The Horsemaster's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

lose himself in her.

    The man with the drum began to beat a tattoo that curiously resembled the nervous warning of a rattle snake.

    Finally the red-haired man looked up, raising his face from its fleshy pillow and peering over the woman’s bosoms. He studied Isadora for a moment; then, dismissing her, he moved his gaze to Lily. Giving a lopsided, beatific grin, he said in a smooth Virginia drawl, “Hello, Mother.”

Three

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

    —Jane Austen,
(1798)

    T he music stopped. Ryan felt the whore shift on his lap as she twisted to see the newcomers. She scowled bleary eyed at the tall woman with the corkscrew curls poking out from the rim of a bonnet. “The fat one’s your mother?”

    “No.” With as much poise as he could muster, he set the woman on deck and stood up, pressing the backs of his knees against the chair to steady himself. Chips, the carpenter, had the presence of mind to step forward and lead the whore away, pacifying her with a fresh flask.

    Ryan did his best to straighten out his crooked grin. “Mother, what an unexpected surprise.”

    “I clearly am,” Lily said.

    Drunk as he was, Ryan read the disappointment in her face. It pulled down the corners of her mouth, made her hesitate for a heartbreakingly long moment before she reached out and embraced him.

    He reeked of rum and cheap perfume. He pulled back quickly, not wanting to taint his mother. Nothing had changed since the last time he’d seen her, not really. At their parting, they had been standing together at Albion Landing in the south reaches of Chesapeake Bay. She’d warned him that eschewing the University of Virginia and going north to Harvard would demand more from him, far more than he could possibly imagine. Possibly more than he had within him.

    Drunk or sober, he was doomed to disappoint his mother, no matter what he did. He regretted being so public about it. He gestured toward the high aft deck. “Come to the stateroom. We can talk there—”

    “What in the name of Saint Elmo’s fire is going on?” demanded a furious voice.

    Ryan blinked his bleary eyes and groaned. Abel Easterbrook. Just what he needed. For the first time, apprehension touched his spine with ice. Tonight’s revels had put his whole mission in jeopardy. He and Journey were so close to their goal. One more voyage, and they’d have the money they needed. Now, thanks to his lack of restraint, he might have put the next voyage in doubt.

    Fixing yet another lopsided smile on his face, he hid his thoughts and bowed to greet his employer. The sweetness of rum pushed ominously at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, hoping he wouldn’t disgrace himself even more than he already had. “I was conducting a small celebration in honor of our safe return, sir.” He exaggerated the enunciation of each word, hoping the long, slurred vowels would simply be attributed to his Southern upbringing rather than all that rum. “I thought a bit of levity would be good for company morale.”

    “You’re not paid to think.” Easterbrook’s stormy gaze swept the decks, taking in the half-clad couples crumpled in the shadows, the men clustered eagerly around the keg, the chickens poking through spilled crumbs. “I am shocked. Shocked, I say. Small celebration indeed.”

    “It is, sir. You see, where I come from…” Ryan paused. He’d made up so many lies to get Easterbrook to hire him that he had to stop for a moment to recall them. “Uh, aboard the Twyla of famous memory, it was considered a grievous error to send the crew ashore sober. There was the danger, you see, that the men would take landlubber jobs and wouldn’t sign on for the next voyage.”

    With a grand gesture, he encompassed the deck, littered with motley drunkards and coarse bawds. “These are the men who have given the Silver Swan her place in the record books. They have earned their