“And?”
“Am I to be your spy now?”
Rake lifted a single black eyebrow. “Artemis.”
She was being a difficult little sister, thatArtemissaid.
“He’s fast and focused,” she provided. “He works for every inch of ground and likes it that way.”
“Stubborn?”
“Aye.”
“A mudder?”
She nodded. “As if born to it. He could put on a show today.”
“But?”
He would have heard the hesitation in her voice.
“He’s never run a single race.”
Gemma’s brow lifted with surprise. “Never been tested against a field?”
Artemis shook her head. “No.”
Immediately, she realized something—she was withholding information.
Lord Branwell Mallory was Radish’s trainer.
Of course, if Rake asked, she would provide him that information, but for some reason she was unable to volunteer it.
Radish would prevail today.
She felt it in her gut.
But then, when it came to horses, her gut had been wrong in the not-so-distant past—deadly wrong.
She couldn’t trust her gut.
Hadn’t the past tried to teach her that lesson time and time again?
And it wasn’t only Dido.
It was Bran, too.
Hadn’t her gut once been wrong about him, as well?
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 followeda 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.
