Trial by Desire

A simple carter might once have caught a glimpse of Lady Kathleen at a harvest festival—a close enough look to boast, over a tankard of ale, perhaps, about seeing a duke’s daughter. He wouldn’t recognize her when she was swathed in a heavy cloak and a working woman’s bonnet.

But a man on horseback could be a gentleman. He might, in fact, be the Earl of Harcroft, come looking for his missing wife. And if Harcroft came upon Kate dressed in this fashion—if he recognized her—he might guess the role she’d played in his wife’s disappearance.

All he would have to do was trace her path back a few miles. That shepherd’s cottage wasn’t so very far away.

Kate pulled the hood of her cloak farther over her eyes and slunk closer to the wall. Her hand brushed against grit on its uneven surface. Even though she huddled in her cloak, she set her chin. She was not about to surrender Louisa to her husband. No matter what he said or did.

The man on horseback came into view through the mist just as Kate crested the hill. Shreds of fog splashed around his horse’s hooves, like gray, slow-moving seawater. The horse was a gentleman’s beast: a slim mare, gray as the wisps of vapor that clung to its legs. Not Harcroft’s chestnut stallion, then. Reassured, Kate studied the gentleman himself.

He wore a tall hat and a long coat; the tails flapped behind him in rhythmic counterpoint to the fall of his mare’s hooves. Whoever he was, his shoulders were too broad to belong to Harcroft. Besides, this man’s face was covered by a sandy beard. Definitely not Harcroft, then. Not any man she recognized.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t recognize her, or that he wouldn’t carry stories.

Slowly she let out her breath and turned to look forward. If she didn’t draw attention to herself, he wouldn’t notice her. She looked like a servant; she would be virtually invisible to a man of his class.

The mare’s light hoofbeats pattered up the hill. It moved in effortless contrast to the other poor animal, which was still dragging its Sisyphean burden to the summit. But Kate had her own burden to concentrate on. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the horseman pull ahead of the cart. The tails of his coat flapped briefly across the beast’s blinkered vision. A foot or so of fabric; nothing more.

The horse pulling the cart, however, stopped and shied, pinning its ears against its head in a gesture of equine distress. Kate pressed against the wall as the cart’s wooden shafts creaked. Another flap of the coattails in the wind; when the whip cracked again, Kate winced. The carter’s horse did more than that: it let out a frightened cry and reared up on its hind legs. The cart tilted precariously; the hooves thundered down. Kate heard the crashing splinter of wood, and she whirled to face the animal.

One of the cart shafts had split down the middle. The horse was tangled in halter and traces, and no matter how it strained, it could not escape. When frightened, horses ran; and when they couldn’t run—

Kate caught a glimpse of a dark eye rolled back, ears flattened against the long head. The horse’s blinkered gaze momentarily fixed on hers. Crack went the whip, and the horse reared in response. It was so close, Kate could see its iron shoes as it pawed the air above her head. She felt frozen in that moment, as useless as a rabbit cowering in the grass with a hawk plummeting down. Her hands went cold. Her mind moved sluggishly. She might have counted the horse’s ribs, every prominent ridge, as the hooves descended toward her.

And then the moment of fear passed, and practical considerations overtook her disbelief.

She dropped to the ground in a crouch, just as those massive hooves hit the crumbling wall where her head had been. Once, and bits of stone and crumbling grout rained on her head; twice, and flying chips of rock struck her cheek. The animal whinnied and reared again.

Before the hooves could land a third time, someone stepped in front of her. Whoever it was jerked her to her feet—the sockets of her arms twinged in protest. His body pressed against hers momentarily, a brief imprint of hard muscle fitting against her curves. He turned his back to the beast, shielding her from those iron-clad hooves. It was the horseman—the gentleman with the gray mare. He must have dismounted and come to offer assistance.

She had no chance to protest, even had she wanted to, no opportunity to pull away. His hands clasped her waist, and he lifted her up, up, until her palms scrabbled along the top of the wall behind her. She pulled herself atop it, heart thumping, and glanced down. The horseman was looking up at her. His eyes, liquid brown pools, sparkled at her over that shaggy beard, as if this were the best excitement he’d come upon in weeks. For one instant, she felt a sick thrill of recognition.

I know this man.

But he turned away, and that feeling of familiarity slipped through her fingers, as hard to contain as the gritty pebbles on the wall she clung to.

Whoever he was, he had no notion of fear. He turned back to the careening beast. He moved on his toes with a graceful economy of motion. It was almost as if he were leading the horse in a waltz. The man sidestepped another furious stamp of those hooves.

“There now, Champion.” His voice was quiet but carrying. “I don’t want to crowd you so closely, but you’ll never calm down if I can’t cut the traces.”

“Cut the traces!” protested the carter, clutching the handle of his whip. “What the devil do you mean, cut the traces?“

The gentleman paid him no mind. Instead, he made a half turn, and stepped behind the animal.

The carter held his whip back, his mouth pursed in ugly disapproval. “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?”

The gentleman turned his back on the furious driver. He was talking—murmuring, actually. Kate couldn’t hear his words, but she could catch the tone of his voice, soft and soothing. The beast pawed the air once more, and then danced from hoof to hoof. It whipped its head to the side, trying to keep its eyes on the gentleman behind it. A swipe with his knife, then another; one final adjustment of leather, and the animal came free of the cart.

“What the devil are you doing? That’s my animal you’re freeing, it is!”

The horse surged forward. The carter still held the reins in one hand, and so it couldn’t bolt far. But without the bits of cart swinging around it—and more important, with the carter left to impotently clutch his whip now that the beast was out of range—the horse pranced, pawed the ground in distress once and then, eyeing the people around it, lapsed into a restive silence.

“There,” the gentleman said, “that’s better, isn’t it?”

And like that, it was better. All the other sounds of the autumn morning seemed to resume with his words: the thump of Kate’s heart, the horse’s uneasy stamp on the dust road below her, the impatient sound of the carter beating the handle of his whip against his other hand. She clutched the wall beneath her.

“You gentlemen are all alike. You’re coddling it,” the carter complained. “Stupid animal.”

The last was directed at the horse, which still trembled despite the so-called coddling, its ears flat against the sides of its head. The bearded gentleman—and by the cultured drawl of his voice and the fashionable cut of his coat, he was surely a gentleman—turned to face the carter. He walked toward him and then reached down and gathered the animal’s reins in his hand. The carter relinquished them, staring in front of him in stupefaction.

“Coddling?” the fellow said gently. “Champion here is an animal, not an egg. Besides, I make it a point to be kind to beasts that are large enough to stomp me to bits. Particularly when they are frightened enough to do so. I’ve always thought it foolish to stand on principle, when the principle is about to trample you to death.”

That evanescent sense of familiarity came to her again, troubling as an unidentified smell on the wind. Something in his voice reminded her of something, someone—but no, she would remember that tone of quiet command if ever she’d heard it.

Kate took another deep breath—and froze. She’d seen the beast only in sidelong glances up until now. In the fog, that strange coloration, those odd white spots, had seemed as if they were some curious form of natural marking. But from her vantage point atop the wall, she could see the marks for what they were: scars. Scars where a whip had drawn blood; scars where an ill-fitting harness had rubbed over the course of who knew how many years.

No wonder the poor animal had rebelled.

The carter was holding his hands out. “Here now,” he complained. “It don’t hurt him. My mam always used to say that tribulation was sent to make you stronger. It’s in the Bible. I think.” The carter trailed off, giving the horseman a hapless shrug.

“How curious.” The fellow smiled disarmingly; even through that thick beard, his grin was infectious, and the carter echoed it with a gap-toothed smile. “I cannot recall the commandment to beat animals. But then, I disagree with the premise. In my experience, tribulation doesn’t strengthen you. It’s more like to leave you with a bronchial inflammation that lingers for years.”

“Pardon?”

The gentleman waved a hand and turned back to the animal. “Never trust aphorisms. Any sentiment short enough to be memorable is undoubtedly wrong.”

Kate suppressed a smile. As if the gentleman could see her, his lips twitched upward. Of course, focused as he was on the trembling cart-horse, she doubted he even knew she was still here. Slowly, she slid from the top of the wall to the ground.

The gentleman fished in his pockets and pulled out an apple. The animal’s nostrils widened; its ears came forward slightly. Kate could see its ribs. They were not prominent enough to indicate starvation, but neither were they covered with a healthy amount of skin and muscle. Underneath those healed lacerations, its coat might once have been chestnut. But coal dust and road mud, stretched over scarred skin, had robbed the pelt of any hint of gloss.

“Oh, don’t feed it, for the love of all that is precious,” the carter protested. “The beast is useless. I’ve had it for three months, and no matter how I beat it, still it shies away from every last mother-loving noise.”

“That,” said the gentleman, “sounds like an explanation, rather than an excuse. Doesn’t it, Champion?” He tossed the apple on the ground next to the horse and then looked away into the distance.

He seemed good with the beast. Gentle. Kind. Not that it mattered, because whoever he was, she couldn’t speak to him. No matter how kind he was, he couldn’t know what Lady Kathleen had been doing, not if she intended to keep her secrets safe. Kate began to sidle away from the scene.

“Champion? Who’re you calling Champion?”

“Well, has he got another name?” The man had made no move to get closer to the horse. He stood, a rein’s distance from the beast, looking away from the valley. Toward Berkswift, actually. Kate’s home, just beyond one last rise and a row of trees.

“Name?” The carter frowned, as if the very concept were foreign. “I’ve been calling it Meat.“

“Meet?” The gentleman frowned down at the reins gathered in his hands. “As in a championship meet? A tourney?”

“No. Meat. As in Horse Meat. As in I could get a ha’penny per stringy pound from the butcher.”

The gentleman’s fingers curled about the reins. “I’ll give you ten pounds for the whole animal.”

“Ten pounds? Why, that’s barely what the knacker—”