They Valued the Duke’s Widowed Bride at Four Pounds and Mocked Her as a Horse-Dealer’s Leftover—Until She Saved a Condemned Foal, Heard Terror Inside the Estate’s “Killer” Stallion, and Realized the Stablemaster’s Left Hand Might Explain Both a Stolen Champion Mare and a Dead Boy

Gabriel followed until Mercy put her hand on the killing-box bolt.

“Open it,” he said.

The groom obeyed.

The black colt exploded backward before the door had fully cleared.

He struck the boards, flanks pumping, old sweat crusted white across his hide.

Mercy did not enter.

She watched.

His attention was not fixed on her.

It remained locked on the near wall.

The left side.

When she shifted right, his eye followed normally.

When a groom moved on his left, the horse convulsed.

“He isn’t defending himself from people,” Mercy said. “He’s defending himself from something that approaches one particular way.”

The colt screamed and lunged.

Mercy stepped sideways.

Gabriel caught her shoulder and pulled her clear of the swinging head.

“Don’t.”

She let him move her.

Then she looked directly at him.

“Feel his pulse.”

He stared at her.

“Under the jaw. When he settles enough.”

“I am not going into that box.”

“Neither am I asking you to.”

Old Thady Muir, a groom who had kept horses longer than Mercy had lived, came forward instead.

Mercy showed him where to place two fingers.

He waited.

Touched.

Then his lined face changed.

“Too fast.”

“For how long?”

Thady kept feeling.

“Too long.”

“A truly enraged horse tires,” Mercy said. “Fear can keep a heart racing, but this is beyond fear alone.”

Gabriel looked toward the feed bucket.

Mercy did too.

Nan’s warning returned.

Fouled.

Smelt wrong.

Ignored for three years.

“Something is being given to him,” Mercy said.

The stable went silent.

Vaux remained at the rear.

Mercy turned only far enough to see him.

“If the dose is stopped and I am wrong, he remains dangerous. If I am right, his body begins to quiet.”

“That is a great wager,” Vaux said smoothly, “from a woman Pell priced at four pounds.”

Nobody laughed.

Mercy let the insult lie where he had placed it.

She addressed Gabriel instead.

“No one feeds this horse except from clean stores measured before witnesses.”

Vaux stepped forward.

“I keep the stable.”

Gabriel looked at Mercy.

Then at the sweating colt.

Then at his stablemaster.

“For eight days,” the duke said. “Do it her way.”

Vaux’s jaw tightened so slightly another person might have missed it.

Mercy did not.

By noon the rescued foal stood.

Three days later he was strong enough to butt Mercy’s hip for attention.

She named him Sixpence.

A private joke nobody understood.

She was standing in the paddock with him when two low notes escaped her lips.

Her father’s whistle.

Three neglected weanlings across the field raised their heads.

Then they came.

Not because she carried grain.

Because they knew her now.

Sixpence swung after them.

Four young horses gathered around the woman men had valued at less than a saddle.

Gabriel watched from the stable corner.

Old Thady removed his hat.

“I’ve kept horses sixty years,” he said loudly enough for every groom to hear. “Whatever she came here as, she is a horsewoman.”

Mercy touched Sixpence’s neck and let the words stand.

Then Josiah Pell rode into the yard.

The man who had delivered her.

The man who knew horse prices better than most men knew their own families.

His eyes traveled past Mercy.

They settled on Ravensmoor’s famous grey mare.

One heartbeat too long.

“Fine picture,” Pell said. “A foal from a mare everyone swore barren.”

He smiled.

“Your Grace ought to count your greys before the spring fair. A man can lose track of what he’s breeding.”

He called it a joke.

Mercy knew it was not.

She looked toward Vaux.

For the first time, the stablemaster looked directly at her.

Not dismissively.

Not through her.

He looked at Mercy as a man finally recognizing danger.

And Mercy, still surrounded by horses that had answered her whistle, understood that whatever had happened at Ravensmoor was larger than one poisoned colt.

Her father’s old day-book was locked in her traveling chest upstairs.

Inside it was an entry about a valuable Ravensmoor grey that had supposedly gone barren just before her bloodline became enormously profitable.

Mercy laid her hand on Sixpence.

Then she turned toward the house and began walking for that book.

Mercy crossed the stableyard with Pell’s careless warning following her.

Count your greys.

Upstairs she unlocked her chest and removed her father’s day-book.

He had treated horses for gentlemen, farmers, dealers, carriers, and men who thought an impressive coat could hide bad legs.

He wrote everything down.

Years earlier he had recorded the Ravensmoor mare called Damson.

Grey.

Wall-eye on the off side.

A distinct splint on the near foreleg.

He had also written something stranger after being told the mare had gone barren.

A valuable mare did not conveniently lose her fertility the same season her offspring became worth several times their former price.

He had suspected fraud.

He died without proving it.

Mercy returned to the yard.

Gabriel was standing outside the room where his brother’s tack still hung untouched.

Kit’s old coat remained on a peg.

A snaffle gathered dust where the boy had left it.

Gabriel stopped at the threshold.

Three years of grief held him there.

Mercy entered alone.

She lifted the bit.

“Come here.”

His face closed.

“You do not command dukes very cautiously.”

“I am not asking the duke.”

He crossed the threshold.

Mercy took his hand and guided it down the leg of a quiet saddle horse.

“Feel there.”

He did.

“Cool. Tight. Sound.”

She moved his fingers.

“A damaged tendon would tell you something different.”

Gabriel closed his eyes.

His hand remained beneath hers.

“Kit could do this.”

Mercy waited.

“In darkness,” Gabriel continued. “He knew horses better than anyone here.”

His eyes opened.

The conclusion reached him without her saying it.

“A boy who could read a lame horse by touch would know if his favorite mare had been exchanged.”

Mercy removed her hand.

“Yes.”

“And a boy that capable does not simply become reckless overnight.”

“No.”

Gabriel looked toward the yard.

For years he had survived by believing Kit’s death was an accident caused by Gabriel’s negligence.

Now negligence offered an almost merciful explanation.

If the horse had been deliberately drugged, and if Damson had been deliberately switched, Kit might have been killed because he knew too much.

Mercy gave Gabriel the day-book.

“My father believed Damson was being used elsewhere.”

The following morning Mercy tested the grey mare in Ravensmoor’s paddock.

She whistled.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

The mare heard perfectly.

She simply did not know the call Kit had used since she was young.

Gabriel brought his father’s stud ledger.

The old duke’s description matched Mercy’s father’s notes.

Wall-eye.

Splint.

The living mare had two ordinary brown eyes and clean forelegs.

“This is not Damson,” Mercy said.

Old Thady’s face collapsed.

Vaux had kept everyone else away from the grey for years under Gabriel’s orders.

A nervous mare, he claimed.

Best left to one experienced hand.

Mercy shut the book.

“Do not accuse him yet.”

Gabriel’s anger sharpened.

“You believe my stablemaster stole from me.”

“I believe the horse is wrong. I believe the black colt was drugged. I believe Dob is frightened of Vaux. Belief is not evidence enough to keep the true mare alive once the guilty men know we understand.”

Eight days of clean feed transformed the black colt.

His pulse slowed.

His eyes softened.

One morning Dob offered him a carrot.

The horse took it gently.

The boy began to cry.

“He doesn’t hate me.”

Mercy understood those words mattered beyond the animal.

Before Kit’s fatal ride, someone had forced Dob to hold the colt.

Dob remembered a hot smell beneath the girth.

He remembered Vaux’s left hand.

A low two-note sound.

Then threats after Kit died.

But terror closed the boy’s throat whenever he tried to speak the whole account.

That evening Mercy told Gabriel another truth.

She had not arrived at Ravensmoor accidentally.

When Pell offered the marriage arrangement, she recognized the estate’s name.

She had deliberately made herself the bride because it was the only way she could enter the stable her father had suspected.

“You arranged to be sold.”

“I arranged to get through your gate.”

“For horses?”

“For my father’s unanswered question.”

She looked toward Kit’s tack room.

“I did not expect your brother.”

Nor, she left unspoken, had she expected Gabriel.

He understood anyway.

Their first kiss was brief.

Asked, not taken.

Then Gabriel requested one thing.

“Whatever comes next, do not go alone.”

Mercy agreed.

She broke that promise within days.

Pell’s yard held the records they needed.

Gabriel’s presence there would attract attention.

Mercy rode out alone.

In Pell’s office she found four years of breeding fees connected to a Ravensmoor grey.

Beside the payments appeared the same initials repeatedly.

S.V.

Half the money to Vaux.

Pell caught her reading.

He did not imprison her.

He did something more dangerous.

He let her leave.

That afternoon Vaux reached Gabriel first.

He told the duke Mercy had secretly visited Pell.

He reminded him she was a horse-dealer’s daughter.

He produced enough truths to make a convincing lie: perhaps Mercy and Pell had manufactured the entire accusation in order to discredit Ravensmoor stock and buy it cheaply.

Gabriel did not call Mercy a liar.

He did worse.

He stopped asking questions.

He ordered the black colt confined again.

No horses moved.

Nothing changed until the spring sale brought public witnesses.

Mercy saw old fear close over him.

“I went to Pell because I feared your presence would ruin the evidence.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“I broke my word.”

Still nothing.

“But the colt will be drugged again now that Vaux controls his bucket. Watch the timing.”

Within the hour the screaming returned.

That night Nan came to Mercy carrying a grease-stained kitchen book.

For three years she had recorded the black colt’s feed.

Cross after cross.

Fouled.

Sharp smell.

Told to mind my own work.

Dob came behind her.

This time the boy told everything.

The hot substance beneath the girth.

Vaux’s left hand.

The soft chirrup.

Kit riding out.

The fall.

Vaux telling Dob that if he spoke, everyone would say the stable boy had caused the death.

“I’ll tell it publicly,” Dob whispered. “But let the horse tell first.”

Mercy realized Vaux had given them their opportunity.

He had arranged Ravensmoor’s spring horse sale before the entire county.

Buyers.

Gentry.

Horsemen.

Officials.

Everyone who had mocked Mercy would be present.

Five weeks passed.

Eight days before the fair, Gabriel finally opened the killing-box himself.

The colt’s racing pulse was exactly as Mercy had predicted.

Gabriel felt it beneath his own fingers.

Then he tested Vaux with a false rumor.

The true Damson had been found.

Vaux’s face remained calm.

His hands stopped.

That was enough.

Gabriel came to Mercy the next morning.

“I doubted you because he wrapped a lie in truths.”

Mercy waited.

“Tell me what you require.”

“You beside me.”

“You have it.”

Then he handed her the legal settlement he had arranged independently.

A cottage.

Income.

Held by trustees beyond his control.

Hers whether she stayed married to him in practice or left Ravensmoor.

“I will not have your freedom depend upon my generosity,” he said. “If you remain tomorrow, you remain because you choose it.”

Mercy read the document.

Then folded it.

No debt.

No price.

No cage.

Now they could act as partners.

On fair morning the county flooded Ravensmoor.

Vaux publicly challenged Mercy to prove the black colt had been poisoned.

She accepted.

Nan brought her records.

A veterinary surgeon examined the sealed feed bucket and confirmed it contained a powerful irritant capable of keeping a horse unnaturally distressed.

Then the killing-box opened.

The supposedly murderous black colt walked quietly into the crowded yard.

Mercy whistled to the grey mare offered for sale as Damson.

The mare did not answer.

A second grey appeared at the far gate.

Wall-eyed.

Splint visible on the near fore.

Mercy whistled.

The mare answered instantly and crossed the yard toward her.

The true Damson had come home.

A magistrate stepped forward.

“A switched blood mare establishes theft,” he said. “It does not establish murder.”

Mercy laid her palm against the black colt’s neck.

“No.”

Then she turned toward Simeon Vaux.

“This does.”

Mercy kept her hand on the black colt.

“He has been girt by three men this morning,” she said. “Master Muir. Mr. Reeve. And a farm hand with no knowledge of our accusation.”

The veterinary surgeon nodded.

“The horse stood quietly for all three.”

Mercy looked across the yard.

“Master Vaux has tended him for three years. Let him girth his own horse.”

Vaux did not move.

Gabriel stood beside Mercy.

Not in front of her.

Not speaking for her.

Beside.

“Do as the duchess asks,” he said.

Every eye in the yard settled on Vaux.

For years he had survived because everyone expected fear to remain private.

Kit was dead.

Dob stammered.

Nan worked belowstairs.

Gabriel avoided the stable.

Horses could not testify.

And Mercy Aldous had arrived supposedly worth four pounds.

Vaux walked forward.

He approached the colt’s near side.

His left hand lifted toward the roller.

Almost unconsciously, he made a quiet two-note chirrup.

The horse came apart.

His entire body locked.

The whites of his eyes flashed.

Sweat appeared almost instantly along his dark hide.

Then came the scream.

The same sound Ravensmoor had heard for three years.

The same scream men had called murderous.

But now a hundred people watched the cause arrive before the reaction.

One left hand.

One sound.

One movement toward the girth.

Dob pushed through the crowd.

“I held him!”

His voice came without a stammer.

Tears ran down his face.

“The morning Master Kit died. Master Vaux made me hold the colt’s head. He put something under the roller. Hot. Smelt sharp. He said it was liniment.”

Vaux turned.

“Boy—”

Dob’s fear flared.

Then the black colt shuddered beside Mercy.

Dob looked at the animal.

And continued.

“After Master Kit fell, he told me I’d hang if I spoke. Said I’d be blamed because I held the horse.”

The veterinary surgeon examined the old white scar beneath the girth line.

The crowd went silent.

“The horse remembers the manner of injury,” he said.

Mercy stroked the colt’s neck from the right side until his breathing slowed.

Then the magistrate ordered Vaux held.

Pell tried to leave.

He discovered that old Thady and two constable’s men were already standing near the gate.

His coping ledger was taken before it could disappear.

Inside were four years of breeding payments from men who believed they were paying privately for the services of a valuable grey mare.

Beside those entries stood Vaux’s share.

The mare had never been barren.

Damson had been removed from Ravensmoor, bred elsewhere for profit, and replaced with a look-alike.

Kit had known Damson since childhood.

He could call her with two notes.

He knew every distinguishing mark on her body.

A substituted mare could deceive a household ordered not to handle her.

It could not deceive the boy who loved her.

He had discovered the switch.

Vaux had needed him discredited or silenced before Gabriel understood.

So he had drugged the black colt and burned or irritated the flesh beneath the girth.

Kit mounted an animal made frantic by pain and stimulants.

The resulting fall had been accepted as the consequence of an uncontrollable horse and a reckless boy.

Vaux then preserved the lie by continually dosing the colt until terror became his reputation.

Gabriel listened without moving.

For three years he had said his own neglect killed Kit.

Now the truth was both kinder and crueler.

He had not caused his brother’s fall.

But his grief afterward had allowed the guilty man to control Ravensmoor.

Mercy saw that knowledge settle into him.

She did not rescue him from it.

Some truths had to hurt before they could heal anything.

The magistrate turned toward Gabriel.

“There remains the matter of Her Grace’s involvement. Mr. Vaux has alleged that this marriage itself was engineered as part of a fraud.”

Before Mercy could answer, Gabriel stepped forward.

He did not defend her innocence as though it belonged to him to grant.

Instead he produced the settlement.

“My wife came here by her own design.”

A murmur moved through the crowd.

Gabriel continued.

“She entered this marriage knowing my requirements. Separate rooms were agreed. No physical or domestic claim upon her beyond what she freely chose. I arranged independent property for her before these events reached judgment.”

He held the paper where the magistrate could see its seals.

“She is free of me materially. Whatever she does today, she does because she wishes to.”

That mattered.

Mercy had been delivered to Ravensmoor as though a debt could determine a woman’s value.

Gabriel made the opposite fact public.

Her staying was not part of the bargain.

Her choice belonged to her.

Mercy looked at him.

Then she put two fingers to her lips.

She whistled.

Sixpence came first.

The chestnut foal she had lifted from frozen mud kicked once as he crossed the yard.

Behind him came the young horses she had handled through winter.

Then others.

Heads raised from rails.

Hooves moved.

The animals clustered around Mercy until the woman Pell had priced at four pounds stood in the middle of Ravensmoor’s horses.

The true Damson pressed her grey face against Mercy’s shoulder.

Nobody laughed now.

Mercy rested one hand on the mare.

“I keep the horses,” she said.

Then she looked at Gabriel.

“And the duke, if he behaves himself.”

A few people laughed.

Not at her.

With her.

Gabriel did something no one expected.

Before the county that had watched him shut his stable and his heart for three years, the Duke of Ravensmoor lowered himself onto one knee in the wet straw.

Not to claim Mercy.

Not to perform a proposal they had already legally completed.

He bowed his head beneath the hand she placed gently against his hair.

A powerful man admitting publicly that her judgment had restored what his authority had failed to protect.

Old Thady removed his hat.

Nan openly wept.

Dob stood beside the black colt with his shoulders straight.

Vaux was taken away.

Pell followed into an investigation his own books had made unavoidable.

The fair never became the sale he had planned.

Ravensmoor’s horses stayed.

So did Mercy.

But staying became meaningful only after leaving had become possible.

In the weeks that followed, the estate changed by practical degrees.

Gabriel reopened the stable records.

Every horse was inspected by more than one experienced hand.

No single employee controlled feed, breeding records, and access again.

Nan’s kitchen notes, mocked for years, became part of the inquiry.

Gabriel apologized to her without qualifying it.

“I should have listened.”

Nan looked at him over a mixing bowl.

“Yes.”

He waited.

Apparently that was the full answer.

Dob moved under Thady’s direct instruction.

No one called him simple again.

The black colt went to pasture.

The first time Gabriel saw him grazing quietly outside the box where everyone had believed madness lived, he stopped walking.

Mercy stood beside him.

“You can go closer.”

“I know.”

He did not.

Not yet.

Mercy did not push.

Healing was not a performance.

Several days later Gabriel walked to the rail alone.

A week after that he carried a carrot.

The colt took it.

Gabriel came back to the house without telling anyone.

Mercy knew anyway.

She saw the orange stain on his glove.

She said nothing.

That evening he sat near the fire while Mercy repaired an old foaling halter.

“You notice everything.”

“No.”

He glanced at his glove.

Her mouth curved.

“Only important things.”

Spring settled over Ravensmoor.

The house opened with it.

Windows that had remained shuttered were unlatched.

Servants crossed the yard without lowering their voices whenever Vaux’s old name came up.

Kit’s tack room ceased to be a shrine nobody entered.

Gabriel did not clear it.

Mercy would not have allowed that even had he wanted to.

They cleaned it.

Kit’s coat stayed on its peg.

His snaffle stayed.

His brushes went back into use.

Memory did not need dust in order to remain memory.

Gabriel began taking the short route from the house to the stable.

At first Mercy noticed every time.

Then one day she realized she had stopped noticing because the detour had become the unusual thing.

Kit’s grave changed too.

For years the stone had carried words implying recklessness.

Gabriel had the accusation removed.

Nothing theatrical replaced it.

Only Kit’s name.

His years.

And a simple line honoring how deeply he had loved horses.

Mercy stood with Gabriel when the mason finished.

“I should have done that sooner.”

“You could not prove it sooner.”

“I could have questioned it.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her.

She did not soften the answer.

Gabriel nodded.

“That is one of the reasons I trust you.”

“Because I occasionally wound your pride?”

“Frequently.”

“You are improving.”

“So you keep saying.”

One warm evening in May, Damson went into labor.

The true mare had returned to Ravensmoor already in foal from the years she had been secretly used for breeding.

Mercy went into the foaling box with her sleeves rolled.

Gabriel followed carrying a lantern.

Months earlier he could not pass a closed stall without taking another route.

Now he stood in deep straw while the mare strained.

“Lower the lantern.”

He lowered it immediately.

“More.”

He obeyed.

Mercy glanced up.

“You make a tolerable assistant.”

“My ambitions have collapsed.”

“They have become realistic.”

Damson delivered without serious difficulty.

The newborn lay steaming in the straw.

Mercy cleared its nostrils and drew it nearer the mare.

Gabriel crouched beside her.

For a moment neither spoke.

Birth in the same stable where death had ruled every conversation felt almost too obvious as a symbol.

Mercy distrusted obvious things.

Yet the truth remained.

The place had changed.

Not because tragedy had been erased.

Because people had finally stopped arranging their lives around avoiding it.

While the foal struggled to gather its legs, Mercy told Gabriel what had become of the others.

Vaux was being held for the summer assizes.

Whatever final sentence the court gave, he would never again quietly control Ravensmoor’s horses.

Pell’s yard had been closed while his ledgers were investigated.

Dob had formally asked to remain under Thady’s training.

The old groom had pretended the request inconvenienced him.

Nobody believed the performance.

The black colt now grazed in the low meadow.

Sound.

Gentle.

No longer called a killer.

Nan had announced that the kitchen was warm again and claimed no responsibility for the miracle.

Gabriel looked at Mercy across Damson’s foal.

“You came here for the horses.”

“I did.”

“And you stayed.”

Mercy continued rubbing the little grey body.

“For you.”

No grand declaration followed.

They did not need one.

Gabriel lowered his gaze, and she saw his face change the way it had on their first night together—except the old self-condemnation was no longer the strongest thing in it.

The foal tried to stand.

Failed.

Tried again.

Mercy waited.

On the third attempt it reached four shaking legs.

She smiled.

Then she gave her father’s two-note whistle.

The newborn’s head turned toward her.

Ears moved.

Listening before it had learned anything about the world.

Gabriel laughed.

One quiet, astonished sound.

Mercy looked at him.

Three years earlier, Kit had died and the stable closed itself around grief.

Gabriel had survived by refusing to look.

Mercy had arrived because she intended to look at everything.

That difference might have destroyed them.

Instead they learned from one another.

Mercy learned that independence did not require doing every dangerous thing alone.

Gabriel learned that protection did not mean deciding what another adult was allowed to risk.

She could leave.

He knew it.

She could remain.

That was the choice she made.

Months later, when another stable boy asked why the Duchess of Ravensmoor still worked with her own sleeves rolled despite possessing servants enough to carry every bucket, Mercy gave him the simplest answer.

“Because the horses do not care about titles.”

Neither did she.

Ravensmoor’s people gradually stopped caring how she had arrived.

Four pounds became a story told with embarrassment by those who had laughed and fierce satisfaction by those who had not.

Sixpence grew.

Dob’s stammer remained when he was frightened and vanished when he spoke of horses.

Thady complained about being given an apprentice and then guarded the boy like blood.

Nan continued writing things down.

Gabriel never again allowed a household to depend on one powerful person being believed while quieter witnesses were ignored.

And Mercy kept both day-books.

Her father’s clean old ledger.

Nan’s grease-marked kitchen record.

Different hands.

Different classes.

The same stubborn refusal to let truth disappear merely because nobody important wanted to hear it.

One evening Mercy found Gabriel in Kit’s old tack room.

He was oiling the boy’s snaffle.

Not mourning over it.

Maintaining it.

“You finally found a use for that room,” she said.

He looked around.

“I think Kit would object to anyone calling it a memorial.”

“He would probably object to the dust.”

“He did.”

Mercy leaned against the door.

Gabriel studied her.

“You have your cottage.”

“I am aware.”

“Your money.”

“Yes.”

“You could keep horses there.”

“I could.”

He set down the cloth.

“And yet you continue to terrorize my household.”

“Our household.”

Gabriel went still.

Mercy waited.

Then his smile came slowly.

“Our household.”

She crossed the room.

He reached for her hand but stopped before taking it.

Even now.

He asked with restraint learned not from etiquette but experience.

Mercy placed her fingers in his.

Outside, a horse called from the meadow.

Another answered.

The sound passed through the open stable doors and into a house that no longer shut itself against its own yard.

Mercy had entered Ravensmoor through a frozen carriage window because men had priced her as part of a debt.

She remained because every practical condition that could have trapped her had been removed.

Her property was hers.

Her work was respected.

Her knowledge had authority without becoming obedience owed to her.

Gabriel stood beside rather than above her.

And when disagreement came—as it did, frequently—neither mistook love for ownership or partnership for surrender.

The day-book eventually took its place on a stable shelf.

Mercy did not lock it away.

Its work was finished.

Nearby hung Kit’s snaffle.

Below it sat a clean feed bucket.

Ordinary things.

That was fitting.

The truth had not been preserved by grand people making grand speeches.

A cook had kept records.

A frightened boy had remembered.

An old groom had admitted what he did not know.

A horse had refused to forget pain.

A mare had answered her own name.

And a widow nobody thought valuable had understood how to listen.

On certain spring mornings, Mercy would stand at the lower paddock gate and whistle.

Sixpence would come first.

The weanlings after him.

Damson more slowly, dignified as age required.

Even the once-feared black would lift his head from the meadow and walk toward the sound.

Gabriel sometimes watched from the steps.

He never called them her horses as a joke about possession.

He understood better now.

They answered because they trusted her.

One morning he came down beside her.

“Do you ever think of the four pounds?”

Mercy looked across the approaching horses.

“Sometimes.”

“Does it still anger you?”

She considered.

“Less than it used to.”

“Why?”

Sixpence reached her first and shoved his nose against her shoulder.

Mercy steadied herself and scratched beneath his jaw.

“Because price and worth turned out to be entirely different matters.”

Gabriel looked at her.

She glanced sideways.

“Do not become poetic, Your Grace. It doesn’t suit you.”

He laughed again.

The sound no longer surprised either of them.

Mercy whistled once more.

Across Ravensmoor, every head came up.