Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) (3 page)

“You’ll find a happy medium,” Grainne said carelessly, trying to turn her mare away from him. Gretna shook her head and argued, mouthing the bit.
 

“Shall we ride together?” Mr. Archer asked blithely, ignoring her clear lack of enthusiasm, and when he nudged his horse forward, Gretna happily fell into stride beside him.

Traitorous mare.

“This is beautiful country for hunting,” Mr. Archer remarked after a few strides, glancing around at the patchwork of fields and hedgerows which spread out below the ridge. “I myself thought there was no place finer than my home in England, but I see that I am mistaken.”

“I suppose everyone thinks their own place is perfect, so it is odd the way they should travel,” Grainne said, just a little too sharply for good manners.
 

“I am happy to be wrong,” William said simply. He looked over at her and she felt his gaze travel over her, from her flat tweed cap to her scarred black boots. “You sit that mare beautifully.”

She colored, and looked down at her reins.

“I suppose you hear that often, though. I should think of more creative compliments.”

“You need not compliment me at all.” She could probably number the honest compliments she had received in the past five years on one hand. Before she had met Len, of course. Len thought her the finest rider he had ever seen, and he told her so with such fierce passion… she felt her lips curl into a tiny smile at the thought of him. Her own Len! He wanted her as she was, and in return offered her all she ever wanted. None of this nonsense about
manners
and
dresses
and
not acting like a hoyden
that Mrs. Kinney was always going on about every night when Grainne came home.
 

Grainne sighed. Her entire day was about the half an hour she stole with Len, and now she was on the verge of losing it. If she couldn’t keep Len hungering for her… She simply must shake this foolish flatterer and see him before the day got away from her.

“Indeed I must pay you compliment, for you are a striking young lady, a fierce horsewoman, and my employer’s daughter, besides,” Mr. Archer insisted, with a twisted smile she did not dislike. He had a very expressive face. Len’s was so often a dark mask, it was hard to guess what he was really thinking most of the time. “But it must be tiresome to be admired by all the countryside.”

Grainne looked at him incredulously. “Admired? A hoyden like me?” She shook her head. “England must be a different place than I imagined, if a young lady who rides astride can be considered admirable.”

“You are unique,” Mr. Archer admitted. “You are an Original, let us say. That can be considered admirable.”

“But rarely is. Certainly not before a person cocks up their toes. I can assure you that I am considered barely respectable, let alone a person of great accomplishment.”

“Would you prefer to be respectable?”

“And sit indoors, knitting stockings? I think not,” she said decidedly. There were no difficulties on
that
point.
 

William laughed. “Tell me true, my dear Miss Spencer, do you care what others think of you?”

She thought. “I suppose it would depend on the person.”

“What about me?”

“Oh, aren’t you clever? Trying to trap me into returning a compliment, Mr. Archer? I shall not do it. You shall just have to wonder.”

A rabbit shied from the brush and ran nearly under Gretna’s hooves. The mare spooked hard, rearing back, and Grainne immediately flung herself forward, wrapping her arms right around the mare’s neck. In a moment Gretna put her feet back to the earth and Grainne righted herself in the saddle, settling the prancing mare with cooing whispers and a soft hand on her hot neck.

“That was some fine riding,” Mr. Archer commented. “Many a man would have tried to control her head by pulling back on the reins, and end only by flipping her over.”

“I have seen it,” Grainne agreed, catching her breath. “A silly mistake. Gretna, my dear, you must not behave like that on the hunt, or some earl’s daughter will get mud on her new riding habit, and you shall not be forgiven.”

“How long have you been riding these horses?”

She looked over at Mr. Archer. He was gazing at her with genuine interest. Probably gauging how long it would be before he could oust her out of the yard and run it to his own liking. She didn’t trust this man — or her father. “Ten years,” she said simply.

“Since you were…”

“Ten.”

“An unusual pastime for a young girl.”

She sighed. “My mother died. Things were… things were difficult. It was easier to go out to the yard and work with the horses than stay in the house. And I was good at it, so… I stayed.”

He nodded, and she hoped that explanation was satisfactory enough. Yes, it
was
unusual for a young lady to spend her time riding hunters instead of learning to dance and set a table for a dinner party. But things had never been usual for her. Even if they hadn’t lived in such a remote spot in the country, not aristocratic enough to be invited to the Big House and not common enough to sit in the village public house, her mother’s death, and her own wild grief, had been enough to convince her father that she could not be cooped up in the schoolroom, nor sent away to relatives. He hadn’t known what else to do, she reflected, and so he gave in to her. And here she was, twenty years old, riding astride and wondering wildly how she would be able to hold her life together when her father decided to force her to be a lady at last.

The day couldn’t be far away, and despite her scoffing words to Seamus that morning, she really did fear that William Archer had been brought here to replace her when she was sent off to Boyle House as Mrs. Thomas Maxwell.

She wouldn’t be able to bear
that
, she knew. The squire’s wife, with all that came with it: the squalling children, the church committees, the endless talk of
sheep!
 

No, she could never be Thomas Maxwell’s wife. She could never give up her horses. And so she had to take her life into her own hands.

However unconventional, however mad her escape might be, she had to make it.
 

Grainne glanced at the sinking sun; the day was passing too quickly. “Can you find your own way home? I want to show Gretna the ditches a few fields over. I’ll be back before evening feeds.”

“I’ll join you,” Mr. Archer said smoothly. “I’m sure Nick would love a ditch.”

“No!” Grainne bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from panicking aloud. “He’s quite competent with ditches, I mean. Gretna must learn to jump them without anyone else to show her the way. She can be quite dependent on other horses for confidence. I like to take her out alone to build her up.” She realized she was starting to gabble and shut her mouth quickly.

But Mr. Archer just raised a dark eyebrow and then nodded. “I see your point,” he conceded, and Grainne could barely stop herself from sighing with relief. “As long as you are quite certain she will go over the ditch without a problem. It would be a shame if you were stranded out there and all you needed was another horse to show her the way.” He thought, giving Nick a rub on the neck. “Perhaps I could come and watch from a distance, just to be certain she was willing to go alone.”

This man was impossible, Grainne thought unhappily. And clever enough about horses to have seen the hole in her argument: if Gretna
did
choose not to go over a ditch, and there was not another horse to lead her over, Grainne would have to choose between staying out for hours fighting with the mare or taking her in without going over the obstacle, teaching the mare that she didn’t have to jump ditches if she didn’t want to. Ruining her, in short. It had been a silly thing to say, she thought ruefully, but she was committed now.

“She
has
jumped it alone,” Grainne tried again. “I just want to reinforce it every chance that I can.” She chanced a smile, hoping a little flirtation might tip the scales in her favor. It really
was
getting late; she had to get away or she would run out of time, and Len would be angry. His dark eyes would be hooded, like a falcon’s, and he would turn away and refuse to touch her.
 

Mr. Archer smiled very slowly, and Grainne found herself catching her breath. He was quite ridiculously handsome, especially on horseback, with tan skin showing through the unbuttoned collar of his shirt and dark stubble just dotting his strong jaw. His mahogany hair, tumbling over his ears and collar and pushed back from his deep blue eyes, looked as soft as a new foal’s fur. He grinned at her with very white teeth and she felt the tiniest bit woozy. Should have eaten luncheon, she scolded herself, but she knew that wasn’t the problem. She had felt this dizziness the first time Len had touched her bare skin with his rough finger. The excitement had faded, though. Mr. Archer seemed to reawaken a part of her she had forgotten about.

Dangerous, dangerous man.

“Go and jump then,” Mr. Archer said teasingly. “If it’s so important to you. But if you aren’t back in an hour, I’ll be coming to rescue you.”

An hour! It wasn’t long enough. But… she looked despairingly at the sinking sun. The days were growing shorter and shorter. An hour was all she would have, anyway, if she meant to be back before dark. And if there was one rule her permissive father
did
get rather shirty about her breaking, it was being home before dark. Ireland had its share of rebels and terrors these days, and no matter that she had been born right here: she was English. She had no business out after dark, ’twas a fact.

“Done,” she said shortly, her voice curt to cover her confusing reaction to the huntsman, and she gave Gretna a squeeze with both calves. The mare stepped off tensely, swishing her tail to show Grainne what she thought of the plan. The chestnut watched her thoughtfully and neighed as he saw he was being left alone.
 

“That’s right, lad,” Grainne heard Archer telling the chestnut horse. “Let her know you miss her.” And then: “BE CAREFUL OUT THERE, MISS SPENCER!”
 

“Oh dear God,” Grainne muttered to Gretna, kicking her into a smooth canter. “What
are
we in for with this one?”

Gretna flicked her ears back and then forward, focusing all her energy on the hedge in the distance.

Grainne could not be so single-minded as her galloping mare, but by the time they had taken that hedge, and several after it, and slowed down to a careful trot, picking through an overgrown little wood that sloped down to a babbling stream, she had nearly succeeded in putting the interfering new huntsman out of her mind. For down at the stream’s edge, in a tiny clearing furred with fine green grass, grazed a few spotted horses, a tall English blood-mare who stared at them with wide alarmed eyes, and a shaggy grey pony, all supervised by the piercing gaze of a dark man leaning against a caravan wheel.

He didn’t rise as she pulled Gretna to a halt and swung from the saddle, nor offer to take her mare’s reins. No one could have mistaken that black-haired, brown-skinned gypsy for a gentleman, and he’d have scoffed if she had asked for his help. He would never have offered to give Grainne a hand in dismounting, or a leg-up in gaining her seat again. It was not his way to fawn over women, he’d told her at their first meeting, and she’d smiled and said she admired a man who could treat her as a man in the field. “And a whore in bed,” he’d said daringly, waiting for her to blush, and laughing at her when she did.

But she hadn’t run away that first afternoon, the golden summer afternoon when he had found her. And she could have. She had taken a tumble from Bald Nick, one of many tumbles she had taken over the years from that confounded horse, and landed in the stream just a few turns from this clearing, and he’d stood holding the reins, leaning against a tree, when she’d come stumbling and wet from the water, certain her horse was lost. She had come to him for the reins, and stayed for his lingering kisses and wandering hands. She knew he couldn’t, or wouldn’t understand why she had given in to him, this stranger in the woods, in his strange embroidered vest and patched trousers, so far beneath her in class that she shouldn’t have nodded to him had they passed on the road.
 

But his eyes… his black eyes had been so demanding, so sultry, so smoldering, and when he put his hand upon the small of her back and pulled her body close to his, she let herself ignore their differences. Society had no place out here in the woods. And Grainne had been looking for a way out of society for some months, having sensed that its walls were growing ever closer around her. This gypsy, he was as sure an escape as any, she thought, smothering a smile, and melting into his embrace, certain that she could enchant him, believing him when he told her that she did.

And then she had watched the back of his head with anguished disbelief when he’d announced he had work to do and tramped off along the smooth stones of the stream-bed, leaving her to scramble into the saddle and find her own way home, alone with her bruises and her disheveled hair, to stammer excuses to her father and Mrs. Kinney.

But she hadn’t stopped coming back, in all the weeks since, as the hot summer slowly cooled into the early days of autumn, riding down to the creekside, slipping down from the saddle, and leaving her horse to graze with his motley herd. She had grown to enjoy the feel of his hands upon her, unlacing her loose corset and slipping the sleeves of her blouse down her white shoulders, kissing the smooth skin that had never known sunlight, praying that today would be the day he would agree to take her away, instead of pushing her away, leaning back against the wheel of the caravan, and lighting his pipe.

“I have work to do,” he’d always say then. “Run along and play.”

She didn’t know what work he had to do; she had never actually
seen
him do anything besides smoke his pipe and watch his horses graze, but at the horse fair his animals had made a fair killing, striding out as if they carried royalty upon Rotten Row, and so he must be a fine enough rider. He was certainly enough of a horse whisperer that he didn’t have to tie his horses, nor fence them in, she thought, slipping the bit from Gretna’s mouth and leaving the mare to graze with the others.