The Horsemaster's Daughter (52 page)

E
liza suspected Hunter was thinking about what she had said about the children, but he pretended the conversation had never taken place. Fine, she thought. In due time, she would get her way. Though she had little experience with children, she knew about loss and remembrance and things that go unspoken. She knew she could reach them.

Already they followed her everywhere like twin shadows, slipping along arbor paths in the garden or through the reeds at the water’s edge. She loved the wonder in their faces when she pointed out the ring in the water where a fish surfaced, the zigzag path of a honeybee going from blossom to blossom, the rise of a loon out of the reeds and into the clouds over the bay. She loved the way they were startled and impressed by the things of nature, and the way they threw themselves into new experiences with total exuberance.

One day they were standing at the edge of the dock, looking out at the water on an overcast morning. A pastel-colored mist fused the sea and sky, creating in them a drifting sensation, as if they had floated away from the rest of the world.

“Look at that ship!” Belinda cried, pointing to the deepwater lanes far out in the bay. The boat appeared translucent, insubstantial, as if it wasn’t real. “It’s a lateen-rigged bark, just like Uncle Ryan’s ship.” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Uncle Ryan! Come back!”

Eliza stroked the little girl’s soft hair. It wasn’t Ryan Calhoun. His ship flew a bright red topsail. And she knew why. She felt a shudder of apprehension when she pictured Captain Calhoun, sweeping in like an avenging angel to rescue a fugitive slave. If it weren’t for the feud between abolitionists and slave-catchers, her father would still be alive, she thought bitterly. But no, she mustn’t resent the abolitionists. The blame lay with the system of slavery, not those who defied it.

“I don’t think that’s your uncle’s ship,” she said. “And it’s too far away. They can’t hear you.”

The three of them stood on the dock, watching the boat sail toward the misty horizon. Then it disappeared gradually, growing more and more faint, like a ghost fading from the light.

“I always worry when a ship goes,” Belinda said. “If I can’t see it anymore, how do I know it’s still there?”

Eliza smiled, but the child was in earnest. She sat down on the edge of the dock, patting the planks so the children would sit down too. “I’ll tell you how you know,” she said. “Because when it leaves our view, someone else on the opposite shore can see it eventually. So even though it’s out of your sight, it’s in someone else’s.”

“Really?”

“I promise. If I were on Flyte Island right now, I would probably see that bark. And when I couldn’t see it anymore, I’d know someone on another shore could.”

Belinda plucked a daisy and started dropping petals, one by one, into the water. Blue stared at the horizon, clearly preoccupied with the departing ship. After a time, the morning mist burned off, giving way to the sharp clarity of a summer afternoon.

An idea nagged at Eliza, but she heard loud whinnying from the barn and stood up. “We’d best be going. Willa had the idea of planting flowers at the racetrack to make it look nice for all the guests who come to the race. Would you like to help?”

“Yes!” Belinda jumped up. Blue did too, even faster, and ran along the sandy track that bordered the streambed and the beach. He loved the horses, Eliza realized. Loving something was the key to healing. She kept watching the boy, looking for a sign. The way he had stared at the departing ship filled her mind. She went and fetched the wheelbarrow full of rosebushes Willa had dug from the garden, and made her way to the mile oval.

Noah and Hunter were working with the stallion. She could see instantly that Finn was balky and reluctant to enter the starting gate. After tossing his head sharply a few times, he sidled away to browse in desultory fashion in the grass that fringed the track.

Noah, seated high with his knees tucked in jockey position, looked at the sky as if asking for divine guidance. Hunter inspected the gate, pushing his fingers through his golden hair as he was wont to do when frustrated. He looked annoyingly good today, she thought, even though he had probably spent the previous night pursuing his favorite pastime of drinking. She couldn’t understand it. He nearly made himself sick with drink, yet the next day he could always get up and work like three men instead of one.

He wore fitted riding breeches and a plain shirt. As she watched, he took a dipper of water from a jug and drank it, letting the droplets sluice down the front of him. Then he peeled off the shirt and slung it over a fence rail. Eliza hoped the children hadn’t noticed her staring at their father’s bare chest, glistening with sweat. She hoped he hadn’t noticed how lonely she was for him.

“You can get started digging in the roses, right here at the entrance to the racetrack,” she said to Blue and Belinda. “A lot of important people will be coming to see the Thoroughbreds run, and we want to impress them.” She knew enough of the racing world to know that, to the gentry, appearances were everything.

She tried to compose herself as she approached Hunter. He barely glanced at her, but said, “He won’t take to the starting gate today.”

“What’s the matter?”

“We can get him to back in,” said Noah, “but he won’t come out.”

She walked slowly around the apparatus. Finn had proven himself tractable going in and out of stalls, and this was no exception. Noah was able to bring him into the gate. But then, when Hunter released the bar, the horse bridled and balked.

Eliza set her hands on her hips and studied the track. The long, straight sides of the oval had been beaten smooth. It appeared to be the ideal racing ground. A short distance to the east lay the beach, where waves broke on the shore and blue herons stood one-legged in the shallow surf. To the north, a fringe of green brier nodded and shimmered in the sea breeze. The meadows of Albion bordered the other two sides of the track. In the high rippling hills beyond, the white house gleamed, its flaws invisible from a distance.

The horse had never looked better. Under Noah’s constant care, he had gained weight and bulk and muscle. His coat was polished to a high sheen by constant grooming. But the flare of fear in his countenance troubled Eliza. As she watched, the fear intensified and the horse turned his head sharply to the side.

“Lead him out of the gate,” she said to Noah.

Then she went in and stood there, thinking hard.

“What are you doing?” Hunter asked.

She’d nearly forgotten he was there. “I’m trying to see what the horse sees.”

“But—”

“Hush. I need to concentrate.” Didn’t he know by now that he should trust her when it came to training a horse?

She felt the breeze in her hair and face, and smelled the salt-heavy air and the rotten-sweet aroma of wrack that washed up on the beach. Heard the shimmering chimes of the wind in the wax-myrtle trees. And saw a dead branch bobbing, bobbing, at the distant north end of the racetrack, preparing to drop off.

Looking at it, she laughed.

“What is it?” Impatience edged Hunter’s voice. He was anxious about the upcoming exhibition; she knew it. He wanted the stallion to perform, to make him proud, to bring legitimacy to Albion.

“Come with me,” she said, walking down the track. Hunter peppered her with questions, but she enjoyed keeping him in suspense.

When they reached the end of the track, she pointed at the precariously swaying branch of deadwood. Sun and wind had bleached the branch to the color of bone. Two dark knots, like malevolent eyes, marked the end of it. “We’ve got to get that down.”

“What for?”

“Because the horse is afraid of it.”

He snorted humorlessly. “That’s absurd.”

The wind caught at the pale, bare wood, causing it to nod ominously up and down. “See?” she said. “It looks like a—a snake, or a dragon, doesn’t it?”

“Looks like a dead tree.”

She glared at him. “Do you really want to question my judgment in this?” she demanded.

He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll fetch an ax. I’m going to have to hack through the brush to get to the dead tree.”

Over the next hour, he worked up a fine sweat, and when he emerged from the brush, his torso was raked by scratches. “There,” he said, gesturing at the place where the huge branch used to be. “I slew your dragon. Are you happy now?”

“That depends,” she said, trying not to laugh. But he did look comical, scratched and cranky and unkempt.

“On what?”

“On what the stallion thinks,” she said, then turned and went to plant flowers with the children.

She was right, of course, Hunter conceded. The dead tree must have looked alarming to the horse—surely one of the densest of all God’s creatures. If Finn had the wits of Eliza’s laying hens, he would be considered gifted. Once the offending object was removed, the stallion stood calmly in the starting gate. He lowered his head and distended his nostrils, blowing calmly into the dust.

Hunter and Noah exchanged a glance. “Ready?” he asked the boy.

Noah gave a brief nod.

Hunter shoved back the barrier.

If he had blinked, he would have missed it. But he didn’t. The stallion shot out faster than a stone from a sling. Hunter had never seen any start so swift, and the promise didn’t end there. The stallion thundered hell for leather around the track, his great body stretching to its limit, his head focused and determined with the single-minded absorption of a true champion. The savagery that had made him so difficult had been transformed into pure energy on the track.

Hunter didn’t have to check the timing in order to know that he’d never seen a horse run faster. He tilted his face to the sky and shut his eyes tight, feeling elation rise like the sun, warming him with rare shimmers of hope. Could it be that finally his fortunes were turning?

The slowing tempo of hoofbeats alerted him that the run was finished. Noah would have to walk the stallion now to cool him down. Behind him, Hunter heard a familiar low whistle. He was already smiling when he turned.

“Did you see?” he asked.

His cousin Charles strode across the yard toward him, hands outstretched in an expression of wonder. “Lord Almighty, I saw. Can’t believe my eyes.”

“Believe, cousin. It’s the Irish Thoroughbred I wrote you about. It’s going to race in the exhibition run before the yearling auction.”

“This is the horse that went mad?”

“The very one.”

“What happened to you?” Charles asked, eyeing him up and down. “Have you been in a fight?”

Hunter picked up his discarded shirt and dabbed at the stinging scratches on his chest, shoulders and back. “Not in the way you think,” he said, putting on the shirt. Ever since his confrontation with Eliza after the picnic, they had been locked in a battle of wills. She claimed the children needed to reminisce about their mother, to weep over her picture and grieve for her. He couldn’t make Eliza understand that they had all been grieving for two years. No good could come of probing deeper into the wounds. The best solution for all concerned was for him to settle on a new wife and concentrate on Albion. That was the only way to get on with their lives.

He shook off the thought. His cousin’s visit provided a welcome distraction.

Charles Calhoun’s green eyes glittered merrily. He lived in Richmond, where his father used to manage the business end of the tobacco trade. One day, about seventeen years back, Charles’s father had simply got up and left. Charles had been just thirteen at the time, confused and frightened by the sudden abandonment. His mother had taken to her bed that day and hadn’t been the same since. Like a young Odysseus, Charles had stalked his father, tracking him westward into the misty wooded hills of the Blue Ridge.

He’d found his father in the arms of a Shawnee Indian woman. They lived in a cabin with a new baby and too many dogs, and his father had been too drunk to recognize the sallow-faced young man with the straggling new beard as his first-born son. Charles had returned home to Richmond, reporting to his mother that his father was dead. Then, in accordance with family tradition, he had taken his first drink of whiskey and hadn’t stopped until he was wildly drunk. That night he had begun a love affair with his mother’s maidservant, and less than a year later the girl died giving birth to Noah.

It was no rare thing for a man of the south to have fathered a mulatto child. The relationship was no secret, particularly if that child turned out to be as handsome as Noah was, and had a special talent, as Noah did with horses. Hunter supposed it was no great matter in Charles’s mind, but Charles had always been fond of parties and socializing and wasn’t given to searching his soul. He never wondered if there was something he should be doing for this boy who had been born into the world because of him.

The matter wasn’t for Hunter to decide. Lord knew, he had a hard enough time being father to his own legitimate son. Charles was not a bad person, but a careless one, raised as he was in a climate of infidelity. Years ago, he and Hunter had vied good-naturedly for Lacey’s hand in marriage, and Charles had cheerfully backed off when she favored Hunter.

“Cousin Charles!” Belinda shrieked with delight. Dropping her trowel, the little girl came tumbling pell-mell across the yard, Blue at her heels. The two of them rammed smack into Charles, who staggered back with exaggerated surprise, laughing and hugging them. They adored him, because he laughed easily and sang songs and never told them no. Hunter looked on proudly, thinking how beautiful his children were. Belinda was as fair and pale as the dawn, and Blue had his mother’s dramatic intensity. Like Lacey, he was keen-eyed and driven, filled with secrets.

“Look at you,” Charles said, holding them at arm’s length. “Blue, you’re getting taller than a bean stalk, and I swear, Miss Belinda, you’re even prettier than your own mama.”

“Was she?” Belinda leaped on the comment. “Was she pretty?”

“Don’t pester your cousin,” Hunter warned. He felt Eliza’s silent censure, but ignored it.

“They’re not pestering me,” Charles said. He chucked Belinda under the chin. “Your mama was just about the prettiest thing in Virginia, honey, and now that honor belongs to you. And who is this?” he asked, focusing a sharp interest on Eliza.