Page 31 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

“Let’s have it, then,” he rasped.

The moment Gawyn produced the saddle and began to ready the horse, Si was drawn to its soft, supple leather. He traced his finger along the stitches, trying to picture the former owner doing the same. Had she sat there in her final days, heavy with a child too large to safely deliver? He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

* * *

Before she quite knew what was happening, Ellen found herself hoisted awkwardly onto a saddle and led out into the paddock, Silas holding the reins. He spoke so softly she wasn’t quite certain whether his gentle whispers were for her or the horse, but she sat rigidly to still her trembling.

Jory’s father had given her cousin riding lessons in the hills surrounding Moy when they were girls. He’d meant to do the same for Ellen, but she burst into tears, far too afraid to go anywhere near the massive creatures. Her parents had discouraged him from ever trying again, and he never got the chance to teach young Maggie, though she’d have certainly been game.

From watching Jory, Ellen knew in theory how to arrange herself in the saddle. That and which end to face were about all she knew.

Secretly, she sometimes imagined asking Jory to try teaching her again, not because she cared so very much to learn, but because it bothered her knowing she’d been too frightened to try.

Fear was supposed to be evolutionary, to keep you safe from harm. But Ellen had been afraid her entire life, and honestly, she didn’t see how it made her any safer. It simply made her even more afraid.

When the MacKenzie had suggested putting her on a horse, she’d expected time to make excuses, to avoid it until he gave up or forgot, to tease and evade if she had to. She certainly had no intention of ever actually mounting one, but especially not today.

Did her new husband suspect she’d weasel out of it given the chance, and then be bitterly disappointed with herself forever after? Was that why he insisted? Was that also why she allowed his braw arms to lift her into the saddle without complaint? Or was it simply the look in his eyes and his earnest ’Lady ’Len, I shall teach you that did her in?

Heaven help her, Ellen wanted to be Lady Len. The fearless and bold Len would have no compunction about riding a horse so fair and sweet as Buttercup, with a big, strapping Highlander at her side. Lady Len was hardy. She was valiant. She was all the things Ellen was not.

She wobbled unsteadily in his mother’s saddle. It seemed she could slip off at any moment. As Silas walked them in a slow circle, she clenched her right thigh around one pommel and gripped the other until her fingers turned white.

Ellen was never meant to witness the world from this height. It was disorienting. Up close, Silas’s eyes had faint rings in them, like the age lines in an old oak tree. Did each one represent a different era of his life? And if she stared into his eyes for the next fifty years, would more rings appear? Would this time, their marriage, be a wide or narrow band?

His mouth was moving, explaining something about balance and guiding the horse, but all Ellen could hear was the rustle of wind through that wizened oak’s leaves. She hadn’t noticed until now, but his lips were thin and fine. If he paid attention to hers, how would they compare?

She wanted to enjoy herself as Lady Len would do, but every time she recalled where she was—far from home, high off the ground on the back of a creature who could shake her off as easily as a flea—she found herself gasping for breath, holding tighter and tighter, but still feeling as though she could slip right off her perch.

Then she’d glance at his eyes, and she was dizzy with the certain knowledge that he was rooted deep into the ground, and he alone could steady her.

“You’re doing very well,” he said. “Would you like to hold the reins?”

“No,” she whispered.

“It’s all right. Just be gentle like I showed you. Turn her head the way you want to go.”

He held out one hand for hers, waiting for her to release the pommel and take the reins. When she finally did, he adjusted her grip, his large, warm hands completely enclosing hers, showing her how to let the leads drape flat against her palm and between her thumb and first finger.

“Lift your shoulder,” he murmured in her ear, tapping her right shoulder to make her sit up straight. “Och, you need a whip.”

“No.” Ellen shook her head. She wouldn’t hit the creature.

His face softened. “Aye, just to tap the saddle on whichever side so she’ll know you want to go. Or I suppose you could give her a wee kick.”

He patted Buttercup on the rump, and it startled Ellen, sending her mind in all manner of inappropriate directions, but of course he would never dare tap her rump out here for Gawyn and the whole world to see. She didn’t have long to dwell on such musings, though, for the horse began trotting once more.

Their pace probably couldn’t even be called a proper canter, but it was faster than Ellen expected, and she squeezed with her legs to hold on, which only seemed to encourage Buttercup to go faster.

Forgetting everything the MacKenzie had just shown her, forgetting that Lady Len would never panic, Ellen kicked the horse to try and stop. That too made Buttercup trot even faster, in a circle at first, as Silas and Gawyn shouted hurried words and lunged for the reins Ellen gripped too tightly. But after the next loop around the paddock, they careened headlong towards an old wooden fence.

She tried to yell, “Stop,” but just like in every nightmare, the words strangled in her throat.

Perhaps the horse meant to jump the fence and carry her all the way to Paris on its glossy back, but somehow Ellen knew that if Buttercup did make the jump, she herself would be left behind with a mud-caked broken neck. Only a terrified exhale passed her lips, and so, right as they reached the fence, she pulled the reins back as hard as she could, not praying, but mentally shouting every foul curse in her father’s and Maggie’s vocabularies. Buttercup reared up, and Ellen was so certain they were both flying backwards she half expected to see a hoard of winged angels. She was surely going to die.

Landing on her left shoulder, the breath rushed from her body in a single woosh, and she tucked herself into a ball like a hedgehog before everything went black.

Her hearing was the first sense to return, ringing a loud, off-pitch tone before it cleared and she began picking up deep, guttural shouts. Then strong hands touched her back, her neck, her head.