“Meringue?” Celine grimaced at the absurd name.
“Anaïs named him before I could.” Putting his hands on her shoulders, Jacques pivoted her towards the track and brought a pair of silver binoculars to her face. “It’s the white Arabian. There. Unfortunately, we don’t work that well together. He’s awfully stubborn.”
“Perhaps it’s the name,” Celine offered, hoping to change his mood. Jacques indulged her with a small smile. “Don’t worry,” she muttered. “I have all the confidence you’ll win.”
“That’s all I need then.” He placed a kiss on the back of her hand. “I must go, but I’ll see you after the race. And don’t mind Bastien. He doesn’t mean the things he says.”
Somehow Celine doubted it. She blew Jacques an air kiss and seated herself between Anaïs and Bastien. He had propped his feet up on the railing, head tilted backwards as he readied himself to deliver another one of his wild observations. But Monsieur Ménard’s irritated grumble intercepted him.
“You’d think some people would have a smidge of reserve in them. He has broughtheragain.”
Celine leaned over to whisper to Anaïs. “Who is he talking about?”
“The club’s president and his new wife. Grandfather despises her.”
“Why? What did she do?”
Anaïs smiled wickedly. “What didn’t she do. They say she was involved with someone way younger than her while she had just celebrated her engagement to the club’s president. But it’s all rumours, I haven’t found anyone to confirm it yet.”
“I’ll do you the courtesy sister,” Bastien said. “It’s all true.”
He hadn’t changed his position on the chair, but a gratified grin was slowly creeping over his lips.
Anaïs’s jaw hung open. “You didn’t!”
His eyes remained shut beneath his shades, but his grin widened.
“Even you are not that shameless as to…are you?”
Bastien shrugged. “As long as her husband doesn’t find out, I don’t care.”
Celine had to stop being surprised by Bastien's profligacy, though she hadn’t expected his tastes to include married women. She craned her neck to check if Monsieur Ménard had caught a word of his grandson’s philandering. The old man was just waiting pensively, eyes fixed on the track.
The announcer’s voice crackled with static over the speakers as he called the jockeys to the gates. Celine straightened her spine primly, though her fingers were restlessly twisting her purse’s strap into a knot. Jacques’s last race with Pharaoh hadn’t ended that well. The horse had collapsed right as they crossed the finish line, shattering one of his leg bones and becoming the main subject of all newspapers. Jacques, fortunately, had only gotten a few scratches and a twisted ankle; but now that he was saying Meringue was stubborn, Celine couldn’t help but fear for the worst.
A lost match was no matter—it would do nothing to taint Jacques’s record—but there had been horrifying accident casesover the years, and to see Jacques get hurt right in front of her was sending her nerves in a frenzy.
“I hope he wins,” she whispered, half to herself, half letting the words take shape in the course and become Jacques’s good luck charm.
“Please,” Bastien scoffed. His eyes were roaming anywhere but the track. “Jacques always comes up first.”
Celine quirked a brow in his direction. “Aww, jealous?”
“Of what, being splattered by dirt and smelling like a horse? No, thank you.”
“Better than sullying yourself in brothels all day and smelling like cheap perfume.”
Now it was Bastien’s turn to quirk a brow. “Aww, jealous?”
“Of being touched by a pig like you?” She lifted her nose in the air. “Not even on my deathbed.”
Bastien dropped his feet down in revolt. “YouwishI was touching—”
He was interrupted by Monsieur Ménard as the old man dismissed the track and faced them. “Celine dear,” he said, pushing his drink to the side and lacing his fingers on the table. “Jacques tells me you enjoy fashion.”
Celine startled to attention, cold sweat breaking across her temple when his words registered. “I-I do,” she stammered. “On occasion.”
Bastien snorted.
