Read The Horsemaster's Daughter Online
Authors: Susan Wiggs
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
T
he night was cold and the hour was late. His hair still damp from bathing, Jamie stood at the window of his room, staring at the house next door and flexing his raw knuckles. He’d tried to escape what he was feeling. He’d ridden Oscar long and hard into the countryside until both he and the horse nearly dropped from exhaustion. He’d joined a group of Georgetown canal lock tenders in their nightly pursuit of violent sports, but even several rounds of bare-knuckle boxing had failed to blot out his thoughts. The agony hung on the edges of his awareness, and when he stopped riding or stopped fighting, it all came flooding back.
Now, back in his room, he had no means of exhausting his mind into blankness. Next door, the lights had been extinguished, but he wondered if Abigail would appear on the roof to pursue her solitary search of the night sky. If she did, he knew he’d be tempted to join her, but he also knew he wouldn’t let himself indulge the urge. It was too dangerous; it made no sense.
Ah, but she haunted him. He could still feel the silken warmth of her, could still savor the sweetness of her innocent offering. Could still hear the faint echo of her whispered
I love you.
That declaration would stay with him for the rest of his life, a bittersweet reminder of an extraordinary friendship with a woman who believed he could be so much more than he was.
It was over now. They had separate paths to follow. Jamie gritted his teeth and shuddered, feeling the loss of her like a physical pain, sharper in its way than any torture he had suffered in a dank sandstone cell in a far-off land.
The empty house sighed and settled. Now that Rowan was gone, taking all his messy contraptions with him, Jamie had the place to himself. Not that he’d be keeping it long. He couldn’t possibly stay on Dumbarton Street, so perilously close to temptation.
A knock sounded in the foyer below, and he started, then tightened the towel slung around his waist. It was Abigail. Who else would come to call at this late hour?
Frozen in place, he waited for her to go away. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he heard the door swish open and footsteps on the stair.
Damn her. She seemed determined to chip away at him.
Feeling an instant physical reaction to her proximity, he pulled on a robe, then went to wait at the top of the stairs. He racked his brain for the words that would banish her, but the woman who emerged from the shadows was not Abigail.
“Caroline,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The uncertain light of the fireplace spilled from the bedchamber. Her bold gaze coasted over him.
“I had to see you,” she whispered. “No one must know. My driver is waiting at the end of the lane.”
“Good.” Grasping her shoulders, he turned her toward the stairs. “He can take you right back to wherever you came from.”
She wrenched away and walked straight into his bedroom, dropping her cloak on a chair as she passed it. “I’m not leaving.”
He ground his teeth in silent frustration. The last thing he needed was for the wife of Horace Riordan to take up residence in his bedroom.
“You have to drop your opposition to the railroad plan,” she informed him. “I thought it only fair to warn you that my husband intends to see to it that it goes through.”
“This isn’t news to me, Caroline.” She still amused him, he realized. He admired her cold nerve, her brazenness. He couldn’t help but like the way she kept staring at him.
“Don’t cross him, Jamie. That’s what I came to tell you. Horace has a certain talent for making things difficult for those who oppose him.”
“Oh, dear,” he said softly. “A threat?”
“An offer,” she said. “He’s prepared to pay you a fortune to drop the issue.”
Jamie laughed aloud. “Sweet Caroline, I didn’t come to Washington to sell the families of my district down the river. God knows, my granddaddy made a practice of that.”
“The railroad company will offer them the chance to move out of their poverty. They wouldn’t have to live or die by the seasons. Think of it, Jamie. Those struggling families could move to the city, find steady work—”
“In sweatshops and unheated mills. Sounds like heaven on earth, Caroline.”
“They’d never have to wonder where their next meal was coming from, never again suffer through drought or frost. It’s a stable life.”
“It’s a filthy life. This is their own enterprise. They won’t be bought for a wage or a promise of broth and bread, and you damn well know it, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not the only reason I came to see you,” she said, her voice thrumming with a seductive promise.
Abigail was anxious to see Jamie, but she forced herself to wait until she knew everyone in the house was asleep. She didn’t care how late it was; from the start, they’d made a practice of meeting at improper hours, and tonight would be no different. At last, everything was going to be fine. Now that she understood what lay buried in his past, she saw the future clearly.
Jamie had been right about so many things, and she was only now realizing it. He’d been right when he told her that she was hiding from the world, afraid to let her heart love fully. She discovered the truth of that the night she’d spent in his arms.
And he had been right when he told her what she should have known all along about her father. His respect mattered far less than the more difficult issue of learning to respect herself. She’d been so fearful about telling him she wasn’t going to marry Boyd, yet it had turned into the most honest conversation she’d ever had with her father.
Jamie had also been right, so long ago, on the first night they met, when he claimed she didn’t love Boyd, because true love couldn’t be expressed by poetry on a page. It came from somewhere deep and mysterious, a place that wasn’t always safe and comfortable.
The only thing Jamie had been wrong about was the fact that he didn’t consider himself worthy of anyone’s love.
She had much to discuss with him tonight.
Dumbarton Street lay quiet and deserted save for a closed hack at the end of the road. Soft gaslight played over the carriage horse, its head lowered in slumber. Holding her cloak around her, she hurried toward Jamie’s house.
Even before she tested the door, she was startled to hear a murmur of voices upstairs, and then footsteps coming down toward her. She barely had time to shrink back into the shadows of the tiny walled yard before the door swished open and two people emerged. Her sharp eyes picked out a crimson-cloaked woman with slender hands and a pale, beguiling—and exceedingly familiar—face.
Caroline Fortenay Riordan looked every bit as beautiful as she had the night of Nancy Wilkes’s wedding. And with Jamie, she acted every bit as bold, clinging to his arm, whispering his name. Abigail couldn’t hear his murmured reply as he escorted her to the waiting hack at the end of the street. By now, she could only hear the terrible pounding of her own heart in her ears.
Every instinct roared at her to run and hide, to curl up into a ball of private pain, but she resisted. Despite the sudden frost sweeping over her emotions, she forced herself to wait until he returned. He stood talking to Caroline for a long time before handing her up into the coach as Abigail struggled for composure. Had she been wrong about him after all?
The slow clop of the horse’s hooves against the brick surface of the street filled the night. Jamie returned to the house, stopping short when he saw Abigail waiting for him.
“Christ,” he said. “You scared the hell out of me.” He looked both annoyed and dissolute with his mussed hair, gaping robe, narrowed eyes. Hands pulled into fists.
Abigail’s conviction faltered. Perhaps he was no different, after all, from the corrupt, bitter man he’d been when she first met him. “We should go inside,” she said, disappointed to hear her voice waver. “We’ll wake the neighborhood.”
“An excellent idea. You go inside your house, and I’ll go to mine.” This was a stranger standing there, glaring down at her, issuing harsh imperatives.
“Jamie, I must speak with you,” she persisted. “There’s so much to say. I learned what happened to you in Khayrat, and the guilt you’ve borne for so long, and I—”
“Then there’s nothing left to talk about.” Grabbing her arm, he steered her toward her father’s house. “You should have left well enough alone, Abby. You should have accepted me at face value. I needed your father’s favor, you were a way to get that, and if I gave the impression you were anything more, then I did you a disservice.”
“I went to see Princess Layla,” she said. “She told me what happened to you. But she didn’t understand how you survived. I do, Jamie. Noah died in your place, didn’t he? On that horse-buying trip you told me about. Tell me the rest, now. You owe me that.”
He flinched. “Noah and I were both arrested, but we figured out a way to escape. In the confusion of running through the city and finding the harbor, we were separated. I barely made it aboard because my injuries slowed me down.” The whole time Jamie was speaking, he hadn’t looked at her, and when he finally turned to her, his eyes were haunted. “I collapsed. By the time I regained consciousness, we were already at sea, and…Noah was already dead. Another trader saw the execution.”
Abigail pressed her fist to her mouth, remembering Doyle’s description of the event.
“So,” Jamie said, “do you still think I should tell Julius the truth about his father?”
“Of course not,” she replied in a thick rasp, her throat half paralyzed with shock.
“I thought not. So there’s your explanation of my dishonorable past. You know why I am the way I am, and why I’ll never be the man you need me to be.”
“You already are,” she said softly.
“Look, I made a mistake the other night. I let myself get carried away. But we’re nothing together, Abby, no more than a stud to a mare.”
“I know better than that,” she said, snapping in her fear. “I know what I felt when you made love to me, and I think I know what you felt when I surrendered everything to you. I
know,
Jamie. I—”
“Hush.” He pressed two fingers to her lips. “I took you to my bed, and a better man than I would feel responsible for you at this point. But you don’t need me anymore, Abby. I made a mistake with you. By now you know me well enough to understand that I never make the same mistake twice.” Stepping away from her, he raked a hand through his damp hair. “I did love Layla,” he softly admitted. “She got the best part of me, and there is no more.”
Even though it was the middle of the night, Jamie dressed in haste. What Caroline had said was less important than what she hadn’t. Something was afoot, and it couldn’t be good for the people of Jamie’s district. He had to go with his instinct on this one. He’d failed to do that once before, with tragic results, and he couldn’t let it happen again.
And as for Abigail…He didn’t want to think about her, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. When he should have merely made use of her connections, he’d made the mistake of getting involved. Perhaps he was a bit like her mythological artist, Pygmalion. He’d proved to her that she could be the sort of woman who combined brains with self-confidence, panache with charm. The sort of woman even he couldn’t resist. But he’d never take credit for her innocent, trusting heart and frankly sensual nature. Those things came from Abby and Abby alone, whether she knew it or not.
Her declaration of love had hit him like a hammer, though he’d done his best to ignore it. He hadn’t the heart for love, nor had he the stomach for the vulnerability, foolishness, responsibility…and the fulfillment.
The look on her face when he had shut the door on her would stay with him a long time. Where had his streak of emotional cruelty come from? Perhaps there was more of his father in him than he’d imagined. He told himself it was the least he could do to give Abigail her heart back. She had no business giving it to him anyway.
He hurried out of the house and made his way on foot to the livery where Oscar boarded. She’d survive, he told himself as he lit a lamp and set about saddling the horse. Before she knew it, Abigail would be married and settled. She would live a life of quiet decency, of safety and security, and who the hell was he to say that such a life wasn’t worth living?
A
fter that night, Jamie Calhoun never returned to Dumbarton Street, and Abigail discovered the true meaning of heartbreak. She drew herself through each day with sheer strength of will, and no one seemed to notice how quiet she’d grown, how introspective. No one seemed to realize that her outward cheerfulness masked a battered spirit.
Perhaps Jamie hadn’t meant to teach her to bear up under unbearable pain, but he had shown her that appearances were everything, and illusion was a powerful tool.
She made use of that at breakfast one morning, when she joined her father and sister—late, as usual.
“You’re spending more and more time on your comet hunt,” her father commented, setting aside his
Post
and standing to help her into her chair.
“I keep thinking I’m going to see one soon,” she said.
“Your patience is admirable,” he said, pouring her morning tea.
Thanking him, she savored the warmth in his eyes. This newfound bond of affection with her father filled a years-old emptiness. But the victory was bittersweet, for its price had been the sacrifice of a love she’d discovered too late. Still, she learned to appreciate the pleasant aspects of easy conversation with her father, and he learned to give more of himself. He shared stories and anecdotes of his courtship and marriage to her mother, and seemed surprised at how she and Helena treasured those glimpses of the past. Lately, he lingered with them over his morning coffee or evening port, more interested in his daughters than his duties.
“Helena,” he said, “will you have coffee or tea?”
“What?” She blinked, clearly far away in her thoughts. “Oh, no thank you, Papa.”
Helena, too, seemed different of late. She smiled less and rarely sang, making her plans and moving through each day with somber purpose.
“Are you quite well?” Abigail asked, feeling a pulse of concern for her sister.
“I am indeed,” Helena said, though the brightness in her voice sounded forced. “Just…preoccupied with wedding plans.”
“You’re sure you want to marry Senator Barnes?” Father said, watching her intently. “Your sister agreed to a marriage for the wrong reasons, and I fear you might be doing the same.”
Helena patted his hand. “Never worry about that, Papa. I’ve made my choice, and I’m content. Be proud of me.” Her bright, beautiful smile almost masked her sadness. “I’ve finally learned to put youthful indiscretion behind me.”
Her declaration seemed to reassure him, for he went back to reading his paper. After a few moments, he frowned and cleared his throat.
“Bad news?” asked Abigail.
“Arsonists set fire to three barns and a home along King’s Creek,” he said.
“Dear God, was anyone hurt?”
He scanned the column. “Apparently not. The residents were warned, and the arsonists caught. There’s a rumor that a railroad company is behind the crime, and will be subjected to an investigation.”
Each night, after everyone else was asleep, Abigail went to her observatory alone to pursue her solitary search. As often as not, she devoted the time to thinking, trying to create a new dream of happiness now that all the old ones had slipped away. She probed the wounds of her memory for every last particle of knowledge of Jamie.
Had she ever really known him at all? Was he the dashing, romantic man who once traveled the world and fell in love with a fairy-tale princess? Or was he the world-weary politician, making use of people and then discarding them after they’d served their purpose?
She wanted to believe his cynicism was all an act, shielding a core of nobility and a heart that still remembered how to love. But now that he’d gone, she would never know for certain. All she knew was that she was a different person for having known him, even for a short time.
Why do you think they call it falling in love? When you truly fall in love, you’ll know it. You will weep with the knowledge.
His words haunted her long after the night they’d met. It was the first lesson he’d taught her, but the last one she’d learned. She had known a love as intense as the brightest star, and a betrayal deeper than the blackest void in space.
Both love and betrayal, she thought on a cold December night as she sat shivering on the roof, had a peculiar majesty all their own. Jamie taught her that she would never find happiness in trying to please others if she didn’t honor her own gifts. How simple life was when she stopped trying to do what was expected of her and followed her will.
Despite a broken heart, she drew strength from the memory of her love for Jamie, and focused as never before on her work. She mapped her sweeping searches with dead-on accuracy, but now she knew how to look for the magic, even in the midst of a mathematical calculation.
That was why she climbed to the roof each night, why she sat alone in the cold with her comet-sweeper aimed at the sky, a celestial chart in her lap and her sky log at hand.
The winter sky welcomed her searching, yet a persistent heartache lowered her spirits until she began to believe, after all these years, that perhaps there was no comet for her to discover. She should give it up, stop chasing stars and find something useful to do with herself. Yet a powerful force kept her coming to the roof, unable to stay away, even on a night as cold as the present one.
In the area of her search, she spied…something. A glimmer, quickly gone behind a high cloud, so startling that she nearly upset her equipment in her haste to read off the coordinates of the setting circle. As the possibility of discovery drew near, her outward calm masked an inner excitement that shimmered through her like a fever. She forced herself to hold still.
A few minutes before midnight, a light wind cleared the sky, and that faint glimmer teased her again. Now it was bright enough to see with the naked eye. A fuzzy beacon. She blinked, fearful that her eyes deceived her. At first she thought she might be seeing an asterism, but there it was, diffuse, lacking a tail, a distant and hazy object moving in the opposite direction of the earth, and outside the earth’s orbit.
Her comet.
The head was so tenuous, she could see stars right through it, but that only added to the misty majesty of the object, riding a thin line of flame. The beauty of the distant heavenly body filled her senses to overflowing. Her heart rose almost painfully in her chest, and she had to remind herself to breathe. She nearly forgot to record the time and position, but training took over, and she quickly scribbled down the information. Even as she wrote, she never took her gaze away from the wonder in the sky.
Her comet. She always imagined that she would shout with excitement when she spied it, but instead, a feeling of quiet awe settled over her, a reverence that both humbled and uplifted her. Tonight, a comet had appeared in the night sky, and she was the first to see it.
Although she was alone, an almost overwhelming sense of well-being swept her senses. She felt alive as never before, whole and complete. “Oh, Mama, I did it,” she whispered, surprising herself with the words. “I found a comet.”
She felt an instant urge to go tearing downstairs, to hammer at the door of Jamie’s house and tell him. But he was no longer there. A shadow of hurt marred the triumph. Jamie was her best friend, the only person who seemed to understand her lonely, late-night vigils. Now he was gone, and she didn’t know if she’d ever see him again.
Her face was awash with tears and great sobs rolled up through her. She wiped impatiently at her cheeks, fearful of getting the eyepiece of the telescope wet, but for the longest time she couldn’t stop weeping. Gale winds of emotion shuddered through her in unending waves.
She gave herself a stern lecture—Had Edmond Halley cried like a baby after correctly formulating astral motion? Had Maria Mitchell wept over her telescopic comet? Certainly not.
Abigail concentrated on practical matters. She had just made an extraordinary scientific discovery. She would have to send the customary telegram to the astronomical society, confirming the sighting. In the days to come, her discovery would have to be verified, but Abigail knew with unshakable faith what she had discovered. Scholarly journals and the popular press would report the find, and soon, ordinary people would spy it. Maybe even Jamie would look up one night and see her comet. A gold medal would be struck in her honor.
Would she become a celebrity like Professor Mitchell? The notoriety didn’t interest her, but winning credit for the discovery did.
Feeling the night breeze cool the tears on her cheeks, she leaned back, gazing at the sky. As always, thoughts of Jamie filled her heart. She’d always thought a broken heart would heal with time. Now she knew the hurt only went deeper with each passing day.
The thought added a bittersweet edge to her discovery. But that was all right, she decided. If she hadn’t paid the price of her heart, perhaps this gift would never have been hers. She was the first person on earth to witness the comet, and the ache in her heart only made her sense of reverence more poignant. “I found it,” she whispered to the empty night, to the stars and the wind.
“Comet Beatrice Cabot,” she said aloud, tasting the name she’d chosen in honor of her mother.