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“Me!” Bridget scowled at her sister.

Izzy bunched her fists, leaned in with a menacing boxer-esque stance likely learned from Max.

Mr. Webster jumped in between them and nudged them away from one another. “Sorry, darling girls. Penny is all mine, I’m afraid. I haven’t had a chance to ride her yet.”

“You can’t.” Bridget’s fists found her hips. “You’re too big.”

“A giant. Yes, I am,” Mr. Webster conceded. “But I can do anything, just like you.” He slung a leg over the pony and somehow curved his body around the tiny sidesaddle. He scrunched up his face. “Eep! Maybe it won’t work.” He spoke in a squeaky, high-pitched voice.

The girls laughed, and Freddy did, too.

Mr. Webster’s eyes went wide, his arms flailed to the side.

He was going to fall.

Freddy leapt for him. “Grant!”

He plummeted off the side of pony’s insubstantial height, tucked, and rolled his backside overhead until he rocked up to his feet with a flourish. “Ta-da!”

He’d been clowning. Never in trouble for a single moment.

The girls cheered and clapped, and Freddy clutched her worried heart. Worried? Silly. He was a trick rider. She should not have flinched. But she shrank back several paces, afraid to speak, afraid of the emotion clenching her throat tight. Two warring emotions—fear for his safety and a softer something that felt like slipping between warm blankets on a cold night. The girls lit up around him, and that made her light up as well.

Dangerous.

A shadow rained over her as a fine mist began its descent from the heavens. “Freddy?” Mr. Webster’s hand fluttered onto her shoulder like a butterfly. Such a strong hand. Such a gentle motion. “Did I scare you? I did not mean to. A thousand pardons.”

She waved the apology away. “I was startled. That is all. I’m fine.”

He nodded and stepped back, breaking contact. “I’ll save my tricks for the amphitheatre.” He turned toward Izzy and Bridget. “No one rides the pony, I’m afraid. She needs rest. She told me so.”

The girls continued arguing with him as they walked a quick pace back to the mews behind the Cavendish townhouse. He surely could not speak with ponies. They would never believe it.

He most certainly could, though he could never prove it. They did not speak to him unless others were neither looking nor listening. A sad state of affairs, but the naked truth.

The girls tittered at the word naked, and Mr. Webster turned red as a winterberry, glanced at Freddy, and murmured, “Sorry.”

He was always apologizing to her. No need to. She’d tried to tell him that with a smile. But it felt a bit soggy. Like her shoulders and pelisse. No matter how light the mist fell about them, it still sank heavy into the cloth, settled against her skin. The brim of her light bonnet began to sag, looking no doubt like a mopey child. Women’s clothes were insubstantial things, often incapable of performing the duties they were created to perform. She untied the sodden bonnet strings and flopped the bonnet off her head.

The mist frenzied about her hair, frizzing it, and somehow slicking it to her skull at the same time. She peeked at Mr. Webster. He did not seem slighted by the rain. His hair curled at the nape of his neck, a shiny fall of silk ending at the steady cliff edge of his shoulders. The mist lay beaded atop the wool of his greatcoat, not even daring to soak in. She wanted to step behind him, wrap her arms around him, and grasp the coat’s edges to pull it off his body then—

The doors to the mews burst open, and a groom sauntered out. “Lady Woodfeld, Lady Eaden wishes to know if you and the girls would like to stay for tea.”

Freddy would like nothing better. Except for things tall and strong she could not currently have. “Yes, that would be lovely.” Freddy knelt down to her daughters’ level and booped both their noses. “I am so very proud of the both of you today. Now, thank Mr. Webster and go find Pansy.”

“Pansy?” Izzy’s eyes lit with mischief. Something whole would be broken soon enough. A teacup or a vase, no doubt.

Freddy nodded. “We’re staying for tea.”

“Thank you, Mr. Webster!” they said together. Then bolted.

Freddy stood. She had him alone. Even the groom made himself scarce, taking Penelope deeper into the mews and out of sight. Now. What would she do with him?

Say what she wanted to say, that’s what.

They listened to the patter of rain on the roof and watched it drip into puddles on the street, rippling water outward until there was no more room to grow.

“Mr. Webster,” she finally said into a rain-filled silence grown taut with unsaid words, “thank you again.”