Читать книгу The Horsemaster's Daughter - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 14

Eliza set out some of last autumn’s apples she’d preserved in a charcoal barrel. In the morning she slipped out early to find that they’d been eaten. She tried to quell a surge of excitement, reminding herself that her father’s first rule was to work at the horse’s pace, peeling away his fears layer by layer rather than trying to rush things. There were more good horses ruined by haste than by any sort of injury, she reminded herself.

In the half-light she inspected the training facility that had been the hub of her father’s life. It was sad, seeing it like this, broken, burnt and neglected. He had died here, she thought with a shudder. He had died for doing the precise thing she was about to do.

The area inside the pen was overgrown with thistle and cordgrass. She would have to spend the day clearing it. Backbreaking but necessary work. Perhaps Hunter Calhoun would be of some use after all.

The thought of her unexpected visitor seemed to have summoned him, for when she untied the halter and turned to pull the gate, he stood there, behind her.

He discomfited her. There was no other word for it. Wearing his own clothes rather than the ill-fitting ones he’d worn yesterday, he managed to appear as broad and comely as a storybook prince, with the breeze in his blond hair and his sleeves rolled back to reveal the dark sun-gold of his forearms. On closer inspection she saw that a golden bristle shaded his unshaven jaw, but that didn’t make him less striking. It only served to soften the edges of his finely made cheeks and jaw, and added to his appeal.

She had never heeded her own looks. She’d never taken the time to make sure her dress fit nicely or her hair was properly curled and pinned. Living on the island with her father, and lately all on her own, made such vanities seem unimportant.

But now, feeling the heat of this man’s stare upon her, appearances were everything. Absolutely everything. She wanted to shrivel down into the ground like a flower too long in the sun. She found herself remembering a group of gentry that had accompanied the drovers to the island to buy ponies from her father one year. They’d made a holiday of it, much as people did on penning day up at Chincoteague to the north. She was twelve, and until that day she had not known a girl wearing breeches and haphazardly cropped hair would be considered anything unusual.

But as she walked past the freshwater pond where the herd of ponies grazed, she became aware of a hush that swept over folks as she walked by, followed by a buzz of whispers when she passed.

“I never knew Henry Flyte had a boy,” someone said.

The dart had sunk deep into the tender flesh of her vanity. She recalled actually flinching, feeling the sting between her shoulder blades.

“That’s no boy,” someone else declared. “That’s the horsemaster’s daughter.”

That day, Eliza had stopped wearing trousers. She had painstakingly studied a tattered copy of Country Wives Budget to learn how to make a dress. She let her hair grow out and tried to style it in the manner of the engraved illustrations in the journal. In subsequent years, visitors to the island still whispered about her, but not because she looked like a boy. It was because she had become a creature recognizable as female no matter what she wore. The stares and whispers carried quite a different connotation. But she never managed to fix herself up quite right. Never managed to capture the polished prettiness of a girl gently raised. And in truth, it usually didn’t matter.

But when she brushed the tangle of black hair out of her eyes and looked across the field at Hunter Calhoun, it mattered.

“I was just thinking about you,” she confessed.

He propped an elbow on the rail and crossed one ankle over the other. “You were?”

“This area needs clearing.”

One side of his mouth slid upward. She couldn’t tell if it was a grin or a sneer. “And why would that make you think of me?” he asked.

A sneer, she decided. “Because it’s where your horse is going to be kept.”

“I told you yesterday, I want no part of this idiotic scheme. I plan to leave—”

“You’re not going to get away with just leaving him.” Her thoughts, of which he could have no inkling, made her testy. If he wondered why, she’d just let him wonder. “I didn’t ask you to bring him here, but now that you have, you’re going to see this through.”

He spread his hands in mock surrender. “It is through. Don’t you see that? The horse is vicious, and he’s scared of a flock of damn birds. Sure, you did a little parlor trick with him down on the beach, but you’ll never turn that animal into a racehorse.”

She glared at him. “Get a shovel.”

“I just said—”

“I heard what you said. Get a shovel, Calhoun. If I’m wrong, you can—” She broke off, undecided.

“I can what?”

“You can shoot me, not the horse.”

He laughed, but to her relief, he picked up a rusty shovel and hefted it over his shoulder. “You don’t mean that.”

“There’s one way to find out.”

“Damn, but you are a stubborn woman. What the hell gives you the idea you can turn this horse around?”

“I watched my father do it for years, and he taught me to do it on my own.”

“And just what is it you think you can do for that animal?”

“Figure out why he’s afraid, then show him he doesn’t need to be afraid anymore.” She eyed him critically. “It would help if you’d quit spooking him every time he twitches an ear.”

“If it’s so simple,” he asked, “why don’t all horsemen train by this method?”

“I don’t know any other horsemen,” she admitted. “My father showed me the ways of horses by taking me to see the wild ponies, season after season, year after year. If you watch close enough, you start seeing patterns in the way they act. As soon as you understand the patterns, you understand what they’re saying.”

“You claim to know a lot about horses, Eliza Flyte. Sounds like you gave it a fair amount of study.”

“It was my life.”

“Was?”

“Before my father passed.”

“What is your life now?”

The question pressed at her in a painful spot. She braced herself against the hurt. No matter what, she must not let Calhoun’s skepticism undermine her confidence. The horse had to learn to trust her, and if she wasn’t certain of her skills, he’d sense that. “You ask hard questions, Mr. Calhoun,” she said. Then she froze, and despite the rising heat of the day felt a chilly tingle of awareness.

“What is it?” he asked. “You’re going all weird on me again—”

“Hush.” She carefully laid aside her rake. From the corner of her eye, she spied the stallion on the beach path some distance away. “There you are, my love,” she whispered. “I knew you’d come.”

“What?” Calhoun scratched his head in confusion.

Eliza stifled a laugh at his ignorance, but she didn’t have time to explain things to him right now.

Hunter held out for as long as he could, but at last worry got the better of him. Taking the shovel in hand to use as a weapon, he followed Eliza’s footprints in the sand. No matter what she said, her scheme to pen the horse and train him was as insane as the woman herself. He had no idea why she thought she could tame a maddened, doomed horse that the best experts in the county couldn’t get near.

A sharp, burning tension stabbed between his shoulders as he quickened his pace. He kept imagining her broken, bleeding, maimed by the horse. Before he knew it, he was running, and he didn’t stop until he saw her.

As she had the day before, Eliza Flyte walked barefoot down the beach. And, just like yesterday, the stallion followed her. He was skittish at first, but after a while he started moving in close. She repeated the ritualistic moves—the turning, the shooing away, the staring down.

Hunter was intrigued, especially in light of what she had said about knowing what a horse was thinking by watching what he did with his body. Perhaps it was only his imagination, he thought, arguing with himself, but the horse followed her more quickly and readily than he had the day before. He stayed longer too, when she turned to touch him around the head and ears.

The docile creature, following the girl like a big trained dog, hardly resembled the murderous stallion. The horse that had exploded from the belly of the ship with fire in his eye. The horse they all said was ruined for good.

Hunter caught himself holding his breath, hoping foolishly that the girl just might be right, that Finn could be tamed, trained to race again. The notion shattered when the horse reared and ran off. This time the trigger was nothing more than the wind rippling across a tide pool, causing a brake of reeds to bend and whip. The stallion panicked as if a bomb had gone off under him. Eliza stood alone on the sand, staring off into the distance.

A parlor trick, Hunter reminded himself, trying not to feel too sorry for Eliza Flyte. Maybe she had put something in those apples she’d set out for the horse. Hunter wanted to believe, but he couldn’t. He’d seen too much violence in the animal. Letting her toy with him this way only postponed the inevitable.

“I can’t stay here any longer,” he informed her that evening. He stood on the porch; she was in the back, finishing with the cow. A cacophony of chirping frogs filled the gathering dark. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked, raising his voice.

“I heard you.”

“I have to go back to Albion,” he said. “I have responsibilities—”

“You do,” she agreed, coming around the side of the house with a bucket of milk. She walked so silently on bare feet, it amazed him. The women he knew made a great racket when they moved, what with their crinolines and hoop skirts brushing against everything in sight. And the women he knew talked. A lot. Most of the time Eliza Flyte was almost eerily quiet.

“Responsibilities at home,” he said. He had a strange urge to tell her more, to explain about his children, but he wouldn’t let himself. She disliked and distrusted him enough as it was. And he didn’t know what the hell to think of her.

“And to that horse you brought across a whole ocean,” she reminded him. “He didn’t ask for that, you know.”

“I never intended to stay this long. I swear,” he said in annoyance. “I can’t seem to get through to you, can I?” The craving for a drink of whiskey prickled him, making him pace in agitation and rake a splayed hand through his hair. “The damn horse is ruined. You’ve managed to get close to him a time or two, but that’s a far cry from turning him into something a person could actually ride.”

She set down the milk bucket. “We’ve barely begun. That horse is likely to be on the offense a good while. His wounds need to heal. He has to regain his strength and confidence. He has to learn to trust again, and that takes time.”

“Give it up, Eliza—”

“You brought him here because you thought there was something worth saving,” she said passionately.

“That was before I realized it’s hopeless.”

“I never said it wouldn’t be a struggle.”

“I don’t have time to stand by while you lose a struggle.”

“Fine.” She picked up the bucket and climbed the steps, pushing the kitchen door open with her hip. “Then watch me win.”

“Right.”

Yet he found himself constantly intrigued by everything about her. He felt torn, but only for a moment. Nancy and Willa looked after the children, and the Beaumonts’ schoolmaster at neighboring Bonterre saw to their lessons. Blue and Belinda wouldn’t miss their father if he stayed away for days or even weeks. The truth of the thought revived his thirst for whiskey. His own children hardly knew him. It scared them when he drank, and he often woke up vowing he wouldn’t touch another drop, but the thirst always got the better of him. Maybe it was best for them if he was gone for a while.

“I’ll strike a bargain with you,” he said to Eliza through the half-open door. “You get a halter on that horse without getting yourself killed, and I’ll stay for as long as it takes.”

The stallion greeted Eliza with savage fury. On the long stretch of beach that had become their battleground, he stood with his mouth open and his teeth bared. He flicked his ears and tail and tossed his head.

She fixed a stare on him and forbade herself to feel disheartened by the horse’s violence and distrust. Patience, she kept telling herself hour after hour. Patience.

The horse shrieked out a whinny and reared up. The sound of its shrill voice touched her spine with ice. She treated him with disdain, turning and walking away as if she did not care whether or not he followed. Perhaps it was the storm last night and the lingering thunder of a higher-than-usual surf, but the stallion behaved with fury today. He snorted, then plunged at her, and it took all her self-control to stand idly on the sand rather than run for cover.

She flicked the rope out. The horse flattened his ears to his head, distended his nostrils, rolled his eyes. Eliza stood firm. The stallion pawed the sand, kicking up a storm beneath his hooves. Yet even as he threatened her, even as the fear crowded in between them, she felt his indomitable spirit and knew one day she would reach him.

But not today, she thought exhaustedly after hours of trying to keep and hold his attention and trust. His whinny was more piercing than ever, and when thunder rolled and he shot away like a stone from a sling, she stood bereft, defeated, fighting the doubts that plagued her.

Taming the stallion became the most important thing in Eliza’s life. She tried not to examine her reasons for this, but they were pitifully clear, probably to Hunter Calhoun as well as in her own mind. It was not just Calhoun’s challenge, and her need to win the bargain they had struck, to make him stay and see this through. Nor was it any sort of softhearted nature on her part. No, her primary reason for dedicating herself to the violent, wounded horse was to bring herself closer to her father.

For some time now, she had been losing him by inches. Her father, whom she had adored with all that she was, kept slipping farther and farther away from her, and she didn’t know how to get him back. One day she would realize she had forgotten what his voice sounded like when he said “good morning” to her. Then she would realize she had forgotten what his hands looked like. And the expression on his face when he told her a story, and the song he used to sing when he chopped wood for the stove. Each time a precious memory eluded her, she felt his death all over again.

Yet when she worked with the horse, she felt Henry Flyte surround her, as if his hand guided her hand, his voice whispered in her ear and his spirit soared with her own.

So when the horse broke from her, pawed the ground with crazed savagery and ran until he foamed at the mouth, she wouldn’t let herself get discouraged. The stallion was a gift in disguise, brought by a stranger. The gift from her father was more subtle, but she felt it flow through her each time she locked stares with the horse.

Hunter wondered how much longer he should pretend he believed in her. He had stopped worrying that the stallion would murder her outright. So long as he wasn’t confined or restrained, Finn didn’t seem to go on the attack. As hard as Eliza worked with him, however, she seemed no closer to penning him than she had that first day.

Yet she went on tirelessly, certain he would become hers to command. Hunter decided to give her just a little more time, a day or two perhaps, then return to Albion. To pass the time, he did some work around the place, repairing the pen where she swore they would train the horse once she haltered him. The mindless labor of hammering away at a damaged rail was oddly soothing—until he accidentally hammered his thumb.

Words he didn’t even realize he knew poured from him in a stream of obscenity. He clapped his maimed hand between his thighs and felt the agony radiate to every nerve ending.

Eliza chose that precise moment to see what he was doing. Caliban—as ugly a dog as Hunter had ever seen—leaped and cavorted along the sandy path beside her.

“Hit yourself?” she asked simply.

Her attitude infuriated him. “I hammered my thumb. I think it’s broken. That should make you happy.”

“No, because if it’s broken or gets infected, you won’t be able to work. Come with me.”

He started to say that he didn’t plan to stay and work here any longer, but she had already turned from him. She led the way to the big cistern near the house and extracted a bucketful of fresh water. The big dog sat back on his haunches, the intensity of his attention seeming almost human.

“Ow,” Hunter said when she plunged his hand into the bucket. “Damn, that stings.”

“I know. It’ll be even worse with the lye soap.”

“Hey—damn it to hell, Eliza.”

Caliban growled a warning. Clearly he didn’t like Hunter’s threatening tone to his mistress.

She showed no sympathy whatsoever as she applied a grayish, irregular cake of soap to the cut thumb, then worked the joint to prove to him it wasn’t broken. Ignoring the curses that streamed out from between his clenched teeth, she fetched a tin of wormwood liniment and rubbed it into the wound. He noticed her staring at the wedding band he had never bothered to discard, but she said nothing. The ointment soothed his fiery, raw flesh, and as she wrapped his thumb in a strip of clean cloth, he grew quiet.

She regarded him through eyelashes that were remarkably long and thick. “You’ve stopped swearing. I suppose this means you’re feeling better.”

“Might mean I’m about to pass out from your tender care,” he said mockingly. The truth was, he caught himself enjoying the sensation of her small hand rubbing the herbal liniment on him. Though impersonal, her touch was gentle and caring, undemanding.

She glared at him. “It wasn’t my fault you pounded your thumb.”

“I wouldn’t have been pounding if you hadn’t insisted on fixing up your pen.”

“I wouldn’t need the pen fixed if you hadn’t brought me that horse.”

“I—” He yanked his hand away from hers. “All right. So it’s all my fault.” Despite his amusement at sparring with her, he grew serious. “Eliza, we have to end this.”

“End what?”

“The pretending. That horse isn’t going to get any better.”

Something flickered in her eyes—fear, rage, distrust—something that reminded him eerily of the stallion.

“You’re wrong,” she said in a low, angry voice. She stepped back, wiping her hands on her apron. “Come with me. Maybe you’ll understand better when I show you.”

Motioning for the dog to stay back, she led Hunter on a hike northward, perhaps two miles along a narrow, sandy track that wound along the edge of the loblolly pine forest and skirted the dunes. After they crossed a low, marshy area, Hunter noticed hoofprints and droppings on the path and in some of the thickets they passed.

“Stay very quiet,” Eliza said, leading him around a curve in the path. “They’re not terribly shy, but they are wild.”

“The ponies, you mean.”

She nodded. “Let’s climb that dune there. Be very quiet.”

He found himself lying, belly down, next to her on the slope of a dune. The spiky reeds framed a view of a broad saltwater marsh crammed with tender green shoots of cordgrass. A herd of about eighteen large ponies grazed in the distance while starlings and sparrows perched on their backs and pecked insects from their hides.

Hunter had seen herds before. But the sight of the island horses, wild and free, moved him. It was a scene he knew he’d hold in his heart for all his days—the placid animals with their heads bent to their grazing, the salt-misted air soft around them, the white-winged gulls wheeling overhead. He glanced over at Eliza and saw that a similar wonder had suffused her face. That was her charm, he realized. Her sense of wonder, her different way of looking at things. He suddenly wished he could see the world through her eyes.

“Where did they come from?” he asked.

“My father brought a herd down, one animal at a time, from Assateague.”

“I wonder how they got there.”

“Pirates, some say. Others think they’re descended from horses turned out to graze by settlers on the mainland. My father believed they’re descended from a shipwrecked load of Spanish ponies. They were being sent to Panama to work in the mines, and every last one of them had been purposely blinded.” She made a face. “So they wouldn’t panic when they were lowered into the mines. Those that survived the wreck swam ashore and turned wild.”

They listened for a while to the deep rhythm of the sea and the wind through the pine forest behind them. He felt surprisingly comfortable, lying in the dunes beside Eliza Flyte. It was something he wished he could do with his children—simply lie still in the sand, in the late afternoon, and watch a herd of horses. He hadn’t done anything of the sort with his children, not in a very long time. Maybe not ever.

“Now watch,” Eliza whispered. “That big shaggy gray is the stallion, and you’ll be able to recognize the mares by the way they behave. See that yearling there, the little bay? He’ll ask the mare for a grooming.”

She turned out to be right. The younger horse approached the mare obliquely, head down, mouth open. The mare rebuffed him, laying back her ears. He persisted even when she reared up and threatened to bite, and after a time she accepted him, nibbling at his head, mane and neck. The exchange was remarkably similar to the interplay Hunter had seen on the beach between Eliza and the stallion.

“Funny how he keeps after her even when she’s ignoring him. I reckon I’ve met a few Virginia belles who must’ve gone to the same finishing school as that mare.”

She propped her chin in her hand. “What are they like—Virginia belles?”

He thought for a moment, remembering the endless dancing lessons he had endured as a boy, the stiff and awkward society balls and the tedious conversation that had droned on and on when the belles went on their annual husband hunt. “Like that mare,” he said simply. “Bossy, fussy about grooming, and fascinating to youngsters and males.”

She blew out an exasperated breath, scattering grains of sand. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

He fell silent and watched the herd for a while. Then he reached out and skimmed his finger along Eliza Flyte’s cheek in a slow, sensual caress. It felt even smoother than it looked.

She smacked his hand away and whispered, “What are you doing?”

“If I keep after you,” he said in a teasing voice, “will you eventually give in?”

“I’ll eventually box your ears.” Yet despite the threat, merriment danced in her eyes, and—wonder of wonders—she was blushing.

They watched the herd until the sun lay low across the island, plunging toward the bay in the west. Eliza stood and brushed herself off. Some of the ponies looked up, but settled back to their grazing or resting when she and Hunter started along the path. About halfway to the house, she turned into a thicket bordered by holly and red cedar.

There in the middle of the clearing stood a weathered gray stump. Carved on the trunk was the name Henry Flyte, d. 1853, and, encased in sealed glass, a painstakingly copied verse Hunter recognized from The Tempest:

“Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.”

The image of Eliza Flyte, giving her father a solitary burial and marking the grave with the weird and beautiful verse, tore at his heart. The peaceful wonder of the afternoon had gone. “You should leave this place,” he said. “Make a new life somewhere else.”

She made her way back to the path. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I have riches beyond compare, here on this island.”

“And you’re content to live here for all of your days.”

Just for a moment, a secretive look flashed in her eyes. “I—yes,” she said hastily. “Why would I want anything else?”

“Because you’re human,” he said, speaking sharply. He wasn’t certain why she made him angry, but she did. “You don’t belong with a herd of horses. You belong with other people.”

“People like you?” She sent him an insolent, sidelong glance.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“I might just choke on all that Virginia charm,” she retorted, flipping her plaited hair with a toss of her head.

She made him want to stay long after common sense told him it was time to leave. Hunter watched the struggle between Eliza and the stallion with a mixture of admiration and hopelessness. There was something to be said for being stubborn enough not to give up, but how long should he let her keep denying the truth? The difficult battle of wills might go on for weeks, months, maybe even longer.

Enough was enough, he decided two days later. It was time to end the charade. He found Eliza and Finn easily enough. All he had to do was follow the stallion’s piercing, bloodcurdling scream.

They were on the long south beach, the one shadowed by the tallest dunes. Hunter was not surprised to see the horse up on his hind legs, his open mouth working furiously. Below him, Eliza looked helpless, yet curiously unafraid.

The stallion’s front hooves raked the air. Then he came crashing down mere yards from the woman. Up he went again, and down. Hunter imagined he could feel the ground shaking. A tight, nervous fear clutched his chest, but he told himself he’d only infuriate them both if he interfered. Though Eliza had made no progress with the horse, she had convinced Hunter that Finn would not hurt her.

The tantrum continued for a few more moments. Hunter waited on the dune until it subsided. Then the stallion planted his front hooves in the sand, and the woman reached out and touched him. The silent, familiar ritual gave the false impression that the horse was hers to command. But when she looped her soft rope over his head, he exploded again. He shook his head like a wet dog and started foaming at the mouth.

Eliza waited patiently, then started the ritual all over again. The crazed eyes of the stallion tracked her every move. The horse’s nostrils quivered and his muscles twitched. Yet after a while, Hunter realized the horse was standing his ground rather than going away. The next time Eliza put the rope around his neck, he pulled his head back but kept his feet firmly planted.

This was different, Hunter realized, lowering himself to the sand and forgetting his purpose. Something was changing, even as he watched. The stallion clearly didn’t like the rope, but the woman had somehow convinced him to bear it.

She went to his side, touched him gently along his neck and cheek. The horse stood frozen, alert but not alarmed. Eliza put the halter where the rope had been. She loosely placed it around his neck. Finn trembled, then broke away in a sweeping, athletic feint.

Hunter’s hopes plummeted. Enough, he thought, getting up.

But then the horse stopped and turned back toward Eliza. As if she had bade him, he walked to her and stood placidly while she touched him all over, head and neck and sides and flanks. His chestnut hide quivered beneath her small, questing hand, and he kept his bright stare fixed somewhere out beyond the waves. But he let her slide the halter over his muzzle and ears.

Then she tugged on the rope. The horse snorted and snapped his back, kicking up sand. Eliza let go and waited for him to calm down. He made a rumbling sound in his throat and dropped his head. She picked up the rope and positioned herself in front of him.

The horse gave a deep sigh, dipping his head in relief and surrender. The air between horse and girl seemed to tingle with electricity, yet the tension had a different quality now. Like a wave of wind through the marsh grass, an ineffable softening came over Finn’s body; he was visibly giving himself over to Eliza. This time when she started to walk, the stallion gave a nod of his noble head and followed. Hunter stood aside to let them pass. He knew he would never forget the sight of the black-haired girl leading the huge stallion along the path to the burned-out barn and paddock.

By magic, Finn had been transformed from savage to docile.

No. Not by magic. The girl had done it. The stallion’s madness had been cooled by the horsemaster’s daughter.

Eliza’s back and shoulders ached, but she felt warm all over with pleasure in the work she had done. Leading the stallion to the round pen, she felt a rare and welcome lifting of the spirit. It was a good feeling, clean and pure, that rose and spread through her. She had found a way to understand this horse, had managed in some small part to penetrate the scrambled rage inside the confused animal’s head.

Like all of his breed, he was not made to be alone. He was a social animal, born to live in a herd. Instinct had driven him to seek out her company. She had simply opened the door, and he had stepped through.

She entered the pen, noting that the stallion’s withers tensed when they passed the wooden slats. The voyage across the sea had involved a pen, and that structure was part of Sir Finnegan’s fright and confusion.

She had no recollection of the one time she had voyaged across the sea. According to her father, she had been only weeks old, and nursed by a Danish woman en route to Maryland. Her father spoke little of the past. Secrets lurked there, she knew, and if Henry Flyte had kept them in his heart, he had had his reasons. She just wished he had told her about her mother before he died.

In the middle of the pen, the stallion flicked his ears in nervousness. Though he stood still, he swung his head from side to side occasionally. He had come a long way from the fearful animal on the scow, though.

“Well done, Miz Flyte,” said a low masculine voice. Hunter Calhoun stood outside the pen, watching her and the stallion.

She felt his approval like the warmth of the sun, and it meant so much to her. She’d had no idea that she was so hungry for this…connection. For months she had lived alone in the wilderness, content with her animals and books, never thinking she needed anything more. Yet the way Calhoun made her feel, with his words and the soft look in his eyes, made her realize how desperately lonely she had become.

She wondered if he could tell she was blushing. “Still intent on shooting him?” she asked in a teasing voice.

He walked into the round pen, latching the gate behind him. But instead of going directly to the horse, he walked over to Eliza. She was unprepared for what he did next. He reached out with great strong arms and grabbed her by the shoulders. His fierce embrace held not warmth, but intensity and desperation.

“I didn’t want to shoot that horse,” he whispered into her hair. “I surely didn’t.”

Frozen by amazement, Eliza simply stood there in his embrace. The stallion ignored them both, tugging indolently at a tuft of grass. Eliza’s eyes drifted half shut, and just for a moment she thought of nothing at all. She merely let her senses turn on, much as a wild animal’s do, taking in the essence of this creature holding her so tightly. The finely woven linen of his shirt felt cool and smooth against her cheek. The fabric smelled lightly salty from the sea air. His hair, long enough to brush his collar, held the clear golden color of the sun. And his skin was scented with a strangely evocative combination of sweat and salt.

His hand moved. Slowly, feeling its way, it skimmed upward over her back so that his fingers found the nape of her neck and pressed there. She felt almost compelled to tip back her head, baring her throat, completely vulnerable to him. Soft heat swirled through her, and she felt such a terrible wanting that it frightened her. Summoning all her self-control, she resisted the warm pulse of her body’s needs and shoved him away.

“I told you I could help this horse,” she said.

He took a step back. “I didn’t believe you could break him, until I saw it with my own eyes.”

She drew herself up, disliking his choice of words. “My father called it ‘gentling.’ Breaking a horse is a savage, dangerous practice.” She watched Finn with a welling of pure affection. “It was a matter of gaining Finn’s trust. He has no idea what patience and dignity and respect are, but he needs them just the same. A horse doesn’t lie, Mr. Calhoun. Not ever.”

“Humans lie all the time.” He leaned back against the fence. Across the circle, the big chestnut horse browsed in a clump of clover. “Finn could have gone anywhere on this island,” he said at length. “And the only place he wanted to be was with you.”

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not black magic,” she said testily. She gestured toward a lean-to at the end of the paddock. “There’s a scythe in that toolshed over there. You can get started on the bigger pen. It’s best to have you working nearby so he can learn who his owner is. You need to clear that field, and later see about fixing that lower fence rail. It’s almost rotted through.”

He fixed her with a narrow-eyed stare, his earlier gratitude gone. “I don’t take orders.”

“I didn’t think you would. You probably aren’t even used to doing work.”

The blisters on Hunter’s hands rose before noon, and burst before one. The sun burned through the clouds and beat like a hammer of fire on his bare head as he worked. He was no stranger to this sort of labor. He had wanted to tell her that. But she wouldn’t have believed him, for she considered him a lazy planter who amused himself by racing horses. Or a bungler who maimed himself with a hammer. Best to show her who he truly was. She seemed the sort of woman who believed her eyes more readily than her ears.

From the corner of his eye, he watched the stallion in the adjoining pen. The animal stood calmly in the shade. She had put soft leather hobbles around his forelegs, and he tolerated them as he had the halter.

Hunter tried not to wonder where Eliza had gone and what she was doing. But it was all he could think about. She had amazed him. In a world that held very few surprises, she had surprised him. Her bond with the horse seemed so natural. Hunter had watched with his own eyes as the barrier separating human from horse had melted away. He had seen, between girl and stallion, a touch so intimate that it was like the touch between two lovers.

Why did her manner with the horse make her so attractive to him? Hunter pondered the question as he worked, heaving scythed plants up and over the rail, his movements as methodical and regulated as a tobacco worker’s. It left his mind free to think about Eliza Flyte.

With no sense of vanity or even gratitude, Hunter knew he had loved some of the most extraordinary belles in Virginia, so a barefoot island girl should not stand out in the pantheon. Yet in her own way, Eliza Flyte was extraordinary too. She was not pretty, but clear-eyed and dark-haired in a way that commanded attention. She wasn’t charming. Raised by a mysterious man in the middle of nowhere, she lacked the refinements of a well-brought-up lady. She dressed poorly and spoke oddly, and yet she was the most compelling woman he had ever met. There was something about her that he recognized. Suddenly, a part of him emerged that he had never been able to bring out before. Her freshness felt brand new, made him feel brand new.

In the years after returning home from the University of Virginia, Hunter had been treated to a variety of women. As the elder son of the master of Albion, he had regularly reviewed a bright parade of eligible ladies all vying for his favor. Some of them were willing to do more than flirt. Some of them were prettier than a girl had a right to be—particularly Lacey Beaumont.

Fair-haired and merry-eyed, she had captured his heart and held it for longer than he should have let her. Long enough for him to convince himself that the match—arranged years before by their parents—was founded on love and trust, and that their vows actually meant something.

Disaster was the crucible that melted their marriage. Lacey had taught him the painful lesson that even the brightest love could not transform the world. Perhaps a deeper love would have held them together through the years of struggle after Albion had failed. Perhaps not. Hunter would never know. What he had begun to suspect, as time marched on and his heart grew icy and hard, was that true love was an illusion. A hoax made up by poets and dreamers.

Out here, on this wind-torn island where breakers crashed and willets wheeled, he seemed far from all the intrigue and entanglements of the past. He found that he liked being out here, on the edge of everything, where earth and sea and sky met and the lines blurred. The hugeness of the sea put his own world into perspective. Perhaps that was the appeal of the island. Perhaps that was why Eliza Flyte stayed here, her back squarely turned on the world.