The Horsemaster's Daughter (34 page)

W
hen Hunter awoke the next morning, the sun was high and the crazy woman was nowhere in sight. He lay in a sailor’s hammock strung across one end of a rickety porch, feeling the warm sting of the sun on his arms and smelling the fetid sweetness of the marsh at low tide.

He’d slept surprisingly well, considering the rough accommodations. She had lit a small fire in an iron brazier on the porch, laying lemon balm leaves across the coals, and the smoke kept the mosquitoes away. The night sounds—a cacophony of frogs and crickets and rollers scudding in from the Atlantic—created an odd symphony he found remarkably soothing. He usually needed a lot more whiskey to get himself to sleep.

He could hear no movement in the house, so he got up and went inside. Opening a stoneware jug in the dry sink, he discovered fresh water and took a long drink. Then he went to check his clothes, finding them stiff with salt, but dry. He dressed, his mind waking up to the fact that a peculiar woman had turned his horse loose on this deserted island, and that he had been powerless to stop her. Today he’d have to sail the scow home empty.

He tried to blame Noah, but none of this was the boy’s fault. Noah could not have known the horsemaster was dead and that his daughter had lost her wits.

Worse, he would have to face Blue. He’d have to explain to his son that he had not been able to save the stallion.

Muttering under his breath, he found his hip flask and wrenched off the cap. Empty.

“Shit,” he said, then drank more water and stepped outside. If she wasn’t anywhere in sight, he wasn’t going to waste his time looking for her.

Broad daylight didn’t improve the place. If anything, the poverty and ruin of Eliza Flyte’s settlement glared even more sharply. The little broken-back house and the burned-out barn resembled a scene in the aftermath of battle—lonely, eerie, abandoned. Yet despite the desolation, a closer examination revealed that someone actually lived in this place. She had added small, halfhearted touches here and there—a jar of wildflowers on the kitchen windowsill, a glass deck prism hung from the eaves to catch the sunlight, a row of martin houses high on posts in the trampled yard.

He followed a sandy path past an old arena shaded by a tall red cypress tree. Presumably this was where the fabled horsemaster had worked his spells. Now the splintered fence rails hung askew, and thick-leafed groundsel spread lush tentacles across the ground and up the posts. Fallen beams that had once held up a sail canvas sunshade lay collapsed in the middle. A smaller arena appeared to be in better shape, the rails lashed in place and the sailcloth stretched overhead, shading a full rain barrel.

As he continued along the winding path toward the sea, Hunter wondered what he could have been thinking, allowing himself to be persuaded to bring the stallion here. What a fool’s errand it had been. What a waste of time.

The horse was a menace. It needed to be shot.

It was not a duty he embraced, for the truth was, he loved horses. He always had. Against all caution, good sense and advice from well-meaning neighbors, he’d made the breeding and racing of Thoroughbreds his life.

Necessity, as much as desire, had dictated the change. His father, the master of Albion, had left the tobacco plantation to his first-born son. Hunter had expected the legacy. From the day of his birth he had been groomed for it. By the age of eight, he knew the worth of a peck of tobacco on the Richmond exchange. By the age of eleven, he knew how many pickers were needed to bring in a crop.

The only thing he hadn’t been prepared for was bankruptcy. When the will was read and all the dust settled, Hunter discovered something his father had concealed for years: Albion was swamped by debt. The once-prosperous tobacco plantation teetered on the verge of collapse.

Everyone had expected him to either go down with the plantation like the captain on a sinking ship, or to cut his losses, take what he could salvage and rebuild.

But to the amazement of the Tidewater plantation society, and to the consternation of his wife and her family, he did neither. He appalled them all with his actions. Before the small-eyed, hated trader came to sell off the slaves of Albion in order to pay pressing debts, Hunter set each one of the slaves free. Hunter’s father-in-law, Hugh Beaumont, had shrieked that the servants and field-workers were worth a small fortune as chattel, but nothing as free people.

What could Hunter have been thinking?

He knew setting them free was foolhardy, yet the day he signed the stack of manumission papers, Hunter had felt ten feet tall. His father-in-law had accused him of going insane, but Hunter had simply turned away and called in an estate agent to auction off some of the remote tobacco fields and furniture.

When all was done, he was left with a huge, half-empty house and a handful of ex-slaves who stayed on out of old age, infirmity or loyalty. In addition to the house, he kept the barns, the paddocks and acreage in the high meadows suitable for pasturing.

He remembered the day he’d told Lacey what he intended to do with Albion. He and his wife had sat together in the still-elegant parlor; the estate liquidators had not yet come to seize the Waterford candlesticks and chandeliers, the Heppelwhite chests, the Montcalme harpsichord and Aubusson carpets. His voice low and deep with excitement, Hunter had finally confessed his life’s ambition. He told his wife that he wished to make a new start and turn Albion into a Thoroughbred breeding and racing farm.

She had laughed at him. He’d recognized the merry, girlish laugh that had captivated him when he was a boy, only this laugh had a harsh edge of desperation. “Darling, you can’t mean it. Making a horse farm will take far more money than you have, and years of work. And you’ve just set all your laborers free.”

Her lack of belief in him struck hard. He had looked down at his large, pale hands, holding them to the light and splaying the fingers wide. “Sweetheart, these hands have held the reins of the finest horseflesh in Virginia. They’ve cradled bottles of wine worth more than some men earn in a lifetime. They’ve been dealt hands of cards that won or lost a small fortune. And they’ve loved you with all that I am for eight years. The one thing they’ve never done is a day of hard, honest labor.” He turned them palms up, studied his long fingers as if they belonged to someone else. “Right now, these hands are the only thing I can truly claim as mine. So I reckon I’d better get used to the idea of doing the work myself.”

Lacey Calhoun had wept, certain her husband had lost his mind. She had begged him to consider their young children, Belinda and Blue, and what this would do to their position in society. But Hunter had stood firm. For once, he was going to go after something he truly wanted. For the first time in his life, the dream belonged to him. Not to his father or to the other planters, to his neighbors or Lacey’s family, but to him.

Lacey had not understood. Hysterical, she had run from the room to pack her things. Then she’d taken the children to her father’s house, refusing to see Hunter until he regained his senses.

That day had marked the end of their marriage. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, of course, because he had given himself, to the last inch of his soul, to the new enterprise. He’d worked like a madman on stables, arena, round pen, racing track, starting gates. Working side by side with Noah, he had sought out broodmares and studs—bargaining, borrowing, buying, breeding and praying his luck would hold. Slowly, as time passed, things began to happen. His horses won races. He received invitations to run his horses at Clover Bottom, Metairie and Union Course. Breeders from Virginia and Maryland, Tennessee and Kentucky sought out his studs. The foals out of his mares were considered to be among the best in racing. He inaugurated an annual yearling sale at Albion.

But as he gained a hold on the racing world, he lost it on his wife. The daughter of Albion’s nearest neighbor, Lacey had been groomed to be a planter’s wife and had no idea how to cope with a husband who worked like a man possessed and didn’t seem to care whether or not he profited from his labors. The tobacco culture, which made up her world, no longer welcomed Hunter Calhoun. Planters looked down on him, branding him a brawler, a gambler, a horse racer. If he’d grown wealthy from his enterprise, they would have changed their minds, but despite the success of his horses, the expenses always outpaced the profits. He should have known the change would be too much for Lacey. But he had been naively certain she would come to believe, as he did, that there were better ways for a man to live his life than employing slave labor to grow a weed that would make him rich.

By that time, it was too late to win Lacey back. He tried—Lord, he tried—but to no avail. His pleas and promises fell on deaf ears. His reminders of their marriage vows and their duties to the children were met with stony silence. He had humiliated her in front of the society that meant everything to her, an unforgivable offense. Never once did Lacey crack, never once did she allow herself to show a flicker of feeling for the man she had pledged to love until the day she died.

Then she had died, in the most hideous possible way, leaving the shattered wreckage of a broken family in her wake—a husband whose only solace lay in a dented silver flask of whiskey, a son whose soul had been sucked away by shock and grief and a daughter who was too young to understand anything except the fact that all the joy had gone from her life.

The prospect of repairing his fortune became the only thing that gave shape and meaning to Hunter’s future. Importing the swiftest Irish Thoroughbred on record should have been the culmination of his ambitions. Deemed a bad foal-getter, Finn was undervalued, and Hunter’s agent in Ireland had acquired him at a low price. Even so, it had cost him all the proceeds of his first yearling sale, and he could not afford to insure the animal through Lloyd’s. He had not once paused to consider that a disaster could befall the horse on the voyage from Ireland.

By the time Hunter breasted the broad dunes facing the southeastern end of the island, he had worked himself into a black and thirsty mood. The need for whiskey sharpened to a gnawing hunger in his gut, and until he reached Albion he had no way to assuage it.

At the high tide line, he reached the scarps in the dunes, forming cliffs where heaved-up surf had clawed into the sand. The roots of sea oats dangled in a dense snarl from the underlip of the cliff. Hunter stood at the crumbling edge, scanning the shore for his scow. He could make out the shadow of a cove, and noticed that the sea changed color not far offshore, indicating a decent deepwater anchorage.

Pirates had probably haunted this place long ago. All Virginians had been raised on stories of Bluebeard, who had visited the islands, leaving at least one wife on Assateague. This island was a place where people with secrets might come. He wondered what Henry Flyte’s secret had been.

As he surveyed the landscape, a movement on the beach below caught his eye.

In a dazzle of sunshine, Eliza Flyte walked along the broad ribbon of sand. Her bare feet left a trail of imprints. She moved slowly, though a curious sense of purpose marked her demeanor. She was strange indeed, with her bare ankles and tattered skirts, and thick, indigo hair pulled back in a long tail. She was as slender as a girl, and at first glance yesterday he had mistaken her for one. One look at her full breasts and curving hips had disabused him of that notion. She was no girl, but a woman. A crazy woman, alas.

In one hand she carried a loose length of rope, and she held a halter looped over her shoulder.

He was about to call out, but then he caught another movement at the edge of his field of vision. His jaw dropped. It was the stallion, a huge rust-colored shadow trailing in her wake.

A single thought streaked through his mind. The horse was a killer.

Half running, half falling down the slope of the dune, Hunter raced toward the beach. He had seen what the stallion could do. The woman had no idea of the danger she courted. Hunter wished he had his gun, but the fool woman had drowned all his shot. He had to make do with yelling, waving his arms as he ran down the hill.

Both horse and woman turned to him at the same moment. The stallion whistled and snorted, then reared and landed with front feet splayed, ready for battle. Eliza Flyte regarded Hunter with fury in her eyes. The horse tossed his head to one side, and Hunter feared he would attack her.

He redoubled his speed, pausing only to pick up a length of driftwood. He flung it with all his might at the horse. He missed, but the stallion broke and ran. Hunter released a sigh of relief, but he knew the danger wasn’t past. He had to get Eliza Flyte to safety.

“This way,” he yelled, grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the dunes. “For Chrissake, hurry!”

She pulled back, her strength surprising as she wrenched free of him. “Are you mad?” she demanded. “I almost—”

“I’m not the crazy one around here.” He reached for her again.

She feinted away. “It took me half an hour to get him this far,” she snapped. “Now you’ve spooked him and I’ll have to start all over again.”

He cast a look at the horse. Finn stood tensely some yards away. His skin twitched, and his tail flicked nervously over his flanks. His nostrils were distended, eyes wary.

“I’ve seen what this horse can do,” Hunter said. “I won’t stand by and watch him attack you.”

“He won’t attack me.”

“Damn it—”

“Look.” She edged away from him as if fearing he’d try to touch her again. Her long hair twitched in a manner that reminded him of the horse. “Give me a chance with this horse. That’s all I ask. Just a chance.”

“No. It’s too dangerous.”

“Please,” she said, her anger draining away to desperation. “I need to try. Just let me try.”

He didn’t know why she moved him. What was she, anyway, but a strange hermit woman with crazy ideas? Yet he found himself softening, relenting. “I’ll wait there,” he said, pointing to a gnarled, budding tree at the edge of the marsh. He stooped and picked up the stout piece of driftwood. “And if he goes on the attack, so will I.”