The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (39 page)

But he’d only meant to help, and, she had had to admit time and time again, they made a wonderful team.

Except for when he was distracting her.

She turned away from Remsen and Jared was right there. Their noses nearly touched. “Oh!” she exclaimed, unable to stop a blush from rising up in her face.
 

He smiled.
 

“Jared, I have work to do,” she scolded.

He put his arms around her waist and pulled her close to him. Behind him, his horse put down his head and started to graze.
 

Her body warmed at his touch. “Eddie’s inside?” she tried, her voice a little breathless.

“We’re not inside,” he growled, and brought his lips to hers.
 

She sighed into his kiss, letting her body melt against his as he leaned forward, molding her to him. Behind her, she felt Remsen’s questioning lips pulling at her knot of hair, and soon it was spilling down around her cheeks. Even the horses conspired with Jared. She laughed and pushed him off of her in a last burst of strength and will.

“Aw, honey,” Jared protested, looking crushed. Then he saw her hair tumbling down her back. “What happened? I didn’t do that.”

“Remsen
did that, because he knows I have to
ride him,”
Cherry laughed, pulling at locks of gilt hair. “Can we not behave ourselves, and save the passion for after dark? I am a busy woman, my love.”

Jared smiled ruefully and helped pull her hair back into place. “I never thought I’d be married to a working woman,” he said, pretending to pout. “Why aren’t you seeing to my
needs,
Cherry?”

Cherry snatched at his collar and pulled him close. She planted a searing kiss on his lips and then shoved him away again. “Jared Reese, husband of mine, I will excuse that if you will go and fetch my saddle for me. I have horses to ride.”

Jared came back for another kiss and she didn’t push him away, but she smiled when he gave her a condescending pat on the head and went to fetch her heavy saddle from the shanty. These days, the shanty had a storeroom attached, courtesy of Eli’s industry over the winter, where she kept all of the horse’s brushes and tack. And inside, Eli still slept alone. Cherry and Eddie had moved into Jared’s cabin.

But she still spent every day here, at her claim, on her land. Someday, she thought, looking out at the rippling green grass and the dark seam of black where her wheat was poking up brave heads, someday this would be hers in truth, and then Eddie’s. Their Beechfields, their estate that they had built with their own hands.
 

Jared came out of the shanty, pretending to groan under the weight of her beautiful saddle, and she laughed at him. They had had help after all, and she didn’t begrudge Jared one moment of it. They would accomplish it all together.

He put the saddle down on the ground and went back to the shanty. “One more thing,” he called over his shoulder. “Wait right there.”

Cherry sighed and tapped her foot on the ground.

“Close your eyes!” His voice floated out the shanty, all mischief.

“What? Come on Jared, I have horses to ride!”

“Are they closed? Not comin’ out ’til they’re closed!”

“Oh…” she shut her eyes. “All right, hurry up!”

She heard him come out of the shanty and then his boots were silenced by the thick grass. But she knew when he was near her again: Jared’s presence made her entire body warm and shiver all at once. She felt his hands in her hair, gently loosening her bonnet, and sighed with the pleasure of his touch.
 

“Not right now,” he teased, correctly interpreting her sigh. “You have
so much
work to do, remember?”

She felt him lift away her bonnet and then something else slid onto the knot of hair on top of her head. “What on earth?”
 

Jared laughed. “Open your eyes.”

She opened them. Before her, Jared stood with her tarnished little hand-mirror, holding it up before her face. “Tell me what you think,” he said with a grin. “I think it suits you.”

Cherry looked, and laughed, and shook her head. “A
Stetson!
Oh Jared, it’s perfect!”

The cowboy hat that sat atop her head was a newer, cleaner version of the battered one that Jared wore. The natural cotton color was several shades lighter than her sun-bleached hair and her slowly-browning skin, and a sight cooler than the bonnet she was used to wearing, but it still shaded her face.
 

“Perfect for a lady,” Jared said. “I don’t know why more don’t wear ‘em.”

“I don’t know what sort of a lady I am anymore,” Cherry chuckled, a little ruefully. “A horse trainer and a homesteader, and now I’m wearing a cowboy hat instead of a bonnet!”

“A bonnet’s nothin’ but a hat,” Jared insisted stubbornly. “And you, Cherry, will always be a genuine lady, through and through.” He put his arm around her shoulders and spun her around to look at the vista of wheat-field and pasture again. “The Lady of your own domain.”

She couldn’t help but smile at that. She put up a freckled hand and tipped back her Stetson, as she had seen Jared do so many times. “I love you,” she breathed, and she said it to Jared, and to the land, and to her future. “I love you so.”

Sydney Alexander writes about women and horses from her home in New York City. A life-long horsewoman, Sydney loves to travel through time with her heroines.
 

You can find her on Facebook at
facebook.com/SydneyAlexanderRomances

And on Twitter at
@by_Sydney

You can read her other Heroines on Horseback novels through Amazon:

Miss Spencer Rides Astride

Miss Grainne Spencer is a young lady with a very serious problem: her father has just remembered she is a Female Person. Utterly content to spend her days riding hunters and training young horses, Grainne is ready to do whatever it takes to avoid being married off to a gentleman who will insist that she behave in a more respectable fashion.
Whatever
it takes — even plotting to run away with a gypsy who promises he will show her the world from the back of a horse.

William Archwood is an earl’s son with a most alarming problem: a fianceé he can’t even stand sharing a ball-room with, let alone the thought of a marriage. When his imperious father refuses to allow him to break off the engagement, he does the only logical thing a wealthy young gentleman with his wits about him could possibly choose to do: he runs away and hides.

When the talented horseman Mr. Archer arrives at the stables, Grainne is certain it can mean only one thing: her father has hired her replacement. She’s determined to escape, but that pesky Mr. Archer always seems to be underfoot, and his presence is decidedly disconcerting. He looks
very
well on a horse, of course, but it’s more than that… something about this English stranger is most… attractive.
 

William only came to Ireland to lie low and worry his father into allowing him to dissolve his unwanted engagement. He certainly didn’t mean to upset his new boss’s mad daughter and send the whole hunting yard spiraling into chaos. But there’s something fascinating about that secretive young lady, and he can’t help but send his horse after her every time she decides to melt into the countryside.

Amidst horses, hunting, and the allure of the Irish countryside,
Miss Spencer Rides Astride
is the rollicking story of two misfits trying to make their own way, fighting the fates with everything they’ve got, and perhaps, just by accident, falling in love.

Miss Spencer Rides Astride
is available at Amazon for 99 cents.

http://www.amazon.com/Spencer-Astride-Heroines-Horseback-ebook/dp/B00CEHHUKK

Introduction (from
Miss Spencer Rides Astride)

“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.