Free Daughters of Rome by Kate Quinn

anyway?”
    “Because I’m getting my noble relatives to help pay for this new team of yours.” Diana twined a finger through one of the racing medallions about her neck. Two horses lost in the first race of the year, before the running had even begun—the Reds team had tangled badly when the hateful Derricus snapped his blue-beaded whip over their heads, and two horses had panicked in their traces. Both inside runners had walked away hobbling. “And if I’m helping to pay, I’m helping to pick.”
    Xerxes grumbled. Diana knew he didn’t like her, but that didn’t bother her a bit. He had just enough respect for her family’s patronage to keep from kicking her out of the Reds stable, and that was all that mattered.
    The farm where they finally disembarked was broad and sprawling, orderly pastures running down a long slope crowned at the top with a small, columned villa. All the best breeding farms lay outside city walls. Diana climbed out of the litter, sniffing delightedly at the cold clean air. So different from the smoke and stench inside Rome’s city walls. If not for the Circus Maximus, she’d quit the city altogether and stay out here where the air smelled clean to the nose.
    A portly steward came out of the villa in greeting, and he and Xerxes lapsed into business. Diana looked down the hill instead, where a man stood leaning on a rail and watching two colts frisking in the field, a big black dog of no particular breed sitting at his feet. She looped her red palla up out of the mud and came to stand beside him. The colts were too young for racing, but she liked the look of them. “Good legs,” she said. “Do you have anything older?”
    The man turned. She was used to surprise when men looked at her, but he didn’t look as if he was surprised by much. “Horses to run, or breed?”
    “To run.” Diana leaned down and scratched the black dog’s head. “For the Reds.”
    “I don’t think much of your charioteer this year.” The Briton’s voice was low and mild. “Doesn’t cut close enough on the turn.”
    “No,” Diana allowed. “I’d do better, but no one’s offering to let me drive.”
    A smile twitched the Briton’s mouth. No one would ever mistake him for a Roman, Diana thought—his hair was too long, iron gray and shaggy; a bronze torc clasped his neck, and he wore breeches instead of a tunic. He wasn’t old, despite the gray hair—thirty-five or forty, tall and broadly built with a cleft chin and a calm face.
    Xerxes came down from the villa then, trailed by the steward, and brusquely introduced himself. The Briton grasped his wrist in greeting rather than bowing. “I am Llyn ap Caradoc.”
    “Caradoc?” said Diana. “I’ve heard that name.”
    “Some have,” the Briton replied, and set off up the slope where the sprawling stables began. His breech-clad legs ate the ground, and she loped to keep up.
    He brought out four gray stallions and put them through their paces. Xerxes began to haggle, but Diana turned away restlessly. The grays ran well, but it would take something better to beat the Blues with their team of savage blood bays. It would take something extraordinary.
    Another large paddock stood, divided into four by rails. Four stallions penned beside each other—Diana leaned against the rail.
    One of the stallions nipped at another, and they lunged over the rail, manes flying. An older stallion in the next pen squealed at them with pinned ears and they went streaking off along the fence instead, racing each other. They passed Diana in a storm of red: chestnuts all, red as a setting sun.
    “Wait,” Diana called to the faction director.
    She was already swinging under the rail and striding into the grass as he and the Briton came to the fence. “This one,” she called, looking at the stallion who squealed at the other two. “He’s older than these other three?”
    “Their sire,” said the Briton. “He keeps them in order. Careful, he doesn’t like