Free The Sacred River by Wendy Wallace Page A

walked on the beach, dreaming of the life she would have. Its details were uncertain but it would be far from Dover and she would be at its center, not at the edge of everything, as she felt herself to be. After their father died, they had no society at home to speak of and Louisa longed for company. For a suitor. Even a glance from a man old enough to be her father, a lingering look while his wife’s fair head was turned and his small son watched mutely—even such an impoliteness was welcome. She nodded as she walked past, feeling his eyes drawn to her like iron to a magnet, sensing his gaze as she carried on over the sands.
    It was late May and the summer was beginning cool and wet. The next Sunday was rainy, the sand scarred with shallow depressions, the beach deserted. Louisa walked for an hour, then went home in low spirits, but the following week, she saw the man again. He was alone, standing on the shore as if he were waiting for an omnibus, puffing cigar smoke into the air over his head in short, fierce bursts.
    “There you are,” he said as she approached, pretending not to have noticed him. “At last.”
    “Good afternoon,” she said stiffly.
    He fell into step beside her, walking along the water’s edge, the dark stink of tobacco mingling with the smell of salt and rotting seaweed. He wasn’t much taller than she and he labored as he walked, his breath heavy, his watch chain rattling on the horn buttons of a check waistcoat under his overcoat. The tide was coming in, surreptitiously, flicking its tongue over the sand. A wave reached his boot and he kicked at it, splashed foam in the air.
    “Damned stuff.”
    Louisa giggled.
    “It’s just the tide. It’s coming home, sir,” she said.
    “Home?” he said.
    They had reached the end of the bay, under the cliff, and could walk no farther without wading out through the water, over the rocks, around the point. He threw the end of his cigar into the sea, turned to Louisa, and put his hand under her chin. His fingers were roughened and bent, the nails flecked with blue and black paint. He turned her face one way then another, tilting it to the sun.
    Louisa wasn’t given to blushing, to displaying her feelings on her face, as some of her sisters were in the habit of doing. Her burning was all on the inside and the gesture, the sureness of his touch, lit a fire in her.
    The man let go of her jaw.
    “I’m going to paint you. We stay at the dower house. Come in the morning, early.”
    She shook her head.
    “I cannot. My mother won’t—”
    “Yes, she will. Tell her Augustus wants you for a model. I’ll be waiting.”
    He looked at her again, up and down, as if he owned her. A faint, urgent ringing traveled through the still air. Lavinia was summoning her from the garden of the house on the top of the cliff, banging on the old saucepan with a flint. Louisa looked up, shading her eyes with her hand, squinting into the distance. High up above was the figure of a boy, dressed in a sailor suit and so still that for an instant she thought it was a statue that looked down at her.
    “I must go now,” she said to Augustus. “Good day.”
    Turning back in the direction of the house, she walked away, faster than she knew she could, weightless, skirting around her footprints in the sand, and his, as the water began to fill them. She felt as if she could have walked on the surface of the sea, all the way along the bay.
    And so it began.
    •  •  •
    As the ship proceeded southeast through the Mediterranean Sea, past shoals of porpoises and huge floating turtles, past fishing vessels and, occasionally, a steamer traveling in the other direction, Louisa kept to the cabin. She rested on her bunk or sat at the small table with her tatting. She’d brought a pattern and a quantity of silk, intending to complete a tablecloth while they were away. One purl, one plain. Two purl, two plain. One purl, one plain. The repetition soothed her.
    There was nothing to worry