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his toes up to the feeble flames he’d conjured in the hearth. The warning from Spencer to treat his daughter like a lady, her mocking smile, the way she’d stammered and made excuses before galloping away from him, her feigned illness at supper, the off-handed way her father had described what must have been a terrible fall that would have kept any other lady — and most men — away from the hunting field forever. The story she’d told him about her mother had been graceful, but he was still astounded that Grainne Spencer was training horses for her father to this very day, instead of sitting uncomfortably on a divan in a Dublin drawing room, dancing at a few parties, and falling into the arms of some minor military man or a permissive vicar.  
    But there, he mustn’t grow too interested in this galloping harridan. There was the way she’d threatened the life of the gropers at the horse fair to remember, for one thing. And there was the absolute necessity to be as uninteresting as possible, and stay well below the notice of the guests who would soon be arriving at the old lord’s house for the hunting, to consider. He had better just concentrate on the horses, and leave the boss’s daughter well enough alone.

CHAPTER SIX

    Noontime the next day, despite her feigned illness the night before, saw Grainne urging Gretna down the stream-bed, the mare picking her way carefully through the scattered stones, wrinkling up her nose in displeasure at the splashing water. There were not many instances in which Grainne had not been able to cajole her father into giving her her own way, and that morning at the breakfast table had been no different. She had been out the door in her riding breeches, ready to start her day in the yard, before her father had time to drink his tea. And having worked three young horses in the menage already, no one could say her nay when she took Gretna out for a lone gallop in the fields just before noon.
    She saw Len before he noticed her. He was sitting bareback on the big chestnut blood-horse with his legs hanging loose on either side, letting the mare graze as she wished while the reins hung slack on her neck. The horse saw Gretna and picked up her head, and that was when Len looked up and saw Grainne riding down to meet him.
    She smiled brilliantly in greeting, feeling her heart swell with excitement, but he only raised a hand in casual greeting and then lowered his head again. She saw his lips moving and realized he must be talking to someone that she couldn’t see.
    It must be someone very important, if he couldn’t even be troubled to greet her properly. She pursed her lips and nudged Gretna to hurry it up. She thought a man who had proposed marriage to her the day before might be a bit more attentive.
    But Len didn’t even pause in conversation as she rode her mare out of the shallow stream and into the clearing, or when she hopped down from the saddle and tied Gretna to one of the iron rings on the side of the caravan, nor even when she walked around to the other side to see him. Leaning against the caravan was another gypsy in a bright red-and-blue colored vest and a dirty white shirt, talking in a very animated fashion, and Len didn’t take his eyes away from the man for a moment.  
    Grainne was annoyed. She was wearing her most becoming breeches, the ones her father had actually taken one look at and suggested that perhaps she stop riding in trousers like a man. It had taken her a week of cajoling before he’d relented, and the promise to never order such tight breeches again.
    But for Len, she thought she’d break any number of promises she’d made to her father. And running away with him would surely nullify any obligations they might have had to one another. She arranged herself in as seductive a pose as she could muster, leaning one elegant hip against the corner of the caravan, and putting her hand on her other hip, riding crop sticking out like a dangerous promise. She