by Susan Wiggs
“Noah will get it later,” Hunter said curtly. He strode to the base of the huge tree, shaded his eyes and looked up.
“Blue!” he called. “Son, come down from there.”
Eliza abandoned her efforts with the trunk. “Your boy’s up in the tree?” she asked in amazement.
Hunter didn’t reply. “Blue, come down at once,” he said.
No response. But then, that was no surprise.
“It’s dangerous for you to be up there. The nails have all rusted, and I don’t think the boards will hold.”
Again, no response.
Eliza went to the base of the tree. Caliban barked sharply, having spotted the boy. “Heavens, how long has he been up there?” Eliza asked.
“This is family business,” Hunter snapped, fear for Blue coming out as fury. “You shouldn’t be wandering the place on your own.”
“Then you shouldn’t have forced me to come here.”
Ignoring her, Hunter angled his gaze up to the platform again. A pale, skinny leg swung idly off the edge of the rotted wood. Caliban whined, and Eliza shushed him.
“Damn it to hell, Blue. You’ll fall from there, break your neck. Is that what you want?” he demanded, terrified. “Is it?”
Still no response. Blue’s bare leg just kept swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
Hunter bit out an oath. “I’m coming up there, son. I’ll carry you down if I have to.” He grasped one of the rungs of the weathered handholds nailed to the trunk of the tree. The second he put his weight on it, the old wood broke into pieces that rained upon the ground. Clearly, Hunter’s weight was too great to be borne by the ancient rungs. If he tried to climb up, he’d have no way of getting down.
“Goddamn it, Blue,” he said in fear and frustration. “What’ll it take to get you down from there?”
“A little more savoir faire than you possess, obviously,” Eliza said, grossly mispronouncing the French. She moved in close with the purposeful precision of a Napoleon in miniature. Small, focused, intractable—those were the impressions she gave. You’d never know she’d been living a hermit’s life on a remote island.
“Hello,” she called pleasantly. “My name is Eliza Flyte. Your father’s told me so much about you. I was wondering if you could help me, Blue. I was just on my way to see how the new stallion is settling in, and I was hoping you could come with me. There’s something very special about this horse.” She paused dramatically. “He talks.”
Still no response. Hunter felt naked, vulnerable, his position as precarious as Blue’s. Contrary to what Eliza had said, he’d told her virtually nothing of the boy.
“Oh, and after that,” she said brightly, “your father promised he would have my special trunk delivered to my room. It’s filled with—” She broke off deliberately.
The bare leg stopped swinging.
“Well, you’ll see what treasures it’s filled with when you help me unpack,” Eliza concluded. “You won’t want to miss them, I promise you that.”
Hunter watched in amazement as the boy dangled both legs over the edge. With unhurried movements, he climbed down the handholds and landed with a gentle thud on the grass.
“Blue!” Hunter grabbed the boy, pulled him into his arms. Blue had pine straw in his hair and he smelled of ocean breezes. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Blue stood stiff and silent, neither pulling away nor leaning into the embrace. Hunter had been raised by a man who had no truck with showing affection. Jared Calhoun maintained that it wasn’t manful to embrace even his own son. So Hunter had never learned to do it properly. Showing affection to his boy always made him feel awkward and strange.
Blue must possess a good measure of his grandfather in him, for he bore the embrace with his characteristic stiff aloofness. Hunter held him at arm’s length. “Are you all right, son?”
Silence. But the boy peered past Hunter’s shoulder at the woman standing behind him.
Hunter rose, frustrated. Control had slipped from him and he saw no way to take it back.
Blue tucked his hands shyly behind his back. He regarded her from the side of his eyes. The stance put Hunter in mind of the stallion that first morning on the island beach, wary and confused. The interest was there, but not the trust.
“Son, say hello to Miss Eliza Flyte,” Hunter said, knowing it was futile.
Blue ducked his head.
Eliza caught his eye and sent him a dazzling smile that would have worked wonders on Hunter himself, had he been the reluctant one. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk,” she said pleasantly. “Your father brought me to live with you.” She pressed a finger to her lower lip.
“She’s come to be your…companion,” Hunter said impulsively, thinking of Eliza’s preoccupation with Jane Eyre. “Your governess.”
Her eyes widened, but she recovered quickly, reaching around behind Blue and taking his hand. To Hunter’s astonishment, the boy didn’t pull away. Eliza said, “I’ve never been to the mainland before. It’s all completely new to me. I don’t know my way around at all. Perhaps you’d show me where everything is.”
To Hunter’s further astonishment, Blue started walking. Hunter could only stare after them as, hand in hand, they headed toward the barn.
The little boy’s hand fluttered within Eliza’s like a small, timid bird. She knew better than to tighten her grip. That would only harm the fragile creature inside. She listened to Blue the way she listened to a frightened animal. She had to, because he had not spoken to her in words yet.
He kept his eyes downcast and his shoulders hitched up. Defensive, she thought. Self-protective.
But from what?
She dared to glance back over her shoulder. Hunter still stood by the dock. He faced the bay, feet planted wide, hands at his sides. In the midst of all that green—field, marsh, tall pines, the bay—he made a dark shadow that lay long against the surface of the water. Eliza had never seen a more lonely sight in her life.
The situation at Albion baffled her. Hunter’s son, a beautiful, blue-eyed boy, hadn’t smiled at his father, hadn’t greeted him, had not even looked at him after descending from that dangerous perch in the tree.
The boy’s beyond any help, Hunter had said.
Had Blue heard? And if he had, did he understand?
She knew instinctively that he was not simple or daft. One look into his eyes told her that. Behind the solemn, curiously adult facade lay a lively intelligence that lit up as he watched the big dog careen across the yard after a mockingbird.
“Caliban never catches anything,” she said, her voice betraying none of her thoughts. “Silly dog, he wouldn’t know what to do if he did get a bird or a squirrel.”
The boy didn’t respond, but he brightened at the spectacle Caliban made. His back legs almost overtook his front as he raced over the lawn.
“My father used to say that dog was stitched together from mismatched parts—the legs of a pony, the body of a cow, the head of a dog and the wits of a dormouse.” She grinned, remembering the day her father had brought Caliban home from Eastwick. The puppy’s gangly legs had hung out of the crate and his fur had been a mass of gray-brown scruff. She had loved him instantly, dubbing him Caliban after the enchanted beast in The Tempest.
“The truth is,” she went on, “he’s part English mastiff and part Irish wolfhound. Irish, like the new stallion. And I promised you I’d show you how to talk to Finn, didn’t I?”
Interest flickered in Blue’s face. His steps quickened and he surged ahead of her in his haste to reach the barn. Inside the long, low building, boxes for the horses flanked the central aisle. At one end, there was a small dwelling or office and a tack and grooming room. She took down a lunge rein and looped it over her shoulder.
The stallion stood in the adjacent paddock under the sweeping outspread branch of an oak tree. Caliban caught the horse’s attention, racing around outside the periphery of the enclosure with his jaw flapping low. The horse had grown accustomed to the do
g and tolerated him well enough.
“Miss Eliza,” Noah said, coming out of the office. “Hey, Blue. Did you come to see the stallion?”
The little boy nodded.
“He came right along, docile as you please,” Noah said. “Tomorrow we’ll put him with the other horses.”
“I told Blue that Finn is a talking horse,” Eliza said. “Come see, Noah.”
The youth flashed her a look of suspicion, but followed them to the paddock.
“He speaks,” she said matter-of-factly, “if you know how to listen.” She lifted Blue and perched him on the top rail of the fence. It was a round beam, she noted with approval. Its shape prevented horses from cribbing the wood and getting colic. Already she was getting the impression that Hunter understood the needs of the horse farm far better than the needs of his son.
She entered the pen slowly but not hesitantly. “Watch the stallion,” she said to the boys. “He’s talking to me right now. See how he puts one ear back? Just one, not both. So he’s not hostile. He’s wondering what I want.” She walked in a straight path toward him. “He’s used to me now, so he’ll let me put on this lunge rein. Watch his mouth—he keeps smacking his lips, so we know he’s not worried about us being here. A horse won’t act like he’s eating if he’s nervous.”
She fastened the rein and, standing in the middle of the ring, prompted him to walk in a circle. Then she accelerated him into a canter. Both boys sat forward, clearly enthralled with the easy, flowing motion of the horse. Finn performed as she knew he would, responding to each command with smooth compliance. He had a fiery temperament but he also possessed the horse’s ingrained will to please. When she finished the demonstration, the stallion followed her around like a dog, and she walked him straight to the fence where Noah and Blue sat enraptured.
“Glory be,” Noah said, holding out his hand so Finn could inspect it. “A blamed miracle.”
She stepped back and nodded encouragingly at Blue. “You can touch him. He likes to be scratched right under his jaw.” Blue reached out, pressing his palm against the chestnut’s big cheek. The horse leaned in to him, and Blue’s hand rubbed firmly and affectionately under the jaw.
“You reckon I can ride him?” Noah asked.
“Aye. Hunter said you’re the jockey.”
Blue took his hand away. The horse swung his head closer, seeking more petting.
“This horse was a killer.” Noah rubbed his thumb on the blaze of the stallion’s forehead. “How did you heal him?”
“I expect you know a horse can’t be evil, like a true killer. He was afraid. When a horse is afraid, it runs. When it can’t run, it fights. Confined on that ship from Ireland, he was frightened by the storms for days on end. All he could do was fight.”
Noah shook his head. “I swear, I don’t understand all that, but I do know horses.”
“That’s what Hunter told me. He’s very proud of you.” She held out the long leather rein. “Lunge him for a while and ask him to work for you. He will.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’d best get back to the house,” she said to Blue.
Blue dropped to the ground and started toward the house. “I’ll ask him to introduce me to his sister,” she said. A little incredulously she added, “Seeing how his father assigned me to be the governess.”
Noah hesitated, the rein dangling from a crook in his arm. “He won’t do it,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Blue won’t introduce you to his sister.”
“Why not?”
Noah wet his lips nervously. “Don’t you know?”
A chill of premonition touched the back of her neck. “Know what?”
“Blue doesn’t speak. Ain’t said a word since the day his mother died.”
Hunter felt tired, and a thousand years old, when he came in from the stables later that day. Through force of habit he poured himself a glass of whiskey and drank two greedy gulps. It had been a long, strange day, beginning with the encounter with the slave-catchers and ending with—
A bumping sound from upstairs reminded him that the day wasn’t over yet. He put the glass stopper in the decanter and went up the curved staircase, heading to the wing where the children’s room was. Eliza had been given a room across the hall from them, and the bumping sound came from there.
He walked in to find both children standing by the old sea chest from the island. No one saw him come in. The room smelled musty from disuse, and old sheets still draped the sparse furniture. At one time, this had been a grand guest room, opulent with damask draperies and crystal vases filled with fresh flowers.
“Would you like to see my treasures?” Eliza asked them.
He remembered the night he had forced her to show him the contents of the locker. Reluctantly she had shown him the things that were important to her, revealed the things she dreamed about. How long ago that seemed, when they had been alone together in the driftwood cabin. Now it already felt as if their time on the island had never happened.
But it had, and he recalled every moment, every shining look she had given him, every gasp of wonder when he’d held her in his arms and made love to her.
Discomfited, he cleared his throat. “I see you’re getting settled in,” he said.
“Papa!” Belinda said excitedly. “Miss Eliza’s going to show us a treasure. Do you want to see?”
“I’ve seen her treasures,” he said.
“Lift the lid, Blue,” Eliza said, flushing at Hunter’s tone. “Let’s have a look.”
The boy opened the chest eagerly and peered inside. With a theatrical flourish, Eliza lifted the old muslin and took out the jockey’s silks that had belonged to her father, the old tankard and the gold mourning ring, and, finally, the gleaming pieces of the Spanish bride’s dowry. She put the old moth-eaten wig on Blue, eliciting gales of laughter from Belinda, who gamely tried on the Monmouth cap.
“You make a right proper sailor now,” Eliza said as the little girl preened. She showed them the book of maps and prints from the wild seacoast of California. “It’s a faraway place,” she said. “A magical place.”
“Do you think we could go there?” asked Belinda.
A shadow fell over Eliza’s face. “It’s so far away, almost no one goes there.” Then she brightened. “Here’s what it sounds like.” She held up the big conch shell. “Be very quiet, and you’ll be able to hear the wind and the ocean.”
The children put their heads together, pressing in close. Their faces shone with amazement. Eliza caught Hunter’s eye, and for a moment he felt completely naked. In that one glance, he saw her understanding. She sensed the turmoil that boiled inside him with every breath he took. He adored his children with a ferocity that ached in his chest. But he didn’t know—perhaps had never known—what to do with that love, except hurt.
Blue squatted beside the bed in the room he shared with his sister. He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder to make certain he was alone. He could hear Belinda and Miss Eliza—the governess—chattering like magpies across the hall, so he knew they wouldn’t disturb him. Pressing his belly to the floor, he squirmed like a snake under the bed. Dust-mice scattered and tickled his nose. He held his breath, trying not to sneeze. He couldn’t bear the idea of making a sound.
Reaching out, he groped in the dark until he found what he sought, feeling the smooth, dusty wood beneath his fingers. Inching back, he pulled it along with him, extracting it from its hiding place. It was a carved rosewood lap desk with brass fittings. His mama used to sit up in her bed, looking like a sunflower against a bank of feather bolsters, and write letters for hours and hours.
Blue hadn’t looked in the box since the day she had told him to hide it. Although he had only been a baby of seven back then, he could remember exactly what she said to him. Take it away and hide it, Blue. Mama’s voice had been harsh and whispery, because she was dying. You must never say a word of this, Blue. Not a single word.
When he had gone to
see her the next day, to tell her he’d done as she’d asked, he had found the room shrouded in darkness. His papa sat beside the bed with his head in his hands and the sharp smell of whiskey on his breath. Blue didn’t ask if his mama was dead. He just knew. And he did exactly what she told him—he never said a word.
Now he was a big boy of nine, and his hand looked big, almost grown-up, as he brushed it lightly over the surface of the lap desk and the brass hinges. In showing him the wonderful things in her battered old sea chest, Miss Eliza had inspired him.
Like Miss Eliza, he had a box full of secrets.
He wondered what would happen if he let them all out.
Eighteen
Eliza awoke but didn’t open her eyes, because she didn’t want the dream to go away. She was floating on a cloud, and everything smelled of dried rose petals and lavender, and someone, somewhere, hummed a song she had never heard.
It was all too delicious to relinquish. And yet a strange feeling crept over her—the feeling of being watched.
Her eyes flew open. At the foot of the bed, a shadow flickered. She blinked and shook her head. A trick of the morning light. She was completely alone in this strange, tall-ceilinged room.
And such a room it was. She realized her dream had been no dream at all, but the comforts she had encountered at Albion. The soft, floating cloud was actually a mattress—one stuffed with cotton rather than the dried milkweed she had used on the island. The floral smells breathed gently from the bed linens themselves, and the sweet melody wafted in through the tall double doors that opened out to a balcony with a fancy plaster rail.
So this was his world, she mused. Hunter’s world. He lived here in this vast, decaying place with a blind housekeeper, a cranky cook, two children and a jockey called Noah. Eliza had not met anyone else yet. She guessed that it was either Nancy or Willa singing outside the window.
