Taming the Barbarian by Lois Greiman

One moment she was prone and doomed. The next she was whisked off the ground like a bit of chaff in the wind. She hung suspended in midair, her toes barely touching the street as she hazily tried to sort fact from fiction. The stallion’s hooves struck the street with resounding impact an instant later, and she shivered as if just waking from a hideous dream.
    “Flurry! Oh, my good Lord!” Lucille rushed toward her, her face pale, her eyes wide with terror. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
    “Yes. No.” Fleurette shook her head numbly and found that it hurt. As did her elbows where they had struck the cobbles. “Yes, I’m fine.” Her voice sounded shaky to her own ears. “It’s just so embarrassing. I was…” Her feet settled magically onto the ground, but someone still held her arm, as if she might topple over like a toddler if left untended. “… so foolish. I didn’t… I don’t know what I was thinking exactly. I suppose I was not thinking at all. I just saw him and he reminded me so of the Black Celt’s steed, like a fictional being that I—” She laughed breathlessly and motioned foolishly toward the stallion, her hand making a vague circular motion in the air.
    “Sir,” Lucy said, lifting her worried attention to the man behind Fleur. “You have our utmost appreciation.”
    “Yes. Yes.” Fleurette turned shakily, feeling utterly idiotic. Good Lord, she knew better than to approach a fractious stallion. But he’d looked so majestic. Indeed, he’d looked quite magical, as if he had stepped out, real and alive, from the ancient past. His kohl black mane hung well past his muscular shoulders, and his crimped forelock half hid his otherworldly eyes. She’d felt herself drawn against her will just as she had been in Paris, just as she was every evening when she returned home to her own gardens. Still… “I must look like an absolute ninny. I’m afraid…” she began and turning, stopped in midsentence as her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “You!” she hissed.
    The Scot’s dark brows lowered as he glared down at her “What the devil are ye about now, lassie?” he rumbled.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Do ye na know better than to be bothering such a beast?”
    “Are you…” She paused, breathless and stunned. It seemed almost as if he’d been conjured out of her restless dreams, drawn magically forth just as the stallion had been. Indeed, it seemed to her reeling mind as if he had come to snatch her from harm’s way once again.
    Which meant, of course, that she was going quite mad. She had never been the sort of woman to dream up foolish imaginings, nor believe herself the heroine of ridiculous tales, and the idea that she would become one now made her unmistakably angry. “Are you following me?”
    “Following ye!” he snorted, and gave her arm a shake. “I am na yer nursemaid, ye silly flibbergib. Though ‘tis clear ye need one. The beastie coulda killed ye soon as na.”
    “Flibbergib! What—You—He—Let go of me!” she sputtered, and jerked her arm from his grasp. The movement hurt like hell.
    They faced off like spitting tigers.
    “Tell me, lass,” he growled, “might ye be trying to get yerself kilt, or are ye simply too daft to remain amongst the living?”
    “Listen you!” she snarled back. “You are hardly the one to be slandering another’s intellect, and I’m certain if you would cease bothering me, all would be perfectly fine. Indeed—”
    “What happened?” An elderly man rushed onto the street. He wore an antiquated white wig, which hung askew around his ashen face. “My lady!” His hands were visibly shaking. “Are you well?”
    Fleurette straightened her back and struggled for dignity, but her frock was rent near the elbow and soiled below the knee. Her shoes were ruined, her hair a wild mass, and her nose was running amuck, making it rather difficult to look perfectly turned out. Perhaps sane would be a reach, but she’d attempt