Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback)

by Alexander, Sydney

  “Nearly there, anyway,” Grainne added, and then subsided. Below, through the grey tree trunks, she could see a flash of color. Len’s caravan.

  Nearly there.

  Len was waiting for her down there, dark-skinned, white-toothed Lennor in his barbarous embroidered vest, his black hair hanging shaggily around the gold hoops in his ears. He would press her up against his chest and kiss her, long and deep, and then they would tie Gretna to the caravan with his long-legged Thoroughbred and they would go inside and he would take her to bed until darkness fell and they could safely leave the sanctuary of the forest.

  She would be happy with him. She would be free with him. It was everything she had dreamed, of course. Grainne thought fleetingly of William’s blue eyes, his lips on hers, and shivered.

  And then the mare stumbled, bringing her back to herself. She must be more careful. She must keep Gretna safe and sound, above all. The dark mare was part of their escape plan. Len had explained it to her day before. She wasn’t going to steal Gretna from her father, he had told her, she was going to take her as dowry. Between the sale of Gretna and Len’s Thoroughbred, they would make enough of a profit in Brittany to see them halfway across Europe. They would go driving in their swaying caravan through the countryside, seeing the world, without limits, without laws, without society looming over her shoulder, telling her what to wear and who to talk to.

  Horse-traders, living on love in their little painted caravan. All her dreams were coming true.

  She sighed and bit her lip.

  And bit it nearly through, as there was a crash through the trees behind her. She whirled, tasting blood on her tongue, even as Gretna spooked wildly and smashed sideways into a crooked oak. Grainne nearly shrieked as her knee was slammed into the wood. She bit down on her sore lips instead, waiting to see who had pursued her.

  When she saw the chestnut horse come careening down the wet deer trail, she felt a rush of emotion that she could not name. But she sought to recover herself immediately. It would never do to appear flustered before him, when he had caught her red-handed, running away. She tried not to worry about what he thought of her.

  “Mr. Archer,” she said dryly when he had pulled up beside her. She put one hand on her throbbing knee. “I see you have been hunting larger quarry than fox today.”

  “I was afraid you might have taken a fall,” William said. His face was scratched from twigs and brambles, and there was a drop of blood on his high cheekbone that she wanted to wipe away with her finger. When he edged his horse closer, she reached out, and did just that.

  He looked at her curiously as she caught the round red drop on her little finger. She thought he might snatch at her wrist, but he seemed immobilized by her touch. I could run away now, she thought, but she didn’t touch her whip to Gretna’s flank, and the mare was content to stay in Bald Nick’s presence.

  They sat in silence for a moment, her finger upturned, adorned with the drop of blood.

  “You hurt yourself chasing after me,” she said eventually, watching his eyes.

  “A few scratches.” William shrugged. “Your mare might have hurt you, taking this path. Did she spook at something in the hunting field? A pup? A pheasant?”

  Did he truly not see? “She didn’t run away,” Grainne said levelly.

  “Oh no?”

  “I did.”

  She watched the muscles in his jaw tense. She felt the slightest bit afraid. But surely he knew, after all this time he had spent following her around the countryside?

  After her shameless kisses, kisses no maiden should have knowledge of.

  Oh, he knew. He had been trying to catch her all this time.

  He was not in love with her at all. He was simply setting a trap, waiting for her to fall into it. And now she had. The drop of blood on her finger — crimson heart’s blood — she had fallen in love with him while he toyed with her, and now all was come crashing down…

  Grainne felt shame flood her from her top to her toes. And she waited for William to pass judgement on her at last.

  He spoke at last. “The horse trader.” His voice was flinty. “Tell me your horse ran away, Grainne. Please.”

  “I’m going to him,” Grainne said, but her voice lacked conviction, and she knew it, and it appalled her. Where did her determination go, when this man was near? Why did he make her stop and second-guess all of her choices? Why did he make her heart beat so hard she could scarcely hear her own thoughts?

  Why didn’t she turn away from him and ride down the hill to Len?

  She could still run away from all this. Even from him and from heart-ache. She turned her head —

  He reached out suddenly, quick as a snake, and took the reins from her hands. In one swift movement he flicked his wrist and the reins flew over Gretna’s black-tipped ears, out of her reach. Grainne gasped, as much in appreciation of the trick as in the realization that she couldn’t escape him now. He had control of her horse. He had control of her.

  She looked down the hill to the little splash of crimson where Len was waiting for her.

  “I’ll send him a message,” William said grimly, nudging Nick into a walk and hauling on Gretna’s reins to turn her. “That you’re not coming.”

  Grainne gasped and snatched at Gretna’s mane to balance. “He’s leaving tonight.”

  “Without you.”

  She felt a sudden panic. All of her plans. She thought of marrying Maxwell and moving to Boyle House. She could not bear it! This was nothing to William, he would take over the yard whether she ran away with Len or moved to the squire’s estate to have his babies and pour his tea. He would win no matter what, so why must he care what she did? “He’s leaving tonight! William! Give me back my reins!” Grainne leaned as far as she could in the wretched side-saddle, trying to snatch at the reins, but she couldn’t reach without losing her balance. “Damn you, you interfering bastard!”

  William looked back at her with cold eyes. “You’re not running away with a gypsy, Grainne Spencer,” he told her. “You don’t deserve such a fate, even if you’re foolish enough to think yourself in love with him.”

  “Oh! How dare you!” Grainne considered leaping down from the saddle. But what would she do without Gretna? They needed the money this mare would bring them on the Continent. She was part of the plan. What would Len say if she arrived on foot?

  He loved her. He wanted her to come away with him.

  Of course she’ll bring a dowry. What kind of a fool do you take me for?

  She closed her eyes against the pain of that memory. But had he meant it? Or was he just blustering for friends?

  “Are you hurt at all?” They had come out of the thickets and were walking more sedately on the wider, cleared path on the other side of the hilltop. William pulled on the reins until Gretna was walking next to Bald Nick.

  “I’m not hurt,” she said dully.

  He regarded her quietly. She put up her chin and tried to ignore him, but she couldn’t quite stop the tears that insisted on welling up in her eyes.

  “He would mistreat you,” William insisted, but his voice was gentle.

  “He loves me.”

  “Run back to him without a horse, then.”

  She widened her eyes and looked at William rather wildly. How did he know?

  He just shook his head. “You know. Or you would have gone.”

  “He made a bargain with others. He can’t bring me without the horse.” The excuse was feeble, and she knew it.

  “You don’t dare show up without the horse, because you know he’ll leave you there alone.”

  The tears slipped over then, down her cheeks and leaving spots on the riding habit’s bodice. She closed her eyes again and let them fall.

  “You deserve better than a gypsy who will work you like a slave and pass you around like a whore,” William said harshly.

  “I deserve anything that is not ornamenting the house of some idiot in a top hat!” Grainne sobbed out. “I will not marry t
hat dolt Maxwell! I shall run away!”

  “Shush.” William’s voice grew still more gentle, and her sobs slowed a little as she tried to hear him. “I will not let your father marry you off to Maxwell.”

  “What… what on earth will you do?” Hope mixed with scorn in her voice. “You’re just a huntsman.”

  “I’m his favorite huntsman,” William corrected.

  “You are?”

  “You bet I am. I’m bringing home his beloved daughter after her horse ran away with her. And I’m the only one who noticed her absence. I’m not just your father’s new favorite employee, I’m his new favorite person.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Grainne awoke with a pounding headache, swollen eyes, and a sense of dread that she could not place. Not at first. She rolled over in bed, gazed at the early morning light touching her muslin drapes with a bloody finger, and then she remembered.

  She had been found out.

  Grainne gasped, all the horror of the day before striking her again as if it was new. Riding away from the hunt as the hounds picked up the fresh scent, all the while resisting the urge to look back at William in farewell. The look on his face when he took Gretna’s reins in his hands. The warring feelings of relief and dismay crashing in her breast.

  The knowledge, now, as she lay safe in her own bed, that she could have fought him, could have escaped him, and had scarcely even tried.

  Grainne groaned and pulled the covers over her head. Whatever was wrong with her? This silly female brain that she seemed to have acquired in the past weeks was confusing in its twists and turns, and her very emotions exhausted. She had chosen Len so sensibly, she thought, for the life he could offer her. But then she had found herself... Admiring... William Archer. Laughing at his jokes. Longing for his company. Worrying for his safety. Imagining his touch…

  And, at last, longing for it.

  So she had fallen in love with William Archer, these things happened. But that she had let that love overpower her good sense — what tragedy would come of her sensibility? She would have to marry Maxwell now, there would be no escaping it.

  Unless William offered for her. He hadn’t any money, of course, and she was no longer certain of the sincerity of his affections — had he only been making love to her in the hopes of finding out where she spent her afternoons? — But perhaps he could make her father listen. Her father admired him, after all.

  So foolish, to imagine that she could have a life with the huntsman, and yet the thought seemed to nudge its way into her brain like an insistent colt looking for carrots. “I don't have any carrots for you, stupid colt,” she whispered, and then she realized she was very probably stark raving mad and had better ring for some tea in hopes of salvaging whatever sanity might be left.

  Emer brought tea, and toast besides, and eyed Grainne nervously while she poured. Grainne could accept that it was a rare thing for her to spend a morning in bed, but that didn’t seem cause for the frightened fawn’s eyes Emer was making at her.

  “Whatever is the matter?” She burst out impatiently, and Emer jumped, sloshing the tea.

  “Big doin’s downstairs,” Emer whispered. “That Mr. Archer came and went away with Himself. They was that upset! Somethin’ ‘bout a gyp horse thief, and takin’ a magistrate.”

  Grainne could only stare at the maid. “A magistrate?” she finally asked, as if she had never heard the word.

  Emer nodded importantly. “Oh aye, and I expect they’ll hang him. Like they hanged Gyppo Pete along Ballydoyle way. He was stealin’ hunters from the Big House too. Did anyone take any of your nice ponies, miss? That would explain the fuss.”

  “No… No,” was all Grainne could manage with her stiff tongue. She looked towards the window wonderingly. Could all this confusion and sorrow be of her making? William and her father riding for the magistrate, going to arrest Len? And for what? Abducting her? But he hadn’t! She was here in her bed and they all knew it!

  Then a terrible thought rose in her mind. Your nice ponies. “I must dress,” she told Emer. “At once.”

  “Your tea!”

  “I must go to the yard. Quickly, help me find my clothes, Emer!”

  ***

  Demure in a dark habit that she had hated since the moment the dressmaker had pinned up the hems, Grainne ran like a fury to the stable yard, leaving opened doors and slammed gates in her wake. Never, not if she were running from the devil himself, would Grainne have been careless about closing a gate animals might escape from.

  When she reached the driveway to the yard she stopped short, her hand to her throat with dread. But she had known it was true, hadn’t she? Since the moment Emer had asked if Len had stolen any of her horses, she had known.

  She broke back into a run, cursing at her skirts, and didn't stop until she was arrived at the clutch of men standing around Gretna’s stall.

  Her empty stall.

  The buzz of delighted gossip silenced as the lads realized she had come at last. Tommy was the one who had the nerve to look her up and down slowly before speaking.

  “Coo, lass,” he said mockingly. “Ye picked a fine mornin’ to lie abed.”

  She stared at him, momentarily confused at the hardness in his eyes. Then she understood. Her dark eyebrows knitted together. “Where has my horse gone?” she demanded, hoping against hope that she was wrong. About everything.

  “Lord Kilreilly’s mare was not in her box this morning,” Tommy said loftily. He folded his arms over his chest and looked at her with that same accusing expression.

  But Grainne refused to be baited. Was she not still in charge of this yard? “Then why are none of you searching for her? She could have been frightened and jumped over her stall door in the night! She could be anywhere!”

  “And swept over her own hoof-prints?” Tommy pointed back at the front gate.

  She sighed with dismay. The gravel of the driveway was raked smooth; the only marks upon it were from boots.

  Len had tidied up after himself last night.

  He had taken her horse and fled the country. She knew it.

  Her foolishness had lost her Gretna.

  She flicked impatiently at a tear. Tommy saw, and pounced upon it. “Hate to loose your gypsy lover to the noose, I wager,” he sneered.

  He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know. “I am not involved with this misdeed,” she bit out haughtily. “How can you suggest such a thing? My father’s yard, my favorite horse? Why would I want her stolen? And what makes you think I consort with gypsies?”

  Just saying the words made her feel ill. She had been on the verge of turning her back on everyone and everything she had ever known to live in a caravan with a horse thief. She had been proud, and excited, to be chosen by a gypsy to join his family. And now! She had been a roll in the hay and the source of a fine horse, a pigeon ripe for plucking indeed.

  She was so ashamed she could scarcely hear the other lads as they leapt to her defense, haranguing Tommy over her bowed head, her hand to her forehead to cover up the tears she could not keep from falling. They splashed on the cobbles, but if the men saw they did not comment. They all knew Grainne well enough to realize she would not welcome their comfort.

  It was the clatter of hooves on pavement that finally caused her to sniff back her sobs and raise her head. And when William Archer rode in on Bald Nick, shining golden with the autumn’s fading sun upon him, and darling Gretna on a leading rein behind him, she could not be troubled to hide her tears of relief.

  It did not occur to her until afterward that Gretna's presence meant Len had probably been captured. And then, her mind curiously unclouded, she thought she did not care what happened to him, and put him from her mind.

  ***

  She was awaiting her father in the parlor.

  It was a grim wait. The silence of the mid-morning house was grating to her, so accustomed was she to the shouts of the lads and the neighs of the horses. Mrs. Kinney and her little staff seemed to creep through the house lik
e mice, hardly making a sound as they went about their inscrutable business of keeping the hunt master’s house neat and orderly.

  William had deposited her here on this faded divan with a lordly air she had not been enamored of, having handed his horse over to Seamus and taking her by the elbow back in the yard without much more than a stiff nod. The tightness of his jaw and the steel of his grip told her all she needed to know of his present opinion of her, though.

  She wondered now, sitting there wrapped in misery, if Len had said things to him. Confessed things to him. Described things to him. The way she had writhed beneath his touch, the way she had opened her mouth beneath his, the way she had begged him for more than any young lady should ever request, let alone attain knowledge of.

  She blushed, again and again, at the memories. William had known she was running away with the gypsy. But had he known about her afternoons in the gypsy’s arms?

  He knew, he knew, he knew.

  She was so ashamed she thought she should want to die.

  And William hadn’t looked at her. He had opened the door of the parlor, told her gruffly to await her father’s pleasure, and stalked away, shutting the door deliberately behind him.

  He had never looked at her.

  I disgust him, Grainne thought despondently.

  And her father! What her father would say to all of this, she could not even imagine.

  The door swung open with a bang; Grainne’s head came up with a snap that made her wince. She was about to find out. Heart full of dread, she looked up to see who would come into the parlor.

  It was her father, but she had never seen him so before. His face was fierce, tight, tense. His jaw was set. Her father, who had never put his foot down before, who had always let her have her head in all things, never wanting to discipline the sad little girl who had lost her mother — her father looked as furious and frightening as William.

  She gripped the edges of the plush divan and waited for him to speak.