Page 2 of Win Me, My Lord (All’s Fair in Love and Racing #5)

CHAPTER ONE

G oats.

The bane of Artemis’s existence presently.

Not goats in general.

Rather, this one with the brown stripe around his middle and the mean glint in his eye.

His front hoof was on the mend from an abscess, but it needed checking—and in the way of all headstrong goats, he wasn’t having it.

She had at least managed to grab hold of his pastern. One might call it progress if the owner of said pastern wasn’t presently attempting—and half succeeding—to butt one with his short, pointy horns.

This obstreperous fellow was the Grange’s first goat, and she couldn’t help hoping he was their last—a wish she immediately regretted.

The truth was many of the animals didn’t usually take to her or any of the staff right away. It was understandable. They had been treated poorly by people, either by benign neglect or outright malice, so it was only natural for them to suppose these new people would ignore or hurt them, too.

They needed time.

One couldn’t take it personally or give up. What sort of horse sanctuary would that make Endcliffe Grange?

Horse sanctuary.

Well, it wasn’t only that anymore, was it?

In the few months since she’d begun this venture, it had become much more than a sanctuary for horses.

Take the constant companion at her side—a one-eyed, three-legged sheepdog she’d christened Bathsheba.

And this rambunctious goat, with whom she was presently locked in a battle of wills and who was making her sweat, prodigiously.

Then there were the donkey, the sheep, the ducks, the geese, and one rangy old rooster who strutted about the estate crowing at all hours of day and night.

Further, Mrs. Hopper, the Grange’s redoubtable cook, was managing a hedgehog trail.

In truth, all the estate’s staff were part of the cause.

They were more compatriots than servants, and though Artemis paid their wages, she treated them as equals.

Everyone here was devoted to their mission to see to the welfare of each animal who happened their way.

If this was what Dido’s death had brought about, then the loss of her life wasn’t in vain.

Dido.

An unresolved sob formed a knot in Artemis’s throat, as was usual when she thought about her beloved Thoroughbred.

Though months had passed, it still felt like yesterday.

One moment, Dido had been thundering down the final stretch at Newmarket, leading the Two Thousand Guineas, the first major race of the season, and the next she was collapsing on the turf, never to rise again.

A hidden heart defect, it had been determined, for there had been no visible signs.

One moment, Dido had been the queen of the race—and the next, gone. It had been so sudden—and final.

Shattered, Artemis had retreated to Endcliffe Grange to piece herself back together.

With the help of Gemma, her brother’s jockey who would become her sister-in-law, she’d started taking in horses that were in all sorts of situations—broken-down farm horses …

horses who had gone lame … stage and carriage horses that had been overworked all their lives.

Quickly, however, word made the rounds through the surrounding countryside, and other sorts of animals began appearing on the Grange’s long, gravel drive, too.

Like that, Artemis discovered a renewed purpose in her life and a fitting legacy for Dido.

Now, she dodged another horn-butt attempt, only to receive a cantankerous bleat in the face.

She spat her own cantankerous, “Blech!” With quick efficiency, she determined that no more pus oozed from the hoof.

“Master Goat,” she said, more than a bit winded as she reached around to untie him from the gate post, “you are on the mend.”

Free of the tether, he was off across the pen on light, bouncy hooves, his tail quivering with umbrage. Bathsheba whined, a sheepdog to her bones. She didn’t like to see animals go off on their own. Life was safer in a pack.

Artemis unfolded her body and stood with a long, pleasing stretch.

As the afternoon light softened into the muted glow of evening, she made her usual rounds through pens, barn, and stables, consulting with lads and grooms, ensuring all was as it should be before she made her way toward the manor house.

Though the Grange had become her home over the summer and felt like exactly where she should be, in truth, she’d become a little out of sync with its rhythms after having been absent for a fortnight.

She’d been away at a house party that had been thrown at Primrose Park to celebrate her best bosom friend Lady Beatrix St. Vincent’s engagement to a man widely regarded as something of a scoundrel, Mr. Blake Deverill.

After all, the ton had dubbed him Lord Devil, and one couldn’t help suspecting he’d earned the moniker.

Naturally, a friend would have doubts.

So, she’d gone to see with her own eyes that Beatrix wasn’t being forced into a bad situation. Though Artemis still wasn’t sure what kind of situation existed between Beatrix and Deverill, she felt certain it was with her friend’s full consent.

Yet, since her return to the Grange, this peculiar feeling in her gut persisted. But its cause wasn’t an ague she’d picked up at the house party, that much she knew. Rather, it was a piece of information.

Instinctively, her gaze flicked in the direction of the northern boundary of her estate.

A few miles from where she presently stood was a man.

A man she’d consigned to her past.

Lord Branwell Mallory.

That was the information she’d picked up at Primrose Park—and it had been plaguing her mind since, like a contagion.

That man had nothing to do with her present or her future. When one did the math, she’d only known him four months in total—and that was ten years ago. A man very definitely in her past.

Yet …

She was stirred up.

That man, whom she’d known for only four of the three-hundred-and-fifty-two months of her life, was supposed to have been in Africa—not sharing the air of Yorkshire with her.

That they were, indeed, sharing approximately the same air was unsettling.

Her stomach hadn’t been itself since receiving the information.

Yet it had been three days since her return to the Grange, and not a word about a visitor at Chateau Bottom’s Roost, locally known as the Roost, the estate of her eccentric neighbor, Sir Abstrupus Bottomley.

But the information had come from Lord Branwell’s brother, the Earl of Stoke, who wasn’t likely to get such a detail muddled.

Of course, she didn’t wish to see Lord Branwell.

Not after what he did.

But a part of her wouldn’t be able to rest until she had the definitive answer.

Really, it wouldn’t be able to rest until Lord Branwell took himself back to Africa.

Except …

He wouldn’t be taking himself back to Africa.

He’d been injured severely enough that he was no longer a soldier.

As she approached the manor house, she took in its grand sandstone exterior glowing gold in the changing light of afternoon, its decorative turrets and crenellations imbuing the house with a whimsical character and charm.

She’d come to feel a deep affection for this place.

It was her home. Though it was a novel feeling, this, of being the lady of the manor.

Of course, she’d been the lady of this manor since her eighteenth year, when her beloved Grandmama had passed away.

As Endcliffe Grange had been unentailed, Grandmama had been at liberty to leave it to whomever she liked—and that person had been her only granddaughter.

Though a duchess by marriage, Grandmama had harbored firm notions about a woman’s right to self-determination.

Mother, of course, had rolled her eyes at this familiar tangent of her mother-in-law’s, but in the way children could see their parents with a specific clarity, Artemis saw that was precisely how Mother went about her own life.

Upon inheritance, and for the intervening decade until last spring, Artemis had been pleased to let estate managers and housekeepers run the Grange. But now she was here and lady of the manor—a manor that wasn’t operated like other manors, given that it was now a sanctuary for animals.

Yet the Grange wasn’t only a sanctuary for animals. It had become her sanctuary and—somehow … improbably—it had become her vocation, too. At the house party, when Beatrix had asked when she would be returning to London, she’d replied she would, eventually.

But it had been an untruth.

The truth was she didn’t miss London.

The truth was she enjoyed being lady of this manor.

The truth was she was staying where she was—indefinitely … possibly forever.

With Bathsheba at her side, she pushed the door open to the boot room and called out, “It’s only me!”

“Off with those mucky boots,” came Mrs. Hopper’s quick reply from the kitchen, adding a beat later, “milady.”

Artemis waggled her eyebrows at Bathsheba and lowered onto the oak bench, switching sturdy outdoor boots for elegant indoor slippers—switching from estate worker to lady of the manor.

She took up a cloth and wiped all three of Bathsheba’s paws, who suffered the ministrations with a series of impatient yawns.

Mrs. Hopper would have treats waiting, and Bathsheba had no intention of leaving them untasted.

So, too, would the cook have treats waiting on the kitchen table for Artemis in the form of a steaming pot of bergamot tea and a plate of her favorite shortbread.

From her place at the stove, Mrs. Hopper dangled scraps for Bathsheba to snap up and said, “It’ll be mushroom bean stew for the evening meal, unless you have objections?”

“None.”

Mrs. Hopper had taken to experimenting with replacing meats with various other ingredients, to surprisingly delicious effect, it must be admitted.

Artemis snapped off a corner of shortbread. “I’m sure it will be exceedingly tasty.”