Calhoun Chronicles Bundle

by Susan Wiggs

  “What would you give?” she asked.

  He caught her eye and turned his hands palms out, showing off his blisters, bruises and cuts. “An honest day’s work?” He put on his best smile.

  She stared at him, clearly unmoved. “Save the charm for your Virginia belles.”

  He hated it that he was so transparent. But his hopes rose as she lifted the slanting doors to the root cellar. She disappeared into the tiny crawl space, then reappeared, lugging a stoneware crock in both hands.

  The sight of it nearly sent him to his knees. “Is that what I think it is?”

  She set the jug on the table, took a pewter spoon and knocked the thick wax seal off the tap on the bottom. “What do you think it is?”

  A grin spread slowly across his face. “Heaven in a bottle.”

  She drew a tin cup of the amber liquid and handed it to him. “Salvage from a shipwreck,” she said. “It’s been in the cellar for years.”

  He took a long drink of the rum, letting its sticky warmth slide down his throat. Fireworks of welcome went off in his gut. “And you, my dear,” he said, grinning even wider, “are an angel from above.”

  Eliza caught a drop from the tap on her finger and tasted it, making a face. “Why do you like to drink?” she asked.

  He drained his cup in two gulps. That was what he needed: a drink to steady him. “So I don’t have to think.”

  “What is it you don’t want to think about?”

  “All the troubles of the world,” he said expansively.

  “Humph.” She went back to stirring the oyster stew. She clearly didn’t believe a man like him could have troubles.

  The rum made him maudlin, talkative. He wanted her to understand. “When my father died, I discovered he was eyeball deep in debt. He did not do me the courtesy of leaving me nothing. Instead, he left me with debts that cost nearly the entire estate to pay off.” He poured another cup of rum. “I hire grooms when I can afford them, and my cousin’s boy, Noah, helps with the horses. Best trainer and jockey in the county.”

  Eliza stopped working for a moment and held herself very still, listening with that same intensity he had noticed in her earlier. He paused, slightly aghast that he was speaking so openly of matters so private. Yet her thoughtful silence encouraged him to explain. Or maybe it was the rum.

  “I’ve built a skinned one-mile oval for training. Got some promising Thoroughbreds in my yard, and I spent nearly all that I have on Finn. If he doesn’t perform, I’m finished. This season’s races and the yearling sale will determine my future. If I fail, I’ll probably lose Albion.” He helped himself to more of the rum, and felt himself smoothing out at last.

  The oyster stew was delicious, or at least he supposed it was. He wolfed down two wide dishes of the stuff and sopped the last of it with corn bread, not pausing to savor the rich, buttery broth. Eliza ate in silence, a trait he found strange in a woman. So strange that he started to resent it. Replete with a stew of oyster and onion, and nicely lit by the rum, Hunter decided to get her to talk to him. When she had opened the cellar door, he’d noticed something else hidden there.

  While she was busy clearing up after supper, he opened the narrow angled door and stepped into the crawl space.

  “What are you—” Eliza bent over the open door. “Put that back,” she snapped. “It’s private.”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Put it back.”

  He shook his head and balanced the big, oblong box on one shoulder as he climbed out of the cellar. “What’s inside?” he asked, setting it down on the crab trap table.

  Her cheeks grew bright red with mortification, and he chuckled. “I don’t know why you’re feeling so bashful,” he said. “I’m the one who spilled my guts to you, telling you things I’ve held inside myself for years. Why? Why did I tell you I’m penniless, that I risked everything to build the horse farm?”

  “Because you drank enough rum to float a boat,” she snapped, grabbing for the box.

  He moved protectively between her and the dusty crate. The rum only accounted for some of his honesty. Maybe he spoke to her easily because she was a stranger—someone he would never see again after he left this island. That made her…safe. Trusted.

  It was sad, in a way, that the only person he could trust his secrets to was someone he would never see again.

  “Calhoun,” she said, “you have no right to pry—”

  Ignoring her, he lifted the clasp of the tired-looking old footlocker and flipped up the lid. Within lay an odd collection. “What’s all this?” he murmured.

  An exasperated sigh burst from her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but those are things we salvaged from wrecked ships over the years.”

  Hunter took the items out, one by one—a wig, a drinking chalice with handles formed from the curved bodies of mermaids, a silver comb, a conch shell with a pearlescent pink interior, a woolen Monmouth cap, a mourning ring of gold inscribed In memory of my beloved wife Hannah—How many hopes lie buried with thee.

  “Here, let me get the rest,” she said, apparently resigned to his intrusion. “You might break something.” With a curious reverence, she brought out a colorful hand-stitched counterpane. It was made of some fine stuff—silk or satin brocade—with a glossy fringe.

  “When I was very small, a ship ran aground during a storm,” she said. “We found the wreck in the aftermath. I don’t remember it very well, but there was such a terrible feeling of loss. A desolation. In the dark, the crew and passengers couldn’t find a way ashore, and they drowned.” Her eyes turned soft with regret. “Every last one of them, that’s what my father thought at first. Then, by some miracle, he discovered one survivor. It was a woman. He found her at sunrise in a stateroom, and she was injured and dying. We never knew her name, and she never spoke to us in English. My father recognized her language as Spanish.” She spread the counterpane over the dining table, smoothing away the wrinkles with her hands.

  “She managed to tell my father, with gestures, that she wished to be brought ashore with all her fine things.” Eliza took out the salvaged wares, setting them on the cloth one by one. There was bone china so fine that it glowed when held to the lamp, silver forks and knives and spoons, crystal goblets, all nestled in protective layers of linen and lace. “My father guessed that it was a dowry, for she was young and very beautiful. She touched my cheek, and her hand was so cold that I wanted to cry. Later that night she died, and my father buried her with the sailors in the high meadow behind the first row of dunes.”

  “Did you ever find out who she was?”

  “We never learned her name. The salvage company in Eastwick came straightaway and took the cargo—sardines and olive oil, mostly. They asked about the Spanish lady’s belongings.” Eliza gestured at the treasures. “My father was an honest man, but he said nothing to the salvagers. When I asked him about it later, he smiled at me and said one day I’d be needing a dowry of my own, and he was sure the beautiful Spanish bride would want me to have hers.”

  With a self-deprecating grin, Eliza looked down at her homespun smock and bare feet. “Thus far, I haven’t found any use for it. But—” She broke off, stopping herself and glancing away from Hunter.

  He found himself staring at the sweet, slender curve of her neck as she turned her head away. “But what?” he asked, almost against his will. “Tell me what you were going to say.”

  With his fingers at her jawline, he brought her gaze to his. Her skin was petal soft, washed clean from the cistern water earlier in the day. She tensed when he touched her, and seemed so flustered that he relented and dropped his hand.

  “You’re as skittish as one of those wild ponies you showed me,” he said, reaching into the bottom of the old chest.

  “That was with her things,” she said.

  He opened the large, flat book. Folded inside the front cover was a map printed on yellowed paper. He raised the flame in the lamp and studied the map. The words were in Spanish, but he rec
ognized the outward curve of the coastline. “California,” he said.

  “We thought that was her destination.” Eliza paged through the book. “The text isn’t in English, but by studying the text and the pictures, I—” She bit her lip, bashful again.

  “Go on,” he said, intrigued. He was having to pull this out of her.

  She opened the book to a page marked with a length of black ribbon. “I know these pictures as well as the saltwater channel in front of this house. My father and I spent hours studying them. The lithographs were printed from famous paintings by an artist called Jiminez. There,” she said, indicating a page in the book. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  He scanned the text beside the picture. “Cel—”

  “Cielito,” she said, correcting his pronunciation. “It’s north of gold country, and the land is there for the taking. Wild horses run free for thousands of miles. My father always said we would go there one day.”

  “I take it you’re more at home with horses than with people.”

  “A horse never did a thing wrong to me.”

  “And a person has?”

  Agitated, she recoiled, as if sensing she had revealed too much. She shut the heavy book with a thud and put it back in the trunk. Hunter sensed something more was going on than the simple display of her treasures. She was telling him her dream. Like the dance she had done with the stallion on the beach that first morning, she was doing a dance with him. She would reveal something to him, and see what happened in return. Interesting.

  “So when do you set sail?” he asked.

  She laughed, but he heard bitterness in her laughter. “I think I’m a little late for the gold rush.”

  He indicated the things in the trunk. “That would be worth something.”

  “That poor dead bride left them with me. I’m not sure she meant to, but it seems wrong to sell her things. I’ll take them with me. They were always meant to wind up in California anyway.”

  “And when will that be?” he persisted.

  She looked him in the eye, and for a moment he wished he hadn’t drunk so much.

  “That depends,” she said, “on what I have to do to earn the price of passage.”

  Eight

  Eliza scrambled out of bed with a vague, disoriented sense that something was amiss. She washed and dressed quickly, and didn’t bother with her hair. Then she went outside to find the porch deserted.

  Had he gone? Had he taken Finn, or simply left the stallion for her to train?

  Caliban came trotting up, his fringed tail swishing to and fro in friendly fashion. “So where’d he go?” Eliza murmured, distractedly scratching the dog’s ears. A breeze hissed in the high trees on the lee shore, bringing with it a tingle of heat from the coming summer. The tide was out, and the long slick mudflats fidgeted with the movements of bugs and crabs. Eliza climbed up to the porch rail and balanced there to give herself a longer view, past the outbuildings and the rippling windrows of saltmeadow hay. No boat or scow lay at anchor at south shore. Instead the strand was wide and empty, the tide out far, gulls and cormorants squabbling over crabs and shellfish on the flats.

  She had looked upon this sight every day of her life, but today felt different. After her father died, she had finally understood what loneliness felt like. She discovered that it was bearable so long as she didn’t brood about her isolation.

  But with the arrival of Hunter Calhoun, she had discovered something else. She needed to be with someone. Even if that someone was an arrogant, hard-drinking Tidewater blue blood. In his absence, she no longer felt merely lonely. She knew a sense of abandonment so vast and deep that she wondered how she could be feeling it and still be alive. It was a different sort of hurt from the hopeless agony of losing her father. This was a sort of hurt that held the heat of anger.

  Why had he left without a word? Had he revealed too much of himself, telling her of his dreams and plans for the place called Albion? That was probably it, she decided. People were rarely grateful to those to whom they told their secrets.

  Caliban whined impatiently, eager to get on with the day. There were weirs and crab traps to be checked, chores to do. It was silly, but she had grown used to Hunter Calhoun being present when she awoke. Sitting around and wondering about him accomplished nothing.

  Claribel’s milk pail wasn’t in the kitchen. Eliza wondered if she could have left it out somewhere. But she never forgot the pail. She hurried outside and walked up to the meadow, listening for Claribel’s bell and calling her name. The little cow always walked the same track, and the path beaten into the sandy earth was easy to follow. Like the other animals of the island, the cow had a language all her own, a silent and simple language Eliza understood. Rather than shying from her, Claribel almost always came when called.

  With a strange shock Eliza saw Hunter Calhoun, carrying a bucket of milk down the cow path toward her.

  “Morning,” he said, his manner casual, as if this were an everyday occurrence.

  “Morning,” she echoed, unable to get her mouth to say anything else.

  “Did your milking for you,” he said gruffly.

  She followed him down to the house. “I’m used to doing my own chores.”

  He went inside and set the bucket in the dry sink, laying a towel over the top of it. “Don’t look so outraged, Miz Eliza. You know, in my time I’ve given cause for any number of women to take offense, but never on account of milking a cow.”

  She felt her cheeks redden. “I’m not offended—”

  “You are.” He took her hand and pulled her along with him, leading the way outside. “And I can tell you why.”

  She wrenched her hand away from his, but he kept walking, so she had to quicken her step to keep up. “Very well. Tell me why.”

  “Because you’re starting to like me.”

  “I’m not. I don’t even know you.”

  He slowed his pace and sent her a sidelong glance. “Honey, you know me better than almost anyone I’ve ever met. See, I don’t talk about…What happened with Lacey and the farm and what I hope to accomplish—I’m not sure why I spoke of it to you.” He thought for a moment. “You started liking me better after I told you about my terrible past.”

  “That’s not true. I—”

  “You’re just relieved to hear I’m not some arrogant planter, whipping his slaves and taking their women to bed.”

  “I’d be relieved to hear that about anyone.”

  “Well, the fact is, you like me better today than you did yesterday, and tomorrow you’ll like me even more.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They made their way along the path to check on the stallion. Finn stood in the shade of a sweetleaf tree, drinking from the rain barrel and switching his tail rhythmically to and fro. At the sound of their approach, he stopped drinking and brought his head up sharply, long bright strands of water dripping from his muzzle.

  She could see the lingering ghosts of fear and rage in him. He pricked his ears high and clamped his tail low, sucking under his haunches and lifting one foot. He was fully prepared to defend himself by kicking.

  “He’s about to explode,” Hunter observed.

  “Yes.” She felt a certain satisfaction in the idea that he was paying attention to the stallion’s signals.

  “He seemed better yesterday, but look at him now.” He touched her arm lightly, and she felt stung, unused to any man’s touch.

  She pulled away. “You can’t rush the process. His fear was deep. Be patient.”

  “Show me,” he said to her. “Show me how you tamed him.”

  Over the years, many had asked the same of her father. Only a few had genuinely wanted to learn. Looking into Hunter Calhoun’s clear blue eyes, she hoped he was one of those few.

  “He’s willing to listen,” she said. “Watch the ears.” Ever so slightly, one ear turned back obliquely. “Go on into the pen. You should start working with him.”

  “
Don’t you think it’s too soon to test him?”

  “We’ll know in a moment, won’t we?”

  Hunter Calhoun stood at the gate, scowling. He was peevish, balky, like an intractable plow horse. The thought made her smile. “All right, Mr. I-Can-Ride-Anything-with-Hair. Are you saying you’re afraid?”

  “You didn’t see us getting him off the ship from Ireland. This stallion’s a lit stick of dynamite.”

  “Just watch him,” she said softly. “Feel what he’s telling you.”

  “Honey, what he’s telling me is he’d like to kick my eyes through the back of my head.”

  She pushed him lightly, her hand on his back. “You’ll be fine. And if you’re not, just—stay close to the rail.”

  He grumbled, but he did as she said, walking into the pen. She took a quiet joy in the morning now, for it felt like so many mornings past, when her father had been alive. The prospect of a new horse. The squeak of the bar across the gate and the solid thunk of the rail dropping into place. She had missed this. Oh, how she had missed this.

  “Now, hold your shoulders square, but don’t threaten him. Think about what he sees when you walk toward him. Your eyes are at the front of your head, which marks you as a predator.”

  “I can’t do much about that,” Hunter said between his teeth.

  “I’m just pointing out that to a horse, you have the look and the smell of a predator. Instinct will tell him to flee from you. So you’ve got to convince him to want to follow you.”

  “In other words, he’s got to see something I’m not. I don’t think a horse is that smart.”

  “You’ve got to avoid threatening him. Walk slowly. Don’t be intimidated, but don’t intimidate.”

  As Hunter approached the horse, the chestnut hide quivered and the ears flattened. Hunter half turned to her, a question in his eyes.

  “Watch the horse,” she said. “See the way he holds himself. He distrusts you, but you have his attention.”