Sir Oswald had left the room to see Lord Duckham to his coach, after his Lordship had inspected the new stables and made a very surprising presentation to Jack. So surprising, such a shock that, as Becky pressed against him, he was still wrestling with the problem of how to approach what it was now imperative for him to admit. Then he heard the sounds of the coach pulling away. As the room door began to open, they jumped...

Jack Wetherley walked slowly, morosely, along the front of the new stables. Not since the death of his father six years earlier, had he ever felt so low. Passing the open-gated front of the twenty, as yet, unused stalls, he was asking himself whether his months of intimacy, with Becky, the niece of Sir Oswald Brandling, were about to tear them apart. They had both been aware of the risks they were taking in prolonging the...

For everyone on the Brandling Estate, the three months after their Newmarket triumph became the most chaotic, the most worrying, the most exciting, the most definitive months they would ever know. After Trafalgar’s massive success as a three-year-old, Jack Wetherley, and chief ostler, Alf Winter, took the advice of the local vet, Victor Lazenby, not to risk their champion in the prestigious Epsom Derby. Victor had indicat...