Free Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) by Sydney Alexander Page A

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.  

CHAPTER TEN

    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