Tattenham Corner.
Lydia set her jaw and eased the cob away from the inside fence of the course. And then, when she judged she had given him enough space to gauge his stride, she turned him in and put her heels on him. “I can jump, I can jump, I can jump,” she told herself, and braced herself for the leap.
It was immensely higher a jump than anything she had ever taken before, and she was nearly unseated as the cob came down on the other side of the fence, thrown heavily on his neck and with her legs out behind her. But she pushed her hands down on his withers and righted herself, and then urged him on with heels and voice. “Get up, get up, let’s get him, get on!”
They charged across the downs at a diagonal angle from the track. To her left, she could still see Reynard charging around, Peregrin in the saddle yet but with utterly no control at all. Ahead of her, coming up rapidly, was another fence. She tried to gather up as much of the cob’s mane in her hands as she possibly could. She had to stay seated after this fence. Once she was back on the racecourse, she’d be on the other side of Tattenham Corner, the sharp left turn horses had to make coming down the hill from the Derby’s starting point. She’d have cut off Reynard, who would be laboring uphill — but then she had to catch him.
The fence rose up before them; she put her hands in the cob’s mane and flung her legs forward as she had seen men do on the hunting field — and then they were up and over, and to their left, far away but growing closer with every passing second, came Reynard, his legs still pounding the turf as if he would never tire.
Lydia turned the cob to gallop along the racecourse and turned her head, waiting. She had to hope that Reynard would be tired and frightened from running so far alone, that he would seek equine companionship and let her get the cob close to him, so that she could reach out and grab his bridle. And then she had to hope she could pull the horse up before he pulled her out of the saddle.
Lydia decided then to stop thinking. It was all frightening to contemplate.
Then he was there, drumming up beside them with his wide white eyes. His face was dark with sweat, and it had frothed up in the hollows above his eyes and beneath the leather straps of his bridle. Poor Reynard, he was a sight. And Peregrin! He looked nearly as exhausted; the effort of riding at such a clip with no reins was telling on him. He looked terrified, to boot, and Lydia knew it wasn’t for him — it was for her.
She was tired now as well, having been galloping astride for far longer than she was used to, and her legs were screaming with exertion. So when she stood in the stirrups and reached out with a questing right hand to grab at Reynard’s slick bridle, she thought she would simply crumple and fall. And in the end, she did fall back into the saddle, but not before she had the leather straps of his cheek-piece in her hand, gripped so tightly that it was either him or her.
He let it be him.
She inadvertently yanked at the bridle as she fell back onto the cob’s back, and Reynard, who was probably looking for an excuse to stop anyway, responded to the jerk on his bit by slowing his stride to match the cob’s. With her left hand, Lydia slowly pulled up her own mount, and Reynard obediently stayed beside her, firmly in hand at last.
They stood still for a long moment, the horses’ sides heaving, their nostrils flaring. Lydia looked at Peregrin and he stared back at her with respect and astonishment in his eyes.
“My God, Lydia,” he said after a moment. “I knew you were a natural rider, but I never expected anything like that.”
Lydia managed a nervous laugh. “I’d ride through worse for you,” she said softly.
And despite the fact that he was still on a horse with no reins, Peregrin leaned over and kissed her gently on her parted lips. “You saved me,” he whispered, hands lingering on her face. “And it was always me that saved you.”
“I suppose now we are even,” Lydia said with a smile. “You’re a good teacher, Peregrin Fawkes.”
“And you’re a true horsewoman, Lydia Dean,” Peregrin replied. “But now, we had better walk these horses cool.”
“Always horses,” Lydia complained, half-joking. “I just saved your life and all you can say is that we had better walk these horses?”
“Oh, Lydia,” Peregrin laughed, slipping down from Reynard’s saddle. “For us, my love, horses will always come first.”
And Lydia, dismounting from her own cob, knew that he was right. And, she thought, she was perfectly fine with that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
About the Author
Natalie Keller Reinert is a lifelong horsewoman with a passion for Thoroughbreds, horse racing, and equestrian sports. Growing up between Florida and Maryland, she competed in hunters, dressage, and eventing with her Off-Track Thoroughbred and a variety of other horses. Her varied background includes grooming for USET eventing riders, exercising racehorses at Aqueduct, and even a year riding with the New York City Parks Department Mounted Unit. Her equestrian contemporary fiction includes the best-selling Alex and Alexander series, focusing on the horse-human relationship in the horse racing industry. Her historical romances, Heroines on Horseback, feature women who draw strength and independence from their relationship with their horses. Natalie lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Stay connected at NatalieKReinert.com, at www.facebook.com/NatalieKellerReinert, and at @NatalieKReinert on Twitter. Visit Amazon.com’s author page at http://www.amazon.com/Natalie-Keller-Reinert/e/B005K98KDK/ for all of the books listed below.
Also by Natalie Keller Reinert
Heroines on Horseback Series:
Miss Spencer Rides Astride
The Honorable Nobody
The Genuine Lady
Alex and Alexander Series:
The Head and Not The Heart
Other People’s Horses
Claiming Christmas
Equestrian Contemporary Fiction:
Horse-Famous: Stories
Ambition (Coming Soon in Ebook and Paperback)
Contributor:
Track Life: Images and Words (Photography by Juliet Harrison)
Miss Spencer Rides Astride is now available!
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.
Visit: Natalie Keller Reinert at Amazon
Natalie Kelle
r Reinert at BN.com
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.
“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.’”
The Genuine Lady is now available!
Lady Charlotte Beacham, hounded by scandal, has fled England for the American West. Determined to build a life for her little son, Cherry disembarks from a train deep in the Dakota Territory and files a claim where she can go about creating a wheat and cattle empire in the new promised land.
Jared Reese came to Bradshaw to leave behind his memories and his broken heart. The ex-cowboy doesn’t have any interest in falling in love again, and he certainly doesn’t need to fall for some crazy Englishwoman with a temper like a snake’s. But when he rides out to check on his new neighbor and finds himself gazing through a shanty window at some slumbering beauty, the attraction is instant - and undeniable.
Cherry believes her heart is buried back in England. Jared believes his heart is irreparably broken. Against the dramatic backdrop of the Dakota prairie, through cyclone and blizzard, they must learn to leave the past behind, or give up on love for all time.
Visit: Natalie Keller Reinert at Amazon
Natalie Keller Reinert at BN.com
Introduction (from The Genuine Lady)
This is never going to work.
The hand-mirror told her that she’d overdone it in the sun again. Of course she had; there was work to be done! But here was the damage: her once-pale skin was glowing the color of a ripe tomato, and her cheeks felt as if they were linen pulled tightly across an embroidery hoop. She touched her sore skin with a trembling finger, sighed, and let the little hand-mirror drop to the rough planks of the big work-table. It dominated the room, that table, reminding her that her little world, insecure and shabby as it was, was no larger than a horse’s box in her father’s stables.
What had been her father’s stables.
This is never going to work.
The claim shanty rattled around her, shaking in a sudden burst of hot prairie wind. Oh, that constant wind! The never-ending gusts came panting across the
gleaming green grasslands all the way from the Continental Divide. Oh, that interminable wind! She thought she’d never get used to that hateful wind, or, even worse, the stifling pauses between its breaths, when it seemed there wasn’t any air to draw into her lungs at all, nothing but the baking stillness, the inside of an oven. She stopped feeling like an over-stretched piece of linen and re-imagined herself as a flattening, crisping cookie, blackening at the edges.
This dreadful life.
She thought about bursting into tears. But no — that had never been her way. She wouldn’t have come this far if she cried over every glass of milk she had spilt.
And yet still, that persistent voice in her head:
This is never going to work.
She heard a little cry behind her and turned quickly, faded calico swirling with her motion. She was still as graceful as a dancer. Hard work had not tightened her muscles. She peered into the mahogany bassinet and breathed a sigh of relief. He was still quite asleep, the little darling, fast asleep, and only the sighing, creaking groans of the shanty had caused him to stir, clenching his little fists, before he fell back into dreams. She watched him for a few moments, forgetting the taut burning of her cheeks and forehead, the sticky sweat beneath her arms and her breasts and between her legs, and concentrated only on that rosebud mouth, those peach-and-cream cheeks, those few golden curls wisping on his pale forehead.
She almost wished he had awakened, if only to keep her company. Her arms fairly ached with the desire to pick him up and clutch him to her chest, but cuddling would have to wait for the coolness of night. He would never be able to sleep pressed against her heat, and at any rate there was work to be done while the baby napped: wasn’t there always? The next day’s loaf to be set, nappies to be washed and hung in the lee of the shanty, out of the wind so they would not blow across the prairie and disappear, the continued experiment in agricultural construction that was her attempt at a chicken coop… the chores ticked themselves over, one by one, in the back of her brain, and interrupted her adoration of her son. As they always did.
The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2) Page 29
