The Horsemaster's Daughter

by Susan Wiggs

  “And you think Eliza is wrong now.”

  “I think she’s very naive. She’s led a sheltered life. Whether she’s right or wrong is for you to discover.”

  He watched Eliza spin past as the dance set changed. Her skirt swirled like a pinwheel and her head tilted back as she laughed at something her partner said. She was vibrantly beautiful, blossoming under the golden heat of the chandeliers and lamps of the ballroom, and under the attention of hordes of inquisitive friends and neighbors.

  A brief solemnity came over Isadora. “I’d say the sheltered part of her life is over.”

  Eliza had never worn shoes for so long in her life, and she discovered that she did not much care for it. The dancing slippers pinched, and after several sets she begged for a rest. Her partner, a Mr. Martin, grabbed both of her hands and begged her for another chance.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s not you. If you must know, my feet hurt.”

  “Forgive me, then. I had no idea.” Gallantly he swept her along to a velvet-covered bench at the side of the room and held her hand while she sat down. He was so earnest as he sank to one knee before her that she didn’t dare to laugh, though he looked comical. “Shall I go for help? Can I order a servant to bring something?”

  She felt the stares probing at them, and she flushed. “Truly, there’s no need. If I could just get these slippers off, I’ll be fine.” She bent down and unbuttoned the cross-strap.

  “Miss Flyte!” Poor Mr. Martin looked as if he might faint.

  “Sir, if the sight of a bare foot offends you, then you’d best look away.”

  As she slipped off the confining slippers, she heard, quite clearly, a series of gasps and whispers all around her. Her faux pas was serious indeed. But where was the sense in mincing around with tortured feet all night while pretending to have a good time?

  She searched the crowd for Hunter, but so many revelers pressed close that she couldn’t find him. She knew she must brazen it out on her own. She squared her shoulders and stood up, pushing the slippers under the bench with her foot. “It’s not as if I’ve stripped myself naked,” she stated baldly to the people watching her. “My feet hurt, and Mr. Martin was kind enough to keep me from getting an injury.”

  “My feet hurt too, Mama,” a young lady whispered. “Can I—”

  “Certainly not,” came the hissed reply.

  The orchestra struck up a lively reel. Eliza had no idea what to do now that she had managed to offend everyone in the room. Help arrived in the form of a smiling Cousin Charles, who elbowed his way toward her and took her by the hand.

  “May I have this dance?” he asked.

  She let out a breath of relief. “I’m honored, sir.” She laughed at herself. It was exactly how they spoke in Jane Eyre, but it felt strange to be in a situation that seemed like something out of a book. Jane would not have taken off her shoes, but then again, Jane was just a character made of ink and paper.

  They went into the reel with a lively step, and the music and light surrounded and possessed her. She forgot all about the fact that she had just committed a highly improper act. Didn’t these people understand? She had never heard music before.

  “I suppose after this,” she said breathlessly, “I am going to have to hide myself away in shame.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Charles said, a darkly amused gleam in his eye.

  “Why not?” She passed behind him and emerged on the other side, eyeing him with growing suspicion.

  “Because you’re no ordinary young lady.”

  She laughed. “There are those who would dispute that I’m a lady at all.”

  She sailed through the reel, loving every moment of it. Now that her feet no longer hurt, she skipped as if walking on a cloud, and changed partners with the smoothness of a practiced lady. It was an enchanted night—the music, the food, the smiling faces. Never could she have imagined such an experience. Charlotte Brontë had written of stiff, formal affairs with currents of gossip undermining every moment. It wasn’t like that at all.

  She found herself wishing Hunter would reclaim her for a dance, but he had gone off to a doorway with a group of the older men to smoke cigars and talk business. She was determined to show she could have fun without his constant company.

  Dance after dance spun by, and she felt like Cinderella in the fairy tale—except that she had discarded both slippers and didn’t care a fig about getting either of them back. She forgot to watch for impending disaster—until the couple behind them in the set slammed into them. With a little shriek, the young lady tumbled back. Eliza noted vaguely that it was Tabby Parks, and that she sprawled on her backside with very little grace.

  “I am so sorry,” Eliza said, holding out a hand.

  Tabby sputtered like a wet cat. Ignoring Eliza’s hand, she grabbed her partner and lurched to her feet, tottering away on shoes that looked as if they fit even more tightly than Eliza’s had. No wonder she was so cross.

  “Now I understand why all the ladies carry fans,” Eliza whispered to Charles. “Dancing is a hot business. Oh, Charles. Did I disgrace myself entirely?”

  He chuckled. “No, only partially. Miss Tabby will survive, I’m certain. They say a cat has nine lives.”

  Eliza escaped the dance floor. Spying a gap in the crowd, she darted outside onto the brick-paved veranda. In the relative coolness and privacy of the night, she felt a mortified heat high in her cheeks. As she strolled down a garden path, she tipped back her head to enjoy the night breeze. She stopped short when she noticed a knot of ladies, young and old, clustered in the glow of torchlight near the stone fountain in the middle of the garden.

  “…has managed to offend everyone present, right down to the lowliest servant.”

  Eliza stopped and stood completely still. She recognized Miss Cilla Parks’s scandalized voice.

  “Personally, I think he should dismiss her immediately. What a disaster for those poor little children. They’ll be the laughingstock of Virginia, running around barefoot and speaking so strangely. Did you know we saw her wearing breeches?”

  “Really?” someone asked.

  “She was dressed like a boy. What can he be thinking, letting a creature like Eliza Flyte mingle at his affairs as if she were one of us?”

  Eliza stepped into the circle of torchlight. “Maybe you should ask him,” she said, smooth fury in her voice.

  Mrs. Merriwether Martin sucked in a shocked breath. “This is a private conversation.”

  “But if I’m the topic,” Eliza said, trying not to let her humiliation show, “then surely I should be privy to what is being said.”

  “Brave girl,” Tabby Parks murmured, snapping her fan shut. “I’m sure I wouldn’t want to hear it.”

  “If you’re rude enough to discuss me behind my back—”

  “It’s not rudeness,” Cilla interrupted, her eyes wide with innocence. “We are concerned about Hunter. He’s been a friend and neighbor for many years, and it worries us when a stranger comes into his life and begins…changing things.”

  Changing things, she thought. Like turning the tide of his fortune. Getting his son to speak after two years of silence.

  “Just who are you, anyway?” Tabby asked.

  More kindly, Lady Margaret inquired, “Who are your people, dear?”

  Eliza thought the question absurd. “I’ve not kept a pedigree on myself, if that’s what you’re asking. Breeding matters with horses, not people.”

  Feminine gasps all around. “Believe me,” Mrs. Martin intoned, “it matters to Hunter Calhoun.”

  “How do you know?” Eliza asked.

  “Because we understand him in a way you never could. All we were suggesting, Miss Flyte, is that perhaps you should limit your training to Hunter’s horses, not Hunter’s children.”

  The bald statement reverberated across the veranda. The blow hit Eliza harder than she ever could have anticipated. She knew there were those who thought her strange, an outsider, someone who didn
’t belong in this closed and close-minded society. But she had dared to believe that, in time, acceptance would come.

  Her understanding of the situation crystallized. Any number of young ladies were lining up to snare Hunter. They saw her as a threat. Nothing she did or said could convince these society belles that she wasn’t a barefoot bumpkin whose presence would bring about the ruination of a good man.

  She really didn’t care what these anserine creatures thought of her. But she did care about Hunter and his children. Was she a mortification to them? Would Blue and Belinda suffer ridicule because of her?

  “Excuse me,” she stated, forcing into her voice a conviction she did not feel. “I’ll let you line up for Hunter like mares to the stud. I understand he’s about to commence a new breeding program.”

  A gale of outrage followed her as she crossed the veranda, marching around to the back of the house to let herself into the kitchen. Amazingly, she kept her composure until she lit a candle in the kitchen, then felt despair tear at her soul.

  She held the edge of the big scrubbed wooden table and sank down to the bench. It was madness, trying to fit in to this society. She didn’t want this at all, not for any price. She understood females being combative to defend their territory. That happened in nature all the time. But until tonight, she hadn’t understood what it was like to be the challenger.

  Hearing a step on the threshold of the kitchen, she looked up. Moonlight framed Nancy’s decrepit form, her abundant white hair. “What you doing here all by yourself, girl?” the old woman asked.

  “When I’m by myself, I don’t get into trouble.” Eliza stood and took Nancy’s hand in hers. “Sit with me.”

  Nancy’s eyes, as deep and unseeing as the night itself, crinkled at the corners in a smile. She took a biscuit from the jar on the table and handed one to Eliza. “Always helps to eat something.”

  “I should have stayed away from the ball. It’s not the sort of affair for me.”

  “Liar,” Nancy said, not unkindly.

  “Nothing escapes you, does it?”

  “Not with a house full of folks and hired servants running everywhere, talking their fool faces off.”

  Eliza took a bite of the biscuit. “I loved it, Nancy. The music, the food, the dancing—I never wanted it to end. But these people…They know I’m not one of them, nor would I ever try to be.”

  Nancy finished the biscuit and dusted the flour from her hands. “Ain’t no point in trying, honey. That ain’t the path to happiness.”

  “Then what is?”

  The old woman slowly rose from the table. “You’ll find it, girl. Or it’ll find you.”

  Eliza helped Nancy to her room. Then she checked on Blue and Belinda, touched by the untroubled beauty of their sleeping faces. Belinda’s tiny fist was curled like a bud upon her pillow. Blue clutched his own close against his chest, his breathing soft and even. She bent and kissed each child on the forehead, feeling love for them swell in her heart. It ached, because she knew she couldn’t love these children the way a mother could.

  Walking slowly, on bare feet that still felt the phantom rhythm of the orchestra, she made her way to bed, seeking a sleep that would not come.

  Twenty-Seven

  Long after the company had gone home or found their way to one of the guest rooms, Hunter stayed awake. He had drunk more whiskey than a sailor on shore leave, but its effects disappointed him. Tonight, he felt everything. He felt every poke and prod and nuance of emotion. He felt things he had been numbing himself against for years.

  Unable to contemplate sleeping, he went out to the barn. Every stall was occupied with racehorses. Things were as they should be. For once, he could breathe a sigh of relief about his state of affairs. He wasn’t bankrupt, his children were learning to embrace life again. He could take his choice of women to be his wife and stepmother to Belinda and Blue.

  He stood poised on the brink of success. At last, everything was as he wanted it.

  Except that nothing felt right. And he knew exactly why—Eliza Flyte.

  She had left the party without even telling him. She had just slipped away.

  He stood in the broad corridor that ran down the length of the stables, listening to the gentle nickering of the horses, and thought about Eliza. It was all he did these days, or so it seemed.

  Finn put his head out of the box and nipped sleepily at Hunter’s sleeve. Idly Hunter fitted his shoulder under the stallion’s muzzle and scratched the smooth chestnut cheek. Finn responded with a contented rumble low in his throat. When Hunter had first seen this horse, the idea of anyone actually being able to touch—not to mention ride—him was unthinkable. Now he was a champion, the star of the hour, and probably the most valuable horse in Virginia.

  The stallion nodded his great head and Hunter stepped away, holding him at arm’s length. The velvety lips rolled back playfully, going for his ears and hair. The horse’s grassy breath blew hot in his face. In spite of himself, Hunter laughed softly.

  “Kissing on the mouth,” said a thoughtful voice from the doorway. “Now that’s something my father never tried with his horses.”

  With a startled snort, the stallion swung his head toward Eliza. The movement made Hunter stumble back, slumping atop a bale of hay. Moonlight cast her in shades of blue as she stepped inside the barn.

  “What are you doing up?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “It’s an hour ‘til dawn,” she corrected him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Neither could I,” he admitted.

  She looked incredibly beautiful to him, a creature of moonlight and mist. A white cotton nightgown swirled like a cloud around her ankles. She wore her black hair loose, falling abundantly over her shoulders and down her back. Shadows hid her face, but he sensed that her attention was riveted on him.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?” he asked her.

  “Everything has been happening so fast. It’s all so new and exciting,” she said. “When I was standing at the banquet table at the party tonight, I was at a loss. There was too much there, Hunter. Too much to sample. I simply couldn’t make up my mind where to begin. I feel the same way about everything else these days.”

  He chuckled, intrigued by her honesty and lack of pretense. “Really?”

  “Really. Why couldn’t you sleep?”

  He hesitated, wondering if he should lie to her. No, he thought. She wasn’t easy to lie to. And so he said flatly, “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  She stiffened, suspicion prickling over her almost visibly. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly that. Everyone went to bed, and I should have gone as well, and slept soundly on the knowledge that Albion is about to enter a period of prosperity. Instead, I found myself thinking of you.”

  She turned away and went to the doorway, speaking over her shoulder. “We should change the subject.”

  “Fine.” He sat forward on the hay bale. “Did you enjoy the party?” he inquired.

  She hesitated, then said, “It was completely amazing.” She twirled around, hugging herself, and the nightgown belled out around her. “I felt like Cinderella going to the ball.” She stopped spinning to face him.

  “There will probably be plenty more dances now.”

  “Not for me there won’t be.”

  A chill stole over him despite the balmy warmth of the night. “What do you mean? Didn’t you like it? Didn’t you have a good time?”

  “I liked it, I danced with plenty of charming gentlemen, I had a good time, and if I’m ever tempted to go to a ball again, you have my permission to shoot me.”

  He planted his elbows on his knees. “I don’t understand you.” He was only half joking.

  She came toward him, moving like a wraith through a stream of blue moonlight, and stood in the center aisle of the barn. “I wouldn’t have missed tonight for the world. I saw so much, learned so much.” She ducked her head. He could hear her drawing in a long slow breath lik
e a swimmer before diving into deep, cold water.

  “One of the things I learned was that this isn’t my world.”

  Panic knocked at his chest. He wanted her here. He needed her here. “Give it time, Eliza—”

  “It can never be my world. I feel the same way when I study a herd of horses. I’m the outsider, looking in. I can understand what’s going on, and can even take part if I’m careful and I watch my behavior, but I’ll never think and feel as they do. I’ll never be one of them.” She lifted her head so that the light traced the clean line of her profile. “You and I belong to different species.”

  “Come here.” He held out both hands to her.

  She hugged herself protectively. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…well, that’s one thing I’ve learned from being here in your world. It’s not proper. A woman doesn’t just go around wantonly making love to men.”

  “Who said I expected you to make love to me? Wantonly?” He stood up, knowing he shouldn’t, knowing he couldn’t help himself. “Dance with me, Eliza. There’s no harm in dancing with me.”

  Before she could answer, he caught her in his arms, humming the first few bars of a waltz. She gasped in surprise, but instead of pulling away she let him hold her, grasped his hand and rested her other hand on his upper arm. They danced in the barn, with cedar shavings under their feet and the moonlight streaming down through the central skylight. Each detail of the moment stood out in sharp relief—the sound of her breathing and the warm smell of the horses, the clarity of her eyes and the way the light fell over her hair, the feel of her small, hardworking hand in his.

  “You’ve been drinking whiskey,” she whispered.

  He stopped humming but kept dancing. “I always drink whiskey.”

  “More than usual tonight, I think.”

  “You’re probably right. Tonight…I needed to forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “How much—” He paused and stopped dancing to weave his hand up into her thick black hair. “How much I want you,” he finished just before lowering his head and settling his mouth over hers.