know better.
She’d been innocent before. Falling into the same trap twice would feel like her fault. As though she’d invited him to destroy her all over again.
It had been a stable just like this one.
Ten years ago, on a trip to London, she’d experienced a moment that had defined who she was to this day.
Summer. Children’s steeplechases. Shiny medallions for the best girl and the best boy of each age group. Olive had been fourteen then, and as excited as if it were Christmas.
She and Papa had arrived too late to watch the boys race. Weston hadn’t won. Some other lad did. Papa said Weston’s father must be frothing at the mouth. Losing was what he deserved for all of the evil Milbotham had wrought.
Olive took his word for it. She’d never met the marquess or his heir. This was her first competition. Her first time around other children who loved horses as much as she did.
It didn’t go well, even before the girls’ steeplechases began.
She was strange and different and awkward. Too tall, too gangly. Ugly, they told her. Worst of all was her smile, with her too-big teeth. It was a wonder she didn’t frighten the horses away.
When her turn to race came, she did what she always had done: closed her mouth tight and flew like the wind.
She won. Handily. She could barely think from the cacophony of shouts. Papa was out there. He’d watched her win.
By the time the medallion was pressed into her hand, she was giddy. It was proof she was talented, worthy, of value. She couldn’t wait to show her father.
With a smile she couldn’t suppress and legs barely strong enough to hold her, she passed behind the stables on her way to circle back to where the spectators awaited.
She didn’t go far.
There was a boy watching the competition from the shadows.
Olive erased her happy grin at once, but the boy didn’t seem to mind it.
He had never seen anyone ride like she did, he said. He was impressed. She had dazzled him.
His words dazzled Olive. No one but her father had ever spoken to her so prettily before. She angled toward the track and to comment on the next group’s race aloud, as if she were a judge and not a girl with a brass medallion clutched in her sweaty palm.
The boy laughed at all of the right times. She was so witty, he said. Clever and talented. His fingers brushed hers.
Startled, she turned to look at him, and his face was right there. She knew what he was going to do before he did it. She could have moved away. Instead, she leaned into him.
Her first kiss. To date, her only kiss. It had been bliss.
At first.
A large group walked around the corner, catching them in the act. Mostly children, but a few parents as well. Olive’s was one of them. So was the boy’s father.
“Get away from my son,” he’d screamed, as though she were a cockroach on his Christmas pudding.
Olive was frozen in place, but the boy jerked away.
The Marquess of Milbotham, whispered the crowd. That’s his heir.
No. Impossible.
The boy knew who she was. He’d just watched her win a competition.
“I’d rather my son kiss an actual horse,” snarled the marquess, “than a worthless chit who just looks like one.”
Shock stole the words from her throat, and she turned to the boy in supplication.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and sneered. “You’re just a Harper.”
“A Harper what?” drawled the marquess.
The boy’s next words were louder. “A Harper horse.”
The children erupted in laughter. They surrounded Olive, baring their teeth and making horsey noises until she burst into tears and barreled through them and into the safety of her father’s arms.
Papa couldn’t hear the taunts. Try as he might to urge her to confide in him, she had never repeated what they’d said.
But every word, every whinny, had imprinted indelibly on her soul.
She’d lost her innocence that day, as well as her prized medallion. It had slipped from her slick fingers during all of the pushing and neighing.
The medallion was the one thing from that day that she wished she still had. Solid proof that the others weren’t better than her.
It was the first time she’d ever won anything and the last time she let something she wanted slip out of her hands.
To the devil with Weston and Milbotham both! No wonder her father was at war with that family. From that day forward, they were Olive’s