The Horsemaster's Daughter. Сьюзен Виггс

he said.

      “I didn’t hear myself invite you,” she retorted, her voice growing as faint as her form in the distance.

      He hurried to catch up to her. “I’ve money to pay.”

      She kept walking, didn’t even glance at him. “I don’t want your money.”

      He touched her arm. She yanked it away so quickly that she nearly stumbled over the vines snaking across the sand dunes. “Skittish, aren’t you?” he asked, torn between feeling intrigued and annoyed.

      “Why should I trust you?” she fired back. “You’re a stranger. You’ve brought me a wounded horse, which you claim is not your fault, but how do I know you didn’t beat him until he went insane?”

      Hunter was nearly out of patience. He planted himself in front of her, stopping her. “You took one look at the horse,” he said, “and you went all weird and misty-eyed, like you could read his mind. Take a look at me, Eliza Flyte.” He glared down at her. “Take a real good look and tell me you see a man who beats horses and crosses dangerous waters in an old scow just for sport.”

      Her eyes narrowed, and in the flickering twilight he fancied he could feel her scrutiny probing at him. In the long, tense silence, broken only by the shudder of the wind and the lapping of the waves, he resisted the urge to squirm like a schoolboy.

      “I don’t know what I’m seeing,” she said quietly. She gestured at the scow. “Have you any personal belongings you’ll be needing for the night?”

      “For the night?”

      “You know, things. You’re sleeping on the porch where I can keep an eye on you. So if you need something from your boat, get it now.”

      “There’s only my gun,” he said. “And without shot, it’s no good to me at all.”

      She made no apology. “Come, then. You’ll want to dry your clothes.”

      “I’ll sleep on the boat,” he said.

      “The mosquitoes will drive you mad,” she promised him. “And I have no experience restoring a man to sanity. Just horses.”

      Four

      Eliza felt sick with nervousness as she made her way over the dunes to the path that led to the house. Since her father’s death, no one had come to the island.

      Henry Flyte had built the house more than twenty years ago. He had made it of materials salvaged from shipwrecks, and indeed it resembled a ship in some respects, with an observation deck on the roof and spindly rails around the porch. The dwelling had two rooms and a sleeping loft where she had passed each night since she was old enough to climb the ladder. Set upon cedar blocks, the house had a lime-and-lath chimney and sparse furniture, most of it salvage goods or fishing flotsam. An iron stove and a dry sink comprised the kitchen.

      He had built it for her—a home. A refuge, a place of safety after he had fled the chaos of the royal racing circuits in England. Eliza had always suspected his self-exile had something to do with the circumstances of her birth, but he never spoke of it, and he’d died before she could wrest the whole story from him.

      Now she lived alone in the house he had made with his own hands and shingled with layers of cypress. It had never been a beautiful home, not like the ones in the illustrations in their prized collection of printed engravings. But it was the place Eliza had always associated with love and comfort and safety. When she thought of home, she could imagine no other place but this.

      Yet as she brought this angry, damp stranger home, she could not help but feel violated in some fundamental way, intruded upon. This aristocratic planter would judge her by what he saw, and while she shouldn’t care what he thought of her, she found that she did.

      Following the curving path, shaded by myrtles, they came to the old barn first. The burned-out stalls and paddock looked haunted, the charred timbers like an enormous black skeleton against the night sky.

      “You had a fire here?” Hunter Calhoun asked. His voice sounded overly loud, almost profane, in the stillness.

      “Aye.”

      “Was it recent?”

      “Last year.”

      “Is that how your father died, then?”

      She hesitated. He had been dead before the fires had started. But to spare herself further explanation, she nodded and said again, “Aye.”

      She led him around the end of the once-busy arena where her father’s voice used to croon to the horses, coaxing them to perform in ways most men swore was impossible. A short sandy track led to the house built up on pier and beam to take advantage of the breezes and to protect it from high water in case of a flood.

      A weathered picket fence surrounded her kitchen garden, tenderly green with new shoots and sprouts of beans, squash, corn, tomatoes, melons. Peering through the gloom, Eliza could just make out the friendly bulk of Claribel placidly chewing her cud. The milch cow flicked one ear to acknowledge them. She was down for the night, sleeping beneath an old maple tree with branches that swept low to the ground. From the henhouse came the soft clucking of Ariel, Iris and Ceres, the biddies settling for the night.

      “You don’t have trouble with cougars or wolves?” Hunter Calhoun asked.

      “I’ve seen a few. But they don’t come too near.”

      “Why not?”

      Before she could answer, a horrible sound bugled from beneath the sagging porch of the house. A shadow detached itself from the gloom and streaked toward them.

      “Shit!” Calhoun swung his rifle over his shoulder, preparing to use it like a club. “You picked the wrong damn time to throw away my cartridges.”

      “Caliban, no!” Eliza said sharply, unable to keep the amusement from her voice. “Heel, that’s a boy.”

      The huge beast loped to her side and collapsed at her feet, peeping and quivering in ecstatic obeisance. Belly up, he resembled a small, uncoordinated pony.

      “What the hell is that?” Calhoun lowered the rifle.

      “That,” Eliza said, dropping to her knees to give Caliban a friendly rub, “is the reason I don’t worry about wolves and cougars.” She got up and patted her thigh. The huge dog lumbered up and trotted along beside her. “He’s part mastiff, part Irish wolfhound. Part horse, you’d think, the way he eats.”

      How odd, she thought, to be talking to another person. Other than the occasional trip to the mainland for supplies, her only companions had been animals. Hearing replies and questions in response to her was disconcerting. The nervousness seemed to bunch up in her throat, and she began to wonder if it had been a mistake to bring him here, into her world. But she had a natural inclination to heal wounded creatures, and something told her this man had wounds she could not see.

      “Delightful,” Calhoun said dubiously. “Any other surprises?”

      She forced herself to swallow past the taut anxiety as she stood up. “Not unless you count Alonso and Jane. The fawn and the doe. They’re both rather timid. Oh, and the cats—”

      “Four cats,” he said.

      She nodded, intrigued that he had actually been listening to her earlier. “Miranda, Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo.” She counted them off on her fingers.

      “Why do all these names sound so familiar to me?” he asked.

      “We stole them,” she said simply. “From Shakespeare.”

      He gave a short laugh as realization dawned on him. “The Tempest,” he said. “Of course.”

      They reached the house as night closed over the island. So near to the sea, the darkness fell fast, like a pool of black poured over the inverted bowl of the sky.

      “I’ll just