stable. The excitement of the morning, the lack of breakfast, and the uncertainty of her future had her trembling by the time she’d entered Newmarket and turned north on Wellington Street.
The scent of the bakery made her stomach growl. The sight of a woman hanging clothes on a drying line made her worry. By the time she was surrounded by farms and fields, even her brain was shaking. She gave a quick glance around and didn’t see anyone, so she cut across the land toward Jonas’s hiding spot.
Every dense grouping of bushes or stand of trees was an opportunity to stop, remind herself to breathe, quote every Bible verse she could remember—which was approximately three in her current state—and check to see if she was being followed.
By the time the cottage came into view, her heart was pounding harder than Equinox’s hooves had done an hour ago. She ran inside, breaking what was left of the upper hinge and sending the door to the ground. It took five seconds to look around the room and see that Jonas wasn’t there. Rhiannon had been tucked into her stall, and Sophia’s wild entrance had the horse tossing her head and prancing in place.
Sophia rushed through the cottage and wedged herself into the stall beside her horse, pressing her forehead into the animal’s warm neck as she both gave and took reassurance. What was she going to do?
Mr. Whitworth could lose his position. Mr. Barley could lose his license. Lord Farnsworth was certainly on the outs with his fiancée’s family. The money Jonas had tucked away somewhere in this cottage wasn’t even enough to get them to London, where they might find work.
Not even Jonas’s creative ideas and clear thinking were going to get her out of this one. This time, she just might have ruined it all. She wrapped her hand in Rhiannon’s braided mane and cried.
“THE LAST TIME I saw him he was sleeping in an abandoned cottage that was half fallen in.”
Aaron pressed his mouth into a flat line as Miss Fitzroy’s destination became apparent. This was what he’d been missing. Her hesitancy to search for another job, the way she didn’t linger after training despite knowing no one in town, even his initial confusion when hiring the red-haired horse trainer named Fitzroy.
Now that all those questions were answered, a dozen new ones had taken their place.
Why hide the brother? Aaron’s offer hadn’t contained any competence requirement. Even if the man he’d thought he was hiring couldn’t ride as well as Miss Fitzroy, they had to know their opportunities would be greater if he’d been the one to show up on the Heath that day instead of her.
Something else was amiss.
Unsure what he would find inside, Aaron moved toward the cottage slowly. To say the building was not structurally sound was an understatement. At least part of the roof and half of one corner was missing. If it had any furniture at all, it was half-rotten. That someone had been living here, even if only for a week, sent his stomach into knots.
He still held a shred of hope for a reasonable explanation, but he had a feeling his wishful thinking was connected to that moment when Miss Fitzroy had jumped from the horse’s back and landed in his arms.
The fact was she’d deliberately misled him. What else had she lied about without actually telling a lie? Desperate circumstances had pushed more than one otherwise honorable person to make less-than-honorable choices. Perhaps she wasn’t so deep into this that he couldn’t still help her.
The door of the cottage was on the ground, so he was able to ease inside without much noise. Standing in the doorway caused his shadow to stretch across the sad furniture and a pitiful sleeping pallet, but there was no one there to notice. He frowned. Had she somehow known he was following her and managed to climb out over the broken wall without his noticing?
He stepped farther into the room and looked around. The last thing he’d expected to see was a white Andalusian horse standing in a stall made of loose brick and timber.
He swallowed hard. Perhaps she was a horse thief after all.
AS SOPHIA’S TEARS soaked her horse’s coat, her mind whirred. If they could just get to London, there would be opportunities. Even if she had to go back to performing or rent Rhiannon out for ladies to ride in Hyde Park. Maybe she could dress as a boy and find work