Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) (7 page)

Mr. Archer, still smiling at her, lifted his own glass, tipping it slightly forward in a secret toast, and drank rather more than was socially acceptable.

Mr. Maxwell fumbled with his soup spoon, not happy until he had dropped it on the floor and caused a clatter.

Mr. Spencer called for the meat to be carved.
 

“A bit of chicken,” Grainne said weakly.
 

“Beef!” Mr. Archer told the footman with lively abandon.

“Have you any mutton?” Mr. Maxwell asked meekly. “Nothing finer for the digestion.”

“Mutton’s for old men and peasants,” Archer announced pleasantly. “A day in the saddle makes a man long for good red meat. Should try some, Miss Spencer, you were out longer than any of us.”

“Oh, I couldn’t eat a bite —” Was that a jab at her riding out alone tonight? Was he going to make a scene with her father? Was he getting foxed? Drunk men were so dangerous at a dinner table.

“Miss Spencer, have a bite of mutton. It will do you such good.”

“She isn’t some auld Irish gran on her deathbed, Maxwell, don’t be ridiculous!”

“Sir, one cannot be too careful of one’s digestion. And a young lady who is out in all weathers must be especially careful of her health. It is most upsetting to think of.” Maxwell’s jowls fairly quivered with upset.

“I hope you are not
criticizing
Miss Spencer for being a strong horsewoman. It would not become you to speak ill of such a great talent. And of course she needs to keep her strength up, that’s why she needs beef, to build her up!”

Grainne thought perhaps everyone in the room was going mad. Why was her father not stepping in? What was he doing while these obscene men sparred over meats? Tucking into a great bloody chunk of beef, that’s what he was doing! She was quite on her own. “Just a bite of chicken and some sauce,” she assured the footman, who nervously complied before the gentlemen could clear their mouths enough to intercede.

This dinner could not end soon enough. She was having a horrible night.

***

William was having a splendid time.

Mr. Maxwell was quite the most ridiculous man he had made the acquaintance of in some time. He
had
been a little put out when he had arrived for dinner and Mr. Spencer had informed him they would have company at the table that evening. Mr. Maxwell, Spencer had informed him, was a most excellent addition to the neighborhood: a knowledgeable farmer, a good landlord, and in possession of an income that would make him desirable to any young lady. It was a wonder, Spencer had said slyly, that he was not married yet.

William had accepted a brandy and tried to still the sudden tic in his jaw. Spencer was apparently in a sudden hurry to marry his unladylike daughter off; William wondered why. After putting her in charge of the stables that were Spencer’s livelihood, and withdrawing to the earl’s kennels, it was strange that he’d suddenly be thrusting her into the marriage market. And in such a half-hearted manner, as well; there was, as far as William could tell, no one at all of their class within a days’ ride.

Besides the estimable Mr. Maxwell.

Perhaps Spencer just didn’t know how the game was properly played. There was no Mrs. Spencer, after all, to drape Grainne in the proper gowns, send her to the proper houses, and arrange her on the proper sofas. But he knew, thanks to Peregrin’s thorough research before they had come to Ireland, that Mrs. Spencer had been the second cousin of an English earl and had dowered Mr. Spencer a brother-in-law rather high-ranked in government. The girl had a few connections. It would have been a simple thing to gain invitations for the girl into Dublin society, and find her a nice honorable fellow for a husband.

The most ignorant of men should have known that he needed a governess, a schoolroom, and an invitation from the brother-in-law’s wife in order to properly provide for his daughter.

Instead he left her to be a wild horsewoman with only this ridiculous pink-faced shepherd of a squire for consideration as husband.

William rather liked her as a wild horsewoman, although he would prefer it if she stopped disappearing for afternoons at a time. He doubted that Maxwell would allow her such freedom to be herself. He’d heard there to be no horses but farm horses and carriage horses at Boyle House. Maxwell did not consider riding a healthful exercise. There’d be no more riding, to say nothing of doing so in breeches and astride.
 

He gave a considered glance to the young lady sitting next to him, determinedly working away at her chicken and cream sauce. Even with her shabby gown and careless chignon, she still gave a credible impression of a respectable English deb. Bloodline mattered in humans as it did in horses, and she could have cleaned up as well as any fine racehorse at Epsom. But he had to admit, he liked her much better wild, with her hair falling across her face and reins in her hands.
 

He liked her a bit too much.

She seemed to sense his gaze and looked up at him, the pink flooding her white cheeks again. She blushed a lot, this girl. Funny, it wasn’t in keeping with her temper. He met her eyes and held her there, still as a rabbit in a net, for a long moment. The clinking of silverware and the conversation between Spencer and Maxwell seemed to fade away. They were alone in an empty space.

“Mr. Archer?” she whispered tentatively. He would never have believed she could sound so timid. “Is something amiss?”

“No,” he answered. “Nothing is amiss, nothing at all.” And he smiled.

A smile touched her lips then, brief and uncertain, and then she looked back down at her plate, flushing up to her ears.

William took another sip of wine, and thought about how very badly he was doing at lying low in Ireland.

The first letter from Peregrin arrived only a few days after he left William in Ireland. And it was chock-full of words which William did not want to read.

Your father does very well despite your absence, which I am sure is just what you were hoping to hear. Of course it is a quiet season, with most of London decamped to the country, but he does his share of entertaining, and sweet Violetta is never absent from these gatherings. She is noisy as ever, I must say, despite all the gossip about your sudden disappearance. I have not noticed any particular young stag keeping her company yet. Perhaps her fortune cannot compensate for her giggling. You may be sure that she will insist on answers soon, so be sure to keep your head down. Her mama will grow impatient soon enough, and move on to fresh prey.

William lay the letter aside and watched the flames in the hearth leap up to lick the blackened stones around them. It was not just Violetta’s terrifying mama he had to wait out. It was his own father, and the fact hurt abominably. More than he had expected, in fact. He took a sip of whiskey and relished the burn as it rolled down his throat and pooled in his stomach.
 

Would he really rot out here in Ireland until his father died? He had initially been prepared to do just that. Standing there on the deck of the ship, watching Ireland’s foggy bulk rise up from the cold sea, he had been quite resolved to give up England, his home, and his inheritance until his father went to the grave, taking with him his out-dated opinions and his grandfathers’ edicts. His foolish notions about how William Archwood, future Earl of Tivington, should live. And who he should live it with.

It would be a self-inflicted punishment that would be as hard on him as it would be on his father, of course, but truly, William believed, he had been driven to such dire actions. No matter what the documents said, he would never marry Violetta deLacey. The signatures on those yellowed parchments were not his. They were not even hers. Lady Violetta deLacey had been a babe in a cradle, and he, William, a boy still riding his pony on a leading rein, when his father affianced him to the Duke of Marchwood’s first-born child.
 

He still remembered peering into the cradle in the ducal nursery, looking at the little bride-to-be in her lace and ribbons, and looking back at his father in confusion. “I’m to marry a
baby?”
he’d asked, scandalized, and the men and the nursemaids had laughed affectionately.
 

It had been his grandfather’s doing, of course; that old man had never been able to relinquish control of any family doing, and when he had known himself failing in health, he had sewn up whatever loose end in the Archwood household he could. Even the tenant farmers were instructed on what to plant for the next five years. The supervisors of the Caribbean holdings were sent lengthy letters detailing their course of business for the foreseeable future. When the old earl died, leaving William’s father the head of the family, he was left with little to do but take his young son hunting.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about marrying the baby,” he’d told his shocked son at the engagement. “She’ll grow up to be a lovely lady, and you’ll not have to worry about any of those fortune-hunters when you grow up yourself. Now let’s go see about a new pony!”

The pony had been a welcome distraction, but even now, William could remember his bewildered hurt at the thought of being affianced to that plump babe in a bassinet. His grandfather might have insisted that he marry the girl, but William was already developing the sort of independence (“hard-headedness,” his father would say) that made him chafe against the authority of others to run his life.

Seventeen years later, he was even less eager to wed the deLacey daughter, if such a thing was possible. Violetta deLacey, secure in her future as a countess, was a plump, fish-mouthed thing who seemed to live on a steady diet of gossip and iced cakes. The first time William had seen her as an adult, punch glass in one hand and a feathered fan in the other, listening to her companion with such scandalized pleasure that her fat mouth had dropped open like a codfish’s, he had thought that she still looked alarmingly like that baby in her silk-hung crib: right down to the white lace and ribbons that bedecked her from head to toe.

Now he took another gulp of whiskey, remembering his father’s face when he’d told the man he could never marry such a girl. “She can’t even sit a horse,” he’d insisted, pleading now with the hard jaw and flinty eyes of his sire. “She cares only for parties and fashion. She despises the country and never leaves London. We have nothing in common! What sort of match would we make? What sort of marriage would that be?”

His father had dismissed his worries with a wave of a hand. “What do you expect from one of these geese? None of them can see beyond their own feathers, always worrying that they can’t play the part of a swan. Horses, boy? You worry about a wife who can ride horses? You’ll marry her, get your heir and your spare, and go on with your life as you lived it before. There’s no reason to worry that you have nothing in common with the woman in the next room. It’s her bloodline that matters, boy.”

William had gritted his teeth. She wasn’t a mare, after all. The woman he must spend the rest of his life with, raise children with, and his father said it didn’t matter, as long as she was of good breeding?

“I cannot possibly wed that woman,” he insisted, grinding out the words. “You ask too much of me.”

“I ask precisely
nothing
of you,” the earl snapped. “I let you spend your days as you please. You wish to ride horses all day in the country, and do I not let you? You did not wish to learn a trade, and did I demand it? You can neither read the law nor preach a sermon, you have never donned a uniform, you have never done a day’s work in your life, and now, when I make one simple demand on you, you have the nerve to refuse me! But I tell you, boy, I will not have it this time! You shall obey me in this, and when you have wedded and bedded Lady Violetta and she has given you sons, you may go back to your hunters and think of her no more. Is that quite clear?”

The earl took a deep breath at the end of this speech. William was not too angry to see how frail his father was growing, or how he gripped the back of the chair he was standing behind in order to balance himself. The earl would not be around much longer. The man who had taught him to ride a pony and jump a fence had not been on a horse in years. William was looking at an old man.

And that was when William made the single most cold and calculating decision of his life.

“You make yourself perfectly clear, Father,” he told the old man glaring at him from behind his desk, and then he left the library, shutting the door quietly behind him, the picture of an obedient son. He nodded politely to the butler as he took his hat and coat, and stepped lightly down the stairs into the warm London night.
 

And then he went straight to his club to meet Peregrin.

They’d plotted his escape that night over a bottle of brandy. It seemed simple. Peregrin had gone visiting in Ireland the autumn before and done some hunting. William was a master horseman. Peregrin would fish around amongst his hunting acquaintances and find him a position in a stable. William, his last name shortened to Archer, could disappear in the wilds of Ireland, far beneath the view of his circles in London, and wait.

Until either Violetta married someone else, or his father died.

It was a bleak thought. No matter how much he and his father had disagreed in the past years, and it had been a rough go, he still loved the man. It had been losing the hunting that had done it, he supposed. They had always agreed on hunting, but the old man didn’t hunt anymore, and so they had lost their one bond.

William sighed and stood to bank the fire. It had grown late, and he’d be expected at the yard at an hour he had previously associated more with tumbling into bed than climbing out of it. It was hard work, riding all day and pitching in to help clean the stables, besides. Harder than strolling down to the yard, whip in hand, to mount the saddle horse his groom held still for him, that was for certain. When he stretched his back, his spine made interesting popping sounds. His knees were making their presence known in ways he had never experienced before. The ankle he had broken in a tumble over a ditch as a fourteen-year-old boy was aching as if the fall had happened yesterday.