Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback)

by Alexander, Sydney

William smiled at Grainne. “Of course you did. The lads would not be having nearly such a fine time if they were trapped in the lord’s drawing room. And a fine day at last! I cannot fathom such luck, that it finally stopped raining.”

  “It will rain again tomorrow,” Grainne said dolefully, but her eyes were bright as she surveyed the rows of trestle tables, dressed in billowing white damask. At a few, lads from the stable were still seated, drinking ale and laughing uproariously. It had long since stopped being her wedding breakfast and gone to being a rare holiday from the stables. They had forgotten about her, and she was going away… but Grainne did not mind the short memories of the lads. She had her favorite lad next to her now, and her favorite horse besides.

  “We should be off, my love, if we are to make it to Dublin tonight.”

  Grainne let William give her a leg-up in the saddle. For this, her ride away from her father’s house, she had conceded to ride sidesaddle. She fussed with the skirt of her navy-blue riding habit, hastily done up by the seamstress at the Big House in the latest fashion.

  “That military look makes me want to declare war,” William told her. “The epaulets on the shoulders… really darling, you might want to consider wearing riding habits more often.”

  “Only if you will take them off of me,” Grainne purred. She favored him with a sultry smile. “It’s so tight, and you know I dislike being restrained in anything.”

  William swallowed.

  “But of course, when we were in town, I shall have to dress like a lady,” she went on, sighing. “Tell me we won’t be in town very often.”

  “I already told you that.” William swung into Bald Nick’s saddle. He smiled down at Tommy Boxton, who let go of the reins and stepped away.

  “Tell me again,” Grainne said. “I am a country girl, as well you know.”

  “Grainne, I am going to take you to my country house and never let you outside the gates of my park,” William announced. “There, is that better?”

  “Perfect,” Grainne agreed. “The sooner, the better!” And she touched her heels to Gretna, sending the gray mare down the road with a clatter of hooves.

  William stayed behind a moment, watching his bride go galloping down the country lane. He waited. “There goes her hat,” he said finally. He grinned down at Tommy and Seamus, and the other lads from the stableyard. “Boys, it has been a pleasure.”

  “Good luck to you,” Tommy said. “You’ll need it with that one.”

  William nodded. “I don’t doubt it,” he agreed, and then sent Bald Nick racing after his wife.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  They had not ridden ten miles when the skies opened up and it began to pour down rain.

  “Oh, this wretched country!” William hunched his shoulders against the onslaught. “It was clear and sunny not ten minutes ago!”

  “It does not rain in England?” Grainne managed to be amused despite her own discomfort. “Indeed, I shall enjoy it there more than I had ever suspected.” She kicked Gretna forward at a canter. “Come, love, there is a barn just ahead. We can take shelter there.”

  Grainne cantered easily in the side-saddle she so despised, and William hung back a little, holding Bald Nick’s head tight, so that he could watch her dip and sway with every stride. The plume on her little military cap fluttered in the cold wind, despite the rain, and he found himself hoping there was a nice store of straw in that ramshackle barn ahead, and no interfering farmer to stop him from going about his business as a lawfully wedded man.

  Grainne rode right into the barn and disappeared. He noticed, as he let Bald Nick follow, that the cottage nearby had fallen into disrepair. No one would be living here, then. William smiled.

  Inside, Grainne was slipping from the saddle without waiting for him, one of her usual tricks. Dismounting from a sidesaddle without help was not the easiest of tasks, but Grainne would probably rather have fallen to the ground than waited for a man’s help. Her bull-headed determination to do everything herself was one of his favorite things about her, he decided, watching her slip the bit from Gretna’s mouth and loosen the mare’s girth. Even through the prim cloth of the riding habit, he could see her biceps bulge as she pulled up on the girth to pop the buckle loose. His wife was a formidable woman.

  He jumped down from his own horse, looking around at their little shelter all the while. It might be a bit tumble-down, but it was a sound barn, with a pile of old hay in one corner and a few corncribs in the other. The door had fallen from its hinges, but the barn was still private enough. He could bed them down in the hay, he thought with a smile, and not have to worry about travelers seeing them from the road. The roads were deserted, anyway. He supposed all the rest of Ireland knew that a cold winter rain would follow two hours of sunshine. He pulled some of the hay aside for Gretna and Nick, and found a shank to tie across the doorway to keep the horses inside. Then he looked at Grainne.

  She was already pulling a blanket out of one of the saddlebags. He watched her shake out its folds and lay it down on the hay.

  “It’s cold in here,” he said.

  She smiled at him. She opened up the larger bag on Nick’s saddle and pulled out a heavier blanket.

  “Oh, very well then,” William laughed, as if he had been coerced, and in two steps he had crossed the dirt floor of the little barn and was snatching his giggling wife up for a long, deep kiss.

  ***

  It was cold, Grainne thought a few moments later, divested of hat and spencer and gloves and scarf and anything that might have kept her warm save William’s heat above her and the woolen blanket above them both. But William’s heat was building, quickly proving to be more than enough. And her own was not far behind.

  He had wrenched off his own coat and shirt with a furious speed that had surprised her, and the feeling of skin on skin was the most exquisite sensation imaginable. She lay pressed between the soft blanket beneath her, shifting on its bed of straw, and the hard heat of him above her, and with his lips alternating between her breast and her throat and her lips, with her fingers stroking at his back and scratching at his shoulders, she thought a barn was quite as good as a Dublin inn for a marriage consummation.

  “Grainne,” he ground out, lips against her white neck. “Grainne.”

  That was all he said, but she knew what he meant. She let him push her thighs open, welcomed him as he slipped his fingers inside of her. She could feel her own heat, his fingers slippery within her, and she thought she would scream, and then he did something and then she did scream, arching upwards, as the rain pelted on the barn roof, drowning out her cries, and he covered her mouth with his and his fingers were gone and then something else was there, hard and hot and soft and thrilling, and she nearly jumped out from under him when he pressed inside of her.

  “William,” she gasped. He paused in his motions, concern on his face.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  She nodded, then she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  He looked serious. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Slowly, gently, he rocked his hips, kissing her sweetly as he moved, letting his lips and tongue move in tandem with his body’s rhythm. Grainne felt her body relax again, and she swung her hips as well, swaying as if she was cantering in the saddle. She sighed, a long delighted sigh of pleasure, and wound her fingers into William’s hair. He took heart and sped up the pace.

  “Oh!” she cried, and tried to keep up, but she could not, and the pleasure was overwhelming her again. William’s hands slipped from her face and suddenly he was cupping her buttocks, his hands tipping up her hips, and she could see him rearing up above her, his magnificent body flinging back the blanket, and as the cold air bit at her breasts she cried out, the starbursts in her eyes again, and he shouted at as he reached his climax, and behind them the two horses ate at their hay and ignored the humans with steadfast equine patience.

  ***

  “We mustn’t nap here all day,” William said a few minutes, a few ho
urs, a few days later. “We will be caught out in the road after dark.”

  “I’m not afraid of the dark,” Grainne said lazily. She ran her fingers lightly over his bare chest, smiling as his muscles tensed. “Let’s just live in this barn. There is hay enough for the horses, and I do not feel like ever leaving this bed of straw.”

  “Silly girl.” He kissed her. “You must think me a stableboy in truth, darling Grainne. But the fact is I am sadly spoilt lordling, and I shall not go without a bottle and a good dinner tonight. My mind is quite set upon it.”

  She laughed at him. “Spoilt, are you? I shall soon enough put a stop to that. I am a country lass, and you shall be my country lad.”

  “That is all very charming,” William teased, putting on his shirt. “But this country lad is not giving up his French cook, nor his butler and footmen, nor his housekeeper and maids. Do you have objections, my dear country lass, to being waited upon hand and foot?”

  Grainne buttoned up her habit with practiced fingers. “Only do not let them try to groom my horse for me, William. There are some things a girl must do for herself.”

  Half-dressed as she was, hair about her face and stocking feet in a pile of straw, William thought her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He pulled her close and gave her a long, searching kiss. She looked up at him with starry eyes. “I shall inform the grooms,” he told her seriously. “That they are never to lift a finger to help you.”

  Grainne burst into laughter and pummeled her husband on the chest. “William, my love, you always say just the right thing. Now, let’s go find you your supper.”

  “And then, home,” he said softly.

  “Home,” she repeated. And Grainne smiled.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  About the Author

  Sydney Alexander has been a horsewoman all of her life, riding horses from a young age at whatever stable would let her work off riding lessons and trail rides. After a long competitive career in show-jumping, eventing, and dressage, she now volunteers with a therapeutic riding center, helping children and adults grow through the power and love of horses. A love of historical fiction convinced her to combine her passions for writing and riding into creating the Heroines on Horseback collection of romances. Sydney spends most of her days typing and drinking coffee, and lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

  Keep in touch at: bysydneyalexander.wordpress.com, @by_sydney, and Facebook.