Chapter One
Bury, Lancashire, 1789
The palm of his hand connected with the middle of her chest and she was on the ground, mud soaking into her skirts. She must remember not to stand near a puddle when she playfully called James a coward. Still, this escapade was nearly worth the inevitable scolding.
‘You have lost your wits if you think I am going to ride that horse,’ James said as Molly rose from the puddle and began to wring out her skirts. ‘Considering who owns her.’
‘You haven’t been listening in church, James. Don’t you know all God’s creatures are free?’
‘That horse isn’t,’ James said. ‘Least, not as far as Rutherford is concerned.’
They were standing at the edge of a pasture. Nearby, ignoring them while she cropped grass and let out the occasional contented whinny, was a bay mare.
Most of the males Molly knew, and James especially, were wiry rather than muscular. So was she – she’d lugged enough firewood in her time and carried bags full of laundry, pails of water. The creature in the field, though, was different. Hard to believe she was the same type of animal as the cart horses that trudged the same streets as Molly, with their bones visible under the skin of their haunches.
Whenever Molly passed this particular patch of grass, she would stand and stare at the mare’s chest, at the bulges of muscle under the sleek brown hair. She reckoned this animal was probably the strongest creature she had ever seen. And unlike the average cart horse, which flinched on occasion when approached, this girl had no need to fear a human voice. She was the pride of Mr Rutherford, the local magistrate, who would ride her sedately through the streets of Bury pretending not to be aware of the envious glances.
Molly had once squeezed herself under the fence at the edge of the pasture. She had wanted to put her hand on the chest, find out whether the mare’s muscles were as pillowy as they looked.
She had never ridden a horse, although she dimly remembered her father lifting her onto one of the cart horses, holding her as she giggled and bounced. Molly couldn’t quite remember what her father looked like now. She remembered his hands, though, under her arms, hoisting her up. His cackle, which matched her giggles. The feel of his whiskers under her hands when he lifted her onto his shoulders and she looped her arms around his neck.
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