The romantic notion of taming a wild beast with a single ride was a lie sold in cheap penny dreadfuls. Breaking a horse like Ruin was a trench war. It was fought in inches in the freezing mud day after day. Basia spent the first week doing nothing but groundwork in the round pen.
She stood in the center with a long lunge line, making the massive gray gelding run circles around her. He bucked. He charged. He reared and struck out with his front hooves, his iron shoes whistling past her face.
She just stood her ground, snapping the whip behind his hocks, forcing him to keep moving until his lungs burned and his arrogance faltered. She demanded his attention. When his ears flicked away toward the main yard, she popped the whip. Look at me.
Respect my space. It was exhausting, brutal work. Her hands grew new layers of calluses over the torn blisters. She smelled permanently of horse sweat and damp wool.
On the eighth day, Henry finally came down to the pens. He had watched her from the library window all week, a silent shadow behind the heavy velvet drapes. He found himself abandoning his ledgers, his estate planning to watch a half-starved woman fight a war in the mud. It irritated him.
He was a man of logic and numbers, and there was no logic in her persistence. The air was bitterly cold, the sky a bruised heavy gray. Henry approached the wooden fence just as Basia brought Ruin to a halt. The horse stood sweating, head lowered, chest heaving.
Basia leaned heavily on the wooden handle of the whip. "You came back," Henry said. Basia didn't flinch. She turned her head, wiping a smear of dirty sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve.