Miss Carlyle's Curricle: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) by Karen Harbaugh

wear her black riding habit instead of her lighter weight blue. The dress was very warm, and perspiration prickled at the nape of her neck. She had worn it because she was still in mourning, but if she had come out earlier in the day, she could have worn the cooler riding dress and no one would have been the wiser.
    She glanced around her—there was no one about. It would do no harm to unpin the jockey-bonnet and let her hair loose down her back. Quickly, she took it off, then unpinned and untied her hair. She would hang her bonnet on a branch to fetch before she returned home. Her hair would become tangled, but the breeze would run through it and cool her quite a bit, and she could run her fingers through it to untangle it before binding it up again.
    The air wafting through her hair was glorious. She ran her fingers through it, massaging her scalp a little, and shook her head, and the length of it fell down over her shoulders to her waist. There, now! She would become sadly brown without her bonnet to shade her face, but it was not as if her skin were perfectly white, after all. It was something her Aunt Matchett used to complain about all the time in London, and had made her put lemon slices all over her face every evening to lighten it. The lemons had made her skin no more pale than it was now, and she was glad to have ceased such nonsense once she returned home.
    “Now we shall have a good gallop,” she said to Lightning, and the horse nervously flicked its ears back for a moment. “Oh, don’t be so finicky, silly! You have galloped when I have had my hair down before, and you have done just fine. Now, let’s go!”
    She nudged her horse forward, leaning over his neck, urging him on faster and faster. Diana grinned widely as the ground passed quickly under her, her hair flying behind her, fluttering at her back like wings. No one did this in the city without someone crying scandal; it was only here, at home, she could ride and be free. Surely there was nothing as wonderful as this, the power and grace of the horse beneath her, the soaring speed as Lightning leaped over small brooks and shrubbery.
    They reached the edge of the estate and Diana slowed her horse, then turned back. She would not go home immediately, but take another way through the woods. The heat was rising, and both she and the horse could cool down in the shade, then rest by the pond there. Then they would have another good gallop, and both of them could return home eager for a midday meal.
    The shade beneath the trees was indeed cool, just right after the heated ride. Diana rode Lightning to a stump and carefully dismounted onto it. Still holding the reins, she gazed speculatively at the bay horse. She had trained him to stay in place if she loosely tied or even only draped the reins over a bush or a low tree limb, and for the most part the horse obediently stayed where he was. But every once in a while, he would be in a mischievous mood, and after an experimental tug at the reins would find them loose enough to know that he was not tied to anything at all, and off he would go. Horses were not particularly intelligent animals, but Lightning was an exception to the rule and was for that reason often more contrary than most and a little more difficult to train.
    Well, there was nothing like consistency to remind an animal of its training. This time she would tie the reins firmly and the horse would know that he was not free to go anywhere.
    “You
will
stay,” she said sternly as she tied the reins to a low branch. “See, I have put you near the pond if you want to drink, and there is plenty of grass to crop, too.” The horse eyed her skeptically, lipped the knot on the branch as if in defiance, then lowered his head to the grass and began to eat.
    Diana walked to an old oak, then sat on one of its large roots. A scattering of primroses grew around it, and she picked one, twirling the stem back and forth between her fingers in a contemplative way.