Calhoun Chronicles Bundle (42 page)

She spread her arms, encompassing all she could see. “This is the life I’ve been given. My father’s love was a precious gift to me, and I’d dishonor that gift by wanting more than I have.”

“So you’ll just stay here, settle for this?”

She watched the blaze of stars, and from the corner of her eye saw one shoot off and then fall out of existence. She could confess to Hunter Calhoun that there were days—many of them—when the simple act of breathing required too much effort. She could confess that there were some nights that she would not allow herself to sleep for fear that she’d dream of the night her father had died. But he was a stranger, so she didn’t answer.

They tracked the silent, angry flight of an owl on the hunt and listened to the distant swish of the endless, destructive caress of the waves on the edge of the island. The marsh whirred with the sound of frogs and crickets, but the noise itself was a sort of silence, pervasive and never-ending.

Finally, Hunter moved his hand. He touched her shoulder, turning her to look at him. “How did your father die, Eliza? Tell me how he died.”

She shivered at his touch, and from the question. A stranger, she kept telling herself. This man is a stranger. “I told you. There was a fire—”

His hand stayed where it was, although surely he could sense that her shoulder stiffened beneath his gently massaging fingers. “No,” he said. “I asked you if there was a fire. You let me assume that’s how he died because you didn’t want to tell me the truth.”

“That’s not so.”

His finger came up, brushed aside a lock of hair that lay across her cheek. The sensation made her shudder. “Eliza. There’s nothing up here but you, me and the stars.”

His statement—so simple, so true—drew a long, uneven sigh from her. “It’s awful.”

“All the more reason to tell me.” His finger skimmed along her cheek, then traced the line of her jaw. She realized she held it clenched tight and forced herself to relax.

“Tell me now,” he said, and she could imagine what that dark honey voice would do to any woman’s will. Lacey Beaumont Calhoun must have been putty in the hands of this man, with his seductive voice, his compelling touch and his attention fixed on her in a way that could make a woman believe she was the most important thing on earth.

“It’ll still be awful,” she warned him. But she could already feel herself unbending, opening up, like Pericles’s lion holding out a wounded paw, trusting the hunter to pull out the thorn.

“Tell me anyway.” The questing hand moved lower, finding the pulse at the side of her neck. It was almost as if he were touching a place inside her. It felt that deep, that intimate. She half shut her eyes and gave a small, distressed gasp.

“Don’t you want me to do this?” he asked. “Don’t you like me touching you?”

“I—don’t know,” she choked out. “You confuse me, Calhoun. In so many ways.”

The starlight caught the flash of his grin. “It’ll be like the horse. I’ll leave you alone until you want to be with me.”

Oh, Lord. It wasn’t supposed to work like that on people.

“So talk to me, Eliza Flyte,” he said, then took a swig of rum. And even though he was no longer touching her, she could feel the press of his attention on her, and it had almost the same devastating impact as his caress. “Tell me about the horsemaster. Tell it any way you like. We’ve got nothing but time.”

A faraway feeling seeped into her mind, sending her back to the years she had spent with her father. She drew the story from a well of pain deep inside her, and each word emerged from that terrible dark place.

“My father and I never did count my birthdays, nor did he ever make note of the day of my birth back in England. The first time I left this island was the year of the big storm that swept away the main wharf of Eastwick, so in my mind the events are connected. My memory of helping my father catch ponies for the annual penning happened the same year as the shipwreck with the Spanish bride. That’s how I remember things. It made for a certain…” She stared at the sky as if the right word might be written there. “A certain sense about the world. I believed that nothing mattered but the sea and the seasons and the work we did. I always had the feeling that we would go on like that forever, my father and me, living out our lives right here, with the animals and our books and the occasional visitor, the occasional trip to the mainland.”

“You never thought about leaving?” he asked.

“We talked about California, but it was a dream, not a plan.” She opened her arms as if to embrace the sky above. The stars were so numerous that they lit the roof, and she could see clearly the outline of her hands against the night. “Why would I want to leave this?”

“Because there’s a whole world out there.”

“Yes. I didn’t realize until I was older that my father kept trying to prepare me for changes. He used to show me where the waves bit away the dunes, and where the sand is shifting, and how there’s a marsh full of stumps where a forest used to be. It’s the nature of the islands to change. That’s what he used to say to me. That nothing is permanent, nothing lasts. He was trying to tell me that changes were coming, but I didn’t listen. Didn’t want to know. And so, after a lifetime of thinking nothing would be different, I found myself with an empty cabin, a burned-out barn, and my father hanged from a beam across the covered arena where he used to train.”

A hissing sound came from Hunter Calhoun. It was as if her words burned him. She felt their sting too, even now, long after the event. She couldn’t stop talking, though. Didn’t want to stop. The dark well inside her had been plumbed. A floodgate had opened. All the words and feelings that she’d held in with her silence and her loneliness came pouring out.

“I remember crushing myself into a hiding place the night they came for him.”

“They—” His voice broke on the single word. He was a tense shadow beside her; she could feel him bracing himself for what came next.

“The men who killed him. He had only moments to warn me, and he made me promise to stay hidden and silent no matter what happened. When he went off to the barn with them, I thought it was to do some horse trading, though it was the middle of the night.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why didn’t I think it was unusual to make deals in the middle of the night?”

“Because you weren’t looking for evil.” Hunter paused a moment, then asked, “You didn’t recognize these men?”

“I never saw their faces. I suppose that’s why they never came back for me. Even if they knew I existed, they had no fear that I’d ever be able to identify them. As far as they knew, I had nothing they wanted. As far as they knew.”

She had always wondered if they would have murdered her too, because she had her father’s gift with horses. Opening her eyes, she said, “I’ll always remember the tread of their footsteps and the sound of their voices. Papa always said I was just like the horses—an animal that survives by fleeing. Quiet, wont to run from danger or camouflage myself in hiding rather than confront it. There was nowhere to flee that night. I managed to hide between two burlap sacks of milkweed pods, wedging myself in, praying my dark frock and dark hair blended with the night. And while I was quailing in terror, my world was transformed.”

The cedar shingles had begun to press painfully into her elbows. She eased down onto her back, assuming Hunter’s supine posture.

“Just like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “My father and I had a life of innocent simplicity here, and suddenly I knew only danger and isolation. My father taught me to believe in the basic decency of people, but in just a few moments I had the smell of blood and death in my nose. I learned to suspect everyone.” She glanced over at Hunter. “You included.” It bothered her that she felt so comfortable with him. She’d warmed to him too quickly, and for too little reason. Yet she believed strongly in instinct, and instinct told her that this man would not hurt her.

“I gathered that.” Pain or anger—she wasn’t sure which—reverberated in his voice.

“One moment I had my father’s unconditional love. The next I had nothing. Less than nothing. When he was gone, so was the only thing in my life that mattered.”

He shifted to his side, one hip against the roof. “Why did they kill him?”

“I always assumed it had to do with his gift for working with horses. Some people still think it’s a black art. I imagine I’ll never know for sure.” She shut her eyes. “Since he was killed, I’ve begun to do something I never thought I’d do. I’ve begun to count time. Not just the years and months, but days and hours. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“So how long has it been?”

“Seven months, eleven days. I’ve been alone ever since that night. I picked up my life as best I could. Every few months I take the dinghy to town for supplies. I’ve been trading herbs and mushrooms, sometimes shellfish or whatever else I can sell. I don’t say much to anyone. Most folks in these parts have forgotten my name. They just call me the horsemaster’s daughter.”

Telling the tale had exhausted her, and she lay limp on the sloping roof, scarcely breathing, studying the powdery white light of the stars, her gaze probing the deeper black between them.

“What are you staring at?” Hunter asked.

“I’m looking, always looking for the place where my father dwells, up there among the stars.”

Hunter Calhoun fell utterly silent. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t touch her. She lay still beside him, listening to the rhythmic breathing of the night and the ocean, feeling the chill lick of the breeze passing over her body. The silence drew out, long and longer still, and then she started to worry. What had she done, baring her soul to this stranger from across the water? What had she been thinking?

Finally, nerves got the better of her and she made the first move, sitting up and scooting over so that she faced away from him.

“You know,” she said, her voice gratifyingly clear and loud. “I don’t really care what you think of my story, or my life and the way I live it. You asked what happened, and I answered you honestly, and now you probably don’t know the first thing to say to me.” Eliza heard herself speaking faster and faster, releasing still more of that flood of words that had been dammed up inside her for far too long. “I can’t blame you. The story of my life since the murder would leave anyone at a loss for words, I swear. But it’s what happened and there’s no way I can change—”

She broke off as his hand clamped down almost violently on her shoulder. He drew her around to face him, cedar shakes crumbling with the abrupt movement. He had risen from his supine position and he appeared huge against the night sky, rearing up on his knees, the chalky starlight forming a nimbus around his breeze-mussed hair. She took this all in with a single glance, but only had time to gasp in astonishment before he bent swiftly and pressed his mouth down hard upon hers.

It took a few seconds for her to realize that this brutally sensual assault was a kiss. Her first kiss. She couldn’t quite think of it in that way, for kissing was something she had only ever read about: Mr. Rochester’s brief peck on Jane Eyre’s wrist. This was not brief, and it wasn’t a peck. He crushed his mouth down so hard that she could feel the imprint of his teeth against her lips. Though it shocked her, it didn’t hurt.

A moment later she felt his tongue pushing insistently against the seam of her mouth. At the same time, he worked his thumb against her jaw as he had done earlier, only this was no friendly caress but an assault, and one she craved. With no choice but to obey, she opened her mouth, and then his tongue was in her, pushing, probing, and in the oddest way seeming to drink or feed upon whatever it was that was inside her.

She felt confused, unbalanced, and she braced her hands on the roof behind her to keep from falling somewhere she didn’t want to go. He pressed his body close, and he was overwhelmingly big, warm and protective as he covered her. She heard a faint, helpless sound and realized it came from her. Protesting? Not that. Pleading? Perhaps. But for what?

The taste of him was so surprising, but not nearly as surprising as the softness of his mouth and the painful sweetness of the feelings that spread through her. A few moments before, her skin had been chilly from the sea breeze. Now she burned, she stung. She wanted.

But life had taught her to flee the unknown, and before her wanting raged out of control, she recoiled.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, pulling away.

She still felt the ghost of his kiss on her lips. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.

He took another drink of rum, and his voice was lazy and careless as he said, “Because you were so alone, Eliza. Because you were so alone.”

His pity infuriated her. Before he could stop her, she scrambled down the slope of the roof. Her legs went over the side and swung there, toes outstretched until she found the top of the barrel she had used to boost herself up. From there she found the porch beam and then the rail, and finally felt the hard, chill earth beneath her bare feet.

W
aking late the next morning, Hunter pulled on his boots and made himself eat something—a bit of spiced apple from a jar in the kitchen. The food tasted foul in his mouth after all that rum the night before, but he knew he needed to eat. Then he left the house to search for Eliza.

He knew he had better find her and explain himself as soon as possible. Kissing her the night before had been the height of stupidity. Never mind that she had looked like a goddess, lying there in the misty starlight. Never mind that he had felt her ache of loneliness as acutely as his own base instinct. Never mind that she had roused in him a blaze of passion he’d never felt before—not for a woman, a horse or even a dream. He should have known better than to touch her, kiss her, fan the banked fires of their relationship. He’d known almost from the start that the passion was there between them. But so long as he kept a respectful distance, he didn’t have to acknowledge the attraction.

Last night, reckless as a moonstruck lad, he had closed that critical, unspoken distance. Some girls were meant to be kissed, fondled and toyed with like playthings. Not Eliza. Earnest and strange, she would never treat love as a game that ended in laughter and forgetfulness. She took everything seriously, took
him
seriously. He groaned aloud. He had misled her. For all he knew, she was now thinking that
she
might be the new wife he was looking for. He never should have told her his thoughts on the matter, never should have raised her hopes, never should have taken her in his arms and kissed her as if there were something they might dare to believe in.

Furious at himself, he searched for her, intent on making certain she understood it was the rum and the moonlight that had made him take her in his arms. Nothing more. There could be nothing more, ever.

The round pen where they had tamed the stallion was empty, the gate open. He followed the footprints—the girl’s small bare feet walking next to the horse’s sharp hoof marks. They had left at a slow walk. He could tell by the impressions they made in the sand. He followed the trail over the dunes and down to the beach. The incoming tide had erased the prints, but Hunter spotted the girl and the horse standing knee deep in the lagoon.

What a pair they made—the black-haired girl and the tall stallion, their images reflected in the still water.

Spying him, she lifted one arm. He could not tell if she waved in anger or welcome or caution. He approached them, and the horse swung his head toward him. Eliza had put a sheepskin, with the wool side down, over the stallion’s back. Two leather straps held the odd saddle in place.

“Good morning,” she said as he reached the edge of the lagoon.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“He needs to be ridden.”

“Like that?” Hunter frowned skeptically. “By you?”

“Haven’t you learned to trust me by now?” Without waiting for an answer, she made a clicking sound to the horse and led him deeper into the water. The surface of the lagoon mirrored the sky, reflecting treetops and high summery clouds that rippled as the woman and the horse waded deep. “This way, if I get thrown, I won’t get hurt,” she explained.

“I hope you know how to swim,” he cautioned, feeling himself go tense.

“I won’t need to swim. Finn will be doing the swimming.”

He marveled at the way she spoke to him, in the same matter-of-fact fashion that she had…before. As if their kiss last night had not happened. Or as if it didn’t matter.

Her manner nonchalant, she went deeper until the horse was in up to his withers. Then he swam, and Hunter was amazed at the calm way he moved through the water. He had expected the stallion to panic.

Eliza took hold of the mane and let her legs drift up and over his back. Hunter held his breath, bracing himself for a terrible accident. The stallion shuddered, but went on with Eliza holding fast to him. She lay forward and dropped her arms around his neck, and the pose had a powerful effect on Hunter. She was the picture of surrender and trust, her body draped over the stallion, her arms around the big arched neck and her cheek against the damp hide. No lady in Hunter’s world would even contemplate such a thing, yet Eliza rode without the slightest hesitation, as if swimming with a horse were the most natural thing in the world.

She didn’t so much ride the horse as become a part of him, moving as he moved, breathing as he breathed, letting him go where he would instead of trying to direct him. They were one entity, neither horse nor girl but a magical melding of the two. After a while, she sat erect, and he was surprised to see that her posture on horseback was as perfect as if she had attended the Hirsute Riding Academy of Williamsburg. She held her chin up and her shoulders level and square, and with only a slight press of her knee, she turned the horse toward shore.

Stallion and rider emerged from the water in a trail of glistening sunlit droplets. The horse planted his forelegs wide, and for a moment Hunter feared he would buck her off. But instead, the horse shook himself dry like a dog. Eliza laughed and clung tight to the mane. Then she asked the stallion to walk, indicating her desire with her knees and that soft clicking sound. The damp dress clung to her, outlining her breasts and belly.

Hunter had loved touching her, and even though he knew it could lead to trouble, he wanted to do more than kiss, even now. Her posture, once again, was flawless—heels down, head up—so proper he almost forgot her ragged dress, bare feet and unkempt tail of hair clubbed back with a bit of string. He forgot that her saddle was fashioned from a sheep’s hide. Upon the back of the Irish Thoroughbred, Eliza Flyte looked as regal as a queen.

They trained all day, taking turns with the work. Each exercise, each step along the way, brought the stallion closer to the champion he had been before the sea voyage. One step at a time, they reintroduced him to bit and bridle, to saddle and stirrups, and most of all to the presence and touch and authority of humans. By the end of the day, Finn was exhausted and biddable, only occasionally balky. Hunter groomed him, invigorated by the clean smell of the lagoon in Finn’s hair and mane.

“Eliza,” he said over his shoulder, “you’re a wonder.”

“I’ll fix us some supper,” she said.

When he turned around, he saw that she had already left silently on the sandy path. A little disgruntled, Hunter finished the grooming. He checked the horse’s feed and water, then shoveled out the arena. As he worked, he couldn’t stop thinking about Eliza.

It galled him that she didn’t seem as preoccupied as he was about their intimacy the night before. She had stayed focused on the horse, limiting her topic of conversation to Finn and his progress.

He didn’t understand her at all. She had gone through the entire day behaving as if nothing had happened between them. It wasn’t that he
wanted
her to be furious or hurt or horrified—it was that he expected no less.

Before going into the house, he put up the grooming box and washed himself at the cistern. Through the kitchen window, he could see Eliza stirring something, her face as serene and untroubled as a madonna’s. Her damp hair hung down her back, and she’d changed clothes. He caught himself wanting to smell the rainwater on her skin and in her hair, to taste her lips again. Immediately he shut off the thought.

“Something smells good,” he said as he stepped inside.

Eliza busied herself at the stove. Within a short time, she set the table with two mugs of cider, bowls of stewed greens and hot corn pone with butter melting over the golden-brown tops.

“Have I told you,” he said, hoping to keep the conversation light, “how much I admire your cooking?”

She watched him shovel in the greens and corn pone. “Not in words.”

He washed it down with a slug of cider and wiped his mouth. “My compliments. I know I’ll burn in hell for saying this, but your corn pone is better than Willa’s.”

“You like this corn pone better?”

He took a bite and nodded. “Maybe she uses more lard or something.”

“I don’t use fat at all,” Eliza said. “I never eat meat either.”

He blinked in surprise. “You don’t?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“I could never be that…predatory.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Hunter said. “Never heard of someone who didn’t eat meat.”

“My father wouldn’t touch it either. I’ll eat fish and shellfish, but never anything with fur or feathers or warm blood.” She gave a shudder of distaste. “It would be like eating a…a relative.”

He could understand that—sort of. She lived with animals, communicated with them in her own strange way. He could understand why she wouldn’t betray the bond of trust she formed with them.

They finished their meal in a silence that, to Hunter’s mind, grew louder and louder with each passing moment. He helped her wash up the dishes, and as they finished the task, darkness fell with that peculiar merciless swiftness he’d noticed the first night here. Long purple shadows streamed across the water and the marshland. The sounds of nocturnal creatures came out one by one, like the stars—the hoot of an owl, the squeal of a bat, the chirp of a thousand frogs.

His tongue and throat itched and thirsted until he almost couldn’t stand it. “I think I’ll have a little more of that rum,” he said.

She untied the cloth she wore as an apron and draped it over the back of a chair. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why do you want a drink of rum?”

“It’s one of the pleasures some folks enjoy.”

“You enjoy it? Drinking gives you pleasure?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“But sometimes no,” she persisted.

He grew exasperated and defensive. “Look, if you don’t want me to drink any rum, just say so and I’ll—”

“I don’t want you to drink any rum,” she said readily. “I shouldn’t have let you have the jug.”

“But—” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re just saying that to make me angry.”

“Are you angry?”

“No, goddamn it, I’m not angry.” But the sexual frustration that had begun so recklessly on the roof came bubbling to the surface. “I wanted to do a lot more than kiss you last night,” he said.

She brought her fists up to her chest and shuddered. He saw a flash of fascination in her eyes, but it was quickly doused by suspicion.

“What? What else did you want to do?”

“You’ll never know, because it’ll never happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right, Eliza. I don’t have a damn thing to offer you.”

“What makes you think I need something from you?”

“I see it in your eyes, honey.” He nearly choked on the admission. “Now, where’s that rum?”