians playing in the Piazza del Conte as she and her cousins drew near to the neighbourhood’s centre. There was already a crowd gathered for the celebration and they were jostled on all sides by good-natured merrymakers filling the narrow streets. She didn’t care. The press of people only added to her excitement. Tonight she was going to dance until her shoes were worn through and then she was going to dance barefoot. She’d dance until the sun came up!

It was her first real party since coming out of mourning and she was going to enjoy it, no matter what, which was no small thing in light of what had transpired this afternoon. Elisabeta grabbed her cousin Contessina’s hands and swung the younger girl around in a gay circle. ‘I’m going to do something scandalous tonight,’ Elisabeta declared, watching Contessina’s pretty brown eyes widened in shock.

‘Do you think that’s wise? Papa just announced—’

‘Especially because of that!’ Elisabeta cut her off. She wasn’t going to think about it—the fact that her uncle, Rafaele di Bruno, the contrada’s capitano, had bartered her off in a proposed marriage to Ridolfo Ranieri, the relative of another neighbourhood’s priore in order to secure an alliance for the all-important Palio.

Like her first marriage, it was not a match of her choosing and it wasn’t fair. Five years ago at the age of seventeen, she’d served her family and married the very young Lorenzo di Nofri. It was meant to be something of a dynastic connection for the family, and her feelings had not been considered. Then, Lorenzo had died after three years of marriage and she’d dutifully but begrudgingly done her year of mourning for her adolescent husband.

Now, at the very first decent opportunity, she was to be married off again. This time to a man in his late forties, more than twice her age, heavy and gouty from rich food and wine. Where would the chance for a family of her own be in that? Elisabeta forcefully shoved away images of what would be required of her to produce a child in that alliance. There was no place in this evening of celebration for dark thoughts.

She deserved better although her uncle disagreed. He was quick to point out she was lucky to marry again at all. She was no fresh virgin like Contessina, but a widow who’d been tried in marriage and hadn’t managed to prove her fecundity. Who would want such a woman? She should be honoured by the Priore of Oca’s attention and the chance to serve her family’s greatness.

The Piazza del Conte came into view and Elisabeta pulled Contessina forward with her to take it all in: people, music, lanterns lighting the piazza like a magical fairyland. Celebrations like this were being held all over the town tonight, with every neighbourhood, or contrada, hosting its own party. It was Siena at its best and she’d missed it sorely in the years of her marriage spent in Florence. She’d missed her family, the festivals and, perhaps most of all, the horses.

It wasn’t that Florence didn’t have festivals or that Lorenzo’s rich family didn’t have horses, but they weren’t hers and she was seldom allowed to work with them. Returning to Siena had been like coming alive again, which made the proposed marriage seem all the more cruel: to live again, only to face another sort of death.

Contessina tugged at her arm, slowing her down. ‘What will you do?’ she asked with a hint of worry.

‘I don’t know—something.’ Elisabeta laughed. When the inspiration came she’d know it. Spontaneity was best left unplanned. ‘Maybe I will dance with the next man I see!’ Elisabeth announced, but that was hardly scandalous to her way of thinking. She’d have to do better than that to be truly scandalous. She’d made the remark mostly to shock Contessina, who loved her dearly, but didn’t always know how to respond to her exuberance. Her uncle ran a strict household.

‘You can’t!’ Contessina whispered a warning. Contessina’s own dancing partners for the evening had already been arranged by her uncle and her brother, Giuliano. Even though it wasn’t a formal ball, Contessina’s partners were to be respectable young men from appropriate households in the contrada. ‘What if the next person you saw was someone from Aquila?’ Contessina dared to breathe the name of their rival contrada.

Elisabeta threw her a smug smile. ‘I would even dance with an Aquilini.’ She would too, but that was hardly likely. There would only be men of the Pantera contrada, her family’s neighbourhood, here tonight. No one would dare venture away from their own neighbourhood celebrations. Still, stealing a dance was hardly the type of scandal she was thinking of, it was far too tame.