The Horsemaster's Daughter

“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 better 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.

Most of the wild ponies were brutally beaten into submission by ignorant farmhands. But Henry Flyte, who had once gentled the finest racehorses in England, treated the island ponies with the same patience and care he had used with the Derby winners.

After his death, no one came. Everyone assumed that Henry Flyte had taken his magical touch to the grave with him.

Eliza alone knew there was no magic in what her father did. There was simply knowledge and gentleness and patience. He had raised her with the same principles, schooling her in the evenings and by day, teaching her the ways of horses and wild things. Her earliest memory was of lying by his side on a sand dune, their chins tickled by dusty miller leaves while they watched a herd of ponies.

“See that dappled mare?” he’d whispered. “She’s in charge of the herd. Watch how she runs off that yearling stallion.” The younger pony had approached with an inviting expression, mouth opened to expose the lower teeth, ears cocked forward. The mare had rebuffed the advance with a flat-eared dismissal.

Eliza had been fascinated by the display. The horses performed an elaborate, ritualistic dance. Each movement seemed to be carefully planned. Each step flowed into the next. The mare lowered her head, menacing the interloper even while capturing his attention. Each time she drove him off, he came back, contrite, ready to obey.

“That’s all we need to do,” Henry Flyte had explained. “Make him want to be part of our herd.”

She stabbed a bite of potato with her fork. “Aye,” she said to Hunter Calhoun. “Aye, it’s lonely here.”

“Then why do you stay?”

“I can leave anytime I want,” she said defensively.

He scraped the last of the potatoes and onions from the pan. “And where would you go if you left?”

She hesitated, thinking that it would somehow diminish her dream if she confessed it to a stranger. The dream was hers and her father’s. She refused to tarnish it by confessing it to this haughty off-islander.

She set down her fork. Turning the subject, she said, “What is the name of your horse?”