Lighthouse Bay (29 page)

Libby drank the most of all. Juliet had seen her wild before, but tonight something was different. She had on her usual bright red lipstick, her dark hair was teased up high, and she wore a tight blue dress. Every man in the surf club was stealing glances at her. But it wasn’t just her looks that were attracting attention. She was laughing loudly, flirting with everyone, tossing her hair and making lingering eye contact. Juliet often wondered if Libby was jealous of Juliet getting married: she was, after all, used to being the center of attention. Or perhaps she was just happy and excited that night.

It was definitely Libby who suggested they all go skinny-dipping at the beach. There were murmured agreements, but it wasn’t serious. They flowed out of the surf club and down onto the sand, laughing and chatting and splashing about, but nobody really thought they would go in for a swim.

Until somebody dared Libby. It was one of the boys, no doubt inflamed from a night watching her vivacious show.

“Double dare me!” Libby shouted. And then, “Triple dare me!”

This went on for a while and Juliet had started to feel tired. She squeezed Andy’s hand and leaned into his warm shoulder. The April breeze was soft on her skin. “Time for bed,” she said.

“And when we wake up, it will be tomorrow.”

She turned her face up for a kiss, and his warm mouth closed over hers. But a sudden screeching made him break off. A hundred meters down the beach, Libby was wriggling out of her blue dress. The others were hooting and laughing. Juliet and Andy stood back.

“She’s gone crazy,” Juliet said.

“She shouldn’t go in the water like that,” Andy said. “She’s too drunk.”

The first stir of unease spread across her skin.

There was Libby, wading into the water in her black bra and knickers. Then diving under and emerging, hair flat now, make-up streaming, laughing and laughing. “Come on!” she called. “The water’s fine.”

She dived again.

And time grew elastic. Juliet’s breath went hard in her lungs.

“Where is she?” Andy said.

A white limb, flailing, a long distance from where Libby had disappeared. Panicked shouts down near the water’s edge. Andy running for the water—the only one sober and strong enough to save Libby—peeling off his shirt and diving in.

And never coming out.

J
uliet heard the silence that followed her voice—it had seemed to go on for a long time—and she couldn’t meet Damien’s eye. Inexplicably, she felt embarrassed. For talking too long, for getting choked up, for not being able to forgive and forget after twenty years. For loving too hard. For not getting over it. For telling this young, attractive man who probably saw her as a pitiful case, past her prime, on her way to terminal, bitter spinsterhood. The wave of self-loathing was so enormous that it crushed her.

But then, Damien’s hand crept over hers. He took her fingers in his own and squeezed firmly. “I am so, so sorry.”

She watched his hand on hers. His tanned, strong fingers. But then he withdrew the contact and sat back in his chair, and she was forced to look up and meet his eye.

“How did Libby get out?”

“Andy managed to get her on the sand bar before the rip pulled him under.”

He paused a moment. “I’m sorry for Libby too,” he ventured. “That’s a big burden she’s had to live with.”

Juliet fell silent, anger and grief and her own guilt making her mute.

He smiled, held up his cup.

Curious, she raised her own cup. “What are we toasting?”

“That we lived long enough to see such miserable complications in our lives.”

She blinked back her tears, laughing. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. At least we’re still out here, getting buffeted by the ill winds.”

“And the wind can change any moment. Fairer weather. Yes, at least we’re still out here.” He drained what was left in his cup. “So, Juliet, are you going to let me rebuild your kitchen?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m glad you’re around.”

L
ibby abandoned the idea of sleeping properly. She kept busy day and night with work on the catalog and on her painting. Slowly, the cogs in her mind turned, and her decision became clear.

Juliet was never going to forgive her. A reconciliation between them was impossible, so there was no reason not to take the money. Selling the land to Ashley-Harris wouldn’t hurt Juliet and she would see that in time.

Six o’clock came. Perhaps she’d slept two hours, not consecutively. Blinking made her head hurt. She could hardly focus on the tiny keys on her phone as she typed the text message to Tristan.
I’ve decided to sell
.

Her thumb hovered over the send button. Her heart skipped a beat. Then she sent it.

Her phone rang within minutes.

“You didn’t check the time zones.” He laughed. She could hear interference on the line. He was outside, somewhere windy.

She squirmed with embarrassment. “What time is it?”

“Four in the morning in Perth.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Luckily I’m not in Perth. I came back yesterday. Finished business early.”

Libby sat heavily in the armchair in her art room. The rising sun made her eyes ache. “You’re in Noosa?”

“You want me to come by?”

“I want that so much.” Did that sound desperate?

“You know I can’t talk business.”

“I just want somebody to hold me. This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.”

“Will you make me breakfast?”

“Of course.”

They never got to breakfast. The moment he arrived she drew him inside and he turned her and pressed her against the door. Clothes were shed in a trail behind them. She lost herself for a while in the hard, passionate lovemaking, forgetting everything but the searing pleasure in her body. Then, after, they drifted off twined around each other, her body collapsing gratefully. Sleep at last.

Even if she was sleeping with the enemy.

1901

T
he pre-dawn light is soft and blue. Isabella still isn’t used to the sharp, fresh smells of the Australian landscape: moist earth and pungent foliage and tangy sea. The air is damp with humidity and salt mist. From the deck of the lighthouse this morning, she was able to see the deserted sea and beach: places it seemed no man or beast ever visited. But down here in the woods, there is activity: birds waking and animals creeping out of their burrows. It comforts her to know that other creatures are busy too. As busy as she and Matthew. A humid chill clings at her cheeks.

Matthew turns over soil with his spade. Under the ground here is the mace. The idea that it still exists in the world is both awful and wonderful. Awful because as long as she is near it she is in danger from Arthur’s family. Wonderful because if she is clever and careful it will pay her way out of this dreadful place and into her new life.

But she has to be clever and careful.

She stands by and watches as Matthew works. His bodily presence is fascinating to her. His rough hands on the spade, the clench and release of his shoulders, the strong steadiness of his legs. Just a few hours ago, those hands and shoulders and legs were
gently yet unstoppably involved in pleasuring her body, and she can’t quite believe it. In the past, her body had seemed only on loan to her: more properly the property of husband, child, family. But Matthew has made her feel that she belongs in her limbs and organs and skin. The desire for him ignites again.

He glances up, as though he can tell she is thinking of him. He smiles and her heart lurches.

“What are you thinking, pretty bird?” he asks.

She smiles in return but doesn’t answer. Through the trees, the first finger of orange-gold dawn creeps. Birdsong intensifies. He continues to dig. Finally, there is a
thunk
as his spade hits the chest.

Matthew falls to his knees, abandoning the spade. Hands in the soil. Isabella joins him, brushing clumps of dirt off the box. Matthew has one end of the walnut box, and he hefts it out of the hole with a grunt.

Then he stands, grasps the box and says, “Come along, Isabella.”

They return to the lighthouse. Matthew takes the mace up the stairs to the middle deck and places it on the ground next to the cabinet in which he keeps his tools. It would be easier to work at the table in the telegraph office but, Isabella knows, Matthew is worried. If somebody comes by to send a telegram, they will see the mace.

He opens the box and stands back.

Isabella lowers herself to the floor, her fingers brushing over the jewels. Eight rubies, four sapphires, four emeralds and one diamond: seventeen gems, each held by a carefully handmade claw.

“I’ll need a set of pliers,” Isabella says. “The smallest you have.”

“Everything you need is in the cabinet there.” He sits down on the floor with her. “I’m sorry you have to work on the floor.”

“I want as much as you to go undiscovered,” she says.

“That diamond alone might fetch enough to pay your passage to New York.”

Two passages. She needed two. “It’s a long journey. I need to be comfortable, in a cabin. I’ll also need clothes, shoes, money for the other side. I haven’t even found Victoria yet. I’ll need a place to stay. No, I will sell them all.”

“But surely it will create too much suspicion if you have these gems out of nowhere. I don’t know how it can work, Isabella.”

The plan is forming slowly, and any doubt that Matthew expresses is like a dull ache in her head. It is true that she, Mary Harrow, lately a lowly nanny, would draw much attention to herself if she suddenly started offering for sale the gems, especially seventeen gems in the same configuration and cut as they were on the mace. She must disguise them, and she certainly cannot sell them here in Lighthouse Bay. Quite apart from the fact that it would be too suspicious, there are few, if any, here who have enough money.

“Let me think about it,” Isabella says, refusing to be discouraged.

Matthew goes about his morning chores. Isabella finds a fine-tipped pair of pliers and gently loosens the first sapphire from its setting. Gold is a soft material, but still it makes her hands ache. She is aware of Matthew’s presence, here then gone, as the morning brightens. She is tired, so tired. She barely slept, so wound up from losing Xavier and so shocked by the fact she allowed Matthew to make love to her. But finally, she has all the sapphires in her hand.

Matthew crouches next to her. “It’s going well, then?”

“I will make them into pieces of jewelry,” she says. “I have always loved to make jewelry, and being married into the Winterbourne family has taught me much. No man will buy a sapphire, but he may well buy a sapphire brooch for his wife.”

“But where will you sell them?”

“I am still thinking,” Isabella says. “I have not stopped thinking.” She trails off into a murmur.

Matthew looks closely at her face. “Are you well?”

She shakes her head. “No. I am tired and I cannot believe what life has handed me. But I know what I must do, and that gives me heart.”

He touches her hand, and the flame ignites again. She gazes into his eyes. His pupils dilate, then his lips are on hers again. Isabella gratefully loses herself in instinct and pleasure. She is tired of thinking. Thinking frightens her.

M
atthew walks up the road from town, a string bag full of potatoes and beans in his hand. It is strange to him how this walk up the road from town has become so significant, so laden with promise and anxiety. Once, he would take this walk and think nothing of it. He would be lost in thought, barely noticing his surroundings. But now, he is going home to Isabella. The path is no longer a neutral place: it is a happy place, made musical with birdsong and the crash of the wild ocean.

His heart is glad. So glad.

Yes, there is the dark thread of doubt. But it is a long way deep. Isabella is determined to sell as many of the gems as she can by making them into items of jewelry. This will take time. She isn’t going tomorrow, or the next day. He knows he can’t keep her—he knew that the moment he saw her—but he will be blessed with her in his life for a little while. And that is more than he ever thought he would know again.

For a week she has been working. There have been trials and there have been errors. She sometimes grows so frustrated that she flings a precious gem away from her so that it rattles against the ground. Then she stands, walks to it, picks it up and quietly starts again.

Matthew unlocks the front door. He is not greeted by empty solitude, as he has been all these years; there is another warm body in here. The thought makes him flush. Her softness makes him hard.

“Isabella?”

“Come and see!” she calls, and her voice is bright with excitement.

He moves up the stairs. She has continued to work here on the floor, right next to the tool cabinet. Her bits and pieces are spread everywhere around her. Every morning she eats and returns to her spot, fair hair falling over her face, focusing with the kind of desperate intensity that must have carried her through the long walk down the coast to the lighthouse. This time, however, she is standing, waiting for him, when he emerges through the hatch. She is beaming, holding out her hand.

In her palm is a brooch. Her resourcefulness delights him. A shell from the beach, a satin ribbon from her dress, the fine gold chain that held the walnut box’s lid in place. Glinting darkly blue at the center of the piece, a sapphire. It is pretty, unusual. Just like Isabella.

“Very nicely done, Isabella,” he says.

“Isn’t it, though? Victoria and I used to make shell brooches together when we were girls. Though we never had sapphires to work with.” She frowns. “I will need more things. Silver wire to make clasps and chains. I want to sell this one and use the money to buy what I need for the next.”

He almost doesn’t hear. Her cheeks are lightly flushed and her hair slipping loose. The stirrings of desire nearly unseat him. He forces himself to focus. “Where can you get such things? Not in Lighthouse Bay. Not even in Tewantin. Timber and sugar, yes, but silver wire . . .”

“Brisbane.”

“You are going to Brisbane?” It is an overnight trip by paddle-wheel steamer. His gut clenches at the idea of Isabella alone that far from him.