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

Another voice, but the same accent. William sat very still.
    “Oh aye.” The first man sounded amused. “T’master of t’foxhound’s daughter, if you please. Finest rider in Ireland. She’ll serve us as well as any gypsy. Better. And dark looks, besides; we won’t be hounded for stealin’ an Anglo woman on t’other side of t’channel.”
    “Finest rider in Ireland!” The second man guffawed. “Yer only sayin’ that because yer beddin’ her.”
    “Nay, nay, not yet. Whaddya take me for? But once we’re away, now… She’s mine.”
    “Oh aye,” the second man agreed, sounding crafty. “Unlessen I want a taste, or Peter Crookshanks. Ye owe us that much.”
    A chuckle. “Of course. Don’t we always share? But I get first taste.”
    William’s head was pounding, the blood thundering in his ears. The master of the foxhound’s daughter — Grainne — what in God’s name was going on?
    And then he remembered, with a sinking sensation, the gypsy who had watched Grainne that first day at the horse fair, his dark gaze never leaving her lithe body as she put the dapple grey through its paces.  
    The look she’d thrown the gypsy in return: intimate, triumphant.
    And all her disappearances into the forest.
    Oh Grainne, he thought wildly, what have you gotten yourself into?
    The men on the other side of the wall were laughing, and while William wanted to leap up, overturn the bench they sat upon, and pummel both villains into the ground, he knew he could not. For one thing, he couldn’t afford to make a scene. There would be questions, and notoriety… and before he knew it he’d be standing with Violetta before the altar. For another, they might go on talking and let slip more information: where they were planning on taking Grainne in that fortnight’s time, for an example. He drank deeply, hoping to calm his rattled nerves, and set his tankard on the boards before him.
    Too loudly. The chuckles behind him immediately ceased, and he felt the bench shift as the gypsy first tensed, then turned around to look over the wall at him. William buried his nose in his beer again and willed himself to stay calm. It would never do if the gypsies realized that one of the huntsmen had overheard their plotting. They could prove dangerous to everyone at the yard — Grainne included.
    He must have been convincing as a half-conscious drunk, for the men left him alone. He heard them drink up and then hastily leave, the clink of coins on the rough-hewn table the last sounds they made. After that, the general racket of the pub seemed to come back all at once, flooding his ears as if he’d been deaf to everything else while the gypsies spoke. But he could not shake their words from his head, nor the image of Grainne locked up in a gypsy’s caravan, clothed in rags, serving the needs of any ragtag bohemian who decided to have her.
    William wondered if he should go directly to Spencer. No, he decided immediately. Too risky. The gypsies could hide in plain sight; they were as wily as old foxes. If Spencer sought them and they did not wish to be found, they could easily outwit him and still convince Grainne to come away with them. She must be in love, after all, to agree to such an utterly mad scheme in the first place. And a girl of her spirit would have no difficulty choosing love over her father’s commands.
    He sighed. Grainne in love with a gypsy. Grainne in love, period.
    It bothered him more than it should have.
    “Your glass is empty!” Tommy cried, startling him violently. “That will never do! Come on Rosie!” And he dragged the laughing barmaid by her thick gingery braid to fill his tankard from a brimming pitcher.
    By four o’clock in the afternoon, William had had enough of the local brew to decide he ought to save Grainne from herself… by turning her head.

    ***

    Grainne moped around the house like a ghost, Mrs. Kinney complained. She didn’t much approve of Grainne’s tomboying around the countryside in