“Get down,” he growled, and to make sure there was no possibility of mistake, he grabbed the frightened horse’s bridle with one hand and the man’s belt with the other. Before the perspiring burgher could do more than gape down at him, Matt had hauled him out of the saddle and vaulted up himself.

“My horse,” the man cried. Then, with a note of horror, “It’s him.”

But Matt had already set his heels to the horse’s sides. He sent the animal plunging toward the edge of the crowd, knocking down those who were slow to get out of his way. Curses and screams followed his progress. Another shot-from a pistol, by the sound of it-whistled frighteningly close to his head. This added to the crowd’s panic, which aided him. He reached the road at last and crossed it quickly, too canny to travel on it in either direction. They would look for him first along the road…

Leaning low in the saddle, one hand pressed tight against his hip in an effort to stem the blood that ran warm and sticky down his side, he galloped across the field that ran at a right angle to the road. He had no idea whether they were after him yet; in his lightning glances back he had seen no one, no cavalry charge of soldiers brandishing rifles, no rush of guards on fat farm animals. Likely the crowd was hampering pursuit-not that it mattered. If they weren’t hard on his heels now, they soon would be. They would search the four corners of the kingdom for him if need be.

His escape would be a hideous black eye for Queen Victoria’s government, and they would be tireless in their quest for vengeance. The odds were high that he wouldn’t get more than five miles before he was captured. Matt’s teeth gleamed brightly in the morning sun as he considered that. He’d always been one to bet on long shots, and as often as not, they’d paid off. That brief smile flashed again as he sent the horse over a low stone wall and into the valley below it. The odds had been considerably higher this morning that he would be dead by now. Instead, he was alive, free as the air, the sun warm on his face and a horse beneath him. He just might manage to cheat the devil one more time. Thinking that, for the first time in a long while Matt laughed out loud.