“Well, we are at a horse race,” he said.
“And whatever the setting we are in, I shall hold myself to the standard of being your wife,” she laughed. He smiled, but something flickered in his eyes that she did not know how to read. Before she could examine it, the race had already begun.
The race was close and she was willing to admit, rather more invested in the fortunes of her chosen horse than was strictly dignified. The bay cut wide at the first turn and unsettled the runner beside it and she made a sharp involuntary sound that she would not be cataloging among her finer moments.
"She will recover," Thomas said.
"She will not. She's lost her rhythm entirely."
She tracked the field, felt the familiar quick pleasure of reading it, the pattern of it resolving itself as it always did when she was paying the right kind of attention. "Watch the bay, there, on the outside. She's been rating herself this whole stretch." Thomas was pointing at the animal as it moved along. The bay moved up with smooth, unhurried acceleration .
She did not take it. She took second, by a margin that Genevieve considered a miscarriage of justice.
"That," she said, "was not a fair result."
"It was a race result," Thomas said. "They are generally considered the same thing."
"The bay was impeded at the final turn! Anyone paying attention could see it."
"A great many people were paying attention."
"A great many people were wrong." She watched the winner's rider accept his congratulations with an air of satisfaction she found entirely unwarranted. "He was lucky. His horse was lucky. I want that noted."
"Noted," Thomas said gravely.
"You are humoring me."
"I would not dream of it."
She looked at him. He looked at the track.
"The bay was the better horse," she said, with finality.
"She was," he agreed.
"Then we are in agreement."
"We are entirely in agreement."
She turned back to the field and said nothing further on the subject, which she felt was a demonstration of considerable restraint.
"I am being ridiculous," she said.
"You are being yourself," he said. "I see no conflict."
She looked at him sideways and found him still looking at the track, his profile perfectly composed, and felt something warm settle in her chest that had nothing to do with the racing.
"Where did you learn about horses?" Thomas asked. Genevieve startled, her heart lurching up, as if he had found some deep secret that she was supposed to have kept hidden away. As if any corner of her heart could be hidden from her husband. She hesitated, then sighed as she let her mind drift back.
"My father had a mare when I was young. Before he sold her." She paused, watching a roan gelding being put through his paces at the far end of the field. The memory had the particular quality of things that had been pleasant and were now simply over. "I missed her very much. I have always thought…" She stopped.
"What?"
She weighed it for a moment. It was the kind of thing she did not generally say aloud, because it was the kind of thing that invited either pity or the brisk suggestion that she had perfectly adequate things to be getting on with.
"My mother thought it an unnecessary expense, once the mare was sold," she said. It was not a complaint. It was simply the explanation for why she had not learned to take such things for granted, offered because he was the person she had decided was worth offering it to. "She was probably right. There were other things."
A small silence settled between them.