The Horsemaster's Daughter. Сьюзен Виггс

nearly struck Eliza in the head. Hunter roared out a warning, leaping up and running toward her.

      She calmly stepped away. The horse landed heavily, then twisted his big body and galloped away toward the thicket behind the dunes.

      “You’re crazier than the horse is,” Hunter said, his nerves in shreds. “I won’t have any part in this. I’m leaving with the morning tide.”

      Eliza appeared not to hear him as she coiled the rope carefully. “That’s enough for today anyway,” she said. “There’s always tomorrow. Best not to rush.”

      “You might not be able to find him tomorrow.”

      She shaded her eyes and looked up at the rise of the dunes. The stallion turned, showing his profile, and reared against the sky, a whinny erupting from deep within him. Then, with a flick of his tail, he was gone.

      “He’ll be back,” Eliza said.

      Six

      Eliza set out some of last autumn’s apples she’d preserved in a charcoal barrel. In the morning she slipped out early to find that they’d been eaten. She tried to quell a surge of excitement, reminding herself that her father’s first rule was to work at the horse’s pace, peeling away his fears layer by layer rather than trying to rush things. There were more good horses ruined by haste than by any sort of injury, she reminded herself.

      In the half-light she inspected the training facility that had been the hub of her father’s life. It was sad, seeing it like this, broken, burnt and neglected. He had died here, she thought with a shudder. He had died for doing the precise thing she was about to do.

      The area inside the pen was overgrown with thistle and cordgrass. She would have to spend the day clearing it. Backbreaking but necessary work. Perhaps Hunter Calhoun would be of some use after all.

      The thought of her unexpected visitor seemed to have summoned him, for when she untied the halter and turned to pull the gate, he stood there, behind her.

      He discomfited her. There was no other word for it. Wearing his own clothes rather than the ill-fitting ones he’d worn yesterday, he managed to appear as broad and comely as a storybook prince, with the breeze in his blond hair and his sleeves rolled back to reveal the dark sun-gold of his forearms. On closer inspection she saw that a golden bristle shaded his unshaven jaw, but that didn’t make him less striking. It only served to soften the edges of his finely made cheeks and jaw, and added to his appeal.

      She had never heeded her own looks. She’d never taken the time to make sure her dress fit nicely or her hair was properly curled and pinned. Living on the island with her father, and lately all on her own, made such vanities seem unimportant.

      But now, feeling the heat of this man’s stare upon her, appearances were everything. Absolutely everything. She wanted to shrivel down into the ground like a flower too long in the sun. She found herself remembering a group of gentry that had accompanied the drovers to the island to buy ponies from her father one year. They’d made a holiday of it, much as people did on penning day up at Chincoteague to the north. She was twelve, and until that day she had not known a girl wearing breeches and haphazardly cropped hair would be considered anything unusual.

      But as she walked past the freshwater pond where the herd of ponies grazed, she became aware of a hush that swept over folks as she walked by, followed by a buzz of whispers when she passed.

      “I never knew Henry Flyte had a boy,” someone said.

      The dart had sunk deep into the tender flesh of her vanity. She recalled actually flinching, feeling the sting between her shoulder blades.

      “That’s no boy,” someone else declared. “That’s the horsemaster’s daughter.”

      That day, Eliza had stopped wearing trousers. She had painstakingly studied a tattered copy of Country Wives Budget to learn how to make a dress. She let her hair grow out and tried to style it in the manner of the engraved illustrations in the journal. In subsequent years, visitors to the island still whispered about her, but not because she looked like a boy. It was because she had become a creature recognizable as female no matter what she wore. The stares and whispers carried quite a different connotation. But she never managed to fix herself up quite right. Never managed to capture the polished prettiness of a girl gently raised. And in truth, it usually didn’t matter.

      But when she brushed the tangle of black hair out of her eyes and looked across the field at Hunter Calhoun, it mattered.

      “I was just thinking about you,” she confessed.

      He propped an elbow on the rail and crossed one ankle over the other. “You were?”

      “This area needs clearing.”

      One side of his mouth slid upward. She couldn’t tell if it was a grin or a sneer. “And why would that make you think of me?” he asked.

      A sneer, she decided. “Because it’s where your horse is going to be kept.”

      “I told you yesterday, I want no part of this idiotic scheme. I plan to leave—”

      “You’re not going to get away with just leaving him.” Her thoughts, of which he could have no inkling, made her testy. If he wondered why, she’d just let him wonder. “I didn’t ask you to bring him here, but now that you have, you’re going to see this through.”

      He spread his hands in mock surrender. “It is through. Don’t you see that? The horse is vicious, and he’s scared of a flock of damn birds. Sure, you did a little parlor trick with him down on the beach, but you’ll never turn that animal into a racehorse.”

      She glared at him. “Get a shovel.”

      “I just said—”

      “I heard what you said. Get a shovel, Calhoun. If I’m wrong, you can—” She broke off, undecided.

      “I can what?”

      “You can shoot me, not the horse.”

      He laughed, but to her relief, he picked up a rusty shovel and hefted it over his shoulder. “You don’t mean that.”

      “There’s one way to find out.”

      “Damn, but you are a stubborn woman. What the hell gives you the idea you can turn this horse around?”

      “I watched my father do it for years, and he taught me to do it on my own.”

      “And just what is it you think you can do for that animal?”

      “Figure out why he’s afraid, then show him he doesn’t need to be afraid anymore.” She eyed him critically. “It would help if you’d quit spooking him every time he twitches an ear.”

      “If it’s so simple,” he asked, “why don’t all horsemen train by this method?”

      “I don’t know any other horsemen,” she admitted. “My father showed me the ways of horses by taking me to see the wild ponies, season after season, year after year. If you watch close enough, you start seeing patterns in the way they act. As soon as you understand the patterns, you understand what they’re saying.”

      “You claim to know a lot about horses, Eliza Flyte. Sounds like you gave it a fair amount of study.”

      “It was my life.”

      “Was?”

      “Before my father passed.”

      “What is your life now?”

      The question pressed at her in a painful spot. She braced herself against the hurt. No matter what, she must not let Calhoun’s skepticism undermine her confidence. The horse had to learn to trust her, and if she wasn’t certain of her skills, he’d sense that. “You ask hard questions, Mr. Calhoun,” she said. Then she froze, and despite the rising heat of the day felt a chilly tingle of awareness.

      “What is it?” he asked. “You’re