The Horsemaster's Daughter

Hunter’s hand closed around the rifle stock. The oiled barrel had grown warm with the coming of the day.

And then he too looked at the stallion.

Two

Eliza Flyte’s favorite time of day was evening, when the light of the setting sun fused the sea and sky into a single wash of color. The flood tide turned the salt marshes into a green, floating kingdom with the shorebirds gliding silently by to roost for the night. A breeze rippled through the beach grass and sea oats, and frogs and crickets started up, marking the end of another day.

At such moments, when the beauty of nature burst with such force across the island, she felt she had all the riches of the world. She liked the unspoiled wilderness and the safety of being completely alone.

She stood at the shore of the island, shading her eyes against the coppery glare of sun on sea, and watched the flight of the wild swans that had taken up residence in the reeds along the freshwater estuary that seeped into the Atlantic. Every bird in the sky, it seemed, chose to roost in these parts. She knew why they came, for this was a place apart from everything else, separated by time and tide and the mists that fogged it in so that it appeared to be drifting, unanchored to the rest of the world.

It was a safe haven for creatures whose only defenses were flight and camouflage.

The cry of the departing swans always sounded inexplicably sad. Eliza imagined the piercing obligato to be some terrible wordless lament for a lost mate, and the sound never failed to make her shiver.

She was about to turn away from the shore, to step over the tangle of trumpet vines and the dunes clad in beach heather, when another movement caught her eye. She noticed a flicker, low on the diffuse waterline, and she paused, squinting, holding herself tense, ready to flee.

Something was there, in the distance, coming from the lee shore. At first she thought it was a whale. She had seen one once, a finback strayed in from the briny deep to beach itself and die with a horrible exhausted shudder on the strand. For weeks afterward she had avoided the stinking blue-tinged carcass, and when a wild autumn storm skirred in and sucked the carnage back out to sea, she had wept with relief.

But she realized as it drew near that this new apparition was no whale. It was the drover’s scow.

She recognized the low profile of the wooden craft from the old days, when her father would bring horses from the annual penning on Chincoteague Island. But no drover had visited Flyte Island recently. There was nothing here for him, nothing at all, and there hadn’t been in a very long time.

A man worked on the deck of the scow, his brawny form silhouetted against the sky. Alarm spread through Eliza in a swift, silent wildfire, radiating out along limbs and spine and scalp, seemingly to the very tips of her hair. She responded with the same instinct as the wild ponies that ranged across the island. Her nostrils filled with the scent of danger, a thrill of panic quivered across her skin, and she fled.

She sprinted up the beach, vaulting over the wrack line choked with refuse from the sea. Her bare feet were soundless on the dunes, and she covered a hundred yards before reason took hold and she slowed her pace. In a grove of whispering cedar trees, she stopped running. Still breathing hard, she scrambled up the curved scarp of a dune that had been bitten away by the tides. The vantage point gave her a clear view of the shore.

What would a drover want here? Did he think to graze his sheep or goats on the island? It was well-known that the grazing was poor, and could only support a handful of animals. What wild ponies there were would not welcome an intrusion. Aggressive and territorial, the herd would close ranks against any outsider.

The ponies would be up on the high ground for the night, huddled together for protection. Sometimes when Eliza watched them, she felt a tug of yearning, for the animals lived in a herd, their society regulated by the turning of the seasons and the sense of social order that seemed ingrained in the mares.

By watching the herd, Eliza had learned long ago that some animals were meant to live in groups. Living alone was unnatural, and the single, unconnected individual never survived for long. Perhaps people, like horses, were meant to live together too. But despite her loneliness, Eliza had never found any humans she wanted to live with.

She edged back out to the lip of the dune where it dropped off sharply to form a cliff. Her gaze tracked a meander of the marsh current. The tide had risen so that only the tips of the cordgrass showed, marking a passage deep enough for a flat-bottom vessel. The barge, rigged with two canvas sails, lurched awkwardly up the beach, propelled by a gust of wind and helped along by the drover’s long pole. Then the craft beached itself upon a shoal of fine sand and crushed shell.

She wondered how in heaven’s name he intended to correct such a haphazard landing. The pole came up, touching the top of the mast, and with a windy sigh the sails collapsed onto the deck, covering the tall-sided narrow pen in the middle.

Eliza stood perfectly still in the sweeping shadows of evening and watched while her heart sent her another message of danger. It took all of her will not to flee deeper into hiding.

A lone figure stood aboard the shallow-draft scow. The golden fire of sunset outlined his form in a strange flaming nimbus. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing fitted trousers and a blousy shirt with sleeves so generously cut that they blew in the breeze. She could make out his silhouette, a sharp-edged shadow against the coppery sky, but was unable to discern his features. He seemed unnaturally big, a threat, as he cast down the two bowlines and stepped into the thigh-deep surf to secure the lines to an ancient, worn stump of heartwood.

Eliza mustered her courage on a breath of marsh-scented air, then descended the dune in a tumble of crumbling sand. She strode out to the beach, unconsciously tightening the rope that held her smock cinched around her waist.

The boatman struggled with the sails, pulling them to one side of the pen. He unhitched a long wooden plank, creating a walkway to shore. His movements were sharp and angry.

A frightened whinny came from the pen.

The sound raked over her senses, calling to her like the song of a siren. Her every instinct screamed warnings but that sound, above all others, cut through her timidity and brought her out of the shadows. She forced herself to go nearer the intruder. He straightened, rubbing at the small of his back. The movement alarmed her, and she fell still, waiting. She could hear him muttering under his breath. He had a low, mellow voice that seemed curiously at odds with the barely restrained violence of his movements as he hauled on the canvas.

From the tall-sided pen she could hear a thump, then another. And finally a low, eerie growl, unmistakably equine.

She hurried the rest of the way to the beach and stepped barefoot through the wrack line, where changing varieties of flotsam were heaved up by the tide. The tattered hem of her dress swirled in the surf.

“Are you lost?” she asked, raising her voice over the roar of the sea.

His shoulders jerked up in surprise. He turned to glare at her. She could tell he was glaring even though the sun behind him obscured his features. Shading her eyes and squinting, she was able to catch a glimpse of his face, and for a moment she felt disoriented, adrift, confused, because it was such a striking, cleanly made face. In her entire life she had met few people, but she knew that here was a man who happened to be gifted with an excess of beauty. He looked like Prince Ferdinand in her illustrated Tempest.

For some reason that disturbed her more than anything else she’d seen so far. With a face as idealized as any artist’s fancy, he made a romantic sight; despite the circumstances, he possessed the sort of unsmiling demeanor of a man of great dignity and stature. He regarded her with a haughty aloofness, as if he lived in a kingdom not of this world.

But when he spoke, she knew he was very much of this world. “Is this Flyte Island?” he demanded, rude as any two-legged profane creature known as a man.

“It is,” she said.

“Then I’m not lost.” He yanked on the bowlines, testing them. “Who the hell are you?”

She cast a worried eye at the pen on the scow. “Who’s asking?”

His shoulders, remarkably expressive for such a nondescript part of the anatomy, lifted stiffly in annoyance. He turned to her once again, a shock of fair hair plastered with sweat to his brow.

“My name is Hunter Calhoun, of Albion Plantation on Mockjack Bay.” He paused, watching her face as if the name was supposed to mean something to her.

“Hunter. That’s a sort of horse, isn’t it?”

“It happens to be my name. I am master of Albion.” His eyes—they were a strange, crystalline blue—narrowed as his gaze swept over her. At a thud from the barge, his brow sank into a scowl. “I’ve come to see the horsemaster, Henry Flyte.”

The sandy earth beneath her feet shifted. Even now, after so much time had passed, the mere mention of the name disturbed her. He had been her world, the gentle-souled man who had been her father. He’d filled each day with wonder and wisdom, making her feel safe and loved. And then one day, without warning, he was gone forever. Gone in a raging blast of violence that haunted her still.

She felt such a choking wave of grief that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Her throat locked around words too painful to utter.

“Are you simple, girl?” the intruder asked impatiently. “I’m looking for Henry Flyte.”

“He’s gone,” she said, her small horrified admission stark in the salt-laden quiet of twilight. “Dead.”

A word she’d never heard before burst from the man. From the stormy expression on his face, she judged it was an oath.

“When?” he demanded.

“It’s been nearly a year.” Her pain gave way to anger. Who was this intruder to order her about and make demands, to pry into her private world? “So you’d best be off whilst the tide’s up,” she added, “else you’ll be stranded till moon tide.”

“He’s been dead a year, and no one knew?”

She flinched. “Those that matter knew.”

Hunter Calhoun swore again. He took out a hip flask, took a swig and swore a third time. “Who else lives here?”

“A small herd of wild ponies, up in the woods. Three hens, a milch cow, a dog and four cats, last I counted. More birds than there are stars.”

“I don’t mean livestock. Where’s your family?”