She breathed a sigh of relief when he fell silent. She didn’t want to hear his excuses, or any of his hateful remarks about Finn. She’d made Lord Wrexley acknowledge his perfidy aloud, and that was all she wanted.
After a moment of strained silence, he closed his pocket watch with a snap. “It’s time.”
Iris followed him across the field where the other two gentlemen waited on their mounts.
“Well, Miss Somerset.” Lord Claire swept his hat off to her in a mocking bow. “Are you to be our competitor this morning? I confess you’re the last lady I would have expected. Pretty little chit, Wrexley, but I can’t imagine we’ll have much trouble beating a dainty London belle, can you, Edgemont?”
“Oh, she’s not a belle anymore, Claire. Didn’t you hear? She’s jilted Huntington.” Lord Edgemont leered. “She won’t become a marchioness after all, and I’d say that makes her fair game. I’d be delighted to serve, Miss Somerset, if you’re looking for a lover to replace Huntington.”
Iris didn’t bother to respond to these taunts, but ran a firm hand over Chaos’s neck and raised her riding crop. “I’m ready, Lord Wrexley. I await your pleasure.”
“Fifteen seconds from now, on my word.” Lord Wrexley’s gaze was fixed on his pocket watch. “Ready. Set…”
Iris drew in a quick, deep breath, closed her eyes, and let the restless energy coursing through Chaos’s body flow into hers. A slight smile crossed her lips. This horse was made to race, and she was made to race him. Her worry and heartbreak would be waiting for her when she finished the race, but for now, everything else but Chaos fled her mind, and she savored the perfect rightness of the moment.
“Go!”
Iris hardly had a chance to twitch the crop before Chaos surged beneath her and shot forward, every sleek muscle and sinew working in such smooth harmony she might have believed they weren’t moving at all if she hadn’t heard the sudden roar of pounding hooves.
After that, she didn’t see anything at all except the green blur of the ground beneath her, and Chaos’s ears twitching with joy and excitement as they flew across the field, floating as if his hooves didn’t even touch the ground. Iris imagined the sight of his long legs, each of his perfect, leaping strides, listened to the pounding in her ears, felt the reverberation of his hooves slamming into the earth in her body as she pointed him toward the tree line and gave him his head, her own head thrown back with a shout of pure delight that she should be gifted with this moment of perfect, incredible freedom.
Iris watched the tree line draw closer with each of Chaos’s pounding strides as he devoured the ground beneath them. Lord Claire was a dozen paces behind her and rapidly losing ground, and by the time they were halfway across the field he must have realized there was no chance he could beat them.
Not by fair means.
That was when he made his move.
Iris’s first warning was the hiss of a riding crop slicing through the air, and then Chaos stumbled—just the tiniest hitch, no more than an instant’s break in his gait, so subtle a rider less attuned to her horse might not have even noticed it.
But Iris did. She noticed it the first time Lord Claire brought his crop down in a brutal blow against Chaos’s flank, and again when he did it the second time.
Another tiny stumble, and a shout, a voice raised in fury—
Hers.
If Chaos had been any other horse, or Iris any other woman, it would have been the end—of the race, the horse, and very likely the rider.
But Chaos wasn’t any horse. He wasthishorse, and Iris knew him down to his very soul.
As well as I know myself.
Neither of them would ever surrender to a coward like Lord Claire, and neither of them would ever settle for less than they deserved.
From the corner of her eye Iris saw Lord Claire raise his crop a third time, but he never had a chance to land the blow. She squeezed her knees around the massive body beneath her to steady herself, gripped the reins in her hands, and leaned so low over Chaos’s head she could hear each of his heaving breaths in her ear.
Go, go, go…
She might have shouted it. She might have whispered it. She might not have said it aloud at all, but it didn’t matter, because Chaos understood her, and in the next breath he plunged ahead in a powerful surge of clenched muscle and sheer stubborn will, out of the reach of Lord Claire’s vicious riding crop.
One minute later, it was over.
Chaos raced past the tree line, with Lord Claire so far behind them by the time he arrived, sweating and panting, he was no more than an afterthought. Lord Edgemont came in last, his horse lathered with sweat, and his lordship red-faced and cursing.
It wasn’t until Iris brought Chaos down to a walk to cool him that she felt it.
He was limping.
Her heart filled with dread as she dropped the reins, scrambled down from the saddle and knelt on the ground next to Chaos’s right front leg. He was holding it aloft to keep his weight off it.
