“I shall do my very best,” she promised.
“My grandfather used to raise horses,” Jack explained. “Decades ago, he sold his best stud to the Harpers’ stud farm. Once a week, that’s where we go riding.”
Désirée was familiar with the Harpers’ farm. Like the le Duc smithy, it stood just on the outskirts of Cressmouth proper. She and her brothers had raced horses and carriages with the Harpers on many memorable occasions.
It was bizarre to visit not with her own family, but with someone else’s.
In no time, she and the three Skeffingtons were settled on rented mounts at the mouth of one of many trails leading through the evergreens.
“Go!” Frederick shouted and flew off down the path.
“Beast.” Annie disappeared right behind him in a cloud of dust and autumn leaves.
Jack did not go. He brushed off his hands and consulted his pocketwatch. “The twins won’t be back until supper time. That gives us three childless hours. We can take this opportunity to eat ices in the castle common room without telling them, or I can nip over to the barber for a quick trim about the ears, or we could—”
Désirée interrupted him. “I’ll race you to the curve leading to the main road.”
“Go!” Jack bolted away in ungentlemanly fashion, just as his son had done, without waiting for her to prepare.
She did not need to prepare. Désirée and her brothers had spent most of their eighteen years in Cressmouth racing up and down these very woods. She could win this race with a wooden hobby-horse.
Grinning, she gave her horse his head and tore down the colorful path behind her employer.
To her surprise and delight, she did not catch up with Jack until the curve was in sight. He made the mistake of glancing over his shoulder to gauge the distance between them, which gave her just enough time to spur her mount the last few yards.
Their horses reached the bend nose-to-nose.
Jack and Désirée stared at each other in disbelief, panting just as much as their horses and grinning at each other like simpletons.
“I was going to let you win,” he managed. “Until I realized you were going to thrash me in the most humiliating way possible unless I tried my utmost.”
“I was going to letyouwin,” she admitted once she caught her breath. “Masculine pride being such a fragile little flower and all. But you were barely a second ahead and already I could not see where you’d gone and… here we are.”
There they were. Neither had won.
She could not help but wonder if it was an omen.
