The Horsemaster's Daughter. Сьюзен Виггс
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her visitor, she felt overly conscious of her bare feet and the ankle-length smock brushing against the backs of her legs. What on earth was she doing, bringing this stranger into her house? She should have left him at the shore, or better yet, driven him off entirely.
She stole a glance at him, and the large, looming shadow behind her did little to allay her fears. She had seen the worst men could do, and now this stranger was upon her. How could she be certain he wouldn’t turn feral on her?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.
“Because I don’t trust you,” she blurted out.
He laughed. “Woman, I don’t blame you a bit. I haven’t done a damned thing to earn your trust. But remember, you haven’t earned mine either.”
Affronted, she opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand. “You claim you’re my only hope of helping the stallion. I’ve yet to see it. All you need to know right now is that I’ve got no possible interest in harming you.”
She quelled a shudder of fear, then raised the lamp and showed the way inside. Neatness was her natural inclination, but somehow the painstaking order of the house seemed to add to its air of empty poverty. For a wild moment, she wished for a room full of abundant clutter, the way it had been when her father was alive. Since his death, she had brought a sterile order to the house, lining the precious few books up on the shelves, the wild cherry and muscadine grape syrups and beach-plum preserves in a neat row of jars in the kitchen, the bins of supplies carefully closed and stowed.
Her hand quavered as she hung the betty on a peg and turned to face her guest. Hunter Calhoun’s presence seemed to fill the austere keeping room and kitchen to overflowing. She studied him by lamplight and could well imagine him the master of a place with the grand name of Albion, ordering slaves about and sipping mint juleps while his Negro grooms and jockeys spurred and whipped his racehorses into submission.
Pinching her mouth into a pucker of disapproval, she turned away. “I’ll find you something dry to put on.” Without waiting for a reply, she went to the old sea crate containing her father’s belongings. The scent of him lingered there as if woven into the very fibers of the fabric: cedar and soap and a faint lovely essence that had no name—it was unique to her father. She told herself she should be used to the elusive fragrance by now. She should be prepared for all the memories that rushed over her when she caught that fine, evocative scent, but as always, it took her unawares. Tears scorched her throat and her eyes, but she conquered them, breathing deep and slow until the crippling wave of grief passed.
She rummaged in the trunk, shifting the contents. Her father had owned the silk breeches and blouses of a professional racing jockey, though now the clothes were outdated by decades. On the island he had worn a workingman’s garb, and she never remembered him any other way. Her hand brushed a parchment-wrapped parcel. Only once had he shown her the contents. It was the yellow silk jacket he had worn when he’d ridden Lord Derby’s stallion, Aleazar, to victory in the most important race in England, so long ago.
“That was the night you were made,” he had once said.
She shut her eyes, remembering his pride as he’d told her of the race. He had always promised to tell her more about her mother, and why, bearing his infant daughter in his arms, he had suddenly taken ship for America. But he had died before the tale could be told.
Darting a glance over her shoulder at Hunter Calhoun, she drew her mind away from memories. She had a stranger in the house, and it wouldn’t do to turn her back on him until she discovered just what he was about. With brisk, decisive movements, she selected a pair of brown homespun trousers and a white shirt. Closing the lid of the trunk, she shoved the clothing at her guest. “Here,” she said. “You can put these on and hang your own things out to dry on the porch.”
“Much obliged.” He took the clothes, then stood waiting.
When she made no move, he did, bending slightly forward and peeling off his wet shirt. His damp chest was broad and deep, gleaming in the lamplight. When Eliza saw it, she experienced a peculiar knot of sensation low in her belly. Embarrassed, she realized that if she didn’t turn away, he would simply undress right in front of her.
“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