The Horsemaster's Daughter. Сьюзен Виггс

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СКАЧАТЬ been pounding if you hadn’t insisted on fixing up your pen.”

      “I wouldn’t need the pen fixed if you hadn’t brought me that horse.”

      “I—” He yanked his hand away from hers. “All right. So it’s all my fault.” Despite his amusement at sparring with her, he grew serious. “Eliza, we have to end this.”

      “End what?”

      “The pretending. That horse isn’t going to get any better.”

      Something flickered in her eyes—fear, rage, distrust—something that reminded him eerily of the stallion.

      “You’re wrong,” she said in a low, angry voice. She stepped back, wiping her hands on her apron. “Come with me. Maybe you’ll understand better when I show you.”

      Motioning for the dog to stay back, she led Hunter on a hike northward, perhaps two miles along a narrow, sandy track that wound along the edge of the loblolly pine forest and skirted the dunes. After they crossed a low, marshy area, Hunter noticed hoofprints and droppings on the path and in some of the thickets they passed.

      “Stay very quiet,” Eliza said, leading him around a curve in the path. “They’re not terribly shy, but they are wild.”

      “The ponies, you mean.”

      She nodded. “Let’s climb that dune there. Be very quiet.”

      He found himself lying, belly down, next to her on the slope of a dune. The spiky reeds framed a view of a broad saltwater marsh crammed with tender green shoots of cordgrass. A herd of about eighteen large ponies grazed in the distance while starlings and sparrows perched on their backs and pecked insects from their hides.

      Hunter had seen herds before. But the sight of the island horses, wild and free, moved him. It was a scene he knew he’d hold in his heart for all his days—the placid animals with their heads bent to their grazing, the salt-misted air soft around them, the white-winged gulls wheeling overhead. He glanced over at Eliza and saw that a similar wonder had suffused her face. That was her charm, he realized. Her sense of wonder, her different way of looking at things. He suddenly wished he could see the world through her eyes.

      “Where did they come from?” he asked.

      “My father brought a herd down, one animal at a time, from Assateague.”

      “I wonder how they got there.”

      “Pirates, some say. Others think they’re descended from horses turned out to graze by settlers on the mainland. My father believed they’re descended from a shipwrecked load of Spanish ponies. They were being sent to Panama to work in the mines, and every last one of them had been purposely blinded.” She made a face. “So they wouldn’t panic when they were lowered into the mines. Those that survived the wreck swam ashore and turned wild.”

      They listened for a while to the deep rhythm of the sea and the wind through the pine forest behind them. He felt surprisingly comfortable, lying in the dunes beside Eliza Flyte. It was something he wished he could do with his children—simply lie still in the sand, in the late afternoon, and watch a herd of horses. He hadn’t done anything of the sort with his children, not in a very long time. Maybe not ever.

      “Now watch,” Eliza whispered. “That big shaggy gray is the stallion, and you’ll be able to recognize the mares by the way they behave. See that yearling there, the little bay? He’ll ask the mare for a grooming.”

      She turned out to be right. The younger horse approached the mare obliquely, head down, mouth open. The mare rebuffed him, laying back her ears. He persisted even when she reared up and threatened to bite, and after a time she accepted him, nibbling at his head, mane and neck. The exchange was remarkably similar to the interplay Hunter had seen on the beach between Eliza and the stallion.

      “Funny how he keeps after her even when she’s ignoring him. I reckon I’ve met a few Virginia belles who must’ve gone to the same finishing school as that mare.”

      She propped her chin in her hand. “What are they like—Virginia belles?”

      He thought for a moment, remembering the endless dancing lessons he had endured as a boy, the stiff and awkward society balls and the tedious conversation that had droned on and on when the belles went on their annual husband hunt. “Like that mare,” he said simply. “Bossy, fussy about grooming, and fascinating to youngsters and males.”

      She blew out an exasperated breath, scattering grains of sand. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

      He fell silent and watched the herd for a while. Then he reached out and skimmed his finger along Eliza Flyte’s cheek in a slow, sensual caress. It felt even smoother than it looked.

      She smacked his hand away and whispered, “What are you doing?”

      “If I keep after you,” he said in a teasing voice, “will you eventually give in?”

      “I’ll eventually box your ears.” Yet despite the threat, merriment danced in her eyes, and—wonder of wonders—she was blushing.

      They watched the herd until the sun lay low across the island, plunging toward the bay in the west. Eliza stood and brushed herself off. Some of the ponies looked up, but settled back to their grazing or resting when she and Hunter started along the path. About halfway to the house, she turned into a thicket bordered by holly and red cedar.

      There in the middle of the clearing stood a weathered gray stump. Carved on the trunk was the name Henry Flyte, d. 1853, and, encased in sealed glass, a painstakingly copied verse Hunter recognized from The Tempest:

      “Full fathom five thy father lies;

      Of his bones are coral made;

      Those are pearls that were his eyes:

      Nothing of him that doth fade

      But doth suffer a sea-change

      Into something rich and strange.”

      The image of Eliza Flyte, giving her father a solitary burial and marking the grave with the weird and beautiful verse, tore at his heart. The peaceful wonder of the afternoon had gone. “You should leave this place,” he said. “Make a new life somewhere else.”

      She made her way back to the path. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I have riches beyond compare, here on this island.”

      “And you’re content to live here for all of your days.”

      Just for a moment, a secretive look flashed in her eyes. “I—yes,” she said hastily. “Why would I want anything else?”

      “Because you’re human,” he said, speaking sharply. He wasn’t certain why she made him angry, but she did. “You don’t belong with a herd of horses. You belong with other people.”

      “People like you?” She sent him an insolent, sidelong glance.

      “Why not?” he demanded.

      “I might just choke on all that Virginia charm,” she retorted, flipping her plaited hair with a toss of her head.

      She СКАЧАТЬ