He feels his face flush and turns it away so the constable doesn’t see it. In a flash, his mind has built the picture. Isabella escaped with the mace. Perhaps she caused the shipwreck. Perhaps she pushed his brother overboard. The conviction that somehow all this is true clenches in his guts. And the idea that she somehow got away, that she is free somewhere in this empty country with infinite places to hide, causes him physical pain.
“I’m sorry,” the constable says again. “I’ll leave you alone with your thoughts.” Percy watches him trudge back up the beach. What now? Look in the woods for her? Go home and do nothing? She has the mace. He wants it back.
Percy knows he won’t survive wandering in the woods, but he absolutely cannot return home empty-handed. No, if Isabella survived, she has been somewhere and met someone. If he puts the word out that she is missing, the beloved daughter-in-law of a powerful family, she will turn up. It may take time, but he will find her.
Isabella stands before the long looking glass, wearing a blue shirtwaisted dress the exact shade of her eyes. It has been so long since she has dressed well. She has no corset, but luckily her natural body shape is very small at the waist. She has her hair fastened loosely at the nape of her neck with a blue ribbon, with fair wispy strands framing her face. And pinned to her collar, she has a sapphire brooch that she made.
A swift knock at the door, and Berenice comes in. She takes in the sight of Isabella, dressed appropriate to her breeding, and pauses. “You look wonderful, dear,” she says. “Shall I burn your old dress?”
Isabella laughs.
“I’m not joking. Not even a little,” Berenice says, straight-faced.
She stifles her laugh. “No,” she says, “I had best take it home with me.”
Berenice spots the brooch, moves in and gently turns Isabella around. She fingers the brooch delicately. “This is divine.”
“I made it.”
Berenice’s eyebrows shoot up. “You did? Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”
“I bought a few gems with a small inheritance from my husband,” she says. She has told the lie twice now, and wonders if on the third telling she will start to believe it herself. “I have always wanted to make jewelry.”
“It is no bad thing for a woman to have work that pleases her,” Berenice says, beaming. “And this is gorgeous. A real sapphire, then?”
“Yes, it’s real.”
“But this would be worth something? Why do you only have two dresses?”
“I haven’t sold any pieces yet.”
“I’ll buy one. What do you have? Bring them down to morning tea. My friends will love them. Handmade from things you found on the beach: I love it!” Berenice’s face shines with enthusiasm.
Isabella shows her the other brooches and bracelets. “I will only make ten more pieces,” she says, mentally counting the gems she still has at home.
“But they’re wonderful, dear. You must continue to make more. You could start your own jewelry-making company, like that Winterbourne family.”
At the sound of their name, heat jolts Isabella’s heart. Any appeal from the idea of founding a jewelry-making dynasty of her own immediately vanishes, and she tells herself she must sell all the gems quickly and get to America before they find her. Xavier must come home soon.
Berenice has fastened a bracelet around her plump wrist and is admiring it in the light coming through the deep window. “Very fetching,” she says. “I shall buy it. How much?”
Isabella names the price the jeweler paid for her first piece, but Berenice is already shaking her head. “Twice that, dear, twice that. People won’t value something that doesn’t sting. I’ll show my friends. I’d be surprised if they didn’t all want one. Then you can come back when you’ve made some more. Come.”
Isabella can smell tea brewing from the upstairs hallway. This time, she is not brewing the tea, or laying out the scones and cream, or slicing the currant teacake into perfectly even portions. She is restored once again to the status of a lady who enjoys tea without having to serve it. She smiles and nods at the maid as she enters the room, because she understands now how tedious it is to wait on others.
Berenice has invited five friends for tea, and Isabella cannot keep all their names in her head. There is a Margaret and a Margery, but while trying to differentiate them in her memory she misses the names of the next two and then cannot hope to catch up. She smiles and takes a cup of tea and remains quiet and close to Berenice. For her part, Berenice is full of her usual vigor and enthusiasm, the center of every conversation, exploding into musical laughter without warning. The other women seem as dull as peahens in her company. Isabella presumes she seems equally dull, stuck here at Berenice’s side.
But she remembers how to do this: how to make small talk and smile along while another person talks for too long or too loudly. She sips her tea and carefully eats a scone and wonders at how different this world is from her world at the lighthouse with Matthew. Where his place is dark and rough, smelling of wood and oil and sea, this place is light and polished, smelling of wax and lemon and sweet food.
After an hour, Berenice clears her throat and ting-tings a spoon on the side of a crystal glass until she has the attention of everyone in the room. She grasps Isabella’s hand and pulls her up in front of the group.
“Now, you’ve all met the lovely Mary Harrow,” she says, “but what I’ve not told you about Mary is that she is actually a jewelry maker. In fact”—here she brandishes her wrist—“Mary made this delightful piece and the pretty brooch she is wearing. She makes them from precious gems and things she collects on the beach near where she lives.” Berenice turns to Isabella and gives her a reassuring smile. “And this morning she has told me she will only make ten more pieces. I have tried to convince her otherwise, but I don’t think she’ll change her mind.”
There are approving mutters, raised eyebrows. Isabella holds her head high and smiles as brightly as she can.
“So, do come and talk to Mary, because I’m sure she’ll be back for the spring ball in September, and if you want the chance to own a rare and special piece of jewelry, she might be persuaded to take orders.”
As the morning wears on, every woman in the room comes to speak to her, to coo over her brooch. She is pressed upon to fetch the last unsold brooch from her room, and Margaret or Margery—she still can’t tell them apart—buys it on the spot. This causes enough anxiety among the remaining guests that another woman—a petite one with curling red hair—offers to buy the one Isabella is wearing. Now she has sold all three pieces, she wishes she could go back to Hardwick’s and reclaim her other three, because with the room in this mood she almost believes she could sell them all.
Berenice parts the crowd then, her plump arms spread like a saint, promising everyone that Mary Harrow will definitely be at the spring ball and that she will bring her jewelry to a high tea here the afternoon before if anyone wants a piece. “Spread the word.” Murmurs of excitement pass from lip to lip. Isabella knows that if she can make ten pieces between now and then, she can sell them all and be on her way.
Berenice turns to her and says in a low voice, “And of course, you must bring your gentleman friend.”
Isabella splutters. “No . . . I . . . He’s not . . .”
Berenice winks. “You will find a way. Next time you come, you should be accompanied. You are young. Love again.”
Then Berenice is off, chatting and laughing, leaving Isabella to contemplate how she might make ten pieces good enough to satisfy Berenice’s friends and their friends too, with only six weeks to do it.
Matthew is waiting for her at the wharf in the morning sunshine. She steps off the gangplank as light and fair as a dove, in a frothy white dress, and his heart lurches. Isabella. The idea of her bubbles happiness in his soul. She sees him and smiles, hurries over and spreads her arms to hug him, but he steps back, fearful of the opinions of others.
The awkward moment irritates her. Her temper is on her
lips in a half-moment. “There is no one watching us,” she snaps. “More importantly, there is no one who cares anywhere in the world.”
“I am known, Isabella,” he says, soothing her with a touch to her white wrist.
Isabella sighs. “I want so much to hold you.”
“And so you will, just as soon as we are home.”
He has hired a horse and carriage for the day; was up before dawn to begin the two-hour drive up here. She immediately launches into a tale of meeting a rich woman on the steamer who took Isabella under her wing, of selling jewelry and having more cash tucked into the lining of her case than he earns in a quarter-year and of a planned return trip to see Lady McAuliffe again. As she speaks, his ribs appear to soften and sag. She has found others of her class. She has tasted once again that glittering life that she knew before coming to the lighthouse.
“Why do you look so sad, Matthew?” she asks him, as they rattle over a rock on the road.
“I’m not sad.”
“You stopped nodding and smiling at my nonsense a good five minutes ago,” she says.
“I’m sorry, my dear. I am only thinking of how simple and raw the lighthouse will seem to you after Lady McAuliffe’s house.”
Isabella thinks about this proposition for a moment, then she slides her soft hand around his elbow and presses her body close against him. “Simple and raw are not necessarily bad things, my love.”
His body responds immediately to her closeness, her sensual tone, but most of all to her words. My love. She calls him Matthew, or dear, but she has never called him her love before. They do not use the word. They talk around it, even though their lips and their bodies profess love every time they connect.
And now, something has ignited between them. She has let down some guard that he hadn’t been aware she was holding up. The journey home cannot pass quickly enough. She clings to him, her sweet breasts pressed against his upper arm, her warm breath on his neck and ear. She only lets him go when they approach Lighthouse Bay, and sinks low in the seat with her bonnet pulled close about her ears and eyes. Outside the lighthouse, he leaves the horse still in harness because an urge so great it cannot be denied a second longer has gripped him. She sits him on the edge of the bed, turns and kneels so he can unfasten the long row of buttons down her spine. Then she stands and the dress falls to the floor. She pulls off her chemise and is only in stockings now, her tiny waist curving out to round white hips and buttocks. Then she turns and sinks into his arms, fair hair falling about her soft breasts, which are marked with faint pink lines from her past pregnancy. He catches her and hears her say the words he has been longing to hear.
“I love you, Matthew.”
“And I love you, my pretty bird,” he says, through a mouthful of hair. “I love you more than I can say.”
And for the first time he thinks, Perhaps, perhaps, I can keep this one.
Isabella can’t sleep. A sad, strange sickness has gripped her. She dozes and wakes all through the night, longing for Matthew to be in the bed next to her so she can take some comfort in lying on his hairy, muscular chest. Is she coming down with an illness she caught on the steamer or in town? But no, it’s more of a nausea of the skin than the stomach. She longs but doesn’t know what she longs for. She tries to soothe herself on familiar fantasies, but they do nothing. The night goes on forever. Finally she falls asleep, just as dawn is lighting the room.
The sun is bright a few hours later when the bedroom door squeaks open and Matthew looks in. She opens her eyes, disorientated.
“Are you well, Isabella? You have slept so late.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten o’clock.”
And there it is back again, the feeling that her skin is heavy with unshed sobs. She should not feel this way. She is young and she has allowed herself to love again. Surely she should be waking to bells of joy, not a sick, cold dread in her hands and feet.
“I am not well,” she replies, “but I don’t know–” Then she does know. She knows and the pain is so sharp and hard that she sucks in her breath with a gasp, her fingers going to the black ribbon on her wrist.
He sits on the bed next to her and puts his arm around her. “My love?”
“Is it the second of August, Matthew?”
“Yes.”
“Three years ago today, my baby died.” Her voice seems a long way off, a rational sound in place of a horrified sob.
“Ah, I see,” he says, and folds her into his arms.
She presses herself against him. “My body remembered before my brain did,” she says. “Do you not think that strange?”
“Not at all.”
“Arthur would have said it was nonsense.”
“Arthur was a cruel man and now he is dead. You can always say what you feel to me.”
“Then I will say to you that I feel desolate and remote from myself. That I may as well have died on that day and would have been three years happy in my grave.”
“And I would never have met you.”
“Perhaps you would have been better not to meet me.”
He doesn’t probe her statement, he lets it stand and holds her tightly against him, and she screws her eyes tightly shut and lets the tears flow. He doesn’t pull away, he doesn’t grow impatient and tired of her tears. But her skin does not fit her comfortably today and she eventually pushes him away gently and says, “I am not consolable.”
“I do not expect you to be.”
“I will go for a walk on the beach, to clear my mind.”
“Do you want my company?” He is hopeful, and it makes her heart contract.
“No. I need to be alone.”
She dresses and takes an apple from the kitchen to eat as she walks through the woods and down to the beach. Its flesh is sweet and crisp, and it fills the gnawing hole in her stomach, but the hole in her spirit is still there. Three years on and it is still there.
Isabella realizes she is half-hoping to see Xavier, that somehow he will be back early from his journey to Sydney. Perhaps his warm-eyed gaze could cure the creeping sadness that weighs her down today. But she looks along the deserted sand and he is not there. The wind coming off the sea is cold and the waves are flat like silver-gray silk. A seagull is riding an air current above her, its wings spread and curved but not flapping. An inclement day, so unlike the day that Daniel died. It had been late summer, a long day of warm sun and cloudless blue sky and bees skimming the grass outside as though they didn’t feel Daniel’s loss. They didn’t feel it. Nobody felt it. Nobody except her, which made her the loneliest woman in the world.
She turns and looks back towards the woods. On the other side, and just a few streets in—surely she won’t be seen—is the Fullbrights’ house. Katarina still away in Sydney, Ernest probably off on a business trip, Cook busy in the laundry perhaps. If she creeps up the back stairs and into the nursery, perhaps she can find something of his to keep. A little toy that she can hold against herself just for today to bring a little comfort. She makes her way through the woods, picking over the uneven ground and then out the other side on to the path down the hill towards town. Carefully, carefully now. Some people think her a thief. Cook will not greet her warmly if she sees her. But surely, even if Cook does discover her, she can simply say, “How can you deny me a small memento of Daniel?”
Xavier. She means Xavier, not Daniel. Xavier is the living boy. Daniel is her son who is dead, who has not had a third birthday. Isabella stops in her tracks, heart hammering. Her moment’s confusion of names in her mind has unnerved her, sent a bright, sharp shock to her heart. It is like waking up from a dream that has wrapped another dream. She had thought herself rational, but now she thinks clearly, perhaps for the first time in months. Xavier is not Daniel. But she knew that. Did she not know that?
She looks around her, as if seeing the landscape for the first time. She will not go to the Fullbrights’ house and creep into the nursery. This would be the action of a madwoman. But is she mad
to dream of taking him with her to America? Her fantasies have gone so far ahead now, she is not sure if she can pull back.
Isabella turns and heads towards the lighthouse. She has a month to decide. She does love Xavier, and the love is real, and she must do something. She can’t leave a little boy she loves in a house full of cruelty and anger and stifling indifference. Surely love will find a way.
Twenty-three
Isabella discovers the romance of working hard. She discovers the delicious pleasure of pre-dawn industry, working while the sky is still dark blue outside, the pool of lamplight on her hands and the floorboards where she lays out her materials and works them together with nimble fingers. Making and remaking, while Matthew makes a wide circle around her on his journey up and down the lighthouse. She grows addicted to the work. In it, she forgets the unwise promises she has made herself about the future, she forgets her nightmarish anxieties about discovery, she forgets that she loves Matthew and must leave him in a month. There is only the delicate and detailed work in front of her, the early-morning silence, the reassuring light of the lamp.
Weeks pass. Her fingers get faster at wrapping the silver wires that hold gems in settings, the precisely even circles that form chains and clasps. But still she is pushing herself to have everything made in time for the ball. Some days, if her fingers are aching and her head is sore from concentrating, she wonders in horror whether Lady McAuliffe has forgotten her. She still hasn’t had word from her. One morning, while she works, Matthew hands her a telegram and her heart lifts, knowing it is finally Berenice giving her the date and place where the ball will be held. But it is not from Berenice. It is from Max Hardwick, the jeweler.
Have sold all pieces. Please return to Brisbane soon to collect £120.
Matthew, who has transcribed the telegram and seen the figure, looks at her gravely.
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