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

Hercules, around the menage. He was such an elegant rider, with his long legs wrapped around the horse’s barrel and his sympathetic hands so gently placed above the horse’s withers, that he looked one with his mount. And he certainly filled out his coat. Grainne watched him with frank admiration, biting her lip a little when Hercules napped at a shadow or tried to duck out of a circle.
    Finally Mr. Archer pronounced him ready. “We’re going to have a canter now, whether he wants to or not!” Grainne nodded tensely and hoped for the best. Hercules had refused to canter ever since he’d arrived at the yard; he would just trot faster and faster, until he got so angry that he went into a bucking fit. And Hercules was a world champion bucker.
    But Archer looked grim and determined. He choked up the reins so tight that Hercules had to lift his head up high, then he slammed his spurs into the horse’s sides and let go of the reins at the same time. Hercules burst forward so quickly it was as if a gust of wind had come up behind him and flung him.  
    “Well, he’s cantering,” Grainne had to admit. At last.  
    But he was out of control, she suddenly realized. He was as scrabbly and dangerous at the canter as he had been in the angry trot he gave all the other lads. And suddenly he ducked his head with tremendous strength, wrenching the reins from Mr. Archer’s grasp, and went into a bucking fit like some sort of deranged thing.
    “Oh no,” she gasped, but she could not rush to his aid; it was all she could do to hold back the fascinated Albert, and she could only watch in horror as Hercules shook Mr. Archer from his back and went on leaping, alone and unfettered, across the menage. Then she could not help herself; she ignored the wild horse and Albert’s fussing and went straight to Archer’s body, lying on his back in the wood chips.  
    “Mr. Archer!” she shrieked, leaping down from her horse’s back and flinging the reins over a handy fence post. “Mr. Archer, are you hurt? Lie still, you mustn’t get up —” for of course that was exactly what that wretched man was doing, moaning and shaking his head and trying to sit up.
    She swooped down upon him like a hawk upon prey and pressed his shoulders back to the tanbark of the menage. He groaned as his head hit the ground again. “Mr. Archer, you must be still. You could have broken something in your fall.”
    “I could have broken something when you flung me to the ground,” he murmured, obviously healthy enough to maintain his sarcasm. “And shouldn’t you go and catch that horse?” As if on cue, the bucking and plunging Hercules went hurtling by, snorting and grunting.  
    “Oh! Of course!” Grainne was startled by her own lack of concern for the horse; that was not at all like her. What had come over her? She turned her head towards the stable. “Timmy! Seamus! Lads! We have a loose horse!” Then she turned back to Mr. Archer, leaning over him, pressing her hands against his arms, feeling for broken bones. Her hair came loose and hung over her shoulder; she pushed it back with an impatient huff, but it kept slipping from behind her ears. The coppery curls brushed against Mr. Archer’s cheek, and he suddenly smiled, slowly, sensually. And the change that came across his face, from slightly pained and irritated to a primitive wolfishness, made her catch her breath.  
    “You do not seem hurt,” she managed to say, cursing her suddenly confused tongue. “It was a good fall.”
    “A lucky fall,” he agreed, his voice husky. “I landed exactly where I needed to.”
    Grainne was mesmerized by the smokiness of his eyes. She could not look away from his arresting gaze, so blue, so deep; she thought she could drown in them.  
    “Miss! Is everything alright?”
    “Damn,” Mr. Archer said conversationally. “We are found out.”
    She shook her head, confused. “What?”
    “Hop up, my dear,” he instructed, and before she could register the