Sovay Read Online Free PDF Page A

the back, or on the roof, she took nothing from them. She treated ladies with great courtesy, bowing, kissing their hands, and leaving them their rings and lockets.
    She did not keep the riches she gained. On her way home, she cast them away, dropping coin on the paths the children took out to the fields to scare birds, leaving gold on the heath to be found by poor furze-cutters, casting silver over hedges into cottagers’ gardens. All this, along with her swagger and gallantry, meant that every day that Sovay rode out her legend grew and the stories about her spread. She was named for the sprig of broom she wore on her hat. The mysterious Captain Blaze.
    She was just about to leave the stable, on yet another expedition, when a hand grabbed her leg. Brady stayed steady, but Sovay nearly jumped out of her stirrups.
    ‘Where are you off to, Missy, on this fine summer’s morning?’
    Gabriel Stanhope, the Steward’s son, stood looking up at her. He was grinning in a way that she found most infuriating, and showed no sign of letting her go. Indeed, his grip on her boot tightened as he waited for his answer.
    ‘Nothing to do with you. Let me go!’
    She had known him since they were children, babies even. They had grown up together. There had been a time when she had considered him as much her brother as Hugh. The three of them had been inseparable, running wild in the woods and fields. She had cried herself to sleep many a night, jealous of the friendship between Hugh and Gabriel, and would have done anything to win his regard, but now they were grown up and things had changed between them. They were still friends and she held him in great affection, but that did not extend to him ordering her about as though they were still seven and ten.
    ‘I’ll come and go as I please,’ she said, ‘and ask no leave of you.’
    ‘Oh, will you now? Dressed like that? It’s a dangerous game you play, Miss Sovay. They are talking in the inn about a new gentleman of the road. Only a slip of a chap, quite a charmer, but reckless and daring by all accounts. Someone has christened him Captain Blaze, for the yellow cockade he wears.’ He nodded towards the sprig of broom still on the brim of her hat from her last ride out.
    ‘Have they?’ Sovay settled back in her saddle. ‘Captain Blaze, eh? I like that.’
    ‘It’s not a joke, Sovay.’ He looked up at her. ‘I hope this madness has nothing to do with that fool Gilmore. He got taken down t’other day, by all accounts.’
    ‘That was different. Now I have another purpose. Much more serious.’
    She leaned towards him, breathing in his familiar smell of hay and horses and tack room leather. His thick red-golden hair was wet where he had sluiced himself with water. His sleeves were rolled up; his shirt was open to the waist, as if he had just finished washing under the pump in the yard. He hadn’t had time to shave. The copper glint of stubble dusted his cheeks. She looked down at his broad face, burnt brown from working in the fields with the men. His wide brow was creased with worry, his blue eyes clouded with concern.
    ‘There’s trouble coming, Gabriel, and I’m going to stop it. You have to let me go!’
    He did so with reluctance and as she rode off all he could do was stand and gaze after her. He had no way of preventing her departure. She was daughter of the house. He strode into the stable, thinking to ride after her, bareback if need be. He knew the way she would take through the woods and out on to the common, knew the place she would stand and wait. He should stay here. There was trouble brewing. Rumours of revolution were sweeping the country, fuelled by events in France. The King and Country movement had started up again with a vengeance, with its demands for oaths of allegiance and its persecution of any known to be of a radical persuasion. Sovay’s father was not popular with everyone. He held extreme views on almost everything and the changes made on his estate