1
NEAR BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
MARCH 1822
Slaughter County Course:
Saturday Races, last race, one-half mile
HE WAS GOING to lose. He didn’t want to lose, dammit, particularly to Jessie Warfield, that obnoxious brat. He could feel Rialto just behind him, hooves pounding firm and steady on the black dirt, head stretched long, muscles hard and bunched. He looked over his left shoulder. Rialto was coming on faster than a man escaping from a woman’s bedchamber before her husband came through the door, and the damned five-year-old had more endurance than an energetic man with four demanding wives.
James stretched as far as he could and pressed his face as close as he could to Tinpin’s ear. He always talked to his horses before and during a race to gauge their moods. Good-natured Tinpin was always open to James. Tinpin, like most of his racehorses, was a fierce competitor; he had great heart. The horse wanted to win as much as James did. The only time he was distracted from victory was that time when a jockey had slammed his riding crop on his side, sending him into a rage. He’d nearly killed that damned jockey and lost the race in the process.
James felt old Tinpin’s labored breathing beneath him. The horse was more a quarter-mile sprinter than a half-miler, so Rialto had the advantage there, in both ability and experience. This was only Tinpin’s second half-mile race. James kicked his sides, telling Tinpin over and over that he could do it, that he could keep the lead over that miserable little chestnut, that he could kick Rialto—named after a silly Venetian bridge—in the dirt. He had to make his move now or it would be too late. James promised Tinpin an extra bucket of oats, a dollop of champagne in his water. The horse gave a final burst of speed, but it wasn’t enough.
He lost—by only a length. Tinpin’s sides were heaving. He was blowing hard, his neck lathered. James walked him around, listening to the groans and cheers of the crowd. He stroked Tinpin’s wet neck, telling him he was a brave fighter, that he would have won if James hadn’t been riding him. And he probably would have won, dammit, despite James’s reputed magic with his horses. Some claimed that James as good as carried some of his horses over the finish line himself. Well, he hadn’t carried any horse anywhere this day.
Actually he hadn’t even come in second after Rialto. He’d placed third, behind another chestnut thoroughbred from the Warfield Stables, a four-year-old named Pearl Diver who had nosed past Tinpin at the last moment, his tail flicking over James’s leg.
Tinpin didn’t have much bottom, but then again this hadn’t been a four-mile flat race, it had just been a half mile and bottom shouldn’t have mattered. What had mattered had been James’s extra weight. With a lighter rider on his back, Tinpin would have won. James cursed, slapping his riding crop against his boot.
“Hey, James, you lost me ten dollars, curse you!”
James was leading Tinpin back to his stable lad, his head down. He sloughed off his depression and smiled toward his brother-in-law, Gifford Poppleton, striding toward him like a civilized bull—short, powerful, but not an ounce of fat on him. He liked Giff and had approved of his marriage to his sister, Ursula, the year before. “You can well afford it, Giff,” he shouted back.
“I can, but that’s not the point.” Gifford dropped into a long, lazy stride beside him. “You tried, James, but you’re just too damned big to be a jockey. Those other jockeys weigh four stone less than you do. Fifty-something extra pounds make a lot of difference.”
“Bloody damn, Giff, you’re brilliant,” James said, striking a pose. “I wish I’d known. And here I thought only the experts knew that.”
“Well, I know a lot of things,” Giff said, just grinning at him. “Hell, I wouldn’t have wagered on you if Ursula hadn’t nagged me into it.”
“The brat weighs even less,” James said.
“The brat? Oh, Jessie Warfield. That she does. Too bad about poor Redcoat breaking his leg in the second race. Now there’s a jockey. You trained him well. What does he weigh? One hundred pounds?”
“Ninety pounds on a sunny day. Do you know how he broke his leg? Another jockey ran him into a tree.”
“It hurt me to see it. You know, James, someone needs to make some rules about racing. All this mayhem is ridiculous. I read about a race in Virginia where the favored horse was poisoned the night before the race.”
“It might be ridiculous,” James said, “and it might be occasionally dangerous, but it’s fun, Giff. Leave things be. Just be careful whom you bet with.”
“As if you cared. Hey, Oslow, how are you doing?”
Oslow Penny was the head of James’s breeding farm. On race days, though, he was the head stable lad who oversaw the handling of all the horses to race at the meet. He was a walking oral history, at least that’s what James called him. The Maryland Joc
key Club was beginning to agree. Oslow knew the direct line back, or the tail-male, of every horse that ran from South Carolina to New York. He also knew every current sire and every dam and every get from every racehorse in America and Britain.
Oslow approached them, muttering under his breath, and gently removed Tinpin’s reins from James’s hand. He was bowlegged, scrawny-looking, and had the most powerful hands James had ever seen. His face was weathered and seamed, his brown eyes as powerful with intelligence as his hands were with strength.
He squinted through the bright afternoon sun up at Gifford’s face. “Good afternoon, sir. I’m doing as fine as Lilly Lou did at the Virginia High Ebb races just last week. Better than Mr. James, that’s for sure. Aye, and how are you doin’, boy? Winded, are you? Well, you did your best, did better than Dour Keg, that knock-kneed creature old Wiggins still persists in racing. Hell, I don’t even remember who his sire was, that’s how bad he is.”
“Did you bet on Mr. James, Oslow?”
“Not I, Mr. Poppleton,” Oslow said, stroking a gnarled, veiny hand over Tinpin’s neck. “I would have if Redcoat had ridden him, poor lad, but not Mr. James. Mr. James has just growed too big, just like Little Nell, who ate her head off four years ago and couldn’t barely shuffle over the finish line at the Dickey races in North Carolina, clean in last place.”
Gifford laughed. “You think I could have done better than Mr. James?”
Oslow spat just beyond Tinpin’s left shoulder. “Not with that pair of hands you got, Mr. Poppleton. Sorry, sir, but you’ve got ham hands, not like Mr. James, who has magic running out the ends of his fingers into the horses.”
“Thank you, Oslow, for something,” James said. “Now, Gifford, let’s go see Ursula. I don’t suppose you brought our mother with you?” He patted Tinpin’s neck as he moved away.
“No, thank God. She tried to talk Ursula out of coming to this godless place.”
James laughed. He was still grinning when he saw the Warfield brat striding toward him, looking just like a boy, still wearing a riding hat with her violent red hair shoved up under it. Her face was red from the hot sun. A line of freckles marched across her nose.
He didn’t want to stop, but he did. It was hard. He’d just as soon ignore her for the rest of his days, but he was a gentleman, dammit.
“Congratulations,” he said, trying to unclench his teeth. She’d beaten him often since she was a knock-kneed kid of fourteen, but he still hated it. He never got used to it.
Jessie Warfield paid no attention to Gifford Poppleton, president of the Union Bank of Baltimore, as she came toe-to-toe with James and said, “You tried to shove me into that ditch on the second lap.”
A dark blond eyebrow went up. “Did I now?”
She came up onto her tiptoes, her nose an inch from his. “You know you did. Don’t even consider lying, James. It was close. If I weren’t such a bloody good rider, I would have gone over the edge. But I didn’t. I came back and beat you—beat you but good.”
“You certainly did,” he said easily, wanting to smack her. Some sportsmanship. She was a female. If she were a male, she’d know it wasn’t right to rub the loser’s nose in his defeat. Although, he thought, when he next beat her, he was going to rub her entire face in the dirt.
“Do you know your lips are chapped? Do you know I can count your freckles from this distance?” he said. “One, two, three—goodness, there are so damned many of them it would take me a week.”
She backed up fast. “Don’t try it again, or I’ll take my riding crop to you.” She licked her chapped lips, shook the crop in his face, nodded to Giff, and strode off.