Read Online Lighthouse Bay by Kimberley Freeman - Free Book Online Page B

milky sweetness and vowed that she would love him enough for both his parents.
    Isabella opens her eyes. It is too much: the memory of Daniel—warm and breathing, not cold and still—has turned a knife in her heart. How she wishes she could open up the walnut chest and retrieve her black ribbon, and spend the afternoon rolling each link on the coral bracelet between her thumb and forefinger, milking it of the last impression of her baby’s living warmth. But she daren’t. It must stay hidden until Sydney. In Sydney she will get it back and she will somehow get out of this miserable marriage and away from Arthur and his poisonous family. Then this wretched storm would stop, and calm seas and sunshine might be hers once more.
    T wo mornings later, Mr. Harrow seeks her out, clever enough to do it while Arthur is otherwise occupied up in the cargo hold with the Captain and Meggy, sorting out a dispute about marble tiles. As well as bringing the mace to Australia, Arthur is exporting expensive tiles and carpets. The less Isabella knows about business,the happier she is. But Arthur is quite tense about the deal, and tense too that the crew will steal or damage the goods.
    When Mr. Harrow knocks on her cabin door, her heart startles a little. She doesn’t want to endure another of Arthur’s lectures.
    “Mr. Harrow?” she says, warily.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Winterbourne. I shall be very quick. Is it the case that you have been confined below deck because of our . . . interaction in the galley the other day?”
    Isabella knows a woman of her standing should dismiss him lightly, never drawing attention to the private matters of her husband. But she sees little point in such manners. “Yes. I did explain, but he’s an angry fool.”
    “I feel terrible,” he says. “Do you want me to speak to him?”
    “No, it will only make matters worse.”
    He glances around. “If there’s anything I can do . . . I was touched deeply by your loss.”
    “And I yours,” she says, and she means it. A little glimmer starts in her heart, and hope rises. Perhaps the ice is not permanent after all.
    “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize what has happened. We’ve been rather run off our feet by the weather.”
    Mention of the weather picks at a little thread of unease in her gut. She realizes that last night she dreamed of the gray sea rising up and up, through the boards, through the cabin, engulfing Arthur’s bunk and then sloshing around her blankets, carrying the black ribbon away while she tried to reach for it with hands as slippery as fish fins. Yes, the weather has been on her mind. If only she could get above deck and talk to the sea.
    “The weather is normal, though? For this part of the world and this time of year?”
    Mr. Harrow shakes his head. “I must say, Mrs. Winterbourne, that the Captain and I are in dispute. It seems to me there must be a hurricane nearby. He argues that it’s too late in the year for a hurricane but . . .” He drops his voice low. “Captain Whiteaway does not like bad weather.”
    Tingles of hot ice lace her skin. “So then why does he persist in the journey? Should we not come to port until we are certain it isn’t a hurricane?”
    “He deals with his dislike of bad weather by insisting it isn’t happening.” Mr. Harrow snaps his mouth shut at the end of this sentence, an outward sign that he believes he has spoken too much, and too contrary to the Captain. “Don’t concern yourself. We are all good men, and we will be safe.”
    “The Captain drinks too much,” she says plainly.
    He replies in a near-perfect impersonation of the Captain’s voice. “‘It’s how I unravel the knots in my stomach.’”
    “The amount I’ve seen him consume at dinner would indicate a large volume of knots.”
    Mr. Harrow tries a smile. “As I said, don’t worry. Let the men aboard mind the weather, and you mind your own affairs below deck.” Then voices from the other end of the