Lighthouse Bay (43 page)

“Go and have a life without me,” he had said. The distance they have kept of late seems to have sunk into their souls.

Isabella sits up. She looks down at her bare breasts. They are still heavy and tender this morning, the nipples darker. The regret that she has buried Daniel’s bracelet began as a prickle last night, but has now grown acute. She tries to think her way through it, but her thoughts are scattered and she feels pressured by traveling time and ship schedules. Perhaps if she goes to stand in the woods where the bracelet is buried, the answer will become clear. She rises and pulls on stockings and a chemise.
Her dresses, for want of a proper wardrobe, are laid out on top of one another over an armchair. She chooses one to travel in, and folds the others to take in the trunk. She flips open the lid and gasps.

The bottom of the trunk is lined with chunks of gold.

“Matthew?” she calls.

And he is there at the door, with a telegram in his hand and a dark expression on his face.

“Where did this come from?” she asks.

“It’s the mace,” he replies, as if the fact is self-evident. She has no time to respond as he waves the telegram. “It’s for you.”

She frowns, takes it from his hand and reads it.

Mary, Percy Winterbourne is looking for you. Have told him nothing, but beware. Berenice.

Isabella’s head snaps up. Her heart is cold. “When did she send this?”

“Yesterday morning. Does anybody else know you’re here?”

“No,” she says, although she knows it isn’t true. The jeweler knows where to find her, perhaps one or two of Berenice’s friends. “When do you pick up the carriage?”

“In about an hour. Don’t delay. Pack the trunk and be ready to fly. Once you’re at the wharf, you’ll be safe.” He looks as though he wants to crush her in his arms to keep her safe, but he keeps the distance they have tacitly agreed on.

“I’m ready now,” she says. Her pulse flickers. “I want to go and say good-bye to Daniel in the woods.”

His eyebrows draw down. “No, don’t leave the lighthouse.”

She drops her head. “Yes,” she says, but she means no.

And then there is a knock at the lighthouse door. They both jump. It is not unusual for people to come to the telegraph office, but nonetheless he holds a finger to his lips and indicates she stay
here in the bedroom. He quietly closes the bedroom door behind him and goes to the main door.

Isabella puts her ear to the bedroom door. Her heart is thundering so hard she can barely hear. Male voices.

“No, I don’t know who you are talking about.” This is Matthew. Fear rises through her like prickling lights.

More muttered voices. She can’t bear it. She cracks open the bedroom door a little and listens hard.

“Then why would a respectable gentleman tell me I could find her here?”

“I have never heard of Isabella Winterbourne.”

“She also goes by
Mary Harrow.
”

“I can’t help you.”

It is Percy. The nightmare made flesh. She closes the bedroom door and hides a horrified sob with her hands. Her eyes dart about. The window. She grabs her trunk and hoists it out the window, then pulls up her skirts and climbs out as quickly and quietly as she can. She lands with a thud on the ground and runs for the woods.

M
atthew keeps his voice calm and strong, even as Percy Winterbourne—a round-cheeked fellow with a sulky mouth—loses his temper.

“I have already walked up that wretched track in the sun to get here because I have been told that this Mary Harrow, which isn’t even her real name, is contactable via this very telegraph office. You should know where she lives.”

“You have been given incorrect information. I may have dealt with a Mary Harrow, I may have even kept telegrams for her, but I deal with many, many people, sir. I cannot be expected to
remember them all and I certainly don’t know where she lives.” His heart tightens under his ribs. He needs to protect Isabella, and this gentleman is violently insistent. Matthew is fairly certain he could best Percy in a tussle if there were one, but he continues to hope that Percy will soon be convinced and go away.

“Why don’t you go to the village and ask around?” Matthew says, trying to buy any time at all to get Isabella out of here. “If she lives at Lighthouse Bay, then someone will surely know her.”

Percy wavers.

“I am terribly busy, sir. I don’t mean to be rude, but I really cannot help you.”

Percy’s eyes narrow, his lips pucker. Finally he says, “I am a rich and powerful man. I hope, for your sake, that you are not lying to me.”

Matthew spreads his hands. “What reason do I have to lie?”

Percy looks him up and down, and gives a resigned, “Harrumph.”

“Good day, sir,” Matthew says, closing the door.

He waits a moment until he hears Percy’s footfalls move away. His thoughts spin. Their plans are in disarray. He heads to the bedroom.

Isabella is gone.

He dares not call out to her. He checks the telegraph office, then clatters up the lighthouse stairs, but his blood grows heavy because he already knows where she is—and Percy has to walk right past the woods to get to the village.

He runs, climbs out the back window so he doesn’t run into Percy on the path, and enters the woods from the northern edge. A flash of her blue dress. She is bent over, her trunk sitting next to her, digging with her hands. He hurries up to her, and picks her up, wriggling and protesting, and clamps a hand over her mouth. “No, Isabella,” he hisses. “There’s no time.”

She claws his hand away and says in a harsh whisper, “We have an hour.”

“You can’t be out here.”

But she is looking at the ground again, at the bird-shaped rock he moved over the burial site so he could come here and remember her when she was gone. He knows every instinct in her body is to bend to the ground and claw her way through to the bracelet.

Footfalls. His head snaps up. She shrinks against him. In the distance, Percy Winterbourne crackles over the undergrowth through the trees.

Matthew’s grip tightens on her, he turns her around and quietly guides her away. But Percy has seen them.

“Isabella, you murdering harlot!” he shrieks, and gives chase.

Matthew grabs Isabella’s small trunk, pushes her ahead of him and runs, tree branches whipping his face. They break free of the woods and round the lighthouse. They must now either make their way over the rocks and down to the beach or head inland into the dense woods. The beach is too open, so he hurries Isabella across the grounds of the light station, into the woods and round to the south. Overnight rain has made the ground muddy, and the mud sucks at his shoes. Isabella stumbles, but he rights her, and they go farther into the trees, with no idea whether Percy is still behind them nor how close. He wishes they could run more quietly. Surely Percy can hear Matthew’s thundering pulse: it is almost deafening, as are the sounds of fallen branches popping and crunching, their ragged breathing and their footfalls. On they go, making a wide semi-circle around the village, then leaving it behind. Isabella gasps with the effort, and he slows his pace a little so she can catch her breath.

“I can’t go on running,” she pants.

Ahead there is a creek, a gully. He grabs her hand and drags
her at speed towards it. Down they go. He pulls her to the ground, lies flat on his stomach next to her in the tangled, succulent growth that covers the creek banks. They are hidden from sight. He listens as hard as he can.

A pop in the distance sparks in his heart. He strains to hear. No: no more footfalls. Just the sounds of birds and animals moving about, the sea breeze in the treetops making dry leaves fall and land with a soft scratch on the undergrowth.

The sea.

Her breathing.

“Have we lost him?” she whispers.

“It seems so. For now.”

P
ercy gives chase for a while, then stumbles over a root and falls with a thud. He puts out his hands to break his fall, and a sharp pain shoots into his wrist. He is angry now. So angry that his stomach seems to boil. These woods are nightmarish, full of strange, prehistoric-looking plants and slithering menace in the undergrowth. He remembers the police constable’s words, back near the site of the shipwreck: snakes, wild dogs, vicious natives; walking into the mouth of a monster.

Percy sits on the rough ground awhile. He is tired from the horrible overnight voyage up from Brisbane in a private coach. He hadn’t wanted to wait two days for the paddle-steamer, but the constant jolting and jiggling, the constant stopping to change horses, had meant a very poor night’s sleep. The coach still waited for him, outside the Exchange Hotel. He had hoped to have Isabella in it by now, to take her to Brisbane, to the police. How he would love to see her locked up in a stinking prison in this vile, humid place so far from home. How he would love those
long hours of the coach journey with her all to himself, to satisfy himself with a more direct, more personal revenge.

His throat burns at the thought of not getting that revenge, and he has to spit on the ground.

But he is smarter than a woman and a lighthouse keeper. They have to turn up somewhere. And wherever that is, he will find them.

Percy stands and brushes the dirt off his jacket, pushing down an awkward feeling of embarrassment. Nobody needs to know he had fallen. Head high, he makes his way back to the village. The first place he stops is the general store. The woman behind the counter, a thin-faced redhead, smiles at him warmly.

He does not smile in return. “Tell me what you know about Mary Harrow and Matthew Seaward.”

The woman stutters, intimidated by his bearing. “Mary Harrow? She was the Fullbrights’ nanny for a little while. She’s long gone.”

“Why, I saw her just this morning. Does everyone in this town lie?”

A well-dressed man who stands, smoking, by the postcard rack on the counter speaks up. “I know Mary Harrow,” he says. “She’s not lying. Mary Harrow was working for the Fullbrights, but she moved on many months ago. I did, however, see her in the winter.”

“Your name?”

“Abel Barrett.”

Percy sizes him up. He looks like a gentleman, and is clearly itching to tell what he knows of Mary Harrow. “She has duped you all,” Percy says. “Her name is not Mary Harrow, it is Isabella Winterbourne. She is a thief. Possibly a murderer.”

The woman behind the counter pipes up, “She stole from Katherine Fullbright.”

Barrett holds up his hand to hush the woman. “Who are you?”

“I am Percy Winterbourne, of the Winterbourne jeweling family.”

Barrett frowns. “She had jewelry. She sold it in Brisbane.”

Percy flinches, thinking about how much of her own jewelry—paid for by his family—she might have sold. And still she has the mace. Why else would she and the lighthouse keeper run away? “It was all stolen,” Percy declares in an ominous voice. “Stolen from my family. Stolen from my dead brother. Her dead husband.”

The woman gasps. Abel Barrett chews on the end of his cigar thoughtfully, then says, “What has this got to do with Matthew Seaward?”

“They are in league. He’s been harboring her.”

Barrett shakes his head. “No. That can’t be right. Matthew Seaward is as timid as a mouse. Never did a bad thing in his life.”

“My husband runs a carriage hire out the back of the store,” the woman says dramatically. “Seaward has booked a hire overnight. Says he’s going down to Mooloolah Wharf and back. He’s meant to be picking it up at ten, if you want to go and wait.”

Percy freezes. “Mooloolah Wharf?”

“Ships to Sydney leave from there,” she says, clearly enjoying playing her part in the unfolding drama.

And from Sydney . . . anywhere in the world. “Yes, I will wait,” he says. They will be back. They have to get away, and they will be back for their carriage—and he will pounce.

I
n the gully, Isabella rolls onto her back, letting her head fall and her eyes close. Her face is pale and tired and Matthew feels a pang in his heart. He had forgotten, at least while they were running, that she is carrying a child. His child. All of her limbs seem weighed down. He cannot bear the distance anymore. He doesn’t care how difficult it makes the good-bye: he folds her into his arms and kisses her face, her ears, her hair.

“I love you, I love you. You’re safe,” he says, over and over.

She clings to him, crying.

“Sh, sh,” he says. “It will be all right.”

“How can it be? We can’t go back to the village: he might still be there. We can’t pick up the carriage, and we can’t walk to Mooloolah: it’s forty miles.”

“But we can walk to Tewantin. The
Plover
leaves tonight for Brisbane. From there you can find another passage to Sydney or Melbourne, and on to New York, where Victoria is waiting for you. I know you are frightened, but once we get you out of Queensland, you will be safe. And one day, not too far in the future, you will be happy. I promise.”

She gazes up at him with huge, unblinking eyes. The instinct to protect her is a hard muscle tightening in his gut.

“Come with me,” she sobs. “You must come with me all the way to New York. We are a family now. Don’t make me do this alone.”

We are a family now
. It is like a light has turned on inside him. Why did he not realize this before now? A family. His ears ring faintly as he turns this over in his mind. To allow her and his child to travel across the seas alone would make him a dark man indeed. He must travel too. He must protect them. His responsibilities to the light, to the telegraph, to the government office that has paid his wage these last twenty years, are nothing in comparison to his responsibilities to Isabella and her child.
His
child. A feeling stirs inside him. It is fear mixed with wonder. It is awe. All his doubts about petty issues of social correctness are washed away in the great river of morality that a man who will be a father feels.

“Yes, my pretty bird,” he says, stroking her hair. “Yes, I will come.”

I
sabella stumbles through the bush behind Matthew. She is reminded, horribly, of her last great trek through the hostile Australian landscape. Much has changed since then, but she is still fearful. They keep the sea on their left, letting the ocean’s sound lead them south. In a few hours, they will come to the river, and they will follow it inland to the wharf. She is already tired, but she keeps going. Next time they come to a creek, she will insist that they stop and drink. The humidity weighs her down. The screeching racket of the cicadas pounds in her head. Sweat forms on her brow and under her breasts.