The Horsemaster's Daughter

“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 against 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.