The Horsemaster's Daughter

by Susan Wiggs

The mere mention of food made his stomach cramp with need. He’d had nothing but whiskey all day, and at last the hunger had caught up with him. He eyed the scow and then the evening sky. It was too late to sail for home tonight. He was marooned on this wind-harried island with the most bizarre young woman he had ever met.

  “I’d be obliged for a meal,” he said.

  “I didn’t hear myself invite you,” she retorted, her voice growing as faint as her form in the distance.

  He hurried to catch up to her. “I’ve money to pay.”

  She kept walking, didn’t even glance at him. “I don’t want your money.”

  He touched her arm. She yanked it away so quickly that she nearly stumbled over the vines snaking across the sand dunes. “Skittish, aren’t you?” he asked, torn between feeling intrigued and annoyed.

  “Why should I trust you?” she fired back. “You’re a stranger. You’ve brought me a wounded horse, which you claim is not your fault, but how do I know you didn’t beat him until he went insane?”

  Hunter was nearly out of patience. He planted himself in front of her, stopping her. “You took one look at the horse,” he said, “and you went all weird and misty-eyed, like you could read his mind. Take a look at me, Eliza Flyte.” He glared down at her. “Take a real good look and tell me you see a man who beats horses and crosses dangerous waters in an old scow just for sport.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and in the flickering twilight he fancied he could feel her scrutiny probing at him. In the long, tense silence, broken only by the shudder of the wind and the lapping of the waves, he resisted the urge to squirm like a schoolboy.

  “I don’t know what I’m seeing,” she said quietly. She gestured at the scow. “Have you any personal belongings you’ll be needing for the night?”

  “For the night?”

  “You know, things. You’re sleeping on the porch where I can keep an eye on you. So if you need something from your boat, get it now.”

  “There’s only my gun,” he said. “And without shot, it’s no good to me at all.”

  She made no apology. “Come, then. You’ll want to dry your clothes.”

  “I’ll sleep on the boat,” he said.

  “The mosquitoes will drive you mad,” she promised him. “And I have no experience restoring a man to sanity. Just horses.”

  Four

  Eliza felt sick with nervousness as she made her way over the dunes to the path that led to the house. Since her father’s death, no one had come to the island.

  Henry Flyte had built the house more than twenty years ago. He had made it of materials salvaged from shipwrecks, and indeed it resembled a ship in some respects, with an observation deck on the roof and spindly rails around the porch. The dwelling had two rooms and a sleeping loft where she had passed each night since she was old enough to climb the ladder. Set upon cedar blocks, the house had a lime-and-lath chimney and sparse furniture, most of it salvage goods or fishing flotsam. An iron stove and a dry sink comprised the kitchen.

  He had built it for her—a home. A refuge, a place of safety after he had fled the chaos of the royal racing circuits in England. Eliza had always suspected his self-exile had something to do with the circumstances of her birth, but he never spoke of it, and he’d died before she could wrest the whole story from him.

  Now she lived alone in the house he had made with his own hands and shingled with layers of cypress. It had never been a beautiful home, not like the ones in the illustrations in their prized collection of printed engravings. But it was the place Eliza had always associated with love and comfort and safety. When she thought of home, she could imagine no other place but this.

  Yet as she brought this angry, damp stranger home, she could not help but feel violated in some fundamental way, intruded upon. This aristocratic planter would judge her by what he saw, and while she shouldn’t care what he thought of her, she found that she did.

  Following the curving path, shaded by myrtles, they came to the old barn first. The burned-out stalls and paddock looked haunted, the charred timbers like an enormous black skeleton against the night sky.

  “You had a fire here?” Hunter Calhoun asked. His voice sounded overly loud, almost profane, in the stillness.

  “Aye.”

  “Was it recent?”

  “Last year.”

  “Is that how your father died, then?”

  She hesitated. He had been dead before the fires had started. But to spare herself further explanation, she nodded and said again, “Aye.”

  She led him around the end of the once-busy arena where her father’s voice used to croon to the horses, coaxing them to perform in ways most men swore was impossible. A short sandy track led to the house built up on pier and beam to take advantage of the breezes and to protect it from high water in case of a flood.

  A weathered picket fence surrounded her kitchen garden, tenderly green with new shoots and sprouts of beans, squash, corn, tomatoes, melons. Peering through the gloom, Eliza could just make out the friendly bulk of Claribel placidly chewing her cud. The milch cow flicked one ear to acknowledge them. She was down for the night, sleeping beneath an old maple tree with branches that swept low to the ground. From the henhouse came the soft clucking of Ariel, Iris and Ceres, the biddies settling for the night.

  “You don’t have trouble with cougars or wolves?” Hunter Calhoun asked.

  “I’ve seen a few. But they don’t come too near.”

  “Why not?”

  Before she could answer, a horrible sound bugled from beneath the sagging porch of the house. A shadow detached itself from the gloom and streaked toward them.

  “Shit!” Calhoun swung his rifle over his shoulder, preparing to use it like a club. “You picked the wrong damn time to throw away my cartridges.”

  “Caliban, no!” Eliza said sharply, unable to keep the amusement from her voice. “Heel, that’s a boy.”

  The huge beast loped to her side and collapsed at her feet, peeping and quivering in ecstatic obeisance. Belly up, he resembled a small, uncoordinated pony.

  “What the hell is that?” Calhoun lowered the rifle.

  “That,” Eliza said, dropping to her knees to give Caliban a friendly rub, “is the reason I don’t worry about wolves and cougars.” She got up and patted her thigh. The huge dog lumbered up and trotted along beside her. “He’s part mastiff, part Irish wolfhound. Part horse, you’d think, the way he eats.”

  How odd, she thought, to be talking to another person. Other than the occasional trip to the mainland for supplies, her only companions had been animals. Hearing replies and questions in response to her was disconcerting. The nervousness seemed to bunch up in her throat, and she began to wonder if it had been a mistake to bring him here, into her world. But she had a natural inclination to heal wounded creatures, and something told her this man had wounds she could not see.

  “Delightful,” Calhoun said dubiously. “Any other surprises?”

  She forced herself to swallow past the taut anxiety as she stood up. “Not unless you count Alonso and Jane. The fawn and the doe. They’re both rather timid. Oh, and the cats—”

  “Four cats,” he said.

  She nodded, intrigued that he had actually been listening to her earlier. “Miranda, Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo.” She counted them off on her fingers.

  “Why do all these names sound so familiar to me?” he asked.

  “We stole them,” she said simply. “From Shakespeare.”

  He gave a short laugh as realization dawned on him. “The Tempest,” he said. “Of course.”

  They reached the house as night closed over the island. So near to the sea, the darkness fell fast, like a pool of black poured over the inverted bowl of the sky.

  “I’ll just light a lamp, then,” she murmured, striking flint and steel and holding the flame to the betty lamp at the base of the porch steps. Climbing the stairs ahead of her visitor, she felt overly conscious of her bare feet and the ankle-length smock brushing again
st the backs of her legs. What on earth was she doing, bringing this stranger into her house? She should have left him at the shore, or better yet, driven him off entirely.

  She stole a glance at him, and the large, looming shadow behind her did little to allay her fears. She had seen the worst men could do, and now this stranger was upon her. How could she be certain he wouldn’t turn feral on her?

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  “Because I don’t trust you,” she blurted out.

  He laughed. “Woman, I don’t blame you a bit. I haven’t done a damned thing to earn your trust. But remember, you haven’t earned mine either.”

  Affronted, she opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand. “You claim you’re my only hope of helping the stallion. I’ve yet to see it. All you need to know right now is that I’ve got no possible interest in harming you.”

  She quelled a shudder of fear, then raised the lamp and showed the way inside. Neatness was her natural inclination, but somehow the painstaking order of the house seemed to add to its air of empty poverty. For a wild moment, she wished for a room full of abundant clutter, the way it had been when her father was alive. Since his death, she had brought a sterile order to the house, lining the precious few books up on the shelves, the wild cherry and muscadine grape syrups and beach-plum preserves in a neat row of jars in the kitchen, the bins of supplies carefully closed and stowed.

  Her hand quavered as she hung the betty on a peg and turned to face her guest. Hunter Calhoun’s presence seemed to fill the austere keeping room and kitchen to overflowing. She studied him by lamplight and could well imagine him the master of a place with the grand name of Albion, ordering slaves about and sipping mint juleps while his Negro grooms and jockeys spurred and whipped his racehorses into submission.

  Pinching her mouth into a pucker of disapproval, she turned away. “I’ll find you something dry to put on.” Without waiting for a reply, she went to the old sea crate containing her father’s belongings. The scent of him lingered there as if woven into the very fibers of the fabric: cedar and soap and a faint lovely essence that had no name—it was unique to her father. She told herself she should be used to the elusive fragrance by now. She should be prepared for all the memories that rushed over her when she caught that fine, evocative scent, but as always, it took her unawares. Tears scorched her throat and her eyes, but she conquered them, breathing deep and slow until the crippling wave of grief passed.

  She rummaged in the trunk, shifting the contents. Her father had owned the silk breeches and blouses of a professional racing jockey, though now the clothes were outdated by decades. On the island he had worn a workingman’s garb, and she never remembered him any other way. Her hand brushed a parchment-wrapped parcel. Only once had he shown her the contents. It was the yellow silk jacket he had worn when he’d ridden Lord Derby’s stallion, Aleazar, to victory in the most important race in England, so long ago.

  “That was the night you were made,” he had once said.

  She shut her eyes, remembering his pride as he’d told her of the race. He had always promised to tell her more about her mother, and why, bearing his infant daughter in his arms, he had suddenly taken ship for America. But he had died before the tale could be told.

  Darting a glance over her shoulder at Hunter Calhoun, she drew her mind away from memories. She had a stranger in the house, and it wouldn’t do to turn her back on him until she discovered just what he was about. With brisk, decisive movements, she selected a pair of brown homespun trousers and a white shirt. Closing the lid of the trunk, she shoved the clothing at her guest. “Here,” she said. “You can put these on and hang your own things out to dry on the porch.”

  “Much obliged.” He took the clothes, then stood waiting.

  When she made no move, he did, bending slightly forward and peeling off his wet shirt. His damp chest was broad and deep, gleaming in the lamplight. When Eliza saw it, she experienced a peculiar knot of sensation low in her belly. Embarrassed, she realized that if she didn’t turn away, he would simply undress right in front of her.

  “I’ll see about supper,” she said, yanking the half curtain across the room, separating it into two parts. Her father had put up the curtain when she had come to him one day in her fourteenth summer, terrified, convinced she was dying.

  “It’s your estrous cycle. You’ve seen this happen with the mares,” he had said simply.

  “You mean I’m…in season? Like a mare?”

  “Not quite like that. But…similar.”

  She remembered, with a rush of affection, how flustered he had been.

  “It means your body is that of a woman,” he’d explained awkwardly. “But not your heart, my daughter,” he’d added. “Not yet.”

  And that day he had strung up the curtain, made of an old saddle blanket pierced by an awl, for privacy.

  In the small corner kitchen, she opened the iron stove and pumped the bellows at the banked embers there. Coaxing a fine wood fire under the two iron plates, she put on the coffeepot and heated the skillet. Fixing a meal for someone other than herself gave her a faint but undeniable stab of pleasure. Why was that? she wondered. Why did it please her so to have company? Because she had been alone for so long, she decided. She would have been pleased to welcome Bluebeard himself, she was that pathetic.

  With a flourish, Calhoun moved aside the curtain and affected a haughty bow, like a gentleman at a cotillion dance. Not that she had ever been to a cotillion dance, but she had certainly read of them in her favorite—her only—novel.

  He was, she noticed immediately, a much bigger man than her father had been. The breeches were tight, outlining every curve and bulge of strong thighs and hips. The shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, and he had rolled back the sleeves to reveal large, muscular forearms. The arms of a workingman. Odd, she thought. He was a planter. He forced slaves to do all his work for him. Yet he lacked the lazy, limp-wristed physique that came from idleness.

  “In the absence of a mirror,” he said, “I have to judge by your expression that it’s not a perfect fit.”

  “Um, my father was a rather small man.” She hoped Calhoun would attribute the redness of her cheeks to the heat from the stove. To herself, she couldn’t deny that the sight of him created a soft melting sensation inside her. She knew she was no different than she had been an hour before, but since meeting Hunter Calhoun she felt more…aware. More alive. More womanly. Because he was so…so manly. Nature had made them that way, she told herself, so why did she feel embarrassed? Flustered?

  Living as she did, she knew the ways of horses and wild animals. She’d seen a stallion cover a mare with a strength and power that left her weak with awe. She had seen the strangely compelling mating of the ospreys, the rhythmic, almost violent beating of the male, the taut-throated response of the female. She thought she understood such things, but judging by the chaotic feelings churning inside her, she knew she was totally ignorant.

  Calhoun took a flask from the pocket of his wet breeches and went outside, draping the pants and shirt over the clothesline strung across one end of the porch. Then he leaned back against the weather-beaten rail and tipped the flask, taking a long, thirsty pull.

  Watching him through the screen mesh door, Eliza felt a small spark of shame, and hated herself for feeling it. There was no shame in being poor, in living simply. She harmed no one. But she couldn’t help wondering what this man thought of her shabby little house, the abandoned outbuildings, the swaybacked milch cow in the yard.

  She put the fish on to fry and stepped outside. Calhoun didn’t turn, but kept staring out at the almost-dark sky, the pinpricks of stars and the moon riding low over the water.

  “You’ve got a fine place here,” he said.

  She gave a sharp laugh. “Do I, now?”

  “It’s mighty peaceful.”

  “You just said it was godforsaken.”

  “But I’m getting drunk. The world always looks bett
er to me when I’m drunk.” He held out the flask to her. In the cool blue light of the moon, she could see that it was made of silver, engraved with the initials H.B.C.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  “It’s good whiskey.”

  “I’ve no taste for spirits.” She folded her arms, feeling awkward.

  He took a deep breath. “Something smells good.”

  “The fish. Come inside. It should be ready.” She tried to steady her jittery hands as she served him the coffee and a plate of onions, potatoes and fillets of rockfish browned in butter. “Caught it this morning,” she said.

  He ate ravenously, yet with a curious refinement of manners. At least, she thought, he had good manners. He used a knife and fork rather than fingers, and didn’t wipe his mouth on his sleeve. Despite his claim that he was getting drunk, he ate with steady concentration, polishing off the meal and the coffee quickly.

  The kettle shrieked in the silence. Eliza jumped, then covered her reaction by getting up to brew a pot of tea. She made tea every night of her life, yet for a moment she simply stood in front of the stove, her mind a blank. Only by force of will did she remind herself to take down the packet of tea leaves from Eastwick, add them to the pot along with the boiling water and return to the table.

  She gave him tea from her black basalt tea service. He picked up a shiny cup, holding it to the light. “Where the devil did you get this?”

  “Father salvaged it from a wreck years ago.”

  He studied the mark on the underside of the pot. “This was designed by Josiah Wedgwood.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A famous potter in England from the last century. This is probably priceless.”

  “I always thought it was just a teapot.” She ducked her head and took a bite of her food.

  “I guess you don’t get many visitors,” he said.

  “I don’t,” she said simply.

  “Gets lonely here, then.”

  His comment put her on edge again, reminding her that she was alone with a man she did not know. She chewed slowly, unwilling to admit how true his words were. When her father was alive, they’d had visitors from time to time. Folks came from far and wide, bringing their ill-trained but high-spirited horses for him to tame, and most of them left proclaiming him a miracle worker. Once a year, her father offered up a pony or two culled from the island herd. People in need of workhorses prized the ponies her father trained.