The Horsemaster's Daughter (72 page)

W
ith a gloved hand, Abigail stifled a yawn. Ordinarily her late-night sweepings of the sky didn’t affect her this way, but she’d stayed on the roof far longer than usual last night. She’d only had time for a nap before getting up to dress for opening session.

She peeked over her hand at her father, who sat across from her in the canvas-hooded barouche.

“Late night?” he inquired. His tone was mild enough, but she knew his every nuance. A subtle censure edged his words.

The memory of being attacked by a half-naked Jamie Calhoun brought a flush to her cheeks. “I observed a most impressive meteor shower.”

“A meteor shower.” Looking like a freshly cut rose from a master gardener’s hothouse, Helena took Abigail’s hand. “That’s lovely, dear. I don’t blame you for staying up to watch that.”

Abigail gave her sister’s hand a squeeze. It was doubtful Helena knew a meteor shower from a bridal shower, but her loyalty was touching.

“I just hope you’ll be able to keep yourself awake during opening session,” her father said.

“Of course I shall,” Abigail murmured. “I’ve been in attendance each year of my life and I’ve yet to fall asleep.”

Helena laughed. “Remember when you were tiny, and you told President Grant he smelled of ginger beer?”

Abigail did remember. It had not struck her as funny then, and it failed to now. Nor was her father amused. He clasped his hands over the head of his cane and glared straight ahead.

The hickory and tulip poplar trees lining Pennsylvania Avenue swayed and dipped in a brisk breeze. The barouche rolled past granite rows of foreign legations and federal offices, mysterious behind wrought-iron gates. Men in black suits hurried about their business, while day maids walked along with baskets of bread or linens tucked under their arms. Dark-skinned servants and drivers shouted and whistled through the traffic of the broad, busy street.

“And remember when you were thirteen, and that horrid woman stood up and addressed Congress?” Helena continued. “She claimed she was running for president.”

“Victoria Woodhull,” Abigail reminded her. “I didn’t think she was horrid at all.”

“You made your position abundantly clear when you hung that banner from the observers’ gallery,” Father said.

Abigail did recall every moment of that awful day. Even now, she remembered how eager and earnest she’d been. How idealistic and misguided. She thought she was doing the right thing. If women had the vote, she reasoned, they would all vote for Father. All the women she knew thought he was wonderful. He’d be so proud of her for winning him more votes. How could he disapprove of that?

She’d stayed up half the night working on the large cloth banner. The next morning she’d tucked it into an enormous carpetbag and smuggled it into the gallery above the senate chambers. Working in secret, she’d secured the banner high overhead so that every member of the Senate, the press corps and the administration could read her slogan: Votes for Women Now.

The only problem was, she hadn’t anticipated her father’s reaction. After everyone gaped in amazement at her grand political gesture, a rival senator from the opposing party had broken the dumbfounded silence. “I say, Mr. Calhoun, isn’t that your daughter up there?”

That was the year he’d sent her to Miss Blanding’s Lyceum. Reputed to be the finest school for young ladies in the nation, the fortresslike institution huddled on the banks of the Potomac, not far from Mount Vernon. Father had hoped Abigail would learn self-discipline and feminine modesty there. Instead, he’d inadvertently found her a place that promised to nurture her lifelong passion.

At Miss Blanding’s, she attended a lecture by a visiting scholar. Professor Mitchell was a sweeper of the night sky, the most famous astronomer in the world. In addition to claiming every honor given any scientist, Maria Mitchell was a woman. The first female professor of astronomy, the first to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first to discover a telescopic comet, she had begun her speech with something Abigail would always remember. “We especially need imagination in science,” Professor Mitchell had said. “Question everything.”

Listening to the lecture, Abigail had felt the curtain opening on a great mystery. Finally, here was someone who understood her girlhood years of stargazing. From that moment on, Abigail had a purpose in the world, and it wasn’t in this world at all. It was uncounted astral units away, in space, where the mysteries of the universe hid, where the stars were conceived.

Other teachers had intrigued, provoked and inspired Abigail, but only this one had changed her life by making her believe she could be more than she was.

Abigail wrote Professor Mitchell a letter after the lecture, and received a reply filled with wisdom and encouragement. They struck up a correspondence and had been writing ever since. Perhaps that was where Abigail had found her facility with letter writing.

Her mood darkened at the thought. Her recent letter writing had produced a disaster, thanks to the horrid Jamie Calhoun. She should have confined her correspondence to her mentor, she thought as they pulled around to the elegant eastern entrance of the Capitol building. A beautifully planted enclosure of cherry and dogwood trees graced the manicured lawn, and the streets and sidewalks had been swept clean of fallen leaves.

Two Negro footmen attended them as their coach joined a long line of other conveyances. Hacks and hired hansom cabs, open carts and ornate carriages lined the roadway. Some senators, like Pishey Harris of Philadelphia, lived in the fashion of untitled royalty, flaunting their wealth like a coat of arms. Others were simple men of the land, Minnesotans or Californians walking to the legislature under their own steam. A crisp scent of expectancy, a sense of newness and possibility, hung in the air. A mood of reunion lightened the day as legislators, their staffs and supporters streamed toward the building, eager to get to work. The idealistic vigor of the young congressmen combined with the settled authority of the elders to create a governing body that exuded power and energy.

While stepping to the curb, Abigail nearly stumbled, but an attentive footman caught her just in time. She glanced at her father to see him watching with a pained expression on his face. Her heart sank. The day had scarcely begun and already she’d displeased him. He said nothing, but turned to greet his associates.

Men greatly outnumbered women, for only the wealthiest and most aristocratic of congressmen brought their families to the Capitol. That was why Father always insisted Abigail and Helena attend opening day.

Then, above the babble of voices, above the whips and whistles of drivers, came a clatter of hooves approaching at a fast gallop.

People turned to look, some stepping hastily out of the roadway. Abigail joined everyone else in staring gape-mouthed at the arriving congressman. He rode a horse, not just any horse but a swift, muscular animal with a gleaming chestnut hide and long black mane. Its head had the fine noble shape of Arab breeding. It whistled and tossed its regal head, front hooves restless as the rider kept it barely in check. Autumn light glinted off the glossy hide like sunshine off a mirror. The force of the horse’s energy caused the waiting footmen and grooms to shrink back against the chiseled granite wall surrounding the lawn.

The rider wore a suit that managed to be both flamboyant and fashionable, as though a cowboy had found his way into a Savile Row tailor shop. With skill and easy confidence, he dismounted the magnificent horse.

The rider caught the eye of a groom, motioning the lad forward. He placed the reins in one hand, tucked a gold coin in the other. “His name is Sultan, and you will treat him like visiting royalty,” the congressman instructed. “Do so and he’ll give you no trouble at all.”

The groom bowed smartly and led the horse toward the Fourth Street livery stables. After surrendering his mount, the newcomer straightened his collar, brushed off his sleeves and faced the broad steps of the Capitol building.

“Who is that?” someone asked.

“He is a god that walks the earth,” a woman nearby whispered.

Abigail rolled her eyes. “That’s Mr. James Calhoun. A freshman congressman from Virginia.”

He caught her eye and winked.

Pretending not to see, she turned to follow her father and sister into the building.

When she was very small, she used to feel like Alice in Wonderland when she entered the gleaming halls of the Capitol. The enormous white-domed rotunda dwarfed and overwhelmed her, giving her the sensation that she’d fallen down a rabbit hole and wound up in a strange new world of marble and gold, populated with creatures as alien as talking caterpillars and mad hatters.

Big-city lawyers clad in expensive suits walked around with legal briefs clutched in their hands. Inquisitive tourists looked on, and some of them appeared far more interesting than the Americans. Abigail noticed a group of elegant Frenchmen studying the inscriptions carved into the walls. Children chattering in Spanish fidgeted with boredom as their guide droned on. Most fascinating of all was a group from the Middle East, which included an important-looking, bearded man in a turban. He was accompanied by a woman so completely swathed in silken veils and surrounded by attendants that she was practically invisible to passersby.

Abigail would have liked to linger in the rotunda, but her sister pulled her along. They reached the long hallway leading to the chambers. Her father, who knew better than any man in the Senate the proper way to make an appearance, positioned himself between his two daughters. “Ladies?” He cocked out his elbows in invitation. “Shall we?”

Filled with pride and affection, Abigail fitted her hand into the crook of her father’s arm. She lived for moments like this, shining moments when the whole world saw that she had a father who loved her.

He smiled a hearty winner’s smile as he advanced down the busy, crowded hallway. “Keep your eyes straight ahead,” he warned, clearly sensing her urge to scan the crowd. He gripped her arm with a firm imperative.

Abigail prayed that if people noticed her burning blush, they would assume it was merely the flush of excitement inspired by the first day of the fall session. She prayed that when she wished her father a good day and turned toward the gallery steps, he wouldn’t see the thin sheen of foolish tears in her eyes as she remembered her stumble on the west staircase last year. She nearly took all three of them down with her then.

When she and Helena were halfway up the stairs, she felt a prickle of awareness and glanced back. There, at the end of the hall leading to the house chambers, stood Jamie Calhoun, watching her with a bemused expression she didn’t trust. He saw too much of her, this insolent, flamboyant man. She’d known him only a short time, and already he’d betrayed her. She would do well to steer clear of him.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she continued up the stairs to the observation gallery. But even though she didn’t turn back to look at him, she sensed his gaze on her, and remembered the liberties he’d taken with her, mocking her even as he heated her senses with his touch.

The man was a danger to her. Not in any physical sense, but in a way she feared far more—he threatened her safety and the things she held to be true.

Helena had been asleep for the past half hour, and Abigail teetered on the brink. Seated above the crimson and gilt senate chamber, they’d observed the opening ceremony with all proper respect, but then the speeches began. Endless, tedious recitations, self-congratulatory oration, incomprehensible rhetoric and overblown statements of ambition for the deeds that could be accomplished by this particular legislature. The newly elected senators were the worst of the lot. Young Troy Barnes of the state of New York had been pontificating about his divine mission for a good forty minutes. Abigail wondered if he realized he’d been elected by voters, not God.

She sneaked a sideways glance at her sister. Over the years, Helena had perfected the art of looking alert when she was actually sound asleep. Her posture was impeccable, her face shadowed by the brim of a fashionable hat, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Only Abigail knew she was blissfully napping.

With the voice of a bullwhip, Senator Barnes gave no indication that he would yield the floor anytime soon. Abigail scanned the ladies’ gallery, seeking an unobtrusive way to escape. The fashionable women of the capital appeared to be preoccupied with gossiping behind their hands. In the gallery across the way, a handful of diplomats and foreign ministers in formal gold-trimmed uniforms, a few newsmen and tourists watched the proceedings.

As Barnes blustered on, Abigail stood and crept from the gallery to the central passageway between the chambers of the Congress. Aides and pages moved through the halls, bearing messages and looking busy.

Her feet tingled as the blood started to circulate in her legs. Concentrating on walking gracefully behind the gallery, she judged that she probably had a good hour before the vice president would declare the day’s session over.

Lieutenant Butler had not come to the opening ceremonies, and she was not certain how she felt about that. She dreaded seeing him, yet she yearned to at the same time. She pictured him reading the letter never meant for his eyes. He’d think the words came from Helena. At some point, Abigail would have to tell him the truth. She’d have to look him in the eye and watch as his confusion turned to hurt and inevitably to anger, and finally, to cold dislike.

As she passed behind the upper gallery of the house chambers, two newsmen burst out of the room and headed toward the wire service office in the basement. Curious as to the cause of their agitation, she entered the gallery and took a seat in the rear.

Unlike the gentleman’s-club atmosphere of the Senate, the House of Representatives was loud, crowded and undisciplined. Men in homespun clothing sat around, spitting and smoking like spectators at a sporting match. It didn’t surprise her in the least to see Jamie Calhoun at the podium, his collar undone and his hair falling over his forehead in maddeningly attractive fashion. What surprised her was the topic of his impassioned speech.