Victorian Boy || l.s. ✔︎

CHAPTER XXIV

"Eat the rich."

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Achilles would not move.

Harry snapped the reins and tapped the stallion's flank with his heel and riding crop but he stubbornly refused.

The sound of the hounds' hungry snarls rose above the trees like a storm brewing while Clarence's horn grew louder and louder as he drew near.

Angrily, Harry yanked the reins. Achilles clamped down on the bit and stomped forward with a woeful neigh.

♘

Albertine.

Louis stared at his reflection in her large blank eyes as death's mask crept over her sweet expression. Oh how he adored this creature! How he doted on her! When Harry was all but a memory to him, alone at Somerset with his cold father, Louis gave Harry's mare all the love and affection he could not bring himself to bestow upon the young Duke during his visit. She was the thread that connected them across fields and hills, rivers and years.

Who would dare sever this thread?

The horn must have been blaring for some time, but in his grief Louis couldn't hear it, not until he heard his cousin's voice issuing commands to the hounds.

"Lieu in!"

That was a command to search the coverts. Had the hunt begun without him? Why was Beardsley, the Field Master, not issuing these commands in Louis' absence?

A mile away, he spotted his cousin beneath the claw of a bloomless willow tree. They locked eyes. Only, Clarence's eyes were as empty as those of the dead mare in Louis' arms.

"Holloa!" He called, a command to alert the hounds that the fox had been spotted.

Louis looked over his shoulder. There was no fox to be seen.

"Cousin!" He yelled, drying his tears with the back of his hand. "Where is he?"

"Holloa!" Clarence called again.

"Cousin?"

Three hounds with their heads low to the ground crept through the brush.

Louis' heart thudded in his chest. "Cousin... what are you doing?"

"Holloa! Holloa! Holloa!"

The hounds lifted their heads and spotted him.

Louis broke into a run.

♘

Holloa.

Harry heard Clarence's command as he rode at cantor beneath a canopy of buckthorns. He panicked and snapped the reins as hard as he could.

Achilles stopped, tossing his head fretfully. Harry felt like he was riding in quicksand, the moment he would gain traction, the stallion would fight him and he in turn would fight the stallion until they were at an impasse.

Finally the beast moved forward, spurned by his own frustration and not Harry's. They were two animals with two hearts when they should have been acting as one.

"Come on boy, that's it," he coaxed.

Harry spotted several straggling hounds with their noses to the ground. The pack was dispersed.

There was still time.

♘

Louis's boots pounded on the muddy trail as he ran. It was a riding path, the earth loosened by the heavy hooves of horses.