Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) (8 page)

Yes, working as a huntsman in an Irish lord’s stable was much more difficult than he had anticipated. But by God, he was enjoying himself.
 

And the master’s daughter certainly sweetened the bargain.

He poured himself another finger and thought about the master’s daughter.

They had shared quite a moment as he had left the house that night. He felt a little aroused just thinking of it, the way she had stood in the doorway bidding the men goodnight, and tried to walk back inside just as he was stepping out, looking back at her father to say goodnight. They had brushed, and stopped, and stared, for a scant second, but it was enough, her breasts against his chest, her face close to his, their bodies touching… her eyes had grown wide and damn if her cheeks didn’t flush
again.

He’d apologized, but he couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face, and she had been so flustered, stepping back into the house while he went out into the night, that he knew it had affected her too.
 

There was something there, he thought. Something very interesting.

***

Grainne brushed her hair slowly, gazing at the fire as she drew the comb through her thick locks. After a day in the yard, her hair was as wooly and full of tangles as a broodmare left out in the fields all summer, but now, having been caught up in a net all evening, it was calmer and more biddable. She still found bits of hay and leaves in it from time to time, though. She flicked a little twig to the floor and tugged the comb through the snag it had left behind, grimacing at the pain. She supposed no one who ever saw her combing out this mane would make the mistake of thinking her a lady.

Except for her father, of course.

Her father had been growing tiresome of late, inviting over this stupid squire for dinner being only the very latest instance of his sudden interest in her gender. She had conveniently forgotten she was a female when she was very young; only her mother had cared, and when her mother had died, no one in the house had dared tell her no. By the time the household had thought her sufficiently recovered enough to start treating her like a normal child again, it was too late. She had run wild, spending all her days on horseback, and her father, longing for his lost wife, relished his daughter’s company.
 

She had never expected he might send her away. Even when Mrs. Kinney, overstepping her boundaries as all good housekeepers were wont to do, began prodding at him to send her to relatives in Dublin, to learn to be a young lady of society, to come out and make her bow, however humble, and find a respectable husband amongst the Anglo-Irish gentry, her father had looked at the housekeeper as if she had two heads. Send Grainne away? What madness!

And that was only a few years ago, Grainne thought sadly, watching the embers deep in the hearth glow and sparkle. She had fooled herself into thinking she was safe, that her father would never take her away from her horses. She shouldn’t have trusted him.

Now she only had Len to trust.

Len.
The very thought of him lifted her spirits. She shivered with delicious delight, her heavy mood suddenly lightening. It would not be long now, and he would take her away from this nonsense, from Mr. Maxwell and his wretched sheepdogs. And the horses that her father seemed suddenly ready to deny her? She’d keep them forever. Len would always keep her in horses. She would never have to fear being locked away in some stranger’s house, languishing on some overstuffed sofa with her ankles neatly crossed, tatting lace and dying of misery.
 

Grainne slid her hair from side to side over her back, feeling it brush her skin through her thin chemise, and then, daringly, let it slide over her breasts, rippling, silken over her nipples. She sighed, thinking of Mr. Archer’s touch.

Mr. Archer?

She stopped, sitting upright. Mr. Archer?

“Mrs. Kinney, Mrs. Kinney!” The voice in the hall was her father’s. She sat very still, listening, as footsteps creaked along the floorboards, and stopped just outside her door. “Ah, Mrs. Kinney. My dear Mr. Maxwell seems to have left his umbrella. Will you send someone along to his house with it tomorrow? I should not wish for him to venture out in this misty weather and take cold.”

“This is Mr. Archer’s umbrella,” Mrs. Kinney replied after a pause. “I suggest Grainne take it with her in the morning. She can give it to him.”

“Ah! Mr. Archer. I need him healthy too. A very helpful man. I am so pleased with his work.”

“Mr. Archer is a gentleman of good breeding,” Mrs. Kinney said thoughtfully. “It is not what one would expect of a horse-jockey.”

“He is certainly more than a jockey,” her father insisted. “He is a first-rate horse trainer. I expect he will run the yard once Grainne is married to Maxwell.”

Grainne gripped the brush to stop from dropping it. She stared at it, trembling in her hands.

“Hush, Mr. Spencer!” Mrs. Kinney chided. “We are right outside her door. The poor girl is probably asleep. After the way you work her all day, it is a wonder she does not fall asleep with her face in her soup.”

Her father’s voice remained light. “I have been remiss as a father, but I plan to make that up to her now. She has been nothing but a good daughter to me, and she shall have a fine estate to reward her. Well. It is late. Goodnight, Mrs. Kinney!”

Grainne waited until their footsteps had creaked off in opposite directions. Then she slowly got up from her chair and crept under the coverlet of her bed. Across the room, the china horses on her mantlepiece shimmered in the dying firelight. She watched them blur with unshed tears until she could bear the sight no more and shut her eyes up tight. But she could not shut away her thoughts.

Mr. Maxwell would never let her ride all day. Mr. Maxwell would fuss if she brought in mud on her boots and twigs in her hair. Mr. Maxwell did not care to hunt and kept no hunters in his little stable. She would have to sit in the parlor and mend his shirts and listen to him drone about sheep and sheepdogs, for the rest of her life. She gave in to her misery and cried into her pillow, and did not think about Mr. Archer’s alarming touch again that night.
 

Riding novices could be dangerous work, but Grainne always enjoyed it. The young horses were bouncy and elastic, and reading their body language to find out what shenanigan they were plotting next made for interesting work. She straightened out Prince Albert, a squirmy little bay cob who always seemed to have his head pointing in the opposite direction of his hooves, and asked him to trot.

He went bobbling around the menage like an inattentive duck, swinging his head from side to side.

“You will never learn to concentrate, will you?” she asked him, wrestling with the reins to try to keep his head steady. “What will you do when there are hounds and other horses all around you?”

“He’ll probably flip over and have a seizure,” a voice said dryly. Grainne turned in the saddle and Prince Albert bounced, a little half-buck. She gave him a pop with her whip and he snorted.

“Mr. Archer, I do wish you would announce yourself before you ride into the menage,” Grainne ground out through clenched teeth.
 

“I believe I did. Or does it only count if I stand in the entrance and wait politely for you to notice me? Because that, my dear, could last me an entire morning. You are as inattentive to your surroundings as your horse is overly attentive. Perhaps he feels that it is a shortcoming in your riding that he must compensate for.”

Grainne brought Prince Albert down to a wobbly halt while Mr. Archer was making his speech. “Stand,” she told the youngster. “You are particularly odious this morning,” she told Mr. Archer sweetly. “Did someone salt your tea?”

He grinned. “I knew that idea was in your head! That’s precisely why I don’t take tea with you in the tack room. The first time I laid eyes on you, I said to myself, there is a female who loves to behave like a ten year old boy.”

“You were right about being a boy,” Grainne admitted ruefully. “I am beginning to dread changing back into dresses in the evening.” She looked down at her breeches and Albert began to walk off. “Stop that,” she scolded. “Did I ask you to walk?”

“Probably felt your body shift and read it as a command.” Archer rode his novice over to join her in the center of the menage. The wood chips beneath the horses’ hooves released a faint musty smell with every step, and Grainne sneezed.

“You might act like a boy, but you sneeze like a man!”

“Oh, shut up.” She rubbed her sleeve across her nose.
 

Mr. Archer halted the horse close to Albert. The little colt, enjoying the prospect of company, leaned over and sank his teeth into the new horse’s neck. Archer’s horse swung his head and snapped back. “Oh!” Grainne snatched at the reins. “Mustn’t let them play while they’re mounted! Such terrible manners, Albert,” she chided the cob. She looked at Mr. Archer and narrowed her eyes. “You shouldn’t ride up so close. They’re not experienced enough yet.”

“Inexperience can be a dangerous thing,” Mr. Archer agreed, looking very serious indeed. “Miss Spencer, have I mentioned how fetching you look in breeches today?”

She glared at him.

“Of course,” he said softly. “I apologize. We mustn’t play while we’re… mounted.”

“Mr. Archer!” She was blushing furiously. How infuriating. And when
had
she learned to blush? Right about when Mr. Archer arrived in the yard, oddly enough.
 

“Have I said something amiss?” He looked contrite.

“Mr. Archer, you are being most inappropriate,” she scolded, voice grave.

“I am sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn’t — that is —” Grainne found she had to stop and try to gather her thoughts. There was something about the way he was staring at her that made her brain seem slow and heavy. And other parts of her rapid and light. And…
tingly.

Yes, decidedly tingly.
 

“I forget that you are young and innocent,” Mr. Archer sighed, looking terribly forlorn. “A maiden unspoiled. Unused to the games grown-ups play.”

Not entirely unused to them, she thought, and something scornful must have shown in her expression, for she did not imagine the sudden curiosity that flared in Archer’s eyes.

Did he see a trace of color in her face? She moved Albert away. “Have you gotten that horse to canter yet, Mr. Archer?” she asked. It was high time he remembered that she was in charge of this yard, not just someone to joke around with. She wasn’t one of the lads. “No one else has. And I would like to know he is making progress.”

“I have not,” he admitted. “But for you, I’ll try.”

She circled Albert in little figure eights in the center of the ring, trying to help him learn to balance himself, while Mr. Archer warmed up the dark horse, Hercules, around the menage. He was such an elegant rider, with his long legs wrapped around the horse’s barrel and his sympathetic hands so gently placed above the horse’s withers, that he looked one with his mount. And he certainly filled out his coat. Grainne watched him with frank admiration, biting her lip a little when Hercules napped at a shadow or tried to duck out of a circle.

Finally Mr. Archer pronounced him ready. “We’re going to have a canter now, whether he wants to or not!” Grainne nodded tensely and hoped for the best. Hercules had refused to canter ever since he’d arrived at the yard; he would just trot faster and faster, until he got so angry that he went into a bucking fit. And Hercules was a world champion bucker.

But Archer looked grim and determined. He choked up the reins so tight that Hercules had to lift his head up high, then he slammed his spurs into the horse’s sides and let go of the reins at the same time. Hercules burst forward so quickly it was as if a gust of wind had come up behind him and flung him.
 

“Well, he’s cantering,” Grainne had to admit. At last.
 

But he was out of control, she suddenly realized. He was as scrabbly and dangerous at the canter as he had been in the angry trot he gave all the other lads. And suddenly he ducked his head with tremendous strength, wrenching the reins from Mr. Archer’s grasp, and went into a bucking fit like some sort of deranged thing.

“Oh no,” she gasped, but she could not rush to his aid; it was all she could do to hold back the fascinated Albert, and she could only watch in horror as Hercules shook Mr. Archer from his back and went on leaping, alone and unfettered, across the menage. Then she could not help herself; she ignored the wild horse and Albert’s fussing and went straight to Archer’s body, lying on his back in the wood chips.
 

“Mr. Archer!”
she shrieked, leaping down from her horse’s back and flinging the reins over a handy fence post. “Mr. Archer, are you hurt? Lie still, you mustn’t get up —” for of course that was exactly what that wretched man was doing, moaning and shaking his head and trying to sit up.

She swooped down upon him like a hawk upon prey and pressed his shoulders back to the tanbark of the menage. He groaned as his head hit the ground again. “Mr. Archer, you must be still. You could have broken something in your fall.”

“I could have broken something when you flung me to the ground,” he murmured, obviously healthy enough to maintain his sarcasm. “And shouldn’t you go and catch that horse?” As if on cue, the bucking and plunging Hercules went hurtling by, snorting and grunting.
 

“Oh! Of course!” Grainne was startled by her own lack of concern for the horse; that was not at all like her. What had come over her? She turned her head towards the stable.
“Timmy! Seamus! Lads! We have a loose horse!”
Then she turned back to Mr. Archer, leaning over him, pressing her hands against his arms, feeling for broken bones. Her hair came loose and hung over her shoulder; she pushed it back with an impatient huff, but it kept slipping from behind her ears. The coppery curls brushed against Mr. Archer’s cheek, and he suddenly smiled, slowly, sensually. And the change that came across his face, from slightly pained and irritated to a primitive wolfishness, made her catch her breath.