The Nine Elms Company holds the Bath road from Hounslow to Bagshot. Postillions, coachmen, highwaymen, all of them wearing the same pin, all of them riding by the same code: nobody rides alone, nobody rides sober, nobody rides against the crew.
Kit Ferrers has been riding by that code since he was sixteen. Then the Windsor Men maimed one of their own drivers and sent a woman to keep the books, and Kit went out to watch their road and came back with her.
Adela Wray knows where the Windsor Men keep their colours and how much of her life they own. The Nine Elms council votes her in on probation. When the Windsor Men come to collect her, Kit rides out alone-and pays for it at the next meeting, with his pin in his hand.
