She was, however, in the mood for riding and now that she had a beautiful stallion at her disposal saw nothing wrong with taking her husband’s bay out for a gallop through the fields before sunset. With the wind in her hair and the ground dropping away beneath her feet she could finally forget the worries that had plagued her for the past eight months. Worries about if her husband would ever return. Worries about having to let half of the servants go. Worries about being able to pay the half who remained. Worries about ever seeing her friends again. Worries about never finding true love for she certainly had not found it with Henry, insufferable cad that he was. The stallion ate up the ground, his thundering hooves echoing in the evening stillness. Hunched low over his neck, her fingers buried in his mane and her thighs tight against the saddle, Margaret urged the bay even faster as they shot through a narrow stretch of woods and into the meadow beyond. Sheep scattered and cows mooed plaintively as the duo flew past, a blur of sleek brown and fiery red.
