AN EQUESTRIAN LIFESTYLE and Provençal heritage inspired this delightful house, which is sited on a knoll in Culpepper County bordering the banks of the Rappahannock River. Patterned after a seventeenth-century French stable building, the exterior of the home is a local fieldstone roughly buttered with lime mortar — a technique occasionally used on old farm buildings in the Virginia Piedmont — agreeably tying the French sensibility of the home to the pastoral Virginia landscape. One room deep, cooling breezes pass through French doors that open to an enticing outdoor living space within the pebbled courtyard. Respite here is defined by a hammered-iron pergola, its bamboo shade, and flowering wisteria.