Free A HAZARD OF HEARTS by Frances Burke Page B

beauty
surrounding her, green hills, golden sandstone cliffs, white sandy beaches.
    ‘How lovely. I was young when we went north. I’d
forgotten how lovely this place is.’
    She spoke to herself but Paul, coming up behind
her, said in a softer tone than she’d heard for some days, ‘It must be the most
beautiful deep-water harbour in the world, plus the safest.’
    She turned around. ‘Mr Gascoigne...’
    ‘Miss Ballard?’
    ‘I’d like to apologise for my behaviour. You’ve
been more than kind, while I repaid your generosity with carping and
argumentativeness.’
    He smiled down at her. ‘Say no more. The shoe
fits us both, I believe. In other words, I’ve been every bit as difficult to
live with. Shall we agree to part friends?’
    ‘I’d like that.’ Elly held out her hand, which
he grasped firmly.
    ‘Miss Ballard, what will you do? Have you
somewhere to go when we dock at the Quay?’
    She reclaimed her hand, turning back to watch
the rapidly approaching rooves and spires of Sydney Town. ‘Thank you for your
concern. I shall do very well.’ Her tone was sufficiently discouraging, she
thought, but Paul Gascoigne was not easily put off.
    ‘Miss Independence came a fall, if I remember my
nursery tale correctly. Come, will you not oblige me? I’d like to call one day
and pay my respects, once you’re settled.’
    Elly straightened her shoulders as if going on
parade, aware of mixed feelings, not quite defiance not quite amusement. ‘Then,
sir, you had best apply to the Sydney Infirmary.’

 

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The clipper East Wind rode at her
anchor off the British Settlement in Shanghai, graceful as a seabird, even without
her great sails set, her raked prow dipping in the wake of passing junks as if
in the majestic courtesy of an empress to underlings. Men swarmed about her
thousands of yards of rigging and scurried across her decks, lowering into her
holds the precious tea and silks she’d crossed the world to carry to home
markets.
    Twenty-four hours later she weighed anchor, slipping
down river to clear the river mouth and enter the muddied waters of the China Sea.
    Jo-Beth Loring had been glad to see the
coastline disappear into the horizon. She stood in the stern, a statuesque
figure with the wind playing in her bright coppery hair while she farewelled
one more foreign land.
    Yet all the while she was aware of the activity
of the ship, the crack of sails, the rigging creaking, the men scurrying to
orders given in a clear deep voice that was echoed by the bellowing boson. That
clear voice had attracted her from the moment she came aboard to meet its
owner, Captain Petherbridge, a golden-bearded Atlas who overtopped her not insignificant
height by at least ten inches, a strong man who controlled his ship and crew
without resort to the usual bullying and threats.
    Mentally she contrasted him with the spoilt
young males back home, more interested in the polish on their dancing pumps
than the set of a sail in the wind above a canting deck, or a prow shearing
through a silken sea. It was men like Captain Petherbridge who really lived,
braving the elements, circumnavigating the globe, while the owners in the
counting houses kept their white hands clean and worried how to invest their
profits. At the thought of the long weeks ahead at sea, Jo-Beth smiled. Then,
taking one last look at China, she went to inspect her well-appointed cabin.
    Lying on the bunk, her arm flung across her
face, she felt weariness seeping through to her bones. How tired she was of
travel, tired of new sights, sounds, smells. Honest to goodness, the smells in
the Far East were beyond description. She was more than tired of being dragged
from ship to ship by her globe-trotting Papa, of trekking miles to admire a temple,
shrine or pagoda, or a view of anything from a bare windswept plain with harsh
mountain peaks beyond, to a sea of green sunken paddy fields peopled with
wading peasants.
    She’d seen too many ancient crumbling