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

pleasant, if rather strained, tone, and he could see her disappointment as she dismounted him and stood, brushing the grass and leaves from her breeches. 
    “I suppose you shall escort me to my father’s stables now,” she said blandly, avoiding his eyes. “Must not let a lady out of your sight or some villain may take advantage of her.”
    William sighed at the renewal of hostilities and went to fetch her horse for her. 
    She took the reins with a nod of thanks and swung into the saddle without assistance. William watched her ride away from him for a moment before he put a boot in his own stirrup. He was utterly perplexed. 
    Who was this little vixen? Was she a common slut or a practiced flirt? As far as he knew, she had only inflicted her affections upon the gypsy, so the first seemed unlikely. And she really seemed to have an attachment to the man or she would not be plotting to run away with him…  
    William shook his head. He strongly suspected that she was playing him like a fish on a line, diverting him while she continued to race off to her secret meetings. He had decided to make her fall in love with him in order to protect her from herself, but who would protect him from her? 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    Despite his best efforts, William could not pin Grainne down about the gypsies, nor could he find where they had camped. He had followed her all over the countryside, but she always managed to give him the slip. His lilting attempts at flirtation were met with biting sallies; she seemed unwilling to forgive him for turning away from her that evening in the meadow. William himself was reduced to a confusing mish-mash of emotions. Was he protecting her from her silly whims and ill-guided plots, or was he falling hopelessly in love with the girl himself?
    The former, he hastily told himself whenever the unwanted question popped up in his mind. At breakfast, at luncheon, at tea-time, at supper. Riding beside her, watching her comb out a horse’s tail, waiting for her in some damp meadow while she consorted with her hidden gypsy, sitting across from her in the Spencer’s dining room. He was protecting her, not falling for her.
    It would be a folly to fall in love with such a girl, who was so loose in her morals, who was happily using her body to charm a man into taking her away from her father’s house. Who was so foolish that she did not see that she was being taken advantage of.
    Who was so careless with hearts that she would toy with the affections of the man who would protect her.
    Not to mention that it would be a cruelty to her should he actually admit his affections, and secure hers, only to go back to England, as planned, the moment he heard that Violetta had given up her hopes for him and found another husband. For of course, as lovely as she was, he could never think of marrying her himself. A wild Anglo-Irish girl, with the manners of a peasant, on his arm for a waltz — just imagine it! His father really would drop dead. It was even worse than the very bad behavior he was engaging in at the moment, snubbing his own betrothed and hiding in Ireland like the coward that he was.
    The coward that he was.
    There was no denying that, he told himself, after all the day had gone by and he was nodding over his whiskey. He was a coward in every way that mattered.
    But the short, cold days went by so quickly: cleaning out the stables, riding the novices in the menage and the older horses out in the fields, watching Grainne in her breeches, swaying past him like a vision of sin, losing her, again and again, when he tried to tail her through the fields and forests that she had grown up in.  
    And at night, he sat at table like a member of the family, while Mr. Maxwell, so frequent a guest in the home that William wondered he did not move into the guest room, flirted in his awful, awkward way with the disbelieving Grainne. William found himself watching her hungrily, unable to deny his utter fascination with the girl,