The Sport of Baronets by Theresa Romain

Author:Theresa Romain [Romain, Theresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theresa Romain
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

They made some excuse to Sothern; Hannah hardly knew what. Bart was everything friendly, speaking with the groom briefly before Sothern led the horses away.

“We have an hour,” Bart murmured. His dark hair glinted with silver, his eyes with promise. “There is a place we might go on the July Course, if you’ll accompany me?”

In a heartbeat. Without question.

“Yes,” Hannah said.

Little used until the summer months, the July Course was a dogleg off of which jutted the straight dash of the Rowley Mile. On the Rowley Mile, where the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes would be run in a few days’ time, jockeys and trainers and owners paced off the subtle topography of a course that changed with every rainfall and every baking sun. Anything for an advantage in the Two Thousand Guineas or any of the other chances to prove one’s worth.

Hannah was happy to leave it all behind for an hour, to stride through the grounds with an entirely different sort of topography on her mind.

She and Bart drew up before a white building that looked like a long cottage, with a thatched roof and half-timbering about the windows. “The jockey room?” she asked.

“And the weighing room and the winner’s enclosure,” he confirmed.

Hannah had rarely wandered into such secret sections of the course. But this didn’t seem like a building that belonged to the sport of kings at all. It looked more like a country cottage, down to the window boxes of spring flowers struggling to bloom.

But it was more than it seemed. It was a place to get ready for a race, a place to return in triumph. When a person was here, anything could happen. She might win anything, anything at all.

“It’s perfect,” she decided. “Unless it is locked. Then it loses a large part of its perfection.”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s locked.” Bart did something complicated and furtive with the handle of the door, then pushed it open. “There we have it. It’s all right to enter. I’m a member of the Jockey Club, and you’re my—ah, my guest.”

“This building is for jockeys, and you are not an actual jockey,” Hannah pointed out.

“You can’t be sure of that. You have never seen me ride.”

The final word sounded salacious. Or maybe everything sounded salacious. “I can tell even so, because you’re far too…large.”

His brows lifted. “You win.”

“I think we’ll both win.”

“I like the way you think.” Ushering her inside, he locked the door behind them.

They found their way into the weighing room, a plain space that would bustle during the summer season. Right now it was quiet and empty, cool and still and smelling faintly of soap and wax. Dominating the center of the narrow space, a great balance hung from the ceiling. On one side hung a seat of metal mesh; on the other, a weighing pan on which brass counterweights could be placed to check the jockey’s weight.

She stripped off her gloves and tossed them onto a bench, and he did the same. His hat followed.

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