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Sarah had never looked back; Cousin Masham was read such a
    jeremiad as must have caused her ears to ring for weeks afterward, and at the end of
    that confrontation Sarah and the single trunk containing all her worldly possessions
     

 
    reposed within Mrs. Kennet’s well-sprung traveling coach and were wheeling smartly
    along the road to the harbor.
     
    But what had begun as seeming indigestion had in the end been death for Sarah’s
    fiery mentor only a few weeks later, and now Sarah was more alone than ever before.
    She was not so certain as she had been in Baltimore that the words written in the
    missive Mrs. Kennet had given her constituted a legitimate claim upon the Duke or
    Duchess of Wessex – and even less certain, now that Mrs. Kennet was gone, that
    the form of payment would be anything that plain Sarah Cunningham of Baltimore,
    Maryland, and the United States of America could like.
     
    It is your own fault. You made this choice; you must make the best of it, Sarah
    told herself firmly, and began to determine, with utmost practicality, what she might
    best do in Bristol to engage transport to London so that she might do what Mrs.
    Kennet had so wished her to do.
     
    Chapter 3
     
    Ten Leagues Beyond the Wide World’s End
     
    (April 1805)
     
    It was good to be out in the open again, even if her life could now be measured
    only in scant hours. The sharp April air cut at her lungs and the whipping wind
    brought roses not of fever, but of frost, to her cheeks, but Lady Roxbury did not
    care. Her sleek brown hair was covered by an ermine shako tied with wide grosgrain
    ribbons dyed to match the coquelicot velvet of her erminelined driving pelisse.
    Wrapped in the garment’s elaborately frogged and gold-laced folds, Lady Roxbury
    did not feel the bite of the evening chill as the gentle Wiltshire countryside unreeled
    behind her.
     
    The high-perch phaeton shivered and trembled beneath her as she urged the four
    match bays to speed and more speed, racing against the Sun itself. It slid inexorably
    westward as Lady Roxbury flicked her whipstring out over the ears of her leader,
    being rewarded with a marginal increase in speed. She must reach the Stones in time,
    or all this would be for naught.
     
    In the distance, the broken outline of the Giant’s Dance appeared on the horizon
    of the rolling Wiltshire downs. At the same moment, Lady Roxbury became aware
    of her own heartbeat as a thundering in her blood. Suddenly the westering sun flared
    dazzlingly bright, burning like the jewel in the skull of the salamander, creature of fire.
     

 
    Arid then the world changed, and the sun that Lady Roxbury raced toward was
    rising, riot setting. The air was chill and damp with morning and blue mist hung upon
    the ground. In the distance the Sarcen Stones were still veiled in night as the rising
    sun kindled an azure world into color.
     
    And then the picture changed again, blue to fire-scarlet, as the sun hung
    spellbound above the evening horizon and all the world was gold. Gold – Blue. And
    only Lady Roxbury’s determination pressed her forward, as night flickered into day
    until the interlocking worlds danced in time with her heartbeat, fire to ice to fire. A
    heaviness, neither cold nor hot but slow as earth, was creeping through her limbs,
    stealing toward her heart. Mercilessly Lady Roxbury plied her whip now, cracking it
    over the. heads of her team until their bay coats were dark with foam and they were
    running flat out. She had passed the kingstone of the Dance and barely noticed, so
    caught up was she in the desperate determination to reach her appointed place. The
    world was mist-grey and now, at last, Lady Roxbury heard what she ought to have
    heard earlier – the earthshaking rumble of an eight-horse coach on the road ahead.
     
    And suddenly the coach was there, filling all the road, and she was desperately
    dragging back on the ribbons to save her team, but the reins slipped through