‘All right, ladies, that’s enough for today. Walk your mounts and then hand them off to the grooms.’ He strode towards the door, his words as rapid as his pace. If he exited fast enough, he could escape making polite small talk with the mothers before his next lesson. He headed for the private instructors’ lounge and slipped inside, breathing a bit easier. It was his first piece of luck all day.
‘Hoy, Nik. I see you survived the Misses Four.’ Peter Crenshaw, one of the other instructors, looked up from cleaning tack.
‘Barely. I’ve got one more and then I’m done.’ Done with this day that had started badly and gone downhill from there. The morning had begun with Lady Marwood slipping a key into his pocket with a note, making it explicitly clear she was more interested in riding him than the lovely bay mare her besotted older husband had purchased for her last week at Tattersall’s. That was how the day started and the Four Horsewomen of his personal Apocalypse had ended it. What he wouldn’t give for a strapping lad who could jump something.
Peter gave him a wry look. ‘You can always quit. You don’t have to put up with the girls or any of it.’ Nikolay didn’t miss the edge of envy beneath Peter’s words. Peter needed to work. Peter depended on the income. He was a half-pay officer in an army going nowhere.
Nikolay shrugged. ‘What would I do with my days if I didn’t come here?’ He needed to work, too, but perhaps for a different reason than Peter. The income wasn’t the issue. The scheduling of his days was. A year ago, he’d been a high-ranking officer in the Kubanian military. He’d spent his days out of doors on the parade grounds schooling cavalry units, leading manoeuvres. He’d spent his nights at palace revels, consorting with the loveliest women Kuban had to offer; waltzing, flirting, engaging in an affaire or two when the whimsy took him. Political calamity had changed that, or at least part of that. True, he still revelled at night. London, even out of the Season, wasn’t much different from Kuban’s glittering court and there were still women aplenty available for pleasure of the physical kind, just the way he liked it, with no strings attached. But his days had suffered. Oh, how they’d suffered.
He’d kept with his old military habit of rising early, only to discover London gentlemen rarely rose before eleven. He’d taken to walking the streets and parks, watching the town rise. He’d spent his ‘mornings’—a term he used loosely since they seemed to occur briefly between eleven and two—conducting the business of resettlement: establishing accounts, garnering memberships to clubs, settling his horses. All of which was handled efficiently and quickly with little effort from him. He’d spent his afternoons sightseeing with his comrades from Kuban, the friends who had fled with him. But when that was done? When all the pieces were in place to ‘begin’ living the London life? How did he spend his time then?
He’d found himself at a constant loose end. No wonder English gentlemen rose so late in the day. There was nothing to do, nothing to look forward to. So, he’d come here to Fozard’s, a place with horses, a place where he knew how to live—to some degree. He was painfully aware the parallel was not exact. He was a trainer of disciplined men, not spoiled girls. But it would do until he figured out who he was in this new life and what he wanted to be. It was a question which haunted him not a little these days. He’d been in England nearly a year and he still had no answer. His hopes of starting his own riding academy were still just hopes.
Nikolay picked up the file with his last client’s information in it. He scanned it once and then twice, the second time more slowly, more carefully, the hairs on his neck prickling at the name: one Miss Klara Grigorieva, a diplomat’s daughter. Another ‘Miss’, of course, because that was how his luck had run today. There was the immediate concern of her riding ability, which was probably negligible. He could only imagine how ill-suited to the saddle she would be. Diplomats’ daughters knew how to host afternoon tea parties and evening dinners. They might even speak a language or two and converse on a variety of subjects. But they were not equestrians. Even so, it wasn’t only that which had his neck hair prickling. It was that she was a Russian girl; Klara Grigorieva was the Russian ambassador’s daughter, which, on the surface, made it easy to see why she’d been paired with him. What Fozard’s couldn’t know was the suspicion such a pairing provoked for him. Did this pairing have more sinister undertones? Had she been sent to smoke him out? Was Kuban hunting him at last? He snapped the folder shut. He wouldn’t have any answers standing here. It was four o’clock. Showtime.
Only he couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in the waiting area. She wasn’t wandering the aisles petting the horses or any of the usual places the other girls tended to be. They were going to start late at this rate, and to top it off, someone was in the arena riding when everyone knew he had one more lesson before the arena was free for instructors’ personal work.
Nikolay strode to the gate of the arena, prepared to halt the intruder, and found himself halted instead. Whoever the intruder was, he was an excellent rider: solid seat, straight back, rolled shoulders, elbows in. The rider urged the horse into a canter with an imperceptible use of hands and knees. Nikolay followed the rider’s trajectory to the jump in the centre of the arena—a jump that had become purely decorative. His students certainly didn’t aspire to it. It was high enough to be challenging. At three feet, a rider needed to know what he was doing. The rider lifted over the horse’s neck and the pair flew over the faux wall easily. The horse could go higher. Nikolay could see it in the tuck of the animal’s knees over the wall. He could also see the horse wasn’t one of their schooling string. This was no instructor riding early. Which begged the question—who was he?
The rider doubled back, preparing to take the jump from the other side, giving Nikolay a first glimpse of the rider’s face: sharp cheekbones, the firm but fine line of jaw, almost feminine beneath the helmet, the intensity of green eyes fixed on the jump as the rider sighted the target. Nikolay couldn’t be sure if the rider saw him. The horse and rider took the jump again, coming to a stop in front of him at the gate.
The rider undid the strap of the helmet and removed it, shaking loose a stream of walnut waves. He was a she. A not entirely warm smile played on her sensual lips. ‘Nikolay Baklanov, I presume?’ She tossed those glossy waves with presumption. ‘You are late.’
‘You are riding without permission or supervision. Klara Grigorieva, I presume?’ Nikolay countered. Best to begin as he meant to go on with this supercilious miss who clearly possessed a healthy dose of arrogance, if not common sense. Nikolay placed a booted foot on the rungs of the gate and gave his newest pupil a considering gaze from head to boot. ‘You’re the Russian ambassador’s daughter?’
She swung off the horse. ‘I am, and this is Zvezda, my mare.’ She smiled broadly, eyes sparking as her boots hit the ground. ‘Surprised? Not what you expected?’
‘No, not at all.’ She was also very tall for a woman, a fact emphasised by the male attire she wore, breeches that encased long legs and emphasised the slenderness of waist. Her hair fell to that trim waist, and she had a face that rivalled Helen of Troy, a beautiful mix of eastern exoticism in the seductive slant of those eyes arched with narrow dark brows, the sharp cheekbones of her Russian ancestors and the delicate jaw of an English rose—the perfect combination of strength and femininity.
‘“No, not at all”?’ she parroted. ‘What does that mean? No, not at all surprised? Or no, not at all what you expected?’
Nikolay put a hand on the horse’s bridle. ‘You know very well you had the advantage of me.’ But he would not be cowed by that surprise. Neither would he allow her to keep that advantage. Bold women were attractive up to a point. ‘I think you like surprising people, Miss Grigorieva.’ How intriguing; the ambassador’s daughter had a rebellious streak. He petted the horse, looking for neutral ground before their first encounter became overly adversarial. ‘Zvezda, that’s Star in Russian.’ He didn’t miss the spark in her eyes. She hadn’t known. Interesting. ‘Pretty name. Pretty horse.’ The mare was an excellent specimen of English