Read The Horsemaster's Daughter Online
Authors: Susan Wiggs
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
“We’ll see about that.” Bracing a hand on the fence, Jamie vaulted over. “Most folks think this sort of thing is beneath them,” he said to Abigail over his shoulder, “but there’s a practical value in styling one’s own mount.”
“Surely you don’t intend that I take my first ride on an untrained horse,” she said.
“Of course not. What do you take me for? That’s Miss Abigail Cabot, by the way,” he told Julius. “She’s visiting from the city. We’re going to teach her to ride.”
She greeted the boy with a smile. He and Jamie shook hands, then Jamie reached out and tousled his hair. “Don’t let the beast get the better of you, son. Your daddy never did.”
Julius showed Abigail into the stables, where a few horses poked their heads out. Jamie stopped in front of a stall and made a clicking sound with his tongue, then opened the door. “You’ll ride Patrick.”
Abigail subjected Patrick to a narrow-eyed assessment. He was small and rather homely compared to the other horses she had seen at Albion. He had a coat of nondescript brown, a mulish shape to his head and splayed hooves like dinner plates.
“You wouldn’t be judging this critter by his looks, would you?” Jamie asked.
“Of course not,” she said, chagrined that skepticism showed in her eyes.
“He’s obedient, reliable and loyal. Everything you could want in a horse…or a wife.”
“I don’t want a wife and I’m not entirely sure of the horse.”
He clipped a rope to the horse’s halter and handed her the lead. “Off you go.”
“I have no idea what to do.”
“He’ll follow you. But you have to go somewhere rather than standing there like a ninny.” He gestured at Julius, who waited at the end of the breezeway, where she assumed he would saddle the horse. “Trust me, it works every time. I’ll be out in the paddock with the new gelding.”
It was slightly intimidating to walk with a thousand-pound beast plodding behind her, but she was determined to master this. She insisted that Julius teach her to do the saddling, and he was pleased to oblige. She liked the boy instantly. He was perhaps thirteen, remarkably poised and quite possibly the handsomest boy she had ever seen, with his café-aulait skin, slender, long-fingered hands and a slight build.
As he showed her each step of the process, Julius was more patient and polite than Jamie had been. So, for that matter, was Patrick the horse.
“Don’t be afraid to touch him,” the groom advised her. “It’s always a good idea to get used to touching him.”
She gingerly patted his neck.
“A horse needs a hard touch, ma’am. He can hardly feel that.”
It took an act of will, but she learned to pat the horse with an aggression the creature seemed to like. She learned to put the headgear and reins on properly and to feed him the bit, ruining her gloves in the process. Abigail didn’t care; she wiped her hands and rubbed the horse’s nose and admired his long-lashed eyes—definitely the homely thing’s most attractive feature.
“Mounting is tricky in skirts.” Julius pulled the block alongside Patrick. “You’ll be riding astride. Sidesaddle’s too hard first time out.”
Abigail balked, stepping back to eye the horse. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Sure you can, Abby,” Jamie called out from the other end of the center aisle. He had managed to subdue and saddle the other horse all on his own.
“It’s impossible,” she called back.
“Suppose I said that about finding a comet.”
Abigail stopped arguing when she realized that she wanted to learn to ride. It was exciting in a way she couldn’t describe. “All right, Julius. What do I do?”
“First step is to get on.” He demonstrated, swinging his leg over the horse’s back. She didn’t like the look of the difficult move at all.
Nevertheless, she was determined. Standing on the block, she brought her other leg up, staggering a little and nearly unbalancing herself. Julius put out a steadying hand and instructed her to grasp the rim of the saddle. On the third try, she managed to lift her leg up and over, but that was only the beginning of the ordeal. She failed to clear the saddle and slipped back down. Then she swung her leg too high and fast, and sprawled forward, banging her chin on the arch of the horse’s bony neck. Gritting her teeth with pain and frustration, she dragged herself up. Good heavens. She sat astride the horse.
“I did it,” she said.
“You did.” Julius went around to the right side to fit her foot into the stirrup. She nearly howled with humiliation when he discovered the special shoe and said, “This ain’t going to fit in the stirrup.”
“Then show me how to get off,” she said, knowing she was just inches from tears.
“Ma’am, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re going to learn to ride. Wait here.” Julius disappeared into the tack room. She could hear him rummaging around, whistling between his teeth. How could he whistle when she wanted to curl up and die?
Except she didn’t want to. She hated her foot, hated the misshapen shoe she had to wear. But she had realized something, sitting on the horse’s back. Her bad foot didn’t matter when Patrick had four good hooves to stand on.
Out in the yard, Jamie rode back and forth on the handsome new horse. Despite the chilly November day, man and beast gleamed with sweat. They were wearing each other out, but maybe that was the point.
After a few minutes, Julius emerged from the tack room with a pair of stirrup loops. “These are used for hunting, so the opening’s bigger.” He held them up for her to see.
She waited in silence as he attached the new loops.
“A perfect fit,” he said. “Ma’am, you are ready to ride.”
“Julius.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Could you pull the hem of my skirt down? You know, to—”
“Yes, ma’am.” He made sure the fabric draped over her feet. He was so matter-of-fact about it that she forgot to be embarrassed. What a pleasant young man he was, she reflected.
“Hang on now, ma’am,” he said, then unhooked the horse from the cross ties and led him out to the paddock.
“Oh.” Abigail clutched at the lip of the saddle, struggling to keep her seat. The lumbering, swaying movement of the horse made her feel as though she might fall at any moment.
“Just sit up straight,” Julius advised. “Look between the horse’s ears. Gravity will do the rest.”
Abigail wanted to ask Julius how he knew about gravity, but she was too busy holding on. Her wild look of panic caught Jamie’s eye, but he merely grinned and waved. “You look splendid, Miss Cabot,” he said jovially. “Simply splendid!”
The liar. She was a terrible rider, fearful and clumsy. Julius and the horse had endless patience, and eventually she managed to exert a small amount of control over the reins. Within the generous oval of the paddock, she could compel the horse where she wanted him.
She kept her seat and steered him this way and that, even taking him up to a trot by prodding him with her heels. Abigail knew there was nothing elegant about her riding, but she didn’t care. She was riding a horse. For the first time in her life, she moved with a normal gait, just like anyone else in the world.
Jamie had pushed her into doing this. How could he know what her soul yearned for when she didn’t even know that herself? Perhaps he was magic. Or diabolical.
When Julius finally brought her from the paddock to the bridle trail, she had the most foolish grin on her face. Waiting for her astride the dun gelding, Jamie grinned back. She would never tell him so, but he looked as dashing as a painting in a museum.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise. Your horse will follow mine.” He headed down a broad, sandy path that followed a meandering creek. Gradually, the terrain changed and flattened into rich bottomland dotted with the small farms she recognized from the journey by coach. The surprise turned out to be a visit to one of the farms.
At their approach, a bluetick coonhound set up a racket in front of a snug house made of cedar planks. The remnants of a garden straggled along the side of the house, and in the distance lay a long, low barn and fenced paddock. In the yard, Jamie shushed the dog as he dismounted, then helped Abigail down. To her relief, he didn’t appear to notice her foot at all, but seemed focused on the little house with its thin ribbon of smoke twisting from the chimney.
“Jasper!” yelled a woman’s voice. “I swear, you’re the loudest dog the good Lord ever saw fit to make.” She stepped out onto the porch, a tall black woman wearing a man’s dungarees and a flowered apron, a wooden spoon in her hand. When she spied Jamie, her face lit up with a smile. “Well, now, look who came to call. So can you come in a spell, or are you too citified these days?”
He took the porch stairs two at a time and swept the woman into his arms. “How’ve you been, honey?”
Abigail had never heard such warmth in his voice, and she was intrigued. She waited at the bottom step until Jamie turned to her.
“Abby, this is Patsy Calhoun, my sister-in-law. Patsy, this is Abigail Cabot, my…” His voice drifted off. He didn’t seem to know what Abigail was to him any more than she knew what he was to her.
“How do you do?” she said, mounting to the porch and holding out her hand.
Patsy looked from her to Jamie and back again, lifting an inquisitive brow. “Your lady friend?”
“No.”
Both Abigail and Jamie protested with one voice.
Patsy lifted her eyebrow even higher. “I see,” she said. “I do indeed. Best get inside, then. I got a chess pie in the oven.”
Abigail passed a most unusual and pleasant afternoon in the simple, sturdy cabin of Noah Calhoun’s widow. Jamie seemed a different person with Patsy. He was relaxed and jovial, and not a sarcastic word passed his lips. This, Abigail realized, studying his face by the light of Patsy’s cozy fire, was the essence of a home. No wonder he was so committed to protecting the farms along the creek.
They arrived at the plantation house an hour before supper. Abigail dismounted on her own and gave a happy sigh, even pausing to press her cheek against her homely horse for a moment.
“You owe me an apology,” said Jamie.
“For what?”
“For saying you didn’t want to go riding.”
“I didn’t think I would like it.”
He sent her a rakish wink. “Next time I tell you you’re going to like something, trust me.”
“T
ry it. You’ll like it.”
“But it’s alive.”
“It’s just lying there waiting to be eaten. I promise, it won’t fight back.”
“And that makes it permissible to eat it?”
“Abby, live oysters are a delicacy. People of quality eat them all the time.”
“People of quality also hunt foxes and club them to death. That doesn’t mean I would participate in such a thing,” she stated with a sniff.
“Leave the poor girl alone, son,” his father said from the head of the supper table. “It’s a poor host who forces unwanted food on his guest.”
Jamie never took his eyes off Abigail. “Oh, she wants it. I can tell she wants it.”
“Truly,” his mother said, “autumn is the best time for bay oysters.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, dear,” her husband said.
“Charles’s grandfather started the oyster beds a half century ago,” she explained to Senator Cabot, who happily sucked down an oyster followed by a swig of stout dark beer.
At the other end of the table, Helena and Rowan ate their share while flashing each other private looks and secretive smiles. Jamie couldn’t believe the senator hadn’t guessed his elder daughter was engaged in a love affair with the professor, but Franklin Cabot had glaring blind spots when it came to his daughters.
At the moment, the younger one was studying the oyster on her plate with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. Something about her always made Jamie want to smile. She was that rarest of creatures, a woman devoid of pretense. For that reason alone, he liked her rather well. It had been a long, long time since he had found himself able to like a woman.
“Just one,” he coaxed, convinced she would thank him. “It’s just a little swallow, my dear.”
She glowered at him. “I am not your dear.”
“No one is,” he agreed. “It’s just an expression. Eat the oyster, Miss Cabot.”
“I will not.”
“My mother’s cook went to considerable trouble to gather and shuck them for supper.”
“If she’s the cook, why didn’t she cook them?” Abigail pushed her plate at him. “You should have it instead.”
He pushed it back. “Eat the damn oyster.”
“I will not.”
“Coward.”
“Bully.”
“And you call yourself a woman of science. You won’t even—”
“Must you argue about everything, Abigail?” Mr. Cabot asked.
Glaring at Jamie, she picked up the half shell. “Very well, but only to silence Mr. Calhoun.”
Jamie knew very well that wasn’t the reason she capitulated. Interesting and unfortunate, he thought, how quick she was to obey her father.
Holding the thing perfectly level in front of her face, she squeezed a lemon wedge into the shell.
“It moved,” she screeched, dropping the oyster to her plate.
Jamie picked it up again. “That was your hand, goose.” He leaned across the table, touching the edge of the shell to her lower lip. “Stop being a baby.”
She nearly went cross-eyed, looking down at the oyster in front of her. Jamie bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him want to laugh. Yet it happened all the time when Abigail was around.
“Just eat it right from the shell,” he advised. “Pretend it’s a spoonful of delicious soup.”
Taking a deep breath, she shut her eyes and opened her lips. Jamie tipped the oyster into her mouth. Her eyes flew open, blazing with alarm.
“Too late, dear,” he whispered. “You’ll have to swallow it now. It would be rude to, well, you know.”
She screwed up her face and gulped hard.
“Oysters are a proven aphrodisiac,” he pointed out, still whispering so the others wouldn’t hear.
She made a small choking noise, reached for her glass of wine and took a deep drink. Finally, she pressed a napkin to her lips and seemed to regain a modicum of control.
“I just thought you’d want to know that.”
“Why?”
“You’re out to trap a husband. Feeding him oysters is not a terrible idea.”
She flicked her gaze to her father, who ignored her, as usual. The senator was fully engaged in conversation with Jamie’s parents and oblivious to both his daughters.
“I am not out to trap anyone,” Abigail maintained in a low voice.
“Sorry. Poor choice of words.”
“Perhaps the terrible idea is in trying to get Lieutenant Butler’s attention at all.”
“Believe me, you already have it. What did he call you in his last letter? The dainty repository of all life’s hopes and dreams. Yes, I believe that was it. The man does know how to turn a sincere phrase, I’ll say that for him.”
“What the devil are you two whispering about?” Jamie’s father asked, not unpleasantly. His mood was well lubricated by a good amount of stout.
“Just plotting the overthrow of the government, sir,” Jamie said, winking at Abigail.
“I should never have let you see his letters,” she said through clenched teeth.
“How else will I know what he expects? He’s on the hook, Abby. You just have to land him.”
“That’s the part I’m afraid of. When he discovers that I’m the letter writer, not Helena, he’ll probably run screaming into the woods.”
Where the devil did she get such a low opinion of herself? he wondered, exasperated. Why did she care so much what people thought? Why did her father’s opinion rule her?
Perhaps Jamie could understand that. He knew his parents regarded him with a negligent affection that was almost an afterthought. Every possible maternal instinct had been bred out of his mother, who had been taught that no woman of quality raised her own children, but gave them immediately to a wet nurse and then a nanny.
Jamie’s earliest memory was not of his mother at all, but of a dark, fleshy arm tucked protectively around him, a gentle round face framed by a homespun kerchief. Her name was Igee, and from the day of his birth, she’d seen to his care and training. One day, not long after he’d published his brother Noah’s name in the
Chesapeake Review,
Igee had hurried into the schoolroom where his tutor, Master Whittaker, had been drilling him on his sums. Igee’s face had shone like a full moon as she beamed at Jamie. “That’ll be enough of lessons now,” she said. “The child needs a bath and a change of clothes, because he’s going to eat supper with the grown folk today.”
Jamie had been buffed and scrubbed like a show horse on fair day. Igee cleaned and trimmed his hair and fingernails; she scoured behind his ears and put him in his Sunday best, shoes and all. He still remembered the way she planted him in front of the tall, freestanding mirror in his mother’s boudoir, her chubby hands pressing his shoulders.
“Don’t you look a sight, honey,” Igee declared. “Don’t you look a picture.”
“Do I?”
She straightened his little neckcloth. “You the prettiest thing I ever did see. You so pretty, I could eat you up.” Her laughter and his giggles rang as fresh as a dream in his memory.
Jamie’s supper with the grown folk turned out to be his final one for a long time, though he hadn’t known it that day. He’d minded every manner that had been drilled into him. He said please and thank you and he ate what was set before him. He never spoke a word except that which he was invited to say, and he remembered not to kick the table leg with his foot.
At the end of the meal, his father had folded his hands on the table, cleared his throat and said, “You’re nearly grown now, son.”
Jamie was proud to hear his father declare him nearly grown. But even so, he wondered why his mother looked so serious, why he could hear Igee crying softly in the next room.
“Tomorrow you’ll be going away to St. Swithin’s School. It’s in Philadelphia, son. They’ll give you a fine education there.”
It had been Noah who’d accompanied him, trying to pretend Jamie was going on a great adventure, not stepping into a nightmare that would haunt him for years.
Pulling himself back to the moment and to the woman sitting across from him, he put on his most dazzling smile. “Nobody’s going to run screaming from you, Abby, honey,” he said.
She was still green around the gills from the oyster. She started to say something, then pressed her fist to her mouth and fled the table.