So he wasn’t all that surprised when the boy had run up to him with her letter. He’d been sitting on a wooden fence, watching his horses, and ripped the letter open with his heart pounding. She said she wanted to meet him that week with some important news. He felt a spurt of triumph, a feeling of pride salvaged—in the end he’d known she’d come running. And he was glad, so glad that the sky and the horse had spun after reading her letter, and he’d had to get down from the fence. The truth was that he could have wept with relief to find she was safe—the sense that somehow he was responsible for her had never left him. There was so much news to tell her, too; so much had changed and he hated the thought of leaving the country without letting her know. A week after she’d left for the governesses’ home, and with his father’s blessing, he’d taken out a three-months lease on a five-acre smallholding two miles northeast of Barnet. It was part of a livery stables that had gone broke, so there were twelve reasonable, though shabby, boxes for the horses, plus, and this was a great bonus, some gallops up the road that belonged to a racehorse trainer called Boy Robertson.
