“Breathe, Freddy darling.” He chuckled.
She sucked in another breath, a gasp. “I am.”
“Yes, but in great spurts. Breathe normally.”
“Breathing and standing at the same time are more difficult to do than I ever would have guessed. That in itself is a trick worthy of applause.”
“Don’t tell the others. The most difficult trick a performer can do is breathe.”
“And the most necessary.” She pulled air in slowly and pushed it out even more so as she surveyed the world around her. The night seemed darker up this high, distanced from the ring of gas lamps glowing low at the ground level. She stood atop a horse. Who would have ever thought a woman like her would do so? Plain Freddy the gentle widow, a Boadicea, fierce and bold.
She looked to the empty seats surrounding them and imagined them fully, imagined the audience clapping and happy, glowing with anticipation.
She lifted her chin. “For my next trick, I will do a somersault and land back on the horse.”
Grant laughed, a sultry bellow that calmed instead of startled. No. It ignited her constant simmering need for him, made it boil. She peered down at him, and found him looking up, pride glowing in his eyes, his lips shaped into a smile of … victory?
“Knew you could do it.” As he spoke, he raised his brows, once, twice, the cocky man. “Now come back down to your hands and knees.”
She did so, very slowly, and with one of his arms around her waist and the other hand holding her arm.
“Good,” he said. “Now stay there, and we’ll walk Exquisite once around the ring.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
He looked up with innocent eyes. “No?”
“I do not wish to move, and I told you I have no talent.”
“Just a little. Very slowly. You can do it, Freddy darling.”
Freddy groaned and tightened her muscles.
His hand cupped her belly. “Be strong here.” He patted her backside. “And here.”
“Do you have ulterior motives, Mr. Webster?”
“Always. We’ll move forward now. Stay strong.” He whispered something into the horse’s ear, and it took its first slow step forward.
Freddy clenched her jaw so hard she could not reply. Every step the horse took required her attention to balance, to shift her muscles, to learn the horse’s gait and her own center. The air moved past her slowly, sluggishly as the horse took, it seemed, a single step every five seconds, but still her body hummed with worry. And exhilaration.
“Don’t drop your shoulders,” Grant said. “Keep them square.”
“Square. Ha. What does that mean? My shoulders are not square. They are more like a line from one end to the other.”
“I mean keep them the same level. Don’t let one drop lower than the other. Your hips, too. As soon as you let those things begin to fall, you’ll fall.”
Ominous, that. She’d never paid attention to whether her hips and shoulders were square or not. Was she doing it right? If one dropped, would she have time to fix it? What if she fixed it too much and slammed the other side down, un-squaring them in the opposite direction?
“You’re thinking too much. Find a rhythm with your partner. You can do it. I know quite well you can.”
“Was that a … a naughty remark, Mr. Webster?”
“If you want it to be.”
“I’m going too fast.” In more ways than one. Exquisite had picked up her pace, and the unfamiliar rhythm of four legs beneath her put Freddy on an edge of fear. More terrifying than that, though—how far and how fast she was falling for the man who stood beside her, waiting to catch her. She wouldn’t panic. She wouldn’t. Yet panic rose steady as the muted clip-clop of hooves on the amphitheatre floor.
“The horse is going at a very, very slow pace,” Grant assured her. “We use this particular mare to train new performers. Child performers. And I am right here.” His hand brushed against her skirts. “Just fall toward me if you lose balance.”
