Chapter 11
Dawn. The air was crisp, the heavy sky was streaked with orange, and Rotten Row was as crowded as Vauxhall on balloon launch day.
This was it. The big race.
Despite having been on her feet for the past twenty hours, Felicity was wide awake.
Six immaculate curricles were inching toward the starting line, two-by-two. As prior champion, Giles was in the final row next to Silas Wiltchurch. The chariots might have to bank slightly off-track in order to pass each other, but no one was worried about the grass. Today was about winning.
Most of the spectators swarmed near the waiting curricles, in the hopes of shouting words of encouragement—or good-natured insults—to the drivers.
Felicity had chosen a spot twenty yards past the starting line. She had no desire to glimpse Giles sitting still in a stationary carriage. That wasn’t his natural state. She wanted to witness him flying down the track, moving from last to first in the blink of an eye, to the roar of an exuberant crowd.
Not to mention that somewhere in this packed crowd, her brother was here to monitor the outcome of his wager. Felicity had made certain to blend with the crowd on the opposite side of the track. Her brother might indulge her eccentricities by allowing Felicity to tinker safely out of public sight, but Cole would kill her if he knew she was out and about unchaperoned. Dressed as a lad or otherwise.
If the first race she’d watched had been capital fun, this one was twice as exciting. These weren’t any old carriages out for a Hyde Park jaunt. There was her brother’s carriage. The curricle Felicity had worked on for the past fortnight.
And the appointed driver washerGiles. The man whose bare hands had, on more than one occasion, been deep in her hair as he claimed her mouth. Not this morning, unfortunately. She was dressed as a lad in trousers, not his great-aunt Melba—neither of whom it would have been appropriate to kiss in public.
But there would be no more kisses in their future. Felicity shouldn’t even be here now, not with a marriage proposal from Lord Raymore on the line. No, not a mere proposal on the line, but her charitable foundation, and the lives of countless children.Thatwas Felicity’s future.
This race was goodbye.
Giles would not be shocked to learn she intended to accept the marquess’s suit. She’d never hid her plans from him. They’d known where each other stood from the beginning. What they’d shared was magical, but temporary. They’d walked into it with open eyes and would walk away the same way.
Boom.
At the crack of the starting pistol, all six curricles were off.
Felicity’s heart lurched. Every inch of her brimmed with pure, unadulterated joy whenever she was near Giles, even if she could only watch from the shadows.
A wet droplet splashed on her nose, and she cast her gaze skyward. The dark clouds overhead had been spitting occasional raindrops, but it didn’t look like it would storm quite yet.
Not that Giles would need that much time to annihilate the competition. No one could hold a candle to his skill at the reins.
As the carriages thundered past, one, two, three, four, five,six—there he was!—Giles turned his head at the last second as if he sensed Felicity’s presence despite the cover of the crowd.
He couldn’t see her. Could he?
Giles winked.
A giddy laugh threatened to spill from her chest. Hehadseen her! She was at her most invisible, dressed in trousers in the least likely spot of a very large crowd, and he had found her as easily as if their souls were entwined.
Was it any wonder she’d fallen hopelessly, irreversibly in love with this maddening, wonderful man? Goodbye or not, as soon as he won this race, she’d be tempted to sail straight into his arms and kiss him senseless. He was—
In trouble.
Barely fifty yards past the starting line, Silas Wiltchurch drove his horses into Giles’s path in a bald attempt to force his chaise out of the running. Horses reared in alarm as flying puffs of dirt and the crunch of wheels rent the air.
Any closer, and wheels would touch wheels, risking the safety of both carriages—and the lives of the drivers.
Wiltchurch veered toward Giles again, this time even more recklessly. Giles would either crash into the driver ahead—or a tree to the right.
Giles swerved his curricle off the road and onto the grass, expertly threading the narrow distance between the track and the tree trunk.
It might have worked, had a low branch not dipped directly in his path.
Giles threw up his arms just in time to prevent the thick, knobby branch from pulverizing his face.
