A flood of foreboding now wrinkled her brow but she endeavoured a smile and made the introductions to her aunt.
“Would you care to join us in our barouche for the race?” Aunt Beatrice asked. “The more the merrier and we’d be most appreciative of your insight.”
Mr Skelton smiled, revealing dimples. “My pleasure, Mrs Cassell.”
He tied his horse, clambered into the barouche and with a flick of green coat-tails, sat aside Hebe.
“The Burford Sweepstake is one mile,” Mr Skelton explained, a fresh lemon cologne wafting. “So, it’s frantic and fast.”
“And what does the winner receive?”
“Ah, well, besides the adulation, each entrant puts in, say, a ten-guinea stake, and the winner takes all, so with eight horses, that will add up.”
No wonder fortunes were lost and found at the races.
“Then there’s the betting.” For a moment, Mr Skelton’s handsome features twisted into a grimace. “Which is a game that no one wins bar the bookmaker.”
A cheer erupted from the far side of the course and Hebe twisted in her seat, eyes searching for signs of the riders, yet spectators had also crowded into the middle, the start line to the oval loop of eight impossible to view.
The cheer appeared to weave and grow, and Hebe rose to her feet to no avail, could only see the straight line to the finish – vacant and expectant.
But then…
Faintly…
The gallop of hooves could be heard, a rumble like distant thunder in the mountains.
Mr Skelton also rose, hat placed to the seat of the barouche, his height an advantage. “Only half a mile to go, they won’t be long.”
Hebe stretched to her tiptoes as the rumble swelled, and that half-mile felt like a league, waiting and worrying. Would he fall? Be trampled?
“Look!”
Hebe craned her neck, longed to descend the barouche and rush to the rope for when they passed, to feel the breeze of their speed.
“His lordship’s a neck behind,” shouted the coachman who had the advantage on his high perch. “Sir Henry leads.”
Noise erupted around them, horsemen sitting tall, cheers, whistles and cries.
The riders rounded the bend onto the finish straight, four, no five snorting muzzles of brown, black and dun racing towards them, gentlemen leaning low, another riderless stallion cantering up on the outside, legs a blur of motion. So close did they gallop that it would only require one to stumble for them all to be thrown to the turf.
Before long, Hebe too could identify Lord Jack, his blood-red coat singling him out, his explosive power evident in every slam of hoof.
“I can’t tell who’s ahead,” she cried, for from her vantage point, they appeared an impenetrable wall of strength and valour. Beasts and their captains thundering headlong into battle.
“It’s Ernest!” shouted Mr Skelton. “He’s in front by a nose but Henry’s keeping pace, the others slackening. It takes speed but also stamina in this final straight.”
And then she too saw him.
His face a blur but recognisable by his golden hair catching the sun, white shirt sleeves fluttering. Lord Jack for all his vigour hardly seemed to labour, his gallop smooth and rounded with swift strides.
“No!” she cried as Sir Henry’s whip appeared to catch Lord Jack’s hip and her heart stumbled as though a fist squeezed it tight – yet neither man nor animal faltered, intent upon the finish rope.
Even through the barouche floor, she could feel the ground shudder with the crashing hooves, clods flung high.
Then they were level.
And for a moment…
