Playing To Win

“Not anymore. I’m Lady Cairnbrooke. Sorry, but I can’t leave him standing, and I’m pretty sure you can’t keep up with me.”

Sera was off again, down the same stretch of trail, with Jeffers after her, but Satin did not so much as think of losing his rider, so glad was he to have a playmate who enjoyed a good gallop. Jeffers breathed a sigh of relief.

Thus challenged, the Falcrests rode after her and kept up with her around the lake and on into Green Park. They pulled up when they saw she meant to canter on toward Hyde Park without so much as breaking her stride. “So that is Tony’s wife. I shall have to contrive to meet Lady Cairnbrooke someplace where I can keep up with her,” Clive vowed, rubbing his stiff leg and easing it in the stirrup.

“Thank God Marissa was not with us. Don’t you tell my wife we were outrun by a woman. We will never hear the end of it,” William warned.

They were walking their mounts back when Tony came up with them, open-shirted and looking as though he had leapt from a bedroom window.

“Hyde Park,” they said in unison, and laughed at Tony’s familiar scowl.

Sera trotted Satin, or cantered him on some of the more open walks, in deference to Jeffers’s hack, which was beginning to blow. When she could make out Tony’s approaching form, she made for the woods. Jeffers, now used to the game of tag between the trees and shrubs, managed to keep her in sight, but it was the last they saw of Tony. Sera brought them out again on Park Lane and trotted quite sedately the whole way home to Marsham Street.

Their mounts were quite cool by the time they returned, and the undergroom received them into his charge with satisfaction. He had thought Lady Cairnbrooke would be a match for the red brute. Of his master he saw nothing for half an hour. When Lord Cairnbrooke did dash into the yard, his gray was flecked with foam, and Dillon looked on his master with disfavor when he realized how long it would take him to properly cool the animal.

“My wife and Jeffers?”

“Back this half hour, m’lord.”

“And safe?”

“Of course,” Dillon said matter-of-factly.