The Horsemaster's Daughter (60 page)

L
eaving wasn’t so hard, Eliza reflected as she slowly awakened to face her final day at Albion. People did it all the time.

She blinked at the slant of light through the window. She could tell it was still morning by the position of the sun. Tucking her knees up under her chin, she tried to put some order to her thoughts, but it was no use. How could she think when her heart was breaking?

“Get up, get up,” sang Blue, bounding into the sun-flooded room. “Don’t sleep the day away.”

She blinked and rubbed her stinging eyes, and couldn’t help smiling at the two moppets who had climbed onto her bed. “I suppose you’ll make sure of that,” she said.

“Aye aye, sir.” Blue stood on the mattress, grasping the bedpost like the shroud of a sail and peering out the window. Out in the yard below, Albion was a hive of activity, with guests leaving and horse buyers arranging transport. The landing at the end of the dock was crammed with yachts and steamers. Beneath loads of luggage, servants staggered between the house and the carriages.

“Another storm’s coming,” Blue announced dramatically.

“A storm, a storm,” Belinda shrieked, falling unquestioningly into the familiar fantasy.

Watching the children, Eliza fought tears. She’d known true happiness with this damaged, love-hungry family, but now her time here was over. Blue halted in his play, as if sensing the downward shift of her mood. “What’s the matter?” he asked quietly.

Belinda held still too, waiting for the answer.

“I…” Eliza looked helplessly from one eager, anxious face to the other. She took a deep breath and began again. “I’m feeling a little sad today.”

“You’ll make it better,” Blue said earnestly. “You always do.”

“No,
you’ll
make it better,” she said. “Come here, you two.” She held out her arms.

They dove into her embrace, one child on each side, snuggling against her chest. How dear they were, warm as puppies, loving her with complete abandon. The woman Hunter eventually chose to be his wife would be lucky indeed. After yesterday’s revelations, he might swear off women for a good long while, but he would get over his disillusionment one day.

He’d left Lacey’s room in a rage last night. She’d heard him in the stables, and by the light of a three-quarter moon she’d seen him riding off to the high meadows in his elegant evening clothes. Eventually, he’d have to make his own explanations to the children.

“I need you to help me today,” she said with a cheeriness she didn’t feel.

“Help you do what?”

“Pack my things.”

Blue caught on first, pulling back to eye her suspiciously. “What for?”

“For a trip.”

“Where’re we going?” Belinda asked. “Are we taking the mail packet?”

Blue shushed her and turned on Eliza. “You’re leaving us, aren’t you? You’re going to California.”

She smiled, loving this angry, beautiful child. “I am, Blue. I’m going off on a very long trip.”

“No!” Belinda burst out. Her eyes filled with tears. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t,” she wailed. “You have to stay with us.”

Eliza struggled to hold on to her composure through the storm of Blue’s anger and Belinda’s grief. When she got them to calm down, she said, “Remember what I said when I first came here? I said I could only stay a while.” She caressed Belinda’s soft curls, twirling one around her finger. “Everything is so much better now. You are both such wonderful, remarkable children. My work here is done.”

“Is that what we were?” Blue demanded. “Work? Like the stallion?”

His insights, for one so young, always amazed her. She could understand why he would think that. She had trained a mad horse and sent him off with Noah when he was calm again. She helped the children with their grief—now they assumed she would walk away from them as well.

And they were right. They were absolutely right.

Perhaps it was some flaw in her makeup, but it was the only way she knew how to live her life. Everything was short term. The world in which she had grown up had changed with the seasons, altered with the storms. Restless waves consumed the shifting dunes of Flyte Island. Nothing was permanent. Experience had taught her how to survive.

But not how to stay.

“Let me tell you something about the stallion,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “He will always be with me, no matter where I go. In my heart and in my mind, I’ll keep him safe and sound. It’s the same with the two of you, only my feelings are much, much stronger. I feel such an incredible love for you that it doesn’t matter how far away I go. Part of me will always be with you.”

They didn’t believe her. She could tell by Belinda’s trembling chin and Blue’s fierce scowl. “You’ll be gone,” the boy said. “Not part of you—all of you. Gone.”

“When you’re older, you’ll understand. I’m like the ship that sails to a far-off shore. You can’t see me, but I’ll still be there. I’ll still love you.” She took each of their hands. “I’ll carry that love wherever I go.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” Belinda asked.

“You’ll be fine,” Eliza assured her.

“But what’s going to happen?” she persisted. “Are we going back to Bonterre for tutoring, or—”

“Not unless you want to. Your father has made a big success of Albion. If you like, you can have a tutor here. I imagine that, in time, your father might marry again.”

“No,” Belinda cried. “I don’t want him to marry anyone unless he marries you.”

The words hammered into her and they hurt. Because that was exactly what she had been thinking. But she was no seven-year-old expecting wishes to come true. She was a grown woman who’d had a taste of this world and discovered that she didn’t fit in, no matter how much she loved Hunter Calhoun.

“Sweetheart,” she said gently, “your papa needs someone who knows about being a wife and a mother. Not someone who knows about horses.”

“But you know everything,” Blue snapped. “Everything important.”

“That’s why it’s not a good idea for me to stay here any longer. It will just make leaving harder.” She threw back the covers and got out of bed. “Now, please. You have to help me make plans for all the animals I brought from the island.”

“Are you taking them with you?”

“Just Caliban.” Hearing his name, the big dog belly-crawled out from under the bed and thumped his tail on the floor.

“How come he gets to go?” Blue asked.

“Because he’s been mine since he was old enough to leave his mother, and I’ll get too lonely on my trip without him.”

“Won’t you be lonely without us and Papa?”

“Of course,” she said. “But I can’t take you with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have to stay here, at this wonderful farm your papa has made, and you have to live the life he’s given you.”

“I want to go to California with you,” Blue insisted.

“No, you don’t. You don’t want to leave Nancy and Willa and Noah and all the animals. You’ll write me letters, and maybe one day you’ll come to California and visit me.”

“And what will you be doing?”

Missing you. And missing your father more than food or air or life itself.

She bit her lip and went to the clothespress, choosing a day gown of plain muslin. Over their protests, which grew louder and louder, she put her things in a traveling trunk. There was so little she wanted to take with her—some items of clothing, her two books, the Spanish bride’s things. A feeling of incompleteness nagged at her. Something was missing, but she couldn’t decide what it was. When she shut the lid with a musty thud, the children sobbed openly.

Eliza wasn’t certain she could hold her own emotions in check, but for the sake of the children, she had to. “Come here.” She held out both hands. “Come and help me say goodbye to everyone.”

They found Nancy and Willa in the kitchen. Belinda wrenched free of Eliza to slam herself face-first into Nancy’s apron.

“She’s going away,” the little girl wailed. “Eliza is going to California!”

“I know, honey,” Nancy said, her unseeing eyes cast down. “I know. I reckon sooner or later everybody goes away.”

Eliza hugged them each in turn. “I’ll miss you,” she said, trying to memorize the old, wise faces of these two women. With quiet strength they had endured at Albion, faithful to Hunter even when he could barely afford to feed them.

Eliza took the children outside, into the heavy lush air of high summer. The perfume of magnolia and camellia rode the breeze, and magpies chattered high in the live oaks that lined the front drive.

She tried not to hold the children’s hands too tightly. Blue and Belinda had so much promise. She had to step out of the way so they could fulfill that promise. Her presence would only hold them back, and if she stayed until they got older, she knew the day would come when her mother’s background would be revealed. Right now, they were too young to feel the sting of gossip and censure, to know what the whispers and titters meant when friends and neighbors saw Eliza. She knew how it felt to be the outsider. She never wanted Blue or Belinda to feel that ostracism, ever. For their sakes, she had to leave.

And for the sake of her own heart, she admitted. Too much of it already belonged to the children, and far too much to their father. If she stayed any longer, there would be nothing left of her. Loving Hunter and his children would consume her entirely.

In the barn, she spent a quiet moment with Finn. The stallion nuzzled at her shoulder, and she stroked his neck thoughtfully. “That was quite a ride you took me on, Sir Finnegan,” she said, then turned to Noah. “Take care of him, Noah.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the youth said. “I surely will.”

Charles came out to the yard, his shirt askew, as if he had dressed in haste. “Is it true, then?” he asked. “You’re leaving.”

She nodded, hoping her composure would hold. “Off to California to find my fortune.”

“Some of us wish you could have found it here,” he said.

“Ah, Charles. You know better than that.”

Belinda’s chin started trembling anew.

Charles went down on one knee. “Guess what happened in the hayrick last night?” he asked, snaring the children’s attention.

“What? What?” Belinda broke away from Eliza and grabbed her uncle’s hand.

“A litter of kittens was born.”

“Really? Can we see? Can we?”

Bless you, Eliza thought. She needed him to do this, to create a distraction so she could say her goodbyes and not worry that they would grieve.

“The mama cat is very tame.” He stood up with a twinkle in his eye. “She’ll let you get very close.”

“Hurrah!”

Eliza held out her arms. “One last hug and a kiss,” she said.

They flew to her, nearly unbalancing her as they wrapped their arms around her. The unexpected strength of their embraces always startled her. A child’s love was fierce, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. There was no stronger force in the universe.

She tried to inhale the essence of them, their smell of sunshine and green grass and milky, childlike sweetness. Would she remember this smell? Would she always cry when she thought of it? Leaving them like this, she felt like the piping plover guarding her nest, wounding herself in order to save her brood.

“Goodbye, my sweet loves,” she whispered. “Be good, and write me lots of letters.”

They looked glum again, so she set them away from her. “You’d better get to the barn before the mama cat moves her litter.”

“Goodbye, Eliza,” Belinda said. “I love you.”

“I know, sweetheart. I love you too.”

The little girl ran across the lawn toward the barn. Blue broke away without saying anything. Eliza wanted to call out to him, to ask him to forgive her, to assure him that she wasn’t betraying him by leaving him. But he was so young, and it was time to let go. Charles opened his mouth to chastise the boy for rudeness, but Eliza shook her head, shushing him. Blue’s acceptance would come when he was ready, just as it had in the matter of his mother’s death.

She stood looking at Charles, and finally said, “Hunter found the letters.”

“Letters?”

“The ones you wrote to Lacey. She kept them all in a box, and yesterday he found them.”

His face went ashen. “He’ll kill me.”

“I don’t think so. But that is between the two of you. You’re both decent men. You both loved the same woman, and now she is gone. I have to believe you won’t let it destroy your friendship.” She looked over his shoulder at the busy dock. “I have to go.”

Charles took her in his arms, burying his face in her hair and then pulling back to kiss her square on the mouth. “Lordy, I’ve been wanting to do that for a damn long time,” he said.

“Aren’t you in enough trouble already?” she asked, pushing him away.

“Then a little more won’t matter. Did you like it?”

She laughed, her heart hurting. “I daresay half the county has dreamed of being kissed by you.”

“Did you like it enough to stay?”

“Ah, Charles. You know I can’t.”

He studied her hard. “You’re right. You’d have to become someone else entirely.”

“Either that, or we’d have to refashion society. Though somehow I can’t imagine Eudora Bondurant dancing barefoot.”

Their laughter was tinged with wistfulness. Charles glanced at Blue, who lingered in the yard. “Goodbye, sugar pie. Send us a letter from California.”

“I will.”

He joined Blue, taking the boy’s hand. She watched them growing smaller and smaller on the lawn as they walked away from her. Just before they turned on the path to the barn, Blue wrenched away from Charles and came racing back to her.

“Eliza,” he called. “Eliza, wait!”

He slammed into her and hugged her hard, harder even than before. “I thought if I didn’t say goodbye then it wouldn’t be real,” he sobbed into her skirts.

“Shush, darling,” she said, stroking his bright sun-warmed hair. “Shush now. You’ve said the sweetest goodbye of all, and now I can go and know you’ll be fine.”

He stepped back. “Eliza.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She looked one last time at his dear, adorable face, into the eyes that had locked in so many secrets for so long. “I love you too, my sweetest boy. I always, always will, no matter where I go.”