Forbidden (11 page)

My hair dripped water, and I dried it as well as I was able and fanned it across my shoulders. It was a style that I had always known to be becoming to me. Eli Stuart was below. That was not what made me comb my hair in an attractive manner, I told myself sternly. I could surely not be so shallow. It was merely so it would dry more readily. Garbed in one of my own innocent dresses and my warm shawl, I went down again to the sitting room.

Lamb was nowhere in sight.

In answer to my unspoken question, Eli said, “Do not fear. I have locked him in the storage room.” He had started a fire in the hearth. His discarded coat hung on the banister, and I saw that he was still clothed in the strange skimp of a shirt he had worn the day before, the half trousers. The look of him unsettled me. Embarrassed, I asked, “Are you not cold?”

“I do not feel cold. My grandmother made this coat for me. I wear it only to humor her.”

The silver candlestick that we had prayed beside shone on the table. My aunt and uncle had closed their eyes, invoked God, and then set out to rob and murder.

I positioned myself close to the fire’s warmth. “My aunt and uncle and the other men on the boats,” I began. “Am I right in believing that they were robbing from the ship, even as those on board drowned?”

“Yes,” Eli said.

In my turmoil, I had reached my hands too far into the flames. Eli said, “Have a care, Josie,” and snatched them out. “Are you burned?”

I shook my head and stood submissively as he examined my palms, turned them over, his head bent above them. His hair, wet as my own, was polished by the firelight! I had to resist my shameful desire to touch it.

He released me and motioned to a chair that he had pulled close to the warmth.

I could not sit.

“They strip everything and everyone from a foundering ship, should he be dead or alive. If he is alive, ’twill not be for long!”

“But there must be a constable in Brindle. And there’s a mayor. Can’t they put a stop to it?” I shivered and took a step closer to the fire.

“I informed Constable McBride of the murders that took place on the beach of Brindle Point. I told him how the ships were attracted onto the rocks. He ignored me. Constable McBride was dancing around the bonfire tonight. And they say the mayor’s house is furnished like a castle.”

“Surely the people of Brindle and the other townlands would report such a crime.”

“There’s not a one doesn’t profit from the wrecking. Any that don’t are afraid of the gaffer. Your uncle. He is the boss.”

I limped around the room, unable to stand still and listen.

“The Sisters make it easy for them,” Eli said. “If a ship in a storm is on a course to miss the rocks, the wreckers make sure it doesn’t. There was once a warning buoy that clanged, night and day. Somehow it got dismantled. When it is fixed, it becomes silent again. There are beacons that promise safety but instead attract ships to their deaths. And then there is Nag!”

I stopped pacing to stare at him. “Why did you not tell me this before?”

He shrugged. “I did not know you.”

“Huh! You thought I might become party to this wickedness?” Anger flared up, but I had not strength enough to sustain it. I shook my head. “I cannot stay here tonight, not in this house. I could not thole it. I must get away. I must get away forever.” I heard my voice rising and could not stop it.

“Yes. But I have to ask you not to go tonight. Not in the dark and the storm. And there are other dangers. Please stay till tomorrow. There are things you must know and do, before you leave. We need you.”

“We? You are speaking of you and your grandmother?”

“Do not ask me. Just come. You will be safe. And you will understand everything. I promise.”

“If it will allow me to understand everything, then I suppose I should remain till tomorrow,” I said.

He had not said that he would miss me if I left forever. He had not mentioned the days after tomorrow.

He did not care.

So be it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

W
E LEFT LAMB
locked in the storage room where I had found the saddle for Dobbin the day I rode into Brindle. Eli filled a bowl with water and set it inside the door. Whatever words he spoke to the dog I could not hear.

We struggled toward his grandmother’s house. The rain had ceased, but the storm blew mightily off the ocean, whipping my shawl around me, tossing my hair across my face.

“Wait,” Eli shouted, then removed his coarse jacket and fastened it across my shoulders, letting my shawl drag below it.

“You will be cold,” I shouted.

“I do not feel the cold.”

“I had forgotten,” I said, and did not protest further.

Below us on the beach the good people of Brindle Point and Brindle itself struggled to add to the piles of what had come to them from the sunken ship. There were two drowned bodies now on the sand. I could only bear to glance once, but I thought that one might be a woman. Out where the Sisters hid themselves beneath the sea, were the dark remains of the vessel that had been lured onto the rocks, and I saw two small boats chopping through waves that were big as houses. They were halfway to the shore, heavily burdened, and I pointed and shouted to Eli, “If only they were saving—” but before I could finish the words, I saw two shadow figures weaving up the path from the beach. I squinted, straining to see. One was a woman holding a lantern, her skirt wet and heavy with sand; the other was a child. I gasped. Someone had taken her child down into the midst of that horror.

As the two came closer, I saw that it was Mrs. Kitteridge. She called Eli’s name. “Eli Stuart! Eli Stuart, is that you? Will you help me with Daphne?”

Daphne? It was she who had been pining for Eli and whose mother had implored him to come again to visit her. She must be behind them. I made an effort to see through the darkness. Where was she? Had she fallen? But I saw only blackness.

“I think they need my help,” Eli shouted to me. “Can you stand alone for a minute, Josie?”

I nodded, though it was likely he would not see such a small tilt of my head.

I watched as he forced himself against the wind and took hold of the child’s arm, helping her the last few steps to the top of the path.

“Can you stand, Daphne?” he asked her.

I caught my breath. Daphne
was
the child, a small block of a shape who came no higher than her mother’s waist. But her mother had said she was seventeen! Did she mean seven?

“Thank ye, Eli,” Mrs. Kitteridge called. “I will be obliged if you will help me get her home. She wanted . . . to come. It fatigued her.”

“Are you crazed, taking her down there?” Eli’s arm was around the small figure, pulling her with him.

“She wanted to come,” Mrs. Kitteridge shouted, and I recalled the way she had bought the dress and slippers in Jackdaws for Daphne. The way she had said,
I can never deny that girl anything she desires.
And then Esmeralda, almost smirking, had said,
Even Eli Stuart?
She’d added, nodding at the dress,
You’ll need to shorten it.

That dress and those slippers for this child?

“Who is that with you?” her mother shouted now in my direction. “Is it Josie Ferguson?”

“Yes,” I called.

I took little Daphne’s other arm, and Eli and I, together, lifted her to the top of the path.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Kitteridge gasped. “Will you carry her home, Eli? I fear she is spent.”

“Carry me! Carry me, Eli!” the child shouted, and Eli swept her up the way he had swept me up just yesterday, down on the beach.

I was sore perplexed. My imaginings of Daphne had not been of a child. But nothing in these last few days had been what I’d thought it to be.

Mrs. Kitteridge went ahead, holding the lantern high. The light went out and left us in darkness. The three of us made our slow walk among the storm-whipped trees that shook their branches, showering us with the icy raindrops they’d held concealed.

It seemed a long way, a nightmare journey, Eli carrying the child, who sometimes called out his name as if she could not get enough of it.

“Here we are,” Mrs. Kitteridge shouted at last, stopping in front of us to open the door of a dark, square house.

She relit the lantern, and we set Daphne down.

I stared, stupefied. She was not a child but a young woman in a child’s small body. Long, fair ringlets hung down her back, so at first sight she appeared youthful. But then I saw her face. It was not the face of a young person. I was stunned and perhaps stared a second too long. She staggered and would have fallen if I had not caught her. “Are you feeling poorly? Can I help you further?” I asked.

She had neither desire to answer me or look at me. Her wide eyes were fixed on him, her hands searched for his.

“She’ll be well now.” Mrs. Kitteridge shrugged off the cape she wore and divested Daphne of her long, dark coat. Her daughter stood passively as her mother unwound a gray muffler from around her neck, and I saw that she had bosoms under her gray bodice.

“There,” Mrs. Kitteridge said.

“See what I found?” Daphne asked, her rapt gaze still on Eli. From a pocket in her dark skirt, she produced a small ornament, a white dog that I took to be porcelain. She held it up. “The sea gave it to me.”

I swallowed hard. In an attempt to bring some normalcy to the moment, I asked, in what I took to be a natural voice, “Do you have a real dog of your own, Daphne?”

“No.” She bent her head over the ornament, admiring it. “We don’t have dogs or cats in Brindle Point. Lamb does not allow it.” She smiled up at me. Her teeth were small, like tiny seeds. “The sea is nice. It gave me my dog, and it gave Mama another ring. Show Eli your ring, Mama.”

Mrs. Kitteridge held out her hand and displayed a hand now free of rings save for one. The jewel in it was a pearl that gleamed translucent in the lantern light.

“Mama had to cut it off the dead lady,” Daphne said proudly. “Isn’t it pretty?” She was vivacious now, all signs of exhaustion gone.

Sickness rose in my throat. The pearl ring. That woman on the beach.

Mrs. Kitteridge was turning the ring this way and that on her finger, eyes half closed as she admired it.

“We must go,” Eli said stiffly.

“Oh, stay, Eli. Stay!”

I could not bear to see the way Daphne clung to his legs, the way she begged.

I turned my back, not wanting to look further.

“We can’t stay, Daphne.” There was so much tenderness in his voice that I felt it no wonder that Daphne loved him. I could tell she did.

“Who are
you?
” Daphne suddenly asked of me, as if she had noticed my presence for the first time.

“I am Josie,” I said. “I am Eli’s friend.”

“Are you his sweetheart?”

“No,” I said. “Just his friend.”

“I am his sweetheart,” she said.

He was gently disengaging her hands from the knees of his wet trousers. “We are leaving now, Daphne,” he said.

“Will you come again and see me?” Daphne wailed.

“He will. Of course he will.” That was Mrs. Kitteridge, soothing and reassuring.

We pushed the door open and were out with it closed behind us. I plugged my ears with my fingers, because even through the roar of the blowing gale, I could still hear Daphne screaming.

“Eli! Eli! Eli!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W
E STRUGGLED ON.

It was impossible to talk. It was difficult even to breathe with the wind against us.

My thoughts surged round in my head. They were too many to sort out. The picked-over bones of the boat out on the Sisters. The ghouls on the beach. The two dead bodies, one the woman who had perhaps had her ring cut from her finger. And Daphne! I could not suppress the groan that came from my lips, and Eli stopped and turned me toward him. “Are you faint? Should we pause?”

“No,” I shouted. “I am troubled. That is all.”

I was unsure if he heard with the wild turmoil around us, but he nodded, and we began again to walk. I walked with shame, aware of my nearness to Eli. Too aware. How could I be so conscious of him in the midst of so much horror? I was as foolish as poor little Daphne.

Now and then, I glanced secretly at him.

At last he shouted, “Daphne is one of the unfortunates of life. She is not responsible for how she is. Or for her terrible mother.”

His grandmother’s house arose out of the darkness. Lights in the windows, smoke zigzagging from the chimney, blowing the smell of turf around our heads. All around us, trees bent toward the land, bowing to the gale that blew from the sea. There was a sudden sweep of lightning across the sky. Together we staggered up the shell-lined path to the door.

Before Eli could knock or call out, his grandmother opened it.

“Come! Come!” she shouted, waving us inside.

The glow of the lantern, the heat, and the quiet crumpled me. I would have fallen if she had not supported me, leading me to a seat by the fire. “Dear child,” she said. Her questioning eyes found Eli’s.

“She has had a shock. And the depravity she has seen has filled her mind—” he began.

I interrupted. “I plan on getting away from Raven’s Roost, Mrs. Stuart. I would be obliged if I may stay here till morning.”

“Of course, my dear.”

His grandmother was relieving me of Eli’s coat and of my bedraggled, dripping shawl.

He stood by the door, rain pooling around his feet.

Mrs. Stuart glanced at him. “You must go out again?”

“Yes.” He came across to where I sat. “Do not vex yourself more about what you saw tonight. I am only sorry that you did. But it will help you grasp our terrible decision.”

“Grasp what? What terrible decision?”

I looked up at him. The half shirt clung to him. His bare shoulders shone, wet with rain. A feeling stronger than any I’d ever had swept over me. If only he would bend and kiss my cheek or murmur a word of endearment! He would not. There was no need to delude myself.

“Why do you always speak to me in conundrums?” I asked him in as angry a voice as I could muster. “Do you think me such a weakling, so mollycoddled that you cannot speak forthrightly? If you have devised a plan to stop this evil, why do you not tell me? Am I not to help?”