She didn’t go far.
There was a boy watching the competition from the shadows.
Olive erased her happy grin at once, but the boy didn’t seem to mind it.
He had never seen anyone ride like she did, he said. He was impressed. She had dazzled him.
His words dazzled Olive. No one but her father had ever spoken to her so prettily before. She angled toward the track and to comment on the next group’s race aloud, as if she were a judge and not a girl with a brass medallion clutched in her sweaty palm.
The boy laughed at all of the right times. She was so witty, he said. Clever and talented. His fingers brushed hers.
Startled, she turned to look at him, and his face was right there. She knew what he was going to do before he did it. She could have moved away. Instead, she leaned into him.
Her first kiss. To date, her only kiss. It had been bliss.
At first.
A large group walked around the corner, catching them in the act. Mostly children, but a few parents as well. Olive’s was one of them. So was the boy’s father.
“Get away from my son,” he’d screamed, as though she were a cockroach on his Christmas pudding.
Olive was frozen in place, but the boy jerked away.
The Marquess of Milbotham, whispered the crowd.That’s his heir.
No. Impossible.
The boy knew whoshewas. He’d just watched her win a competition.
“I’d rather my son kiss an actual horse,” snarled the marquess, “than a worthless chit who justlookslike one.”
Shock stole the words from her throat, and she turned to the boy in supplication.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and sneered. “You’re just a Harper.”
“A Harper what?” drawled the marquess.
The boy’s next words were louder. “A Harper horse.”
The children erupted in laughter. They surrounded Olive, baring their teeth and making horsey noises until she burst into tears and barreled through them and into the safety of her father’s arms.
Papa couldn’t hear the taunts. Try as he might to urge her to confide in him, she had never repeated what they’d said.
But every word, every whinny, had imprinted indelibly on her soul.
She’d lost her innocence that day, as well as her prized medallion. It had slipped from her slick fingers during all of the pushing and neighing.
The medallion was the one thing from that day that she wished she still had. Solid proof that the others weren’t better than her.
It was the first time she’d ever won anything and the last time she let something she wanted slip out of her hands.
To the devil with Weston and Milbotham both! No wonder her father was at war with that family. From that day forward, they were Olive’s sworn enemies, too.
She swore never to let anyone humiliate her like that again.
But of course it wasn’t that easy. One couldn’t simplydecidenever to be an object of ridicule.
Not with Weston and Milbotham out there, whispering into every gossip’s ears.
