Page 17 of Win Me, My Lord (All’s Fair in Love and Racing #5)

As it became apparent the start of the race was imminent, the atmosphere of the grandstand grew in volume and vivacity.

Artemis’s palms went damp, and her heart became an unpredictable butterfly in her chest. This wasn’t from excitement, but rather an indistinct sort of fear—fear that what happened to Dido would be repeated today.

She tried to reason with it, but it wasn’t listening as it ran rampant through her body.

She even smiled at some quip Rake made, but she couldn’t hear, and it didn’t matter, anyway.

She found herself holding a coupe of champagne and took a sip. The cool, effervescent cascade of bubbles down her throat blessedly served as a distraction for her body, and it quieted down a hair.

She took another sip.

From his place on the raised platform beside the starting line, the starter lifted the gun.

The roar of the crowd deflated into a hush, anticipation rippling through the air, from body to body.

Then his forefinger was squeezing the trigger, and a puff of gray smoke burst into the air.

The crack of the shot followed a trice later.

As one, the scrum of horses, tetchy and too-ready, lurched forward, and they were off.

Like Newmarket, Doncaster was a broad, flat track—which was where the similarity between the two racecourses began and ended.

Doncaster was a pear-shaped, left-handed track, which meant it ran counterclockwise.

Further, at one mile and six furlongs, it was the longest course of the Triple Crown races.

When the length was combined with the weather of Yorkshire and the soggy turf, the St. Leger was known as the toughest and truest test for a Thoroughbred in its prime three-year-old season.

Like every other spectator, Artemis sprang to her feet, champagne coupe discarded, her hands desperately clutching the balcony railing before her.

Rake was giving a running account of the action, but her attention was fully fixed on the field as they thundered into the first turn.

A few horses got too close and scrambled up in the skirmish, losing pace and falling behind.

Radish was one of them.

Artemis’s heart took a dive in her chest. The thing was, she should have been cheering for him to lose. For if Radish lost, then Bran lost—and she won. The bargain would be definitively settled, Bran would vacate the Roost, and he would no longer be in her life.

Radish, however, had his own destiny to fulfill.

He came away from the mistake uninjured and began regaining his pace.

Sure, he was in the back of the field as they came through the second turn, but he’d begun to gain ground, even through the muck that had been churned up by the horses ahead, which still held together as a pack.

As no horse had yet broken free and taken a definitive lead, it was still any horse’s race.

And didn’t Radish seem to know it.

Methodically and confidently, his hooves ate up the turf on the straight, in that stubborn, workman-like mode that was his signature style.

Radish needed that bit of adversity to come to life in a race.

Riveted, the crowd whipped into a frenzy as he took the next turn on the outside—an objectively terrible line for Lafferty to have taken—but somehow came out in the lead four of the pack.

Artemis’s heart raced as fast as his hooves, not from nerves, but rather from sheer exhilaration. “Go … go … go !” she cheered, her voice lost in chorus with the thousands of other spectators.

By the time the horses entered the final furlong at a breakneck run, the crowd had rallied behind the improbable Radish, who was not only showing his spirit, but his heart, as he and Good Bottom raced neck and neck down the final stretch.

As they neared the finish line, the crowd wound itself up into an all-out, thrilled frenzy.

Radish hadn’t been favored to win this race, but somehow at the finish line—possibly with the racing gods at his back—his stride stretched at precisely the right timing to put him across to victory.

It was as valiant a come-from-behind win as one was ever likely to witness on a racecourse, and the crowd raucously proclaimed its approval, even as a few seconds later, the realization settled on many that Radish wasn’t the horse they’d wagered on.

Artemis allowed her gaze to roam the track and field below as Lafferty cooled Radish down at a canter, before slowing him to a walk, then a stop.

It was only when the winner’s garland was being placed over the horse’s head to the raucous acclamation of the crowd that her eyes found who she was searching for.

Bran.

He accepted the purse and lifted the winner’s plate triumphantly into the air to yet more cheering.

A feeling pulsed through Artemis.

A feeling she tamped down—or attempted to.

Bran had trained Radish to victory in mere weeks, proving how remarkably skilled he was at horse training.

That talent—not Radish’s, but his —was attractive.

Beside her, Rake pointed, imperious as ever. “Is that Radish’s trainer?”

Dread crawled through Artemis. “Aye.”

It was only a matter of time before he said, “Let’s go congratulate him.”

Gemma shook her head on a laugh. “I know that look in my husband’s eye. Radish will give Hannibal a run for his money in the Race of the Century, and my husband has every intention of poaching Sir Abstrupus’s trainer.”

“Can’t a man offer his congratulations to another man for a job well done?” asked Rake, all disingenuous innocence.

Gemma lifted doubtful eyebrows. “He could.”

Rake pinned Artemis with a penetrating look. “What’s the trainer’s name?”

After a brief, futile hesitation, she relented. “Lord Branwell Mallory.”

Rake’s dark eyebrows lifted. “Lord Branwell? Stoke’s younger brother?”

“The same.”

“Wasn’t he injured in Africa?”

“He was.”

Two small words.

Two small words Artemis could barely speak, her throat gone suddenly tight.

“I always liked Lord Branwell,” said Rake with an approving nod. “A much better man than that brother of his.”

She kept her mouth closed regarding the last point.

She knew differently, of course.

A few minutes later, Artemis, Rake, and Gemma were making their way through the grandstand and out onto the racecourse, where it was no less crowded.

The rain that had begun to drizzle wasn’t stopping anyone from ruining their new silks and celebrating the day with an abandon that would be bordering on the hedonistic by nightfall.

Other sporting competitions, like donkey races, footman sprints, and cock-fighting, were already in the offing, but Rake kept their path direct.

As the Duke of Rakesley, the crowd happily and readily parted for him as the Red Sea did for Moses.

Artemis’s gaze landed on a familiar form in the distance— Bran —and everything and everyone else faded into nonexistence.

It was the unfiltered joy in his eyes that had her experiencing a wobble. In all these weeks, this was the first time she’d seen a light within him.

Instinctually, her body responded with a lifting feeling in her chest, as if the blood in her body had gone suddenly weightless.

Then his gaze shifted and unerringly met hers across the ten yards that separated them. What held their gazes locked was more than awareness or her ever-present desire— need —to touch him and to feel his touch in return.

Connection.

That was what pulsed in the space between them.

In this moment, she felt connected to this man in a specific way. A feeling that sank through the body and into a place deeper—the spirit.

This was the place where one plus one made one .

She hadn’t expected ever to experience this feeling again—and certainly not with this man.

Nay.

That was what her mind wanted to believe.

But her body— her spirit —knew a different truth.

This feeling could only be experienced with this man.