by Nell Stark
“I haven’t.”
“Then allow me to introduce you.” She held out her hand, and Alix used the invitation as an excuse to slip her arm out from the crook of Sebastian’s elbow.
“Enjoy the race,” she told him as Thalia tugged her away.
“Someone has a crush?” she murmured as soon as they were out of earshot.
“I don’t know. I hope not.” Alix tried to remain matter-of-fact. She also tried not to worry about how any observers would perceive their clasped hands. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Thalia seemed distracted as she scanned the crowd, but Alix wondered whether that was simply a front to avoid having to talk about what she was on the verge of attempting. “Oh, there she is. Come on.”
Thalia led her toward the bar, where a slender, middle-aged woman was holding court with two of her contemporaries. Pearl earrings adorned her ears and a matching pendant encircled her neck. As they drew closer, Thalia let go.
“Pardon me, Lady Rufford,” she said deferentially, “but may I introduce you to Her Serene Highness Pommelina Alix Louise of Monaco? She is currently in the development stage of a not-for-profit to benefit women in eastern Africa. We met a few weeks ago and I suggested she speak with you based on your interest in philanthropy.”
“It’s a true pleasure, Your Highness,” Lady Rufford said.
“Alix, please. And likewise. Perhaps we could arrange to talk at some later point?”
“Nonsense. You should join us.”
“And I should leave you,” Thalia chimed in. “My work here is done, anyway.”
“On to your work out there.” Lady Rufford gestured at the track.
Alix wanted to tell Thalia to be safe, but that was ridiculous. Jostling for position around a narrow track for two hours at speeds upward of three hundred kilometers per hour could never be safe. “You’re insane” would be a more accurate, though not socially acceptable, sentiment.
“Good luck,” she said instead, wondering if Thalia could tell she meant it more with respect to her safety than her position across the finish line.
As Thalia walked off, a few others in the room called out to her, but most simply watched. Some looked skeptical, and a few positively annoyed, but others were visibly excited to have her there. Thalia had a real opportunity to serve as a role model, not only to women who wanted to race cars (of which Alix hoped there were few) but also to any woman—anyone, really—who found themselves in a minority position where people wanted them to fail. Thalia could still fall on her face, of course—the next few hours would be the test of that—but no matter what happened next, she had gotten this far.
Realizing she was staring, Alix turned back to Lady Rufford and her friends. “Please don’t let me interrupt you,” Alix said. “It was a pleasure to—”
“Do sit, Alix. And call me Florence.” Lady Rufford gestured to a barstool to her left, and Alix perched on it with as much grace as she could manage. On high alert, she took only the tiniest sips of champagne as Florence introduced her to her two companions, Lady Bruxton and Lady Southey, both of whom were also the wives of British aristocracy and apparently de facto interested in charitable endeavors.
“What sort of NPO are you planning to found?” Florence asked.
Wanting to tread carefully, Alix opted for a conservative approach. “I’m very happy to provide all the details, but I don’t want to interfere with your enjoyment of the race.”
“The race?” Florence laughed. “Darling, aren’t you from Monaco? Have you ever been to a Grand Prix? It won’t begin for another hour at least.”
“I attended several as a child. I always had my nose in a book.”
“A budding intellectual, I take it?” Lady Bruxton said.
“Guilty, I’m afraid.” At the risk of being perceived boastful, she decided to lay out her credentials. “I’ve recently completed a master’s of public health from Harvard, and my culminating experience involved working with women and children in eastern Uganda. That experience has fueled my desire to start a foundation.”
“Eastern Uganda,” Lady Southey said. “Is that where the Maasai live?”
“The Maasai are primarily in Kenya,” said Lady Rufford.
“I lived with the Karamojong,” Alix said. “Their history is linked to the Maasai, but they are now a distinct group.”
When Lady Rufford began to recount details from her own experiences in Africa, Alix was content to sit back and listen. She had anticipated this might happen. She might not have much of a chance to pitch her own ideas today, but by doing little more than listening attentively, she had a strong chance of making a good impression. Lady Rufford wasn’t about to dispense her money or her support on a whim. If Alix could establish herself as serious and level-headed enough to be successful, yet engaging enough to attract attention to her cause, she might earn herself a second meeting where matters of real business would be on the table.
But at first, she found it difficult to concentrate. Around their small group, the room buzzed with anticipation. Like distant thunder, the muted growl of warming engines outside heralded the theatrical display to follow, and she found herself wondering about Thalia’s pre-race mentality. Did she have a preparatory visualization routine? Did she listen to music? Or was she a ball of nerves until the race began?
Annoyed at her lapse in focus, Alix waved aside a waiter’s attempt to refill her champagne flute. She was not here to watch the race, and she certainly didn’t intend to overindulge. She had clear objectives to meet today, and allowing anything else to get in the way would be self-sabotage. As Lady Rufford regaled them with a humorous anecdote, Alix let her laughter pull her back into the sphere of conversation.
Chapter Six
Thalia jerked the wheel first to the right and then to the left, forcing her car to weave across the track. She was nearing the end of the warm-up lap before her first Formula One start, and the butterflies in her gut were the size of dragons.
“All right, Thalia.” The calm voice of her engineer, Carl, filtered through her headset. “One more burnout.”
“Roger that.” She pressed down hard on the throttle, glorying momentarily in its responsiveness as the car leapt forward before necessity demanded she hit the brakes or ram into the driver just ahead. Hysterical laughter threatened to bubble up in her throat at the thought. What a field day the media would have if she crashed before the Grand Prix even began.
The grid came into view, then: a narrow chessboard of white squares against the dark asphalt. She caught a glimpse of Peter’s car slipping into the third-place spot before she had to concentrate on sliding carefully into eighth. Silently, she prayed that her tires and brakes were warm enough to handle a bid for stronger position at the first corner. Eighth position might be in the points, and not a bad place from which to begin her F1 career, but she wanted the podium, and that meant working her way up five places in the pack. Making a good start was one of the best ways to improve upon position.
Keeping her eyes on the row of five as-yet-unlit lights suspended above the track, she swallowed against a fresh surge of bile. She always vomited before a race and had emptied her stomach like clockwork into the rubbish bin in Petrol Macedonia’s garage just before climbing into her car. Usually, she felt good as new afterward. Then again, usually she was not racing a Formula One vehicle in what amounted to an attempt to make history.
When the middle light turned red, the answering surge of adrenaline hit Thalia so hard her vision blurred. Fighting off the impulse to jump the start, she sucked in shallow breaths and released one of the clutch paddles on her steering wheel while pushing lightly on the throttle with her right foot. Lightly turned out to be heavily, as the engine soared past the ideal bite point for the clutch.
“Easy there, Thalia,” Carl said into her ear as a second light turned red.
Easing up on the throttle, she decreased the car’s RPMs to as close to the bite point as she could manage. The third light turned red.
When she realized that her hands were trembling on the wheel, she willed them to stop. All her life, she had been training for this moment. And in the moment, who cared about history? This was her dream come true, and she was going to make the most of every hundredth of a second.
The fourth and fifth lights were illuminated in quick succession, and Thalia automatically sucked in a deep breath, preparing herself for the heavy hand of gravity that would make breathing temporarily impossible. In the next instant, all five lights went out. Exultantly, she released her other clutch paddle and the car leapt forward like a living creature. The driver directly in front of her hadn’t been so efficient, and she quickly jerked the wheel to the left in order to pass him.
“Great start,” said Carl. “Keep it clean going into turn one.”
She entered the turn abreast of two other cars and fought hard to surge ahead of them, but one of the Ferrari drivers blocked her attempt, forcing her back into the seventh-place position she had earned off the grid.
“That’s fine. Take it easy and settle in now. Plenty of time to challenge.”
Thalia knew that was true, but her failure to get ahead at such an opportune moment was still difficult to swallow. Forcing down her self-recrimination, she focused on driving cleanly even as she challenged the car in front of her at every good opportunity.
For the next twenty laps, Carl was mostly silent. Periodically, he delivered updates on Peter’s position and on the cars directly ahead of and behind her. By the twenty-first lap, she agreed that she needed to come in—her rear tires were shot and the driver behind her was gradually gaining.
Pit stops always filled her with helplessness. All she could do, she did: gliding in as efficiently as possible and leaving the same way. But she hated giving up control of her car to other people—hated feeling the bump as the chassis was lifted into the air, rendered impotent however briefly. When she merged back into the race, she temporarily found herself in ninth, and fretted about her position until both cars in front of her pitted on the very next lap.
Back in seventh, with forty-four laps to go, she needed to strategize. Twice, she had come close to passing the sixth-place car, which Carl told her was currently eight-tenths of a second out of reach. She could make that up, as long as she drove efficiently.
But as lap stretched into lap, the goal seemed increasingly out of reach. Her opponent hovered between five- and eight-tenths ahead, and try as she might, Thalia couldn’t make any consistent headway. In this situation, the only thing she knew how to do was to attempt to rattle him by making constant challenges at each of his positions on the track—even the relatively strong ones with little chance of passing.
Like a mosquito in search of that one uncovered patch of skin, she pursued him relentlessly, even as she continued to take stock of those behind her. The next car was just over two seconds back—not close enough to pose a constant threat, but close enough to capitalize on a mistake. As time passed, the temperature climbed in the cockpit. The sweat pouring from her forehead would have blinded her, had it not been for her balaclava.
By the fiftieth lap, her shoulders and neck were aching fiercely. Usually, she didn’t feel this much pain during a race. She was too tense, and her muscles were fatiguing quickly. When she reached the next straight, Thalia pressed the “drink” button on her steering wheel only to find that after the initial surge of warm, sugary liquid, her fluids bag was depleted. Each turn became increasingly agonizing, as gravity conspired to make her head five times heavier than normal. And if she flinched even the slightest bit, she risked sending her car off the track.
By the time she had reached the sixtieth lap, the nerves in her arms and back were screaming for her to surrender. Every time she approached the pit lane, they urged her to capitulate. Pull in, slow down, give up. Let the critics have their day and find some other line of work.
And then, as she headed into the first corner for the sixty-first time, the car ahead of her swung too wide. With reflexes honed by instinct and training, she slammed down on the throttle and surged forward into the gap he had created on the inside, then braked hard to take the corner as tightly as possible. Pain shivered up her spine as she fought to keep the car steady despite the pounding g-forces. Her peripheral vision caught the metallic gleam of the car she had passed trying valiantly to keep abreast of her, and she accelerated hard out of the corner to complete the overtake. Exultation rose over her body’s clamor, but there was no time to celebrate as seconds later, the tight chicane of turns two and three tested her stamina. More than ever, now, she had to keep her head.
Carl opened the mic channel and she could hear the cheers from their garage. “Nicely done, Thalia! Stay strong and protect your position.”
Protect your position. She knew Carl was right, and that sixth place would be an excellent finish. But she wanted more. The podium might be out of reach, but fifth place certainly wasn’t. Her tires were in decent shape—perhaps better than those on the car ahead. If she could make time on him during this next lap, another overtake might be a possibility.
That single lap stretched into an eternity, but by the time it was over, she had closed the gap enough to recognize the Ferrari logo on the car’s wing. What a bonus—if she passed him, she would deal a blow to her father’s team.
She opened her mic. “I’m going after the Ferrari driver. Is it Terrence or Hugh?”
“Terrence,” Carl replied. Even in those two syllables, she could hear his uncertainty.
“I can do this. You know I can.”
After a long moment of silence, the channel reopened. This time Alistair’s voice greeted her. “His tires are shot from playing catch-up, and you’re gaining on him. But don’t be reckless. We need the points you already have.”
“I hear you.” Perhaps she should have phrased that more respectfully, but she was the one piloting a vehicle with the power of six hundred horses in a cockpit that was by now well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Surely her manners could be cut some slack.
Dimly, she realized that the physical preparation she had done for the GP2 season hadn’t been enough to prepare her for the temperature and pressures of Formula One. By the time she had completed two more laps, the heat was starting to threaten her ability to remain conscious. A wave of dizziness nearly swamped her concentration on the final turn before crossing the line to begin her sixty-fifth lap. Tiny points of darkness shot through her vision as she struggled not to pass the car ahead, but simply to maintain a competitive line. But in spite of her relatively conservative driving, the gap continued to close. She could still capitalize on Terrence Delamar’s mistake, if she could only keep her wits.
Her heart was pounding wildly, but she forced her breaths into a deep, rhythmic pattern, hoping to increase the blood flow to her brain. And then, halfway through the lap, she saw her chance—this time on the outside of a turn, as Terrence hugged the inner line. With her superior tires, she might be able to make a play around him.
Gritting her teeth, Thalia pressed on the throttle. As gravity tried to crush her skull, a moan slipped from her mouth, and tears rolled down her cheeks. A yellow haze tinged her peripheral vision, and she struggled to pull in deeper breaths. No. Not now. She could not faint now.
Terrence must have caught a glimpse of her approach, because at the apex of the curve, he began to swing wide in an attempt to force her to break. But Thalia slammed down the pedal, and her car leapt beyond the reach of his defensive maneuvering.
Fifth place. She was in fifth place. Her cheeks were tingling and her vision was shot with streaks of red, but she was in fifth place.
“Well fucking done!” Carl shouted into her ear.
She wanted to reply, but even the tiniest movement required a Herculean effort. She had to conserve every drop of energy for this final lap. There could be no mistakes, not even when the pain in her neck and shoulders sent bright arrows up into her brain to pierce her eyes; not even when her left calf muscle seized up in
a cramp, making every touch to the brakes a hellish agony.
Twice, Terrence tried to slip past her, and both times she managed to fend him off. By the time she rounded the final bend, her slow, deep breaths had become gasps. Her parched throat burned with thirst, and her peripheral vision was gone. Slowly, the darkness closed in, until her entire vision telescoped down to two narrow cones of visibility. She couldn’t see the checkered flag, but when she finally crossed the line, her ears were flooded with the sounds of celebration from the garage.
“Excellent race, Thalia,” Alistair spoke calmly over the background exultation.
She wanted to thank him and ask after Peter but was using every ounce of her willpower to hold her head up as the car decelerated. Relief at not having blacked out momentarily eclipsed any sense of pride in her performance. It wasn’t over yet—she still needed to guide the car around the circuit one last time to get back to the pit lane. And by the time she arrived, she had to pull herself together in order to function in the post-race media storm. Climbing out of the car only to collapse was not an option. She didn’t want anyone to know how difficult that had been, or how close to the edge she had felt. Betraying any kind of weakness would play right into the hands of her enemies and detractors.
“Thalia?” Carl sounded concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course,” she forced out. “Thank you all. Brilliant job setting up the car. She performed beautifully.”
“You made the magic happen out there. Come on in and let’s have some champagne.”
As she slowly piloted the car around the course for the final time, she tried to shove aside her physical discomfort and take a mental snapshot of this moment. In her first F1 race, she had improved her position from eighth to fifth—a personal victory, if not an actual one. She had won ten points for her team, and had stolen two from one of their main rivals. As her breathing finally began to slow and her heart rate came down to something closer to normal, she was able to smile.
