Page 505 of From Rakes to Riches

There was no doubting he’d just done what he loved most in the world.

Rake experienced admiration—and a dollop of envy.

And more worry.

In his experience, loving too much or too freely only invited trouble—even disaster.

Wilson called out a heartywell doneand immediately set about inspecting Hannibal from all angles, asking questions like, “How was his wind?” and “Did you feel him favoring a leg?”

All the while, Rake watched and listened as Gem answered each question, clearly and equably. Rake slapped the slouch hat against his thigh, drawing Gem’s attention. The lad had already retrieved his coat from the fence rail and shrugged it onto his bony shoulders. All he was missing was his hat.

The one Rake yet held.

The lad extended his hand. “If you wouldn’t mind.” A beat. “Your Grace.”

Viewing Gem up close without the hat, Rake could see why the lad wore it. Sun-streaked red-gold curls rioted untamed about his head, just touching his shoulders, hardly kept in check by the queue at the nape of his neck. The auburn of his hair pulled the gold flecks from his green eyes.

There, again, went one of those observations he’d never had about a jockey.

Rake released the hat, which was immediately snatched away and affixed onto Gem’s head, covering his wild glory of hair.

“If that will be all, Your Grace?” said Wilson, clearly satisfied with his inspection of Hannibal. “I’ll be gettin’ the lads back to it. They seem to think it’s Boxing Day.”

The stable lads and grooms did give off a holiday air as they continued to lag about and make jolly with each other. Rake nodded, and Wilson pivoted, already barking orders to the cluster of lads unlucky enough to be nearest.

Gem must’ve taken it as his dismissal, too, for he began leading Hannibal down the track for his cool-down.

“Not you, Gem,” said Rake, falling into step beside the lad. Though he had a busy day and hadn’t the time to spare, he had a few questions for his jockey. Best start with the one that had been at the top of his mind all morning. “How did you come to know horses the way you do?”

Gem shrugged. “Bouncing between stables here, there, and everywhere,” he mumbled.

Rake shook his head. “You don’t get to know horseflesh the way you do like that. Try again.”

Rake could see that every admission—every syllable—would have to be pulled from the lad bit by reluctant bit.

“I spent much of my life in a lord’s stables.”

Each syllable sounded bitten off with great difficulty.

“Like Grimalkin the stable cat?”

This got a barely-there exhalation that might’ve been a laugh.

“How did you come to be in a lord’s stables?” Rake’s patience was beginning to wear thin.

Gem swiped the sweat off the back of his neck. “My Mam was the lord’s cook.”

Ah.

That made a modicum of sense.

But the information only provoked another question. “Which lord?”

“I’d rather not say.”

I won’t say, the lad might just as well have said.

Rake’s question had been little more than an idle one—one not intended to lead anywhere. It wasn’t as if he would be checking into Gem’s story. But Gem’s response turned the idle question into something altogether different.

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