Like every other spectator, Artemis sprang to her feet, champagne coupe discarded, her hands desperately clutching the balcony railing before her. Rake was giving a running account of the action, but her attention was fully fixed on the field as they thundered into the first turn. A few horses got too close and scrambled up in the skirmish, losing pace and falling behind.
Radish was one of them.
Artemis’s heart took a dive in her chest. The thing was, she should have been cheering for him to lose. For if Radish lost, then Bran lost—and she won. The bargain would be definitively settled, Bran would vacate the Roost, and he would no longer be in her life.
Radish, however, had his own destiny to fulfill.
He came away from the mistake uninjured and began regaining his pace. Sure, he was in the back of the field as they came through the second turn, but he’d begun to gain ground, even through the muck that had been churned up by the horses ahead, which still held together as a pack. As no horse had yet broken free and taken a definitive lead, it was still any horse’s race.
And didn’t Radish seem to know it.
Methodically and confidently, his hooves ate up the turf on the straight, in that stubborn, workman-like mode that was his signature style. Radish needed that bit of adversity to come to life in a race. Riveted, the crowd whipped into a frenzy as he took the next turn on the outside—an objectively terrible line for Lafferty to have taken—but somehow came out in the lead four of the pack.
Artemis’s heart raced as fast as his hooves, not from nerves, but rather from sheer exhilaration. “Go … go …go!” she cheered, her voice lost in chorus with the thousands of other spectators.
By the time the horses entered the final furlong at a breakneck run, the crowd had rallied behind the improbable Radish, who was not only showing his spirit, but his heart, as he and Good Bottom raced neck and neck down the final stretch. As they neared the finish line, the crowd wound itself up into an all-out, thrilled frenzy. Radish hadn’t been favored to win this race, but somehow at the finish line—possibly with the racing gods at his back—his stride stretched at precisely the right timing to put him across to victory.
It was as valiant a come-from-behind win as one was ever likely to witness on a racecourse, and the crowd raucously proclaimed its approval, even as a few seconds later, the realization settled on many that Radish wasn’t the horse they’d wagered on.
Artemis allowed her gaze to roam the track and field below as Lafferty cooled Radish down at a canter, before slowing him to a walk, then a stop. It was only when the winner’s garland was being placed over the horse’s head to the raucous acclamation of the crowd that her eyes found who she was searching for.
Bran.
He accepted the purse and lifted the winner’s plate triumphantly into the air to yet more cheering.
A feeling pulsed through Artemis.
A feeling she tamped down—or attempted to.
Bran had trained Radish to victory in mere weeks, proving how remarkably skilled he was at horse training.
That talent—not Radish’s, buthis—was attractive.
Beside her, Rake pointed, imperious as ever. “Is that Radish’s trainer?”
Dread crawled through Artemis. “Aye.”
It was only a matter of time before he said, “Let’s go congratulate him.”
Gemma shook her head on a laugh. “I know that look in my husband’s eye. Radish will give Hannibal a run for his money in the Race of the Century, and my husband has every intention of poaching Sir Abstrupus’s trainer.”
“Can’t a man offer his congratulations to another man for a job well done?” asked Rake, all disingenuous innocence.
Gemma lifted doubtful eyebrows. “He could.”
Rake pinned Artemis with a penetrating look. “What’s the trainer’s name?”
After a brief, futile hesitation, she relented. “Lord Branwell Mallory.”
Rake’s dark eyebrows lifted. “Lord Branwell? Stoke’s younger brother?”
“The same.”
“Wasn’t he injured in Africa?”
“He was.”
Two small words.
