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“He’s gone and left them to get up to every sort of mischief.”

“Gone?” Cassie looked up from a stack of books on the floor.

“Off to London, of course. Now those boys are idle and up to no good.”

“Oh,” Honoria said, “he’s not gone.” She gave Cassie a questioning look. “He’s away.”

Cassie pulled herself together. The brief alarm passed. She was annoyed at herself for being susceptible to it. Of course, Sir Adrian wasn’t gone. He had plans. He was to give a summer ball. His messenger boys were still here.

Grandmama flashed an impatient glare at Honoria. “Don’t quibble about words, Honoria. Cassie, you know those boys. Get them sorted. They can’t remain idle and underfoot, and I can’t have them wandering about either. They’ll spook the horses.”

Cassie turned to Honoria, standing in front of her writing table. “I’ll return as soon as I can, Aunt.”

“You go, love. We’ve made great progress.” Honoria gestured at the piles of books on the floor. “We’re sorted. We just need to shelve.”

Grandmama sniffed and turned on her heel. Cassie gave her aunt a quick hug.

*

She arrived at the stables with a basket of sandwiches from Cook, expecting from Grandmama’s report to find mayhem. But the stables had an air of quiet busyness that made her think that her grandmother had exaggerated the boys’ antics. Then she found them.

Over the past weeks, she’d come to know their names. Joe, Ben, and Tim were roughly the same age, which Cassie guessed to be eight. They were skinny and ruddy-cheeked with almost identical mops of brown hair and thick London accents that often required her to ask for repetition. Sir Adrian had outfitted them in gray wool breeches and caps, blue shirts, and sturdy shoes. Now they sat, unmoving, gazing into Hermes’s open stall.

As Cassie approached, Hermes sensed her, and tossed his head. The boys looked up and Joe, who seemed to be their leader, put a finger to his lips. Cassie glanced into the stall and met Dick Crockett’s gaze. Dick smiled and gave her his greeting sign. Cassie nodded in reply.

“Please, Lady C,” Joe whispered. “Don’t make us leave. Dick lets us watch ’im.”

“I won’t,” Cassie whispered back. She wondered how Dick had made their acquaintance and even more how he had got them to sit quietly.

“’e’s softening the ’orse,” said Joe.

Cassie nodded. She was familiar with the ritual with which Dick always began his work. He wanted a horse to stand and let him hold its hooves, but first he wanted to know that the horse had no injuries or lingering pain that would make the animal uneasy. Perhaps because Dick’s primary language was a language of gesture, he used his hands to talk to horses.

She began to lower herself to the floor beside the boys when Joe held up a hand. “Wait Lady C.” He dashed off down the main aisle of stalls and returned with a stool for her to sit on.

Meanwhile, Dick, in his leather apron with his sleeves rolled up, stood on Hermes’s near side, his left hand below Hermes’s shoulder, his right moving gently up from Hermes’s left eye, over the poll, and along a line just below the ridge of the neck and withers. As Hermes grew easy under the gentle touch, Cassie marveled again at the youth’s way with animals.

The boys, to her surprise, sat unmoving, and she wondered what they’d been up to that had prompted her grandmother’s complaint. And how Dick had managed to cast a spell over them. When Hermes’s head drooped and his eyes began to close in drowsy contentment, Dick grinned at Cassie and the boys. He examined each of Hermes’s hooves in turn, applying a hoof pick when needed, and then stepped away from the horse and out of the stall, closing the door behind him.

He signaled with a finger to his lips for the boys to remain silent. Then he led them out of the stables. Outside in the sun, the boys immediately fell into a shoving match. Until Cassie cried, “Stop.”

“Lady C,” began Joe. “Do you speak Dick’s sign language?”

“A very little,” she said.

“I’m learning,” said Ben.

“A fat lot you know,” said Tim.

“Wot we want to know, Lady C,” said Joe, “is, can that ’orse run? Can ’ermes run? Is ’e fast? ’e looks fast.”

“We think,” said Ben, “that Dick knows.”

Cassie turned to Dick, and made the sign that she knew meant question. She both spoke the question, and pantomimed with her fingers the motion of running.

Dick appeared to comprehend instantly, and nodded vigorously. He signed for the boys, and let them mimic his gestures. From the pocket of his leather apron, he drew a pad and a pencil. He wrote, Snell runs Hermes in his pasture. No saddle. No rider.

Cassie borrowed Dick’s pad and pencil and wrote. “Does my grandmother know?”