The Horsemaster's Daughter (51 page)

“I
want to talk about Blue,” Eliza said.

“I want another drink of whiskey,” Hunter murmured, balancing an empty glass on his drawn-up knee.

They sat on the front veranda. It was twilight. Willa had already put the children to bed and a hush had settled over the farm. Evening birds haunted the high branches of the live oaks, and a light breeze rustled through the leaves. A steam packet slid by on the distant quiet waters. With the sun melting into a pool of gold on the bay, it should have been a scene of tranquility. But instead, Hunter felt edgy with unspent rage. Eliza looked anxious and upset, twisting the fabric of her blue picnic dress.

“You’ve had enough whiskey,” she said.

“You sound like a goddamn temperance scold.”

“I sound like someone who cares about Blue. Lord knows, somebody needs to.”

He lost his breath as if she had knocked the wind out of him. Damn the meddling woman. “I care about my son,” he said. “I’ve loved him since the day he was born and I held him in my arms and thanked God for the blessing. You’ve known him a few days. So don’t go thinking you know what’s best for him.”

“I know you care. So much that you nearly killed a man today. But that’s not the kind of caring Blue needs.”

He swiveled away so he didn’t have to look at her. “What the hell do you know about what Blue needs?”

“Not much. That’s why I want you to tell me more about him. I want to know everything.” She put her hand on his sleeve, her fingers resting lightly, like a timid bird. “Please.”

It was the
please
that did it. That, and the fact that she touched him. He turned to her, his heart on fire with the need to tell her everything, the need to get it out.

“He stopped speaking the day his mama died,” Hunter said.

“That much I know. How did she die?” Eliza asked.

He dragged in a deep breath, feeling a sharp ache in his chest. “In a fire,” he said, and when Eliza winced, he added, “It was an accident.”

“How did it happen?”

He could tell from the expression on her face that she was really asking
why
it had happened. He had never explained it all, beginning to end, to another person. But he wanted to now. Needed to. “I suppose the trouble started when Lacey moved back home to Bonterre,” he said quietly. “She left me the same day the French spinet piano did. The furniture was carted off to auction to pay the debts my father left. She was so mortified that she took the children on foot, marching straight across the meadow to her father’s house.” He stared into his empty whiskey glass. “And I did what any typical Southern gentleman would do—I started drinking.”

“Why?”

“It blunted the pain of having my family taken away. People gossiped that my pride was hurt by the shame of poverty. In truth, it was Lacey who suffered from the shame.”

“Was Blue all right?” Eliza asked.

He nodded. “He still talked, if that’s what you mean.”

“I need to know what made him stop,” she said softly.

With elaborate care, Hunter turned the glass around and around in his hands. “I don’t know why, but she took to closing herself up in her room and writing long letters nearly every morning. That’s what Blue used to tell me. You’d never know it, but he was a big talker. Every time he saw me, he’d tell story after story.”

Hunter paused and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “He used to tell me all about his day. He said his mama wrote letters for hours and hours in the mornings, and then she would seal them up and send a houseboy down to the landing with them for the afternoon packet. I never paid much mind. Lacey always did write with a fine hand, so I reckoned she was just corresponding with friends to while away the hours.

“But Blue never told me what happened the day she died. I had to get the story from a servant girl who was scared out of her wits. While sealing one of her letters, Lacey was careless with the wax and flame. You have to understand, my wife was a beautiful woman, vain about her figure and devoted to fashion. She wore whalebone stays and a cage of steel hoops beneath her skirts. When the sealing wax dropped on her skirt and was ignited by the flame, those hoops became her prison.”

Her jaw dropped in horror. “You mean she couldn’t get out of her burning clothes?”

He stared thirstily at the bottom of his empty glass. But tonight he knew no amount of whiskey would blunt the memories, so he simply set down the glass and continued. “I’m told her screams weren’t heard at first because she had shut the door to her room in order to write in private. When they found her, most of the clothes had burned away.” He swallowed hard and looked into Eliza’s strange, misty eyes, as if to find peace there. “She had no hair left to speak of.”

“Oh, Hunter. I’m so sorry.”

“By the time I was summoned, she had been put to bed. I found her whispering to Blue—she didn’t have much of a voice left. The Beaumonts said he refused to leave her side. I was stunned when I saw her, so close to death.” His beautiful Lacey. What a shock that had been. “She did recognize me, but I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. Blue seemed upset, so I told him to wait outside with his sister.”

Hunter forced himself to go on. “There was nothing left of Lacey. But as Blue walked past her bed, his little face all wet with tears, her hand shot out. At first I thought it was a reflex, like a death shudder, but she grabbed his arm. It scared the hell out of him. Her hand was all wound in a bandage that was oozing. And she looked Blue in the eye and said, ‘Remember your promise.”’

“What promise?”

“I have no idea. She was delirious. Just hours from death. I don’t know why she grabbed Blue like that. Don’t know what she was trying to tell him. He was terrified. She was a sight—nothing like the mama he knew. Hair burned off, face red and blistered. Her lips barely moved. He ran out of the room, and that was the last time he saw his mother alive.”

Hunter planted his elbows on his knees and shoved his fingers through his hair as if to weed out the memories, but it was no use. They were a part of him. “Lacey was out of her mind from the injuries and the laudanum the doctor gave her for the pain. I didn’t know what to do. So I talked to her. I talked about anything and everything. My dreams of turning Albion into a Thoroughbred farm, the way she looked to me the first time I kissed her…I tried to bring up every pleasant memory that lay buried in our past. I’ll never know if she heard me or not.”

Eliza wept quietly in a way that he had never been able to do. She hadn’t known Lacey, but she knew how to grieve. He got up and faced out toward the darkening yard, filled with remembrances of that night. “When I ran out of talk, I didn’t know what else to do. So I sat down at her bedside and held her poor burned hand until she died.”

“I hurt for you,” Eliza whispered, her step soft on the porch as she came up behind him. “Oh, how I hurt for you.”

“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you this,” he said. “That’s why I never think of Lacey these days. Sometimes I see her smile in Blue’s eyes or hear the echo of her voice in Belinda’s laughter. I can’t stand that.”

He had grimly swept her out of his life. But Lacey’s legacy lingered. Blue was left with open wounds, struck mute by shock and grief. Belinda, who had been just five when it happened, had hazier memories of her mama. Hunter would never, ever forget. Some nights, when he closed his eyes, he could still see his wife’s charred and blistered body. Could still smell the burned flesh and hair, still hear her rasping, rattling breaths as she struggled to stay alive for just a moment longer.

Crushing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he tried to erase the images, but they stayed inside his head, forever branded on his memory. He swore, grabbed his glass and pushed past Eliza as he went in search of more whiskey.

She stood in front of him, blocking his way. “That won’t help you.”

He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Don’t be absurd. Thinking you’ve found the root of my problem is a mistake.”

“But you just told me everything I need to know,” she said, her small face somber in the twilight. “You just told me where all the troubles in this family come from.”

Something inside him, something the whiskey hadn’t reached yet, seriously considered her words. He had a swift, compelling image of seeing her on the beach with the stallion for the first time. She had said almost the same thing. Find out where the fear is coming from. That’s where you begin.

He had built a fortress around his heart. Here she was with her chisel, taking it down, bit by bit. And each time a piece fell away, it hurt. He felt more cold and exposed.

“Get the hell out of my way,” he said between his teeth.

She planted herself in the doorway, pushing her palms against the door frame and looking him straight in the eye. “Your wife died two years ago and you’ve been drinking ever since. Don’t you think that if the whiskey was going to work, it would have by now?”

“I don’t drink because I want it to work,” he said. “I drink because I want to forget.”

“You can’t simply forget about the children,” she said.

“I’m good to my kids. I love them.”

“They need more—”

“What the hell do you know?” he growled. “You never even met a kid until Blue and Belinda.”

“But I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she replied, practically whispering. “Don’t you get it, Calhoun? My father was everything to me. He was Prospero. The wizard. He made the world turn around me. And when I lost him, I lost everything I ever loved.”

“Damn it,” he said, pointing an unsteady finger. “You’re nothing but trouble. I want you out of my life.” It was true, he needed to be away from her. Away from her rain-colored eyes and her earnest looks, and her unsettling way of peering into his soul and seeing the things he tried to keep hidden.

But he was like the stallion on the beach, wanting to be away from her yet drawn to her at the same time. Later he would blame the whiskey, but at the moment he didn’t try to resist the urge to touch her. It was more than an urge; it was a need, like the need to draw the next breath.

He put out his hand and watched it waver a little drunkenly as he reached for her. He touched her face first, that smooth pale cheek, and with the pad of his thumb he traced the shape of her full lips. She didn’t move, didn’t even blink, as she stood in the doorway with the house obscured behind her and the falling dark of twilight throwing her features into velvety shadow. The darkness merely made his other senses more acute. He could feel the smooth texture of her skin and he could hear the way her breathing stopped for a few seconds, then continued in soft shallow puffs. His exploring thumb continued past her lips, over her chin and down to skim over her vulnerable throat. She was so delicate there, tender as a new flower. His hand looked big and rough against her throat, but she bore his touch without flinching, and even seemed to warm beneath it.

“I’m not supposed to be doing this,” he whispered. “I told myself I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Then why are you?”

“Don’t ask. Just…let me…” He quit trying to explain, quit trying to rationalize. He pulled her forward, tight against him, and his mouth found hers. She tasted as sweet as he knew she would, and her body felt pliant against his. Unlike the other women he’d known, she didn’t pretend not to want this. Her surrender now, like the night on the roof, was total. She swayed against him, her body as graceful as a willow in a breeze, and she opened her mouth. No pretended coyness or lessons from finishing school governed her response. No one had ever told her to slap a man away, to tell him no, to giggle and blush. And he loved it. God, how he loved the feel of Eliza in his arms, a woman who didn’t have designs on him.

But she had expectations, he thought, his hands skimming up and down the length of her. She expected everything from him.

And that, ultimately, was what made him push her away. He actually groaned when he let go of her, the sound of a man being hit in a fight.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“We’ve been through this before.” He turned away and sat on the steps of the veranda. The fireflies came out, vague secretive flashes in the low shrubs of the yard. “You’re in the world, Eliza, and it’s a bigger world than your island. What you do matters now.”

She sat down beside him. “Is that why you don’t want me here?”

“I never said I didn’t want you here.”

“But you don’t.”

“You never wanted to come to Albion. You want to go to California.”

“California can wait. It’s not going anywhere. Once I met your children, I wanted to stay, at least for a while.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re so little and they need me.”

“Fine. They have needs. So tell me what they need.”

She moved away from him on the step, pushing back to lean against the pillar. “They’re stuck, Hunter. They’ve lost their mother, and they have to grieve for her. They have to feel the hurt before they can get over the grief.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What makes you the authority on motherless children?”

She regarded him steadily until he started to squirm.

“That’s different,” he said, frustrated. “You never knew your mother. You didn’t know what you lost because you never had it.”

“I know what it’s like to be hurting inside,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be fearful. That’s what I see in Belinda and Blue. Especially Blue. They can’t get over the hurt.” She took a deep breath and braced both hands on the step behind her. “They can’t, because you won’t let them.”

“What?” He laughed harshly. “I can’t believe you dared to say that.”

“It’s about time someone did. Others might shrink from your temper, but not me. You’ve already said you don’t want me around, you’re shipping me to California. So I have nothing to lose, do I?”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“You’re right. You don’t. You can stand up right now and go into the house and drink some more. And tomorrow when you wake up, everything will be the same. Blue won’t be speaking. Belinda will hide everything she thinks and everything she feels. And you’ll be too drunk to notice.”