‘There’s no outstanding stayer this season,’ he told Cassie in the bar afterwards. ‘And at one and three quarter miles, the little fellah’s still only cantering.’
‘But will you be able to ride him, Dex?’ Cassie asked.
‘I’ll think about it, Guv’nor,’ Dex grinned, ‘if you say please.’
Cassie did say please, but that was all. She found herself still very fond of Dex, who had grown from a boy full of determination and purpose into a man of dedication and also of great natural charm and warmth. Cassie knew that he found her attractive as well, but before there had been the chance for any romance to flower, Tomas had nipped it smartly in the bud.
‘This young man of yours, Guv’nor,’ he’d started one morning after the second string had returned from the gallops.
‘I don’t have any young man, Tomas,’ Cassie had replied, over their mugs of tea in the office.
‘The way he looks at you with them googly eyes of his, I’d say he thinks you do.’
Tomas had glanced at her, as he relit the stub of the Sweet Afton he’d tucked away behind his ear.
‘If you’re referring to Dexter Bryant, Tomas—’
‘Sure I’m hardly referring to Sean Connery now, am I? I’m just sayin’ that he’ll stop listening to you the moment you start listening to him, that’s all.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning precisely that, Mrs Rosse. There’s no benefit to be had crossin’ the line, you know. Not in a racin’ yard.’
‘I have no intention of crossing the line as you call it!’ Cassie had replied, more than a little curtly.
‘You’d be as well not to,’ Tomas had finished, ‘not if you want him to keep ridin’ you winners. A man keeps his ambition just as long as he keeps his pants up.’
It was the nearest Cassie had ever come to losing her temper with Tomas. And only because she had known he was right.
Even so, however much she protested, Cassie found it increasingly hard being alone in Dex’s company, although she seemed almost wilfully to fly in the face of providence by still continually inviting him to eat dinner with her children and herself in the kitchen at Claremore. She made it her excuse that she wanted to prove to herself how strong she could be.
But on the Sunday before the big Goodwood meeting, the temptation almost proved too strong. Cassie had thrown a lunch party and Dexter had been amongst the guests. And he had lingered behind, ostensibly to play with the children. Cassie didn’t even know that he was still there until all her other guests had gone and she saw Dexter riding up the drive on Bouncer, with Mattie on his saddle in front of him and Josephine on her pony beside him. It was such a pretty sight that for a moment Cassie stopped helping Erin clear up and stood watching the party ride slowly up to the house with a smile on her face. Dex was teasing them both, and Josephine in particular, so much that by the time they pulled their horses up below the terrace, Josephine was quite pink from the giggles.
‘I’ve been fired!’ Dex called up to Cassie. ‘Jocked off! Young Mattie-boy’s riding The Donk in the Goodwood Cup!’
‘And Dexter and I are going to get married!’ Josephine shouted. ‘Tomorrow!’
‘My oh my!’ Cassie laughed. ‘Tomorrow? I’ll never get the invitations out in time!’
‘It’s going to be a very quiet affair!’ Dex called up. ‘Just you and Mattie and the horses!’
After they’d helped Erin bathe them, and read them their stories, Cassie and Dex tucked the children up in bed as if they were their very own. Josephine gave Dex an extra long kiss and hug, and told him not to be late for their wedding.
Cassie was still laughing downstairs with Dex about the children before she realised that she was in his arms. Then her laugh stopped as she saw how seriously Dexter was looking at her.
‘Dexter,’ she said. ‘Dex.’
But it was too late. He had kissed her, and even though she quietly protested when he stopped, he simply kissed her again.
‘I’ve been dying to do that, Cassie, ever since I saw you again,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve been dying to do that in fact for over twelve years.’
‘Dexter, please,’ Cassie said, trying to find the strength to push him away from her, to refuse him any further contact.
‘It’s OK, Cassie,’ Dex reassured her, ‘it’s really OK. I could see how you were feeling as well. I could see you were feeling just the same as me.’
‘I don’t know how I’m feeling, Dex!’ Cassie protested, almost indignantly, as she finally managed to prise herself out of his arms. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s just not fair.’
‘What isn’t?’ he asked her. ‘You kissing me? I don’t find that unfair. What I find unfair is all those years we missed. All that time gone by.’
Cassie sat down on a sofa and looked up at the serious-faced Dex. He was wearing exactly the same expression he had worn all that time ago when he had climbed into her bedroom on Long Island.
‘Dex, I’ve been married since then,’ Cassie told him. ‘You must try and understand. I’ve been married, I’ve had babies and I’ve lost my husband. A man I loved deeply. I’m just not the same girl you knew in America.’
‘Sure you’re not,’ Dex replied. ‘You’re even more marvellous. I know I’ll never understand what you’ve been through, but you mustn’t expect me to. I love you for what you are now. For what you are to me. That’s how it is, Cassie. You’re still the most wonderful girl I’ve ever met.’
Cassie looked up at him, as Dexter smiled and sat down beside her. ‘You can’t, Dex,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t.’
‘I can’t? I mustn’t what, Cassie?’
‘You mustn’t fall in love with me.’
‘It’s a little late for that, Cass.’
He smiled at her sweetly and took her hand in both of his.
‘Dex, I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t even know if I feel. If I still can have feelings. I know that I like you tremendously, that you make me feel warm and that I love being with you. Beyond that, I don’t know how I feel. Really.’
‘It’s OK, Cass. We’ve plenty of time.’
‘It’s not a question of time, Dex.’
‘What is it then?’
Cassie fell silent, looking at how serious he had become.
‘You mean I’m not good enough for you?’ he said without malice, just with a sort of innocent curiosity.
‘That’s not what I mean at all,’ Cassie replied.
‘I guess maybe it is,’ Dex replied. ‘Jeeze – I’m still such an idiot. You know that? I keep forgetting how different things are! How much everything’s changed’
He got up and started to pace the room. Cassie watched him anxiously.
‘Or rather not changed,’ he continued. ‘No – it’s my fault, Cass! It’s OK! You see I forget things like how you are now, what you are, where you are, and what I am, and where I am. You see, you see – I keep seeing us, you and me, I keep seeing us as we were. The way we were. A boy and a girl, that’s all. But now you’re Mrs Rosse, widow of a famous trainer, getting pretty famous in your own right, and I’m a professional jockey who works for people like you. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? That’s what it’s a question of, right?’
Cassie looked up at him, but was unable to keep her eyes on him, unable to bear looking at the pain on his face. So she just looked down again and shook her head, even though she knew and he knew that he had spoken the truth.
Dex knelt down beside her and took her hand again.
‘I’m sorry, Cass. I really didn’t mean any of that,’ he said.
‘Of course you did, Dex. And there’s nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m the one who should be sorry,’ Cassie replied.
‘You mean sorry for letting me get involved with you?’
‘I mean sorry I can’t love you back. It’s not to do with where we both are, and what we are. It’s too early for me, that’s all. It’s still too soon after Tyrone. I nearly made a terrible mistake in
France, and—’
‘And you don’t want to make another, that’s under-standable.’
‘You’re not a mistake. But I could be, Dex. Because I don’t know who I am yet. I really do need a little more space. And a little more time.’
She looked up at him, and tried to smile. But found it impossible.
Dex smiled instead and stroked her cheek lightly before rising. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’d best be hitting the road. I have to ride work tomorrow for this very strict lady trainer.’
Cassie rose after him, and took his hand, to stop him leaving quite yet. ‘Please forgive me, Dex,’ she said. ‘Please. It’s just time. That’s all I need. Time.’
‘I guess that’s all any of us need, Cass,’ Dex replied. ‘And I guess it’s the one thing none of us ever gets enough of.’
Then he squeezed her hand and was gone.
Things looked good that week. The weather was fine, The Donk was popping out of his skin, and the Goodwood Cup appeared all over bar the shouting, there being only four other entries, all of whom strictly on form let alone on Cassie’s timings were held by her own horse.
And the fact that he was her horse and not anybody else’s added a different dimension to the whole race, because if The Donk won, the winner’s prize money, which that year had risen to over £20,000, would all come back to Claremore.
‘I haven’t even had a bet,’ she told Tomas as they saddled him up for the race. ‘There’s no point, is there? Not if he’s going to win all that lovely prize money.’
The only worry Cassie had that week had been over Dex. He had turned up to ride work on the Monday, and was his usual sweet and charming self. But on Wednesday he was oddly taciturn, and on the morning of the race, when he was due to walk the course with Cassie and Tomas, he didn’t show up at all. When Cassie returned to her hotel, she found a message of apology from him, saying he’d developed a cold, and had overslept because of the medication he’d taken.
And when he’d walked into the paddock to mount up, Cassie was appalled by how pale he looked.
‘Are you all right, Dex?’ she asked, as he arrived by her side for his race orders.
‘I’m OK, really,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just a bad cold.’
‘You don’t sound as if you’ve a cold,’ Tomas said.
‘I’ve taken some of those cold capsules,’ Dex said, checking his horse’s girths. ‘You know, the ones which dry you right out.’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t walk the course,’ Cassie complained. ‘It gets awful confusing out there in the country.’
‘I’ve been through it with the other jocks, Guv’nor,’ Dex replied. ‘Dozens of times. No problems. Now. Shall I make all? Or hold the little horse up for a burst?’
‘Against this field you go on,’ Cassie instructed. ‘The going’s just right for him, after the overnight rain, so jump him off in front, and make them come after you. Give him a blow coming up the hill, and don’t worry if they start coming at you. They’ll be crazy if they do when they’re climbing, but that’s what we want. Let them think you’re beat, then three out, kick him on again, and let’s see what he’s got in the locker.’
The Donk went down to the start with his head in his chest, and his ears pricked. On the way past the stand, he gave a good-natured buck, to show his well-being, and then settled down to enjoy his canter. He was the clear favourite at (5/4) against, the next horse in the market being the Ascot Gold Cup runner-up, Preface, at (2/1), and drifting. By the time they were off and running, the Claremore horse was even money.
Dexter did exactly as bid, jumping The Donk off first in a field where no one was anxious to make the running. After two furlongs he had poached a ten-length lead before the horses behind him realised how easily he was going. As they turned away from the stands, and out into the country, Dexter had him fifteen lengths clear and going sweetly. Of his four opponents, two were already apparently being tailed off, one of the back markers being Preface. Running along the back of the course, before the long climb up to the final straight, the field was well strung out, with The Donk if anything increasing his lead. Judging from the buzz in the grandstand, the race was over bar an accident.
Indeed, The Donk was now in what appeared to be an unassailable lead, knowing his stamina, as he and Dex approached the point on the Gold Cup course where it criss-crosses with the other part of the racecourse, and where there is a sweeping turn off to the right which to all intents and purposes, and to a jockey who doesn’t know the course, would appear to be the final turn back to the grandstands stands, and home. Which it isn’t.
Yet Dexter took it. Approaching it, he had taken a long look over his shoulder at the field strung out behind him, and seeing his nearest rival hard at work over fifteen, maybe twenty lengths back, had then turned front again, and obviously mistaken which running rail to follow. He swung the little horse to follow the first rail on his right, which led in fact back into the country, and as he did so there was a mighty shout from the stands as the crowd realised the favourite’s mistake. But by the time Dex had realised it, the others were past him and gone straight ahead up the hill, on the correct route for home. Dexter pulled the little horse up, and through her glasses Cassie saw Dex sitting back on his saddle and pushing up his goggles. Then he kicked The Donk on and cantered slowly for home.
There was a Steward’s Enquiry, and at it, Dexter Bryant was fined and warned for taking the wrong course. As soon as the horse was safely in his stable, Cassie announced to Tomas that she was returning to her hotel, and Tomas announced to her that he was going to get legless. Neither of them had bothered asking Dexter for an explanation. There was no point. The race had been run and lost.
Leonora offered Cassie her version of events when she caught up with Cassie in the owners’ and trainers’ car park.
‘Wasn’t that a crazy thing to do?’ she asked. ‘Though I have to believe it wasn’t entirely a mistake.’
‘What do you mean by that, Leonora? Cassie asked. ‘I hope you can back up any accusation you may be about to make.’
‘It’s just that Dex was at dinner with me the night before he left for England,’ Leonora replied, fishing in her purse for yet another cigarette, ‘and we got talking old times. You know how it is.’ She smiled over the flame of her lighter as she lit her cigarette.
‘And I may be wrong,’ she continued, ‘but I doubt it. Because I got the distinct feeling, darling, that Dexter Bryant was just a little piqued, shall we say, when he learned that the little prank when he climbed into your bedroom and ended up getting fired was both our doing.’
Cassie looked at Leonora, feeling a hate in her heart which until then she had not realised it was possible to feel.
‘You know that isn’t true, Leonora,’ she replied, icily calm. ‘You know perfectly well you wrote the note.’
‘Did I, darling?’ Leonora said, frowning, and replacing her lighter in her purse. ‘Did I really? Well, well, well. My memory. You’re right. Maybe I really ought to stop drinking.’
She smiled, and then walked away to her limousine, where her chauffeur was already out and waiting by her door.
It was one defeat Cassie found very hard to take. She had tried very hard to follow in Tyrone’s footsteps, and not pin all her hopes on the results of one race but this time she had failed. She was bitterly disappointed.
‘It’s only racing, Cassie McGann,’ Tyrone had always said whenever she tried to commiserate with him. ‘One horse loses, another one wins. One horse wins, another one loses.’
But she knew that this race had been different. This race should never have been lost and, worst of all, she knew it hadn’t been. The race had quite deliberately been thrown. And all because of a falsehood.
Leonora’s one falsehood had spoilt a thousand truths. That was the way with lies. Cassie’s relationship with Dexter was now ruined irrevocably: he would consider Cassie to have been the liar, and not Leonora, so subsequently everything which Cassie migh
t say to him, however truthful it was, would always seem to Dexter another possible deception. Such was the art of a deliberate liar like Leonora; she proved the old saying that, with skill, the smallest amount of lying can be made to go the longest possible way.
‘Listen, Guv’nor,’ Tomas had said to her one morning, after listening to a very unaccustomed outburst of resentment from Cassie. ‘We’ve a saying in Ireland – and very suitable it is in this instance – that lies are always the jockeys of misfortune. So never yous mind for now. Liars don’t get to look God in the face.’
‘Neither, I hope,’ Cassie added bitterly, ‘do two-bit jockeys who pull horses.’
Dexter certainly never got to look Cassie in the face again that season. She was so hurt that he had doubted her and believed in Leonora instead, and so inconsolably angry that he had thrown the greatest race she had ever had a chance of winning, that Cassie went out of her way to cut and snub Dexter at every conceivable opportunity. She was also privately furious with herself for allowing such an intimacy to arise between them. Tomas had been right as usual. In situations such as this, there was just no crossing the line.
Worse was to come. Cassie had been reliably informed that she was the only serious buyer for Peacock’s Mill, and yet at the auction for the property, just as the Mill was about to be knocked down to her for precisely the indicated reserve, another party entered the bidding, and within a couple of minutes the property was out of Cassie’s reach. She had been forced to bid far too high for it anyway, since the bank had only agreed to lend twelve thousand for the initial purchase, but she had stayed with it till the bidding reached nineteen and a half. It was finally sold to the representatives of Sir Robert Ando, the owner of United Fodder Merchants Ltd, and the most recent husband of Leonora Von Wagner.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Tomas seethed, as they drove slowly home. ‘What the bloody hell did you ever do to this woman? Savin’ your presence.’
‘What did I do to her?’ Cassie echoed.
‘That’s what I asked you, Mrs Rosse,’ Tomas repeated. ‘What in the name of all that’s holy did you ever do to her?’
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