Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12

Shawls of fine rain fell on Newmarket Heath.

It was a steady rain. The kind of sneaky, stubborn rain that penetrated the thickest of wool greatcoats until one's very bones felt soggy enough to be wrung out into a bucket. It had turned the clipped green turf of the racetrack into a muddy quagmire.

Lady Letty sat beneath the leaking leather hood of a ramshackle cabriolet and scowled at the dripping sky. She fastened a spyglass to one eye, focusing on the starting post. "'Twill be at least a half hour before they're off. Time enough for us to lay another pony on our nag."

"Oh, Gram..." Jessalyn drew in a deep breath, wrinkling her nose. The rented carriage reeked of mildew and stale tobacco smoke. "We cannot afford to risk another twenty-five pounds."

"What? Speak up, gel."

Jessalyn cupped her hand around her mouth and leaned into her grandmother to shout. "If you are growing deaf, Gram, I shall have to get myself a speaking trumpet!"

"Humph."

"And if we become much more in the suds, I shall have to borrow from Mr. Tiltwell."

"I forbid it," Lady Letty stated, proving, as Jessalyn well knew, that she'd been hearing every word. "A Letty never borrows from her lover." She rapped Jessalyn sharply on her knee with the spyglass. "One would think I hadn't raised you proper."

Jessalyn rubbed her stinging knee. "Clarence is not my—"

"I know what the boy is to you, blast it, and I don't like it. One does not marry the Clarence Tiltwells of this world, m'dear. It is understandable that you might want him— there's a certain appeal there if one likes 'em pale and fair, which I, personally, do not—but at least have the sense God gave you to wait until you are safely wed into your own class. Then you may take him to your bed—"

"I do not want Clarence in that way!" Jessalyn nearly shouted again. "I want him for my husband," she quickly added as a shrewd look shot into Lady Letty's eyes. It was no use. She'd had this argument with Gram before, and neither of them, being stubborn Lettys, was about to budge.

Ironically, it was for Gram's sake that she had accepted Clarence Tiltwell's proposal in the first place. By marrying him, she would ensure a life of luxury for her grandmother for all of her remaining days. No, she must be honest with herself. It was not only for Gram. Someday Gram would be lost to her, and Jessalyn did not want to spend her life alone. She wanted a home, a husband, children. Clarence could give her all those things, she told herself for the hundredth time, everything she could ever want or need. And she was fond of him, truly she was. Their friendship had roots that went back to their childhood. They would deal well together as husband and wife.

And he loved her. He told her often how much he loved her.

Yet Jessalyn was frowning as she peered through the drizzle at the prancing line of Thoroughbreds and jockeys in rainbow-colored taffetas. The twenty-five pounds her grandmother wanted to wager was the last of the household money that Jessalyn had set aside to see them through the winter until her marriage next spring. If they lost, they could well be reduced to selling watercress bunches in the grimy London streets.

But they wouldn't lose. Not this time.

Jessalyn descended from the carriage into mud that had the consistency of hasty pudding. She turned her face up to the gently weeping clouds, loving the feel of the soft rain bathing her cheeks like spray from an eau de cologne bottle. "Are you hungry, Gram? Shall I bring you back something to eat?"

Lady Letty sat lost in thought, massaging the blackthorn handle of her cane. In the dim light the skin of her face shone pale and translucent as an eggshell. In that moment she looked more than her eighty-three years.

"Gram?"

Lady Letty blinked and focused gray eyes that were as hard as tin ore on her granddaughter's face. But her voice held none of its usual tartness. "Nay, gel." She reached down and brushed Jessalyn's cheek, a touch that was tender and so uncharacteristic that Jessalyn had to swallow around a strange thickness in her throat.

Lady Letty's hand fell to her lap. It looked boneless against her heavy black skirt, a long and narrow hand with bent fingers, old and frail. Jessalyn was filled with a familiar fear. She felt alone and afraid, six years old again and about to be tossed aside like a suit of old clothes.

"Now quit your shilly-shallying, and get along with you, gel," Lady Letty said, grimacing a scowl, an expression that was oddly loving for all its fierceness.

Jessalyn squeezed her grandmother's hand. She felt its reassuring and familiar strength that was there, still, beneath the fragility of age. "This is our lucky day, Gram, I just know it. We'll risk it all, neck or nothing," she said, laughing, and at the squeaky, joyous sound of it people turned to look, and they, too, smiled.

Whirling around, she set off with a spring to her step to bet their last twenty-five pounds on the next race, neck or nothing.

"'Ware the sharpers and pickpockets!" Lady Letty called after her.

Jessalyn walked down a path littered with soggy race cards, past the hazard tables that were sheltered from the rain by a low-slung canopy. Water dripped from the red-striped canvas, bleeding into puddles. A boisterous group of young bucks, barely old enough to shave, pressed around the gaming tables. Any fool who frequented the Turf knew the dice were cogged, the games run by crooked sharpers. But there always seemed to be a fresh flock of pigeons to gull. As she plunged into the crowd of men on foot and horseback, Jessalyn gripped her reticule so tightly the linked steel rings bit through her kid gloves. At racing meets, pickpockets and cutpurses were as thick as crows in a cornfield.

Smells of jellied eels and ripe cheese and snatches of laughter wafted out the open doors of the many gin tents. A huckster strolled by, hawking penny tots of gin and meat pasties that steamed in the cool air. Jessalyn's stomach growled. She didn't stop, though, for she was intent to place her bet before the runners had all gathered at the starting post.

The first time Jessalyn attended a racing meet, Gram had accused her of behaving like a gapeseed, staring open-mouthed at every sight. Newmarket was a network of interlocking courses covering four miles over spacious, level meadows of thick, short grass. But it wasn't only a place for horse racing. In many ways it was like a fair, with horror plays and peep shows, dancing dogs and cockfights.

This afternoon's contest was called the Crombie Sweeps, after the Scottish lord who had organized it. It was a sweepstakes race for two-year-olds. Each owner who subscribed to the race had had to put up fifty sovereigns, and the winner would take the pot. But the Lettys, true members of the Turf, weren't content just to risk their stake money. For one thing, the expense of keeping even their small string of four horses, the cost of fodder, straw, and hay, and the stabling outlay, couldn't be covered alone by the stakes they won. They had to bet to live.

As Jessalyn strode toward the betting post, her stomach spasmed with a fear that left her feeling queasy, for their luck had been running so sour of late. A gelding they had planned to race in the Rowley Mile meet last month had been laid low with the colic the night before. Then Nancy Girl, their most profitable runner to date, had mysteriously broken a bone in her knee while turned out to grass and had to be put down. In another race their entry had been leading by three lengths when a handbill had blown across the track, startling him so that he reared, tossing his jockey headfirst into the turf. Two other times this season their horses had had disappointing outings, running sluggishly and finishing well back in the pack.

Indeed, the Letty luck had truly been abysmal, Jessalyn thought. But it was bound to turn today. Especially in this race, with this horse. From the day the blood bay colt had first put in his appearance in the world, she had known that he would be the one to win them the Derby someday. It wasn't that he had been born with the configuration of a racer. In truth, he still wasn't much to look at, for he had enormous feet and the short cannon bones that denoted more strength than speed. But every time Jessalyn looked into those bright, intelligent eyes she saw burning within the ruthless, driving will to win that made a champion.

She had named him Blue Moon.

The betting post, a thin white pole, could barely be seen through the crowd of gentlemen milling around it, most on horseback. They called out their wagers to the blacklegs who made the book, laying and taking bets at varying prices. The legs, sheltering today beneath a large sagging lean-to, shouted back, loudly naming their odds.

Black Charlie was the only female leg in England. An enormous woman, she overflowed around her stool like a bullfrog sitting on a stone. It was said she was worth ten thousand pounds a year, though she dressed and talked and looked like the Spitalfields washerwoman she had once been. Jessalyn was careful to stop downwind of her, for she smelled worse than a basket of rotten eggs. She had once told Jessalyn that she'd already had a lifetime of soap and water and never intended to get near the stuff again.

"Come to lay more blunt on yer pretty boy, have ye, Miss Letty?" Black Charlie said, smiling around the bit of a clay pipe she had stuck between tobacco brown teeth. '"Ow much this time?"

"A pony. To win."

Black Charlie noted the twenty-five-pound wager on the running tick she kept. Money would not change hands until later. "You and yer granny'll be living high as fighting cocks if yer lay pays off, eh? Pity it is that I can't be givin' ye better odds, but that Blue Moon of yers is a tiptop goer and no mistake. Ye watch if he don't make all them other 'orses look like donkeys."

Out of habit Jessalyn checked the list of runners and their odds, which was chalked on a large piece of slate posted above Black Charlie's head. Blue Moon was down as the favorite, for in the two contests he'd run in his young life he had defeated all comers. Her eyes scanned the rest. "Who's the late entry?"

"Eh? Oh, ye mean Rum Chaser. His owner has just now come up to scratch with the stake." Black Charlie jerked her three chins at the men who straddled stools alongside her. "Yon legs're laying five to two on 'im at starting." She heaved a derisive snort that set her chins to trembling. "Rum Chaser's of a showy turn, ye mind. But my tout says 'e ain't fit. E ain't had a sweat for a fortnight." She paused to puff on her pipe and winked a great, fleshy eye. "And he weren't fed on no milk-soaked bread and fresh eggs last night like yer Blue Moon was."

Jessalyn waved away the malodorous smoke that billowed from Black Charlie's pipe. She was careful to keep her face blank, but inwardly she was torn between laughter and dismay. The Sarn't Major would be furious to know that Blue Moon's dietary secret was out. But then Black Charlie's touts were the best on the Heath at spying on the racehorses in training and picking up tips.

"Rum Chaser's training has been neglected, ye see, ever since the earl popped off," Black Charlie was saying. '"Tis said he put a barking iron in his mouth and blew 'is noddle off, the earl did."

"Rum Chaser's owner shot himself?" Jessalyn asked, only half listening. She was trying to see if she could spot Blue Moon at the starting post.

"Aye. 'Twas done in some gaming hell," Black Charlie went on. "Played deep and then got caught playin' dirty and took the 'onorable way out. 'Tis said the earl's heir were once a penniless soldier afore fortune smiled upon 'im. I'll tells ye this, he's as much the deep plunger as his brother ever was. 'E laid a thousand quid on his runner to place, did the new Lord Caerhays."

"Lord who?" Jessalyn's voice cracked as her heart thrust up into her throat. "Rum Chaser belongs to the earl of Caerhays?" Dear life... She sucked in a deep breath and felt her heart begin to beat again in loud, hard thumps like a Cornish tin stamp. "Is he here? Is Lieut—is Lord Caerhays here?"

"Standing right behind ye, he is." Black Charlie's cackle split the air. "'E looks a rum un. The sort of man ye'd trust to guard yer back, but not yer daughter's virtue, eh?"

Jessalyn whipped around so fast she nearly stumbled. Her gaze was filled with the wide back of a tall man with a caped greatcoat slung in a negligent fashion over his shoulders. Just then he turned half toward her, and Jessalyn felt a wrenching pain in her chest, a pain so sharp and thrusting so deep she nearly cried aloud.

The years had hardened his high-boned face, but he was still disdainfully handsome. A woman catching a glimpse of him from across a ballroom would look again. And then again.

But for Jessalyn just to see him once was more than she could bear. Yet she could not have looked away, not even if the whole world had ignited into a blazing conflagration behind her. His skin had been bronzed by the sun, and his hair hung in shaggy strands from beneath his glossy high-crowned beaver. He lifted his head slightly, looking toward the starting post, and something glinted like a bright coin beneath the curved brim of his hat. A thin gold loop that pierced the lobe of his left ear. He hadn't changed, oh, he hadn't changed... Still wicked and dashing and irreverent. A scapegrace Trelawny to his very bones, and to the devil with you if you didn't like it. She imagined how Society's matrons must swell up like frogs at mating time at the very idea of a peer of the realm sporting a pirate's earring.

And then the inevitable happened. He turned his head, and their gazes met. He stared at her a long time, his face dark and intent. He made a movement as if to leave, then changed his mind and came toward her.

He still walked like a lazy cat, with that sauntering sway of lean and manly hips, ruined at the last moment by the hitch in his stride. He hadn't changed, hadn't changed....

When I marry, it will he to a woman, not a scrawny, carrottop barely out of the schoolroom. She'll be a woman with breeding and money, not some provincial miss without even two beans to boil together to make soup.

But I love you.

Too bloody bad, Miss Letty. Because I don't love you.

Humiliation washed over her, as fresh as if it had happened only yesterday. She had laid her heart at his feet, and he had walked away. How amusing she must have seemed to him, how he must have laughed—silly Miss Letty with her moony ways, falling over cliffs and down mine shafts, and begging him to marry her. Silly child... How she had loved him then.

And how she hated him now.

Her first instinct was to turn and run, but she made herself stand tall and straight until he was almost upon her. He had left her so little pride that summer, had left it tattered and in shreds, but she wrapped it around herself now like an old mended cloak. She lifted a composed face, and the heavy serge skirt of her walnut brown redingote, and sailed past him, cutting him dead.

A footman in purple and gold satin livery dashed past her, nearly knocking her down. Suddenly she was enveloped by a whole gaggle of running footmen. Some gentlemen, bored with waiting for the sweepstakes to start, were matching their servants in a human race.

One of the footmen, his roly-poly body sausaged into tight crimson and silver satin, his periwig askew over one eye, lagged far behind the others, and his master was riding along beside him, ordering him to pick up his legs and move his bloody arse, dammit. The footman, puffing like a locomotive, leaped high and landed in a puddle. Muddy water splashed through the air. Jessalyn stood, stunned and dripping, until a hand closed around her elbow, guiding her out of the way.

"Well, well, if it isn't Miss Letty in trouble as usual. Somehow I always thought that if I should ever see you again, it would be in a place where you don't belong."

She had to swallow before she could speak. Her tongue felt rough with rust, and it seemed she had forgotten to breathe. She looked up into his face, so handsome above his tall, starched collar and cleverly tied cravat. Into his eyes, so dark and compelling. At his mouth, a mouth that she knew could be hard and then sulky by turns.

A mouth that had once kissed her.

"But I do belong here," she said, pleased that her voice betrayed none of the turmoil within her breast. "My horse Blue Moon is entered in the Crombie Sweeps, and I am here to see him run away with the prize, Mr.... Pray forgive me, but though your face is familiar, your name has slipped my memory—no, I have it. Trelawny. Lieutenant Trelawny."

Anger flashed in his eyes. Raw and ragged anger that was swiftly covered up. "It is Lord Caerhays now, and you remembered damn well who I am, Jessalyn. You didn't used to be so good at nasty, cutting sort of games."

"I was taught how to play by an expert." She gathered up her skirt again. "Do accept my condolences on your brother's death, and now if you will excuse me..."

She took a step, but he took a larger one, planting himself in front of her. His lips curled up at one end in an arrogant smile. "No, I will not excuse you. Miss Letty. At least not until we exchange a few more polite banalities. You shall ask me how I am faring, and I shall say: 'Tolerably well, thank you.' Then I shall ask how you are faring."

She made her eyes go wide and guileless. "I beg your pardon. I hadn't thought to be rude. I merely assumed that the state of my health is a matter of utmost indifference to you... since I harbor not the slightest interest in yours."

He leaned into her, so close she could see the beginning shadow of a beard on his lean cheeks and the shadows stirring in the dark pools of his eyes. "Now there you are wrong," he said, drawling the words in a deliberately seductive fashion, "for I have thought of you often in the last five years."

"I thought of you, too, my lord. In the beginning. But then I came to see that you were right: We did not at all suit. And so my thoughts moved on to other things."

To her shock his head fell back in laughter. "Well put," he exclaimed. "Cut to the bone, I've been. Skewered like a Christmas goose, pricked like a pincushion, sliced like an onion, stabbed like a—like a... dear me, I seem to have run out of metaphors. Tell me, Miss Letty—it is still Miss Letty? Or should I be addressing you as someone more matronly? Mrs. Respectable, perhaps? Mrs. Dull?"

The words built in her mouth to tell him about her betrothal to his cousin, for more than anything that would show him that she had survived what he had done to her heart and to her pride. But as she tilted her head back to speak, she caught his gaze upon her. The twin exploding suns blazed bright in his eyes, as disturbing as ever, and even after all this time she felt her heart pick up a beat.

She stared up at him, hating him for doing this to her— for knocking down in five minutes all the walls she'd spent five years building. "You've grown up, little girl," he said, his voice husky but with an underlying edge that promised a danger she was, oh, too familiar with.

Grown up... she must remember that she was a woman now, no longer the silly barefoot girl who had once made such a fool of herself over him. She had acquired a bosom that filled out her redingote. Beneath her fanciful Gypsy hat, her hair was pulled neatly back into a braided chignon. But it was still red, and her mouth was still too big for her face.

When I marry, it will be to a woman, not a scrawny, carrottop barely out of the schoolroom....

Jessalyn's stomach clenched into a tight knot. Away... she had to get away from him before...

But before she knew what he was about, he had taken her arm and was leading her over to the painted white markers that lined the home straight. His touch was light, impersonal, but she felt it deep within her like a bruise on the bone.

His hand released her to wrap around one of the posts. He gripped the wood so tightly the veins and sinews of his wrist stood out and the leather of his tan gloves pulled taut across his knuckles. She shot a quick glance at his face. He was staring at the tall white pillar that marked the starting point where the runners were gathering. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

The jockeys, bright as popinjays in their taffetas, were jostling for position. Through the misty drizzle, the horses were barely distinguishable from one another, their coats all dark and sleek like otters with the wet.

Out the corner of her eye she saw him move. He even started to walk away from her, and she let out a soft breath of relief. Then he whirled and took two hard, jerky strides. His hands fell on her shoulders, pulling her around. "Why did you name him Blue Moon?"

Whatever she had expected, it was not that. For a moment the shrill cries of the hawkers and legs faded away. She saw herself dancing before him, laughing, picking a moonflower to tuck behind his ear. She heard the sigh of the surf and felt the sea wind... that night of the blue moon, when he had taken her in his arms and kissed her the way a man kissed a woman he wanted. Hard and rough and hungry.

In spite of all her hard-won control, she felt the walls crumble some more. She looked into his eyes, to see if he remembered, too, and saw nothing there but shadows. "I named him Blue Moon because he's rare and special," she said, the words matter-of-fact, telling the truth, but only part of it. "This one will do it, my lord. He is going to win the Derby for us, for Gram and me. Now if you will please be so kind as to take your hands off me. I dislike being touched by people I scarcely know."

He opened his hands, fingers spread wide, and lifted them off her shoulders in an exaggerated motion. "I do beg your pardon, Miss Letty. I shall try to refrain from touching you in the future." He brought his face so close to hers his breath disturbed strands of her hair, and Jessalyn's heart thrust hard like a fist against her breast. "At least," he said, "until we come to know each other again."

She felt the shock of his words deep in her belly. Again... Unconsciously, her hands clenched. No, not again. Never again.

He hadn't moved, nor did he take his eyes off her face. The sleeve of his greatcoat brushed her arm. The wind whipped the bottom of her redingote open, slapping it against his leg. She heard him take a breath; she imagined she could feel his heartbeat.

"I hope your Blue Moon wins you many races," he said, and there was still an edge of rough anger to his voice. "But not today's. I already have a coper interested in buying my Rum Chaser, and he'll be worth far more as a stud if he can go out a winner. Not to mention the fact that I have a bloody fortune riding on his hide."

"You should not have plunged so deeply, my lord. For he'll have a hard time beating Blue Moon. Especially in this weather."

"A mudder, is he?" The creases alongside his mouth deepened into a sudden and unexpected smile, and Jessalyn's treacherous heart pitched and dipped.

"Blue Moon runs like the wind on anything."

He stared at her, his eyes on her mouth. The air vibrated between them like the strings of a viola tuned too tightly. She stared back at him, at the taut set of his face. She felt his heat, smelled him.

She stepped back and turned aside, suddenly afraid. Tension thickened the air until she couldn't breathe. Her chest felt heavy with a quiet despair, yet her heart was racing. It was as if she were falling down a mine shaft and her scrabbling fingers could find no purchase. Falling down, down, until she was back again in that bittersweet summer, not herself anymore but the girl she had been. Poor silly Miss Letty, loving him, needing him. Losing him. The first time had almost killed her, but she had survived. Again... again... She would never let herself be hurt like that again.

She licked her lips, tasting the rain, which was cool and tinged with smoke. I must be going," she said on an expulsion of pent-up breath, already turning away. "Gram will be wondering—"

"Wait!" The urgency in his tone stopped her. But when she looked back, his eyes were empty and as unfathomable as the sea. "The race is about to start," he said.

She looked to see if what he said was true. The runners were still lining up, a procedure that had been known to take up to an hour. She searched for Blue Moon and his jockey, Topper, and spotted them easily. The boy in the Letty colors of black and scarlet; the horse's bay coat looking almost bloodred in the murky light. The field was large, and the jockeys had to fight for a place in the lead, kicking and hitting one another in the face with the butt ends of their whips. The horses pranced and lashed out with their hooves. The jockeys bounced on their backs, their bright taffeta-covered skullcaps bobbing like fishing corks.

He was standing close to her again. She sucked in a deep breath. The wet, mulchy smell of the turf seemed to wash over her like a wave, then receded. "Which one is your brother's horse—"

"My horse."

"Yes... I'm sorry."

"You needn't feel sorry for Rum Chaser. I assure you that while I have many vices, I am invariably kind to animals. It is my one soft spot."

He had done this the first time they'd met, talked in circles around her so that she'd emerged from a conversation with him feeling dizzier than a top. "I meant that I am sorry to learn of your brother's death," she said.

"Why should you be sorry? No one else is. He put a pistol in his mouth and blew his brains all over the pink-flocked wallpaper, leaving me not only his title and champion racehorse but all his bloody debts as well. And further upholding the proud Trelawny tradition of dying young, violently, and in disgrace."

She looked up into his face, noting the bitter slant to his hard mouth. "And will you uphold the tradition now that you are the earl of Caerhays?"

He pinned her with his gaze. "Probably."

For a moment she thought she saw real pain smothered behind the shadows of those dark eyes. She turned abruptly away from him. "You never said which one is your horse. My lord."

"Rum Chaser's knight is wearing green and yellow. Miss Letty."

Around the Turf the jockeys were called knights of the pigskin. Jessalyn had always loved the fanciful expression, which came from the pigskin saddles the jockeys rode on. She spotted the green and yellow taffeta of Rum Chaser's knight mounted on a dark chestnut with four white socks. The jockey seemed to be having trouble holding the horse in check. The big chestnut was curvetting and rearing and tossing his head. His massive hindquarters revealed his power and speed, and his arched neck his pride. Black Charlie had been right: Rum Chaser was of a showy turn. Jessalyn could only hope the leg's touts were also right about his not being fit.

The wind blew, bringing with it not the smell of the turf this time but the scent of the man beside her—of maleness and danger and of something that fanned a flame low in her belly. He had the whole wide heath to move about in, yet he was standing so close to her that they could have shared the same coffin. She smiled at the absurd thought.

"I still hate it when you do that," he said.

Her head snapped around. "Do what?"

"Smile as if you know something I don't know."

But I love you.

Too bloody bad, Miss Letty. Because I don't love you.

"Since you ask, I was thinking I really ought to thank you for turning down my rash and thoughtless proposal of marriage all those years ago," she said with a bright, careless smile, although inside she was aching, aching. "It is amazing—is it not?—the mistakes one makes when one is young and foolish."

His face did not change expression; he didn't even blink. His eyes were empty, dark, and still as an underground pool. "But we must have a care," he said, "not to make the same mistake twice."

Whose mistake was he talking about? she wondered. Hers or his? She felt an unwanted tightening in her chest.

In that moment if there had been any softening in his eyes, any indication at all that he had cared for her that summer, even a little, she might have forgiven him everything.

But his gaze remained flat and impenetrable, and she had taken to heart the bitter lesson learned the day he had left her. That loving someone is not enough if he refuses to love you back.

The starting bell clanged. They both whipped around as a flag flashed beside the distant post, white like a gull's wing against the green turf, and suddenly the horses were off.

The screams of the spectators slammed against Jessalyn's ears like the roar of a hundred hungry lions. But she didn't even breathe. Her eyes were riveted on black and scarlet colors and Blue Moon's distinctive ungainly stride.

They were well in the back of the pack. For all his courage, Blue Moon had a disconcerting habit of trailing lazily along in the rear, waiting until the last possible second to put on his tremendous burst of speed. His crafty mind understood that to have his head in front was enough; he saw no point in exerting himself to win by a furlough when a whisker would do. But this made for some excruciatingly nerve-racking moments for those who had their hopes and their money riding on his blood bay hide.

Jessalyn swayed on her feet, as if the cheers of the crowd were buffeting her. The course was an undulating mile and a half long, twisted and cruel as the devil's heart. The horses' hooves flashed silver, tearing like scythes into the sloggy turf. The jockeys' bright taffetas wavered in and out of the driving mist, blurring into streaks of living fire.

A black gelding named Candy Dancer had quickly taken the lead and was holding it. Jessalyn reminded herself that the touts had Candy Dancer pegged as a fast starter that often had no pluck for the hard finish.

They were now at the far end of the course, where it curved sharply back around like a bent elbow. Shrouded by the rain, the horses were black shadows, indistinguishable.

Suddenly they burst out of the white mist like arrows shooting through a gauzy curtain. The man beside her stiffened as Rum Chaser emerged from the pack along the inside to challenge Candy Dancer.

Hooves pounded the turf like a thousand drums, vibrating the ground beneath Jessalyn's feet. She looked for Topper's black and red skullcap and spotted it, bobbing a full five lengths behind the leaders. Too late, she thought. He's left it until too late. Then, just when it seemed the race was lost, Blue Moon put on his flying speed, coming around the outside, gaining, gaining, gaining.... Five hundred yards stretched before them to the winning post, and the three Thoroughbreds, black and bay and chestnut, were now running stride for stride, straining every muscle and sinew toward victory.

As was the custom, many of the spectators on horseback galloped onto the course to join the runners. Without the bright colors of the jockeys' skullcaps it would now have been impossible to distinguish which horses were actually a part of the race. Jessalyn began bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. She knew she was wriggling like a pilchard, but she didn't care.

"Come on, Blue Moon. Come on, come on..." she chanted, as if the words were an incantation, her voice rising to a crescendo along with her excitement.

She glanced at the man beside her. He watched with a controlled intensity, only the tight set of his mouth revealing how much he had invested in this race. She was lost a moment in looking at him, and so she missed seeing the beginning of what happened. Only the horrible finish.

The crowd's cheers of excitement shattered into screams as Rum Chaser went down in a tangle of white socks and hooves. Blue Moon swerved, his legs slipping sideways out from under him in the mud. He slid along on his belly, unable to collect his crazily skating feet, then overbalanced onto his nose...

And lay absolutely still.