Dot’s embroidery hoop tumbled from her hands.
She rose slowly from her chair, her lips trembling, emitting the small airless noises onemakes when excitement prevents the formation of words.
“Fate!” she finally squeaked. “It’s fate!”
“Oh, Dot, I’m not sure about this...” Delilah was beginning to feel nostalgic for the boring nights they’d enjoyed just a few days ago.
“What is Shillelagh like, Mr. Delacorte?” Alexandra wanted to know.
“She’s gray, low-slung, has a white muzzle and light legs,” Delacorte told them. “Pretty little thing. Scares her competition by sneaking up on the outside, then running like the blazes. Can sometimes be a bit balky, and she once bit me when I was allowed to pet her but she didn’t break the skin. But that’s the best part of it, right? It’s unpredictable! A bit like The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
Angelique and Delilah were none too pleased to learn that Mr. Delacorte equated The Grand Palace on the Thames with being bitten at the donkey races.
Dot turned to Delilah and Angelique, her hands clasped beseechingly. “I know it’s not my off day... and I know it’s Mr. Pike’s night off, too... so there’s no one to answer the door... maybe we won’t get a new guest tonight! I’ll give up my next one and the next one... I promise...pleasemay I go to the donkey races?”
“Ummm...” Mr. Delacorte was alarmed.
“It does rather seem like fate,” Angelique whispered to Delilah, mischievously.
“Shhh.”Delilah nudged her surreptitiously.
But because Dot’s blue eyes were the size of dinner plates, almost no one could beseech as well as she could. She asked for so little. It was heartrending.
“I just don’t think that’s wise, Dot,” Delilah said, somewhat desperately. “It can be a bit of a rough crowd, isn’t that right, Mr. Delacorte?”
“Well. I’d have to say yes, it could be. It’s notusuallya place to take ladies. Although there are, er... some ladies, after a fashion... there. It’s a friendly crowd, on the whole. But mostly everyone just wants to watch a race. You will hear a lot of jar words,” he said frankly.
“Which ones?” Captain Hardy asked.
Mr. Delacorte snorted. “I’m not falling for that again, Hardy.”
Captain Hardy grinned.
“Butthe jar words are mostly because everyone gets so excited. They sell chestnuts!” Delacorte added by way of enticement. “The fights usually happen later, when everyone is full of drink. And by then I’m home for curfew.”
Angelique and Delilah were speechless.
Mr. Delacorte was nearly quivering with the effort to restrain his hope that people he liked would go with him to a donkey race, which was very nearly his definition of happiness.
Alexandra cleared her throat. “I think...”
Everyone turned to her.
“. . . that I’ve seldom wanted anything more than to see a race between a donkey named Brightwall and a donkey named Shillelagh.”
She said it quietly. But when her gaze collided with Magnus’s, an interesting, spikily challenging frisson passed between the two of them.
There ensued quite a long silence, as everyone was very curious about what the colonel would say.
“May I ask what compels your interest in a donkey race in particular, Alexandra?” Magnus said with a certain taut formality.
“Someone once suggested I ought to diversify my pastimes,” she replied politely. “I don’t feel as if I’ve had a sufficient variety of experiences. And if Dot thinks it’s fate, who am I to argue?”
Dot nodded vigorously.
“And... I’ve never been to a donkey race. It sounds like fun.”
She said it almost wistfully.
