The Horsemaster's Daughter

by Susan Wiggs

  For some reason that disturbed her more than anything else she’d seen so far. With a face as idealized as any artist’s fancy, he made a romantic sight; despite the circumstances, he possessed the sort of unsmiling demeanor of a man of great dignity and stature. He regarded her with a haughty aloofness, as if he lived in a kingdom not of this world.

  But when he spoke, she knew he was very much of this world. “Is this Flyte Island?” he demanded, rude as any two-legged profane creature known as a man.

  “It is,” she said.

  “Then I’m not lost.” He yanked on the bowlines, testing them. “Who the hell are you?”

  She cast a worried eye at the pen on the scow. “Who’s asking?”

  His shoulders, remarkably expressive for such a nondescript part of the anatomy, lifted stiffly in annoyance. He turned to her once again, a shock of fair hair plastered with sweat to his brow.

  “My name is Hunter Calhoun, of Albion Plantation on Mockjack Bay.” He paused, watching her face as if the name was supposed to mean something to her.

  “Hunter. That’s a sort of horse, isn’t it?”

  “It happens to be my name. I am master of Albion.” His eyes—they were a strange, crystalline blue—narrowed as his gaze swept over her. At a thud from the barge, his brow sank into a scowl. “I’ve come to see the horsemaster, Henry Flyte.”

  The sandy earth beneath her feet shifted. Even now, after so much time had passed, the mere mention of the name disturbed her. He had been her world, the gentle-souled man who had been her father. He’d filled each day with wonder and wisdom, making her feel safe and loved. And then one day, without warning, he was gone forever. Gone in a raging blast of violence that haunted her still.

  She felt such a choking wave of grief that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Her throat locked around words too painful to utter.

  “Are you simple, girl?” the intruder asked impatiently. “I’m looking for Henry Flyte.”

  “He’s gone,” she said, her small horrified admission stark in the salt-laden quiet of twilight. “Dead.”

  A word she’d never heard before burst from the man. From the stormy expression on his face, she judged it was an oath.

  “When?” he demanded.

  “It’s been nearly a year.” Her pain gave way to anger. Who was this intruder to order her about and make demands, to pry into her private world? “So you’d best be off whilst the tide’s up,” she added, “else you’ll be stranded till moon tide.”

  “He’s been dead a year, and no one knew?”

  She flinched. “Those that matter knew.”

  Hunter Calhoun swore again. He took out a hip flask, took a swig and swore a third time. “Who else lives here?”

  “A small herd of wild ponies, up in the woods. Three hens, a milch cow, a dog and four cats, last I counted. More birds than there are stars.”

  “I don’t mean livestock. Where’s your family?”

  A wave of resentment rose high, crested. “I don’t have one.”

  “You’re all alone here?”

  She didn’t answer. He drank more whiskey. Then, bending down, he fetched a long-barreled rifle. The scent of danger sharpened. Was he going to shoot her?

  “What do you mean to do with that?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he cocked the gun and lifted the barrel toward the latch of the pen. With horror, she realized his intent. “Stop it,” she said sharply. Animals were sacred to her, and she wouldn’t stand by and see one slaughtered. “Don’t you—”

  “I’ve a mad horse aboard,” he interrupted. “You’d best move aside, because when I open the gate, he’ll escape, and I’ll take him out.”

  Eliza stood her ground.

  Scowling, Calhoun lowered the gun. “Without Mr. Flyte’s help, the beast is a mortal danger to anyone and anything. He’s got to be put down, and it’s best done here, in this godforsaken place.” His haughty glare encompassed the marsh. Ever-softening light spread over the low ground, the placid water reflecting the rise of dunes and the forest beyond.

  He paused for another drink of whiskey. Eliza scrambled aboard and grabbed the gun, using her finger to pry the shot out of the pan. “This godforsaken place, as you call it, is my home, and I’ll thank you not to be leaving your carrion on the shore.”

  He wrenched the gun away, elbowing her aside with a hard, impatient nudge. He lifted the heavy latch to the pen. “Stand aside now. This horse is a killer.”

  Eliza burst into action, planting herself in front of the pen, her back flat against the gate. She could hear the heavy breath of the horse within, and she fancied she could feel its heat. The smells of hay and manure brought back waves of remembrance from the days when her father was alive. She let her emptiness fill up with fury.

  “Who in God’s name are you, that you think you can simply do murder right here in front of me?”

  “Who the hell are you that you think you can stop me?” As he spoke, he touched the barrel of the gun to her shoulder, where a long tangle of her hair escaped its carelessly done single braid.

  Though she’d unloaded the rifle, she stood frozen with fear. In an obscenely gentle caress, he used the barrel of the gun to move aside the lock of hair and the edge of her blouse with it, baring her shoulder.

  “Darling,” said Hunter Calhoun with a low, false endearment in his voice, “I’ve had a long, trying day. I’m armed with a deadly weapon. You don’t want to cross me, not now.”

  She ignored him and battled the fear, closing her eyes as the sweet fecund aroma of horse and the sense of a big animal’s warmth reached her, entered her, plunging down to her heart. She hadn’t worked with a horse since her father had died, and she had sworn she never would again. But the magic was still there, the potency, the wanting.

  She should walk away now, let him shoot this hapless beast and finish his whiskey flask. Her father’s magical way with horses, legendary on two continents, had got him killed. Ignorant, superstitious men had gone on a witch-hunt after him.

  But there was something the world didn’t know. The magic had not died with Henry Flyte.

  “Step aside, miss,” Calhoun said brusquely.

  She opened her eyes, put her hands on the cool gun barrel and shoved it aside. Then she turned and peered through the gaps in the pen siding. She caught vague glimpses, obscured by the movement of the scow and by the twilight shadows, of a proud head, arched neck and a cruel iron muzzle. An old rag blindfolded the animal. Moist sores ran with pus that coursed down the horse’s cheeks, and he swayed with a sunken-ribbed hunger. The sight tore at her heart, and the pain she felt was the animal’s pain. Rage at Hunter Calhoun made her bold.

  “Was this horse mad before or after you muzzled and starved him?” she demanded.

  “Look, I came here hoping to save him.”

  “Well done,” she said sarcastically.

  “It’s no fault of mine he’s in this condition,” Hunter Calhoun said. “He came off the ship from Ireland crazed by a storm at sea. Killed a mare and nearly did in a groom before we were able to stop him.”

  “What did you need a horse from Ireland for anyway?”

  “For racing and breeding.”

  The precise things that had given her father his start. Racing had elevated the horse, but it had also been responsible for unforgivable abuses.

  “And you’re absolutely certain this horse is ruined.” Even as she made the comment, she realized his opinion didn’t matter to her. She sensed the horse’s fear—but she also knew that the fear could be penetrated.

  “Look, I’m good with horses,” said Calhoun. “Always have been. I can ride anything with hair, I swear it.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Horses are my life. This is the first one I haven’t been able to handle.”

  “So you’re going to shoot it. Do you deal with all your problems that way?”

  “Damn it, I won’t stand around and debate this with you, woman.”

  She turned a
way from him and peered through the slats of the pen. She saw the filth-caked coat shudder. An ear twitched, angling toward her. And then she felt it. An awareness. A connection. The stallion could feel her presence. He sensed she was different from the brute who had blinded and muzzled him.

  She clutched the rough wood of the pen, battling her own instincts. Her need to reach out, to heal, was acute. For a moment, she felt very close to her father, who had taught her to respect all living things. The horse made a sound low in his throat, and in an odd way he seemed to be pushing her, forcing her toward a decision that could mean nothing but trouble.

  The dilemma lay before her, demanding a course of action. If she healed this horse, she would unmask herself to the world. As they had in her father’s day, ambitious trainers and jockeys would come calling, begging her to rehabilitate their badly trained stallions, and in the next breath condemning her as a necromancer.

  “Get away. Now!” Hunter Calhoun tried to shoulder her aside. “You think I like doing this? I just want it to be over—”

  “I can help you.” The words rushed out of her, unchecked by reason. The sensible response would be to turn her back on this stranger and his abused stallion. But when it came to horses she had no will of her own.

  Calhoun gave a short, sharp laugh, and in the pen the horse huffed out a startled breath.

  “You can help?” he demanded.

  Eliza felt torn. By revealing her secret ability, she would end her own self-exile. She would make herself vulnerable to the same ignorant prejudice that had killed her father. She wanted to curse this poor, damaged horse for forcing her to choose. Yet another part of her wanted to discover how the animal had been hurt, to bring him out into the light.

  She took another look at the furious muzzled creature in the shadowy pen. Her special affinity, which had always been a part of her, gave her a glimpse of the tortured confusion that muddled the horse’s mind. A wave of compassion swept over her.

  “Aye.” She used the old-country affirmative of her father.

  “The horsemaster is dead. You said so yourself.”

  “I did. But his craft is still very much alive.” She made herself look the intruder square in the eye. “I am Eliza Flyte. The horsemaster’s daughter.”

  Three

  Hunter didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. It was a minor wonder he had actually made it to this godforsaken place. Having grown up on a tidewater bay, he was a good seaman and knew the shoals and currents, but making the crossing to the barrier islands with a wild horse aboard a clumsy scow had not been easy.

  Now that he had finally reached the island, this ragamuffin of a female claimed Henry Flyte was her father. Her late father. Unless Hunter wanted to go traipsing off around the island, he had no choice but to take her word for it.

  “Eliza Flyte, is it?” He tasted her name, let it find its way over his tongue. It suited her, somehow. In her tattered brown smock and bare feet, she seemed wild and a bit fey, quite unlike anyone he had ever met before. A darkling girl, possibly of slave or Indian stock, she had a flawless complexion enhanced by the silkiness of her long eyelashes and the blue-toned sweep of her indigo-black hair. She had eyes of some indeterminate color beneath two dramatic slashes of eyebrow. The expression on the pale oval of her face was a mixture of annoyance and compassion—annoyance at him, and compassion for the murderous stallion in the pen.

  When the breeze blew the dress against her legs, he saw that this was no girl. She lifted her face to the light, and he noted a woman’s maturity in the clear, fine-boned features. And in her strangely light eyes, eyes the color of mist on the water, he saw a look that was a thousand years old.

  She stood no more than thirteen hands high, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder. Yet she claimed she could tame this horse.

  She was a liar, a cheater, a marshland bumpkin taking advantage of him.

  “How much do you want for your services?” he asked suspiciously.

  She frowned, then said, “The life of this horse, no more.”

  “Right.” He snorted in disbelief.

  “Why would I lie?” she asked peevishly. “Do you think I came out here expecting to meet some whiskeyed-up planter and the horse he beat half to death?”

  “I never—” He stopped himself. It was pointless to argue. He needed to do what he should have done first thing that morning instead of listening to Noah. He eyed the landing. The scow was positioned just right for the horse to exit down the ramp to the hard-packed sand of the long, lonely beach. Hunter could simply take aim, shoot and leave the carcass lying on the beach to be taken out with the next tide.

  “So let’s have a look at him,” the woman said, a brisk bossiness in her voice now. She reached for the latch of the pen.

  He pushed her hand away. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” he demanded. “This animal is dangerous. Now, stand aside.” He grabbed his rifle and rammed the butt against his shoulder. “I need a moment to reload—”

  A distinct sound interrupted him. He looked up in time to see his cartridges spin through the air, stark against the twilight sky, before plopping into the water about fifty yards out.

  His first thought was one of amazement. He had never seen a woman throw so far. His second was one of fury. “No wonder you live like a hermit on this island. You’re completely mad.”

  She flinched, a strangely animalistic movement, as if he had struck her physically. Then she glared at him, pain hardening into an anger to match his. “You are the one who can’t seem to hear. You won’t be shooting this horse.”

  He anticipated her move and stepped in front of the gate. She made a sound of exasperation and bent down. Complete disbelief held him immobile just long enough for her to grab him around the ankle. She pulled up sharply, surprising him with her strength. Arms wheeling in the empty air, he fell backward over the gunwale of the scow and landed in the chilly shallows.

  While he sat, half stunned, in the silty muck, she climbed up and spoke quietly to the horse. Then she reached over the side of the pen and untied the blindfold. The iron muzzle fell with a thunk. She lifted the latch of the gate, drew aside the bolt and opened the pen.

  Cursing, Hunter sprang up. The stallion clattered down the ramp, frantic hooves throwing up a spume of blue-green water. The animal raced ashore, a sleek dark shadow moving with amazing speed. Hunter’s anger drained away as he stood knee-deep in water and saw, for the first time, the full power of the horse.

  In a wave of strength and grace, the stallion ran across the ribbon of the beach, loping along as if made of water, one movement flowing seamlessly into the next. The length of his stride and his quickness convinced Hunter that if the sea storm had not driven this horse to madness, he would have been a champion beyond compare.

  Still, Finn’s owners had sold him cheaply. Too cheaply. Perhaps he was mad from the start, and the agent in Ireland had failed to see that.

  Something scuttled up Hunter’s leg. He jumped, brushing at a pair of quick, busy crabs. Then he waded ashore, the heavy sand sucking at his boots. He still had murder on his mind, but the stallion was out of range. He would murder her.

  Eliza Flyte watched him, her mouth quirking suspiciously close to laughter.

  If she laughed, he would do worse than simple murder.

  She laughed.

  And he did nothing but drip, and rage. And glare at her. And despite the insanity of the situation, he laughed too.

  He laughed because there was nothing left to do. Because he was a widower with two children he didn’t know how to love, and a fortune he wasn’t able to repair. Because he was considered a rebel among his peers. Because he was raised to be a wealthy Virginia planter and he had become something entirely different. Because losing the stallion would be the final nail in his coffin.

  The thought sobered him utterly. The horse would die in the wilderness. Finn was a stable-bred horse that had been raised as artificially as an orchid in a glass house. The purchasing
agent in Ireland had sworn the yard did all but chew the Thoroughbred’s food for him. Such a creature had no notion of how to survive in the wild. The humane thing to do would be to hunt the poor animal down and put it out of its misery, but the very idea turned Hunter’s stomach sour.

  “Well,” he said to the strange woman, who had finally managed to conquer her mirth and stood watching him expectantly. “You’ve certainly solved my problem for me. The horse’ll starve and thirst to death on this island all on his own.”

  Her smile disappeared. Only when it was gone did he realize how attractive she was. She had full, moist lips and straight teeth, and a twinkle in her eye that hinted at a merry intelligence.

  “I said I would tame him, and tame him I shall.” She had a weird accent, a combination of Virginia’s lazy drawl and something foreign, from the small shires of England, he guessed.

  He regarded the chestnut shadow in the distance. The stallion was tossing his head and trotting to and fro, pausing now and then to browse in the odd spiky grasses that fringed the marsh.

  “I see,” he said sarcastically. “And I suppose after he gets tired of being on his own, he’ll simply come knocking at your door.”

  “You’re close to the truth,” she said. “Horses are herd animals. They naturally want to join with you. It’s their nature. Their instinct.”

  “He’ll kill anything he encounters,” he promised her. “You’ve let Satan out of hell.”

  She fixed him with an enigmatic stare. “Why do you assume his madness is a permanent state? That it can’t be healed?”

  His mind flickered to events of the past and then recoiled. “Experience has taught me so.”

  “Not me.” She started walking away.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her.

  “Home. It’s nearly dark and I’m hungry for my supper.”