Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback)
Read Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) Online
Authors: Sydney Alexander
Tags: #regency romance
CHAPTER ONE
“The next man who pinches my arse will find my knife at his throat,” Grainne declared stoutly. “Do I hear any takers amongst you, lads?”
The little crowd of men slowly melted away, their faces hangdog, whispering to their friends as they went. It was well known in the county that Grainne Spencer never, ever joked about putting knives to men’s throats. Seamus Kelleher had a scar yet, and he’d show you if you asked. Seamus had been unlucky enough to reach in for a bit of grab while she’d been handling an unruly filly. When the young horse shifted, so had her knife.
Still the daughter of the Big House’s master of hounds was always a favorite attraction at the horse fair. Sure, she always had the very best horses in her care: no one could match the old lord for breeding horseflesh, not even a true-born Irishmen, the lads would mutter, kicking the dirt. And just as no one could match Mr. Spencer for his pack of hounds, no one could match his mad daughter, Miss Grainne Spencer, for bringing on the hunting horses.
“Grainne, you always know how to send them packing,” an old gentleman said appreciatively, picking his way through the mud in a pair of boots more scarred than polished.
“Mr. Lark,” Grainne said, unabashed. “I have the grey here to show you.” She wriggled the reins of the big hunter she’d been waiting with. “Every bit the horse you are looking for. Sure-footed, brave, and always first to the kill.”
They would make a perfect match on the field, she thought, watching the gentleman run his hands down the hunter’s legs. The Honorable Jeremiah Lark was not a young man, but he still wanted to cut a figure on the hunting field, and he had a good enough seat that he could ride something a little flashy without getting over-horsed. When he had written her father to let him know that he’d be buying at the next fair, she had taken on the challenge of choosing which of the Earl of Kilreilly’s hunters ought to be sold on, and which one of those would be right for Mr. Lark.
She had agonized over the horses in the yard, trying to decide which one would be flashy and spirited enough, yet tractable and reliable enough, to keep the old fellow safe through ditch and forest and five-barred gate. Magyar, the steady dappled grey cob she had been hunting for two seasons, seemed perfect, though she’d miss him. In the end, Grainne had decided that Mr. Lark’s safety was more important than keeping Magyar for herself. She had dozens of horses to hunt. It would be selfish to hold on to such a steady animal when she was perfectly capable of riding a hellion.
She jiggled the reins a bit more and snapped her fingers in the air. Magyar pricked his ears and picked up his head, showing off his great curving neck and the clean lines of his shoulders. He was a powerful, exceptional beast.
“Well, well,” Mr. Lark said, peering through his spectacles not at the horse, but at the shapely young woman who stood at his head. “He is a beauty. Why don’t you put him through his paces for me, my dear.”
***
“Who is that bad-tempered young woman?” William Archwood nudged his companion in the ribs, perhaps harder than he realized.
“Oh, that one. I’ve heard of some mad girl who rides astride… must be her. You’ll want to stay away,” his friend griped, rubbing at his chest beneath its vest of grey wool. “And keep your elbows out of my side. You forget I’m not one of your barmy hunters. I’m a man of flesh and blood, Willie!”
“Flesh and blood and utter nonsense,” William snapped back, but he was smiling. “Tell me about her. She looks…” William trailed off for a moment as the girl swung lithely into the saddle of a spectacular dappled grey and put the big horse into a trot, circling a prospective buyer without even bothering to pull her skirts over her boot-tops. “She looks like a handful,” he finished finally, conceding Peregrin’s point. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Believe me, I’m right!” Peregrin put a kid-skinned glove on William’s arm and squeezed gently. “If I’m going to leave you here in this God-forsaken valley, I want to at least know that you shan’t be eaten by the natives.”
William laughed. “Oh, no fear of that! What a pack of provincials. Such accents! I fear I shall have to bite my tongue or I shall give myself away so quickly I’ll be back in London and married to Violetta before Boxing Day.”
“St. Stephen’s Day, the
provincials
call it,” Peregrin corrected. “You won’t be in the manor house, you know, you’ll be out in the muck with the Irish. Better learn their words, though you’ll never hide your accent. You’ll just have to make up for it by riding them all into the ground.” His eyes wandered to an attractive dark horse, long-legged and bright-eyed, that was stepping out in high fashion from some hidey-hole behind a festively painted gypsy caravan. “My God, what a looker! I’m half-tempted to take that beast home to London with me. Although I suppose there’s no telling what’s wrong with it; those gypsies are notorious for covering up every manner of fault in a horse.”
William was eyeing not the horse, but the man on its back, instead: a dark-haired and dark-eyed fellow of no remarkable height or face, but whose piercing gaze was utterly fixed on some object beyond William’s shoulder. William turned, bemused, and saw again the ill-tempered young woman on the dappled grey. She was slipping easily down from the saddle, haggling good-naturedly with the buyer as she did so. Before she could take the reins over the beast’s ears, the dandy was doffing his top hat and holding out his hand to seal the bargain. William saw the horsewoman gaze past the buyer then, throwing a look of victory and joy at the gypsy on the dark horse, and he thought he understood.
“The gypsy and the harridan are in some sort of arrangement,” he murmured in Peregrin’s ear.
“Confound it, man, stop tickling my ear!” Peregrin swiped at William. “What’s that, now? You’re mad. All right, all right, I know her. She’s a gentleman’s daughter, even if she does ride like a pagan. That’s Grainne Spencer, daughter of the Master of the Hounds. That’s right,” he continued, taking relish in his friend’s sudden horror. “You can call her ‘the boss’s daughter.’”
William Archwood followed Mr. Spencer along the muddy path. He’d been brought out for a tour of the Earl of Kilreilly’s hunting stables. Not as an honored guest, come for the hunting, as his friend Peregrin no doubt would be later, but as the newest huntsman, there to train horses and act as a whipper-in during the hunts. He looked without pleasure at the lonely little cottage, a stark contrast from trim stone stables he could see down the lane. The whitewashed cot seemed to sag in the middle, and he wondered how much longer that thatching had before it gave up and crashed down upon his unwitting head.
“These will be your quarters,” Mr. Spencer announced in his funny half-Irish, half-English accent, cracking open the door of the lonely little cottage. He left it to William to push the door all the way open and peep inside, taking in at a single glance the one rectangular room, the whitewashed walls lumpy with their uneven stonework, the black-streaked mantle of the great fireplace where he guessed he’d have to cook and wash as well as heat the cottage. He pushed the thought of his sumptuous London rooms from his mind resolutely. This was the cost of his actions, after all. He had known it would not be an easy thing to shrug aside the life of an earl’s son. But the freedom would be worth it in the end.
He was sure of it. Anything was better than Violetta. Even a roof falling on his head.
“All in good order?” Mr. Spencer seemed impatient. William nodded and let the door slip closed again, shoving it with his shoulder when the ancient wood caught on its warped frame. Christ! This cottage was probably older than his cursed grandfather, the man whose out-dated edicts had sent him here in the first place.
“Good,” Spencer grunted. “The stable lads live above the stables, of course, but since you’re going to have charge of the yard before too much longer, may as well start as we mean to go on and put you up in the head lad’s cottage. Now: on to the important bits: horses. You’ll supervise the grooming in the morning. Feeds are at sunrise. I want a good tight routine: feeds, strapping, hooves cleaned, and then everyone out for an exercise. The lads know where the ground is good and where to go: they’ll assist you with that. Too much mud and you’ll ride in the menage. Common sense. Now, when it comes to feeds, you’ll want to pay close attention — ”
William followed the tall figure of Lord Kilreilly’s Master of Hounds under the trees and along the muddy lane, its ruts blistered with hoofmarks, and onto the swept cobbles of the stable-yard. The fellow went on droning about ratios of corn and barley. William wasn’t too concerned with the actual content of the lecture; the stable lads knew what the horses were meant to be fed, and they’d show him the routine right off. It was a pretty yard, u-shaped, with attractive horses pricking their ears in his direction from over every door of every box, and mossy tiles sloping down over grey-white fieldstone walls. A yard this well-maintained would have hard-working, dedicated stable lads, not slouches who would short the horses their corn.
At any rate, Peregrin had assured him that Lord Kilreilly would not have anyone less than the very best on his estate, whether they were mucking out the stables or making up beds in the big house. “Well, I don’t know how I’ll make out then,” William had joked, but Peregrin had just looked at him very seriously and said, “You’re the best horseman I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t have recommended you for this job.”
It was a strange thing for a fellow’s best friend to say to him, William reflected. Surely he would recommend his mate simply out of friendship? But then he was just as much a hunting fanatic as Peregrin. He could imagine that if Peregrin recommended a substandard huntsman to his own stables, and a horse was injured or badly ridden, he and Peregrin would probably have an argument that would end their friendship. They were the closest of friends, like brothers, he and Peregrin, but horses —
“These are your lads!”
William blinked and shook his head a little, coming back to the present world. The yard staff was assembling in front of the tack room to greet the new huntsman, and he’d better look like he knew what was going on. Since he was the new head huntsman and all.
The lads filed out one by one, alike in their stiff breeches and homespun shirts and flat caps. They were nearly all of an age, too young for a family of their own and too old to wipe their faces on their mother’s aprons. They were thin, with cheekbones pressing at their flesh and beaky noses, and dark smudges of exhaustion beneath their eyes. But they smiled brilliantly, not a sullen face amongst them. Four, five, six, William counted, as the young men filed out of the tack room, and then he lost count as a tall young woman, with tendrils of dark hair touched by copper slipping from beneath her own tweed cap, came sweeping out last of all.
The boys nodded respectfully and stood with their hands behind their backs, but the woman came to stand beside Mr. Spencer, a tiny mocking smile on her lips as she bobbed a curtsy to William. And that was when he recognized Grainne Spencer, the boss’s daughter.
The girl he’d seen at the horse fair the day before.
When he’d seen her yesterday, William
had
thought it odd that the Master of Hounds would allow his daughter to work in the yard like a man, but he soon shrugged it off. Must be some common Irish practice that the fellow had picked up after spending decades here, he decided.
It would be to the girl’s ruin, of course. Who would wed a tomboy like that? He had not been unaffected by her figure on horseback, but a woman who spent her days outdoors like a commoner would not excite any sort of interest from a man of his tastes. Suppose her father saw her as free labor and nothing more; some fellows were blind like that, but ’twas to her ruination and that was that.
But the Grainne Spencer standing before him, wearing men’s breeches, scarred and worn black boots, and a laced peasant blouse, was not the one he recalled from the day before. Now, to be fair, he
had
been at some distance from her at the horse fair. He was standing right before her now, and he was struck by the things he had not seen. He had not seen her face, which surely should have been more brown and wrinkled after spending so much time outdoors, nor her rich, fire-kissed dark hair, which truly ought to have been more tangled and disorderly as it slipped from the little tweed cap she wore just like the rest of the stable lads. He had not seen her lips, which were lush and pink and perfectly kissable. He had not seen her eyes, which were the rich changing grey-blue of the Irish sky —