Wild Angel by Miriam Minger Page B

Ronan
found himself pelted with clods of earth as she flew ahead of him.
    "Come on, Laeg! Let’s show Black O’Byrne what it
means to ride!"
    Her mood lightened by the wind whipping at her hair,
Triona waved her arm and whooped at the top of her lungs. The sheep grazing at
the bottom of the hill scattered, bawling, and the clatter of the bells around
their necks filled the air. She glanced over her shoulder to see that she held
a good lead over Ronan though his stallion was lunging hard.
    "Faster, Laeg!" she cried, hoping Ronan was
angry, no, furious. As furious as his brazen compliments had made her. How dare
he comment upon her appearance as if he had the right!
    She raced on past rough pasture and ever-thickening
forest that stretched far up the surrounding mountainsides, her head bent low against Laeg’s powerful neck as the stallion thundered
beneath her. Whenever she ventured a quick glance behind her, Ronan remained a
good twenty lengths away, making her triumphant smile stretch all the wider.
    She had shown him! He wouldn’t dare to ask her to ride
with him again out of sheer embarrassment!
    "Have you had enough?"
    Startled that she could have heard Ronan calling to her
so clearly, she shot a look over her shoulder to find that her lead had shrunk
to less than five lengths.
    "I said, have you had—"
    "I heard you!" she shouted back to him,
urging Laeg with a firm squeeze of her knees to go faster. "You should be
the one asking yourself if you’ve had enough! Are you blind, O’Byrne? I’ve been
holding the lead since—"
    She didn’t finish, glancing behind her again to see
that Ronan had fallen back . . . to the same twenty lengths. And when she saw
him shrug, sitting fully upright as if he didn’t care that such a posture might
slow him down, a realization dawned on her that churned her stomach. The spawn!
He wasn’t trying to catch her. He was letting her win!
    Triona yanked up on the reins so suddenly that Laeg
snorted in surprise, the stallion rearing and jabbing at the air as she wheeled
him around. She had to wait only a moment before Ronan had drawn alongside her,
to her annoyance his powerful stallion appearing to have barely worked up a lather .
    "Have you been enjoying yourself?" she
demanded, rubbing Laeg’s sweat-glistening neck to calm him.
    "I was going to ask the same of you," said
Ronan, struck more than he wanted to admit by the emerald fire in her eyes.
    He had never known a woman who could look so beautiful
when angry, her cheeks flushed pink from her ride, her lush coppery curls wild
and billowing around her face. And her lips were as red as ripe berries as if
the wind whistling down from the great Lugnaquilla had chafed them.
    "Now what are you staring at?"
    "You," Ronan admitted. As her eyes flared in
surprise, he added quickly, "You’ve got straw in your hair."
    "I do?" She raised her hand to check, then
just as suddenly retook the reins, exhaling with
exasperation. "You’ve got a fine way of changing the subject, but it won’t
work, O’Byrne. Why didn’t you try to catch me?"
    "Begorra, now, is that what you wanted me to do?"
Her lips drew into a tight line, and Ronan found he was enjoying teasing her,
something he hadn’t done to anyone in years. "I thought you were merely
giving Laeg a good run. If it was a race you wanted, you should have said so .
. . though I doubt it would be a fair one."
    "Oh no?" Triona tugged sharply on the reins
to keep Laeg from dancing sideways. "What are you saying, O’Byrne? That my
Laeg can’t hold his own against that . . . that disagreeable black beast of
yours?"
    "This so-called disagreeable beast comes from the
finest racing stock in Eire," Ronan said calmly.
    "So does Laeg! Do you think as the daughter of
Fineen O’Toole I’d ride anything less?" Triona suddenly smiled at him
archly. "I know why you won’t ride against me, and it has nothing to do
with Laeg."
    He remained silent.
    "It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it? You truly