“Berenice, I would like to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Matthew Seaward.”
If Berenice notices his discomfort, she blithely ignores it. She shakes his hand warmly and says, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Seaward.”
“And a pleasure to meet you, Lady McAuliffe.”
She waves the title away with her cane. “Pish. Berenice will do me. And what line of work are you in, Mr. Seaward?”
“I keep the lighthouse and man the telegraph at Lighthouse Bay. I have been there six years, in service to the marine board for twenty.”
Berenice inclines her head. “That is dedication,” she says. “You are to be commended. Now, I am certain you won’t want to wait here and suffer through an hour of women squawking over jewelry. May I recommend to you the reading room downstairs? It is a lovely apartment with writing tables and you may read newspapers or periodicals in peace down there.”
Matthew smiles apprehensively, and Isabella is keen to know what has amused him. She supposes he hasn’t had the company of many women, and Berenice is certainly a singular woman. Perhaps she terrifies him in her delightful way. “Thank you, Lady McAuliffe,” he says, showing that he is determined to acknowledge the difference in their classes. “I will do just that.”
When Matthew has slipped out, Berenice urges Isabella to show her the new jewelry. Isabella has kept her little case near to her the whole journey, and she lays it on the table and flicks open the catch. Berenice coos. There are six brooches and three bracelets. “So very beautiful, dear. We’ll sell every piece. I’ve told them to bring their money with them, lest they go home empty-handed. The tea will be here in twenty minutes, so you go and wash your face and tidy yourself, and I will lay all of these gorgeous baubles out to best advantage.”
Isabella slips into her bedroom, her heart thudding. At the end of this day, all of the Winterbourne gems will be gone. The sturdy rope that has kept her life tied to theirs is fraying. Soon she will be free.
She pours some water into the bowl on her dressing table and splashes her face with it. It has been a long time since she has seen herself in the mirror and she is surprised by how well she looks, how rosy her cheeks and bright her eyes. She can’t remember ever looking this well back in England after Daniel’s death. She had become a shadow, but now she is returning to three dimensions. A pull of panic: does that mean she is recovering from her grief? Please, no. She never wants to stop feeling it, in case it means she has stopped loving him.
A knock at the apartment door alerts her to the arrival of the tea. She quickly tidies her hair and her shirt, smooths over her skirt and returns to the dining room.
Two young servants are laying out the tea on the dining table. Berenice has folded out a card table and laid out the brooches and bracelets artfully. She smiles at Isabella. “You look beautiful, Mary,” she says.
“Thank you. Thank you for all your help. I can never repay it.”
Berenice nods once. “One day you may be in a position to help someone who needs it. Repay it to them.”
Isabella thinks about Xavier, his loveless family.
Within moments, the maids are busy to and from the door, letting in a parade of society women in frothy dresses, who know and love—or know and fear—Berenice. They greet Isabella effusively, talk about how they have seen her pieces and “simply must have” one of their own, but their talk doesn’t necessarily add up to action. They eat and gossip and drink tea, some of them spreading out onto the verandah, and Isabella worries that they have forgotten about her jewelry.
Then she finally sees two women at the card table, gently insisting that they each saw a ruby brooch first and therefore it is theirs to purchase. Something about this polite disagreement captures the attention of the others, and before long a crowd has gathered around the card table and Berenice presses Isabella forward to talk to them.
“How much for this bracelet?” one matronly woman asks her.
Isabella thinks of a figure in her head, then doubles it, as Berenice has told her to do. “Seventy pounds.”
“I’ll take it.”
And so it goes, until all of the pieces are gone and she has enough money to take Xavier to New York and back two or three times. Her heart flutters, but her face is warm with excitement now, not anxiety.
Just as the last pair of guests are leaving and the maids are clearing off the dining table, Matthew appears at the door looking uncomfortable. “Shall I come back later?” he asks.
Berenice grasps his hand and pulls him in. “No, not at all. Would you like cake? We seem to have rather a lot left over. Everyone was more interested in Mary’s jewelry.” Berenice nudges her gently. “You really must make more. You could be a wealthy woman.”
Isabella is aware of Matthew’s gaze on her. “I have no desire to be a wealthy woman,” she says. “I have a few, simple goals. I thank you for helping me achieve them.”
Berenice’s eyes narrow, but she is still smiling. “You are a mysterious one, Mary Harrow,” she says. “I’m never quite sure whether or not to take you seriously. Nonetheless, you are a sweet girl and pretty to boot. I shall look forward to seeing you at the ball tomorrow night. Listen out for the dinner gong at seven.” She nods to Matthew. “We will speak again.”
“Of course, my lady,” he says.
Berenice rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Yes, well. If you’re determined to call me so.” Then she is gone.
Isabella and Matthew wait out on the verandah until the maids have cleared away and the apartment is once again their own.
“Did you enjoy the reading room?” Isabella asks him as they watch the sky turn dusky over the river.
“Yes, and there is an electric telegraph in the other reception hall. The hotel has its own.”
“I think many of the parliamentarians stay here.”
“I wonder who else comes here. Let us hope Percy Winterbourne isn’t lurking, looking for you.”
“Oh, pish, Matthew. You are seeing monsters where there are none.”
“Still. There are a lot of wealthy people between these walls.” He smiles across at her. “Am I to understand you are one now?”
Isabella nods. “I sold them all. I have more than enough for a new start in America.”
“Then you should go. Tomorrow, maybe. Steamers leave for Sydney all the time, and from there you can get a passage to San Francisco or New York.”
“Not tomorrow,” she says guardedly. “I shan’t miss Berenice’s ball. Not just yet. I can travel to Sydney from Mooloolah Heads just as well.”
“But—”
She leaps from her chair and presses her fingers against his mouth, then leans in and replaces them with her lips. “Matthew,” she murmurs, “forget all of that for just a few days, please.”
He does as she says, at least outwardly. But guilt is starting to dig the ground out from under her.
Stiff trousers, shirt, silk waistcoat, heavy jacket, dark cravat: one by one Matthew pulls the items on, wondering why he is here. He should have stayed home. At the lighthouse, he knows what he is. But here . . .
The trouble is Isabella. Back at home, he doesn’t feel the difference between them. He is a capable, independent man of good birth and good intelligence. She is a warm, childlike, graceful woman, also of good birth and good intelligence. They are right for each other. It is only here among society that he truly sees what he has been trying not to see. Her breeding is apparent in the way she speaks, the way she takes a cup of tea from a servant, the way she holds herself. There is an ease about her that he could never have, even if he should live in this hotel for a hundred years.
Isabella is different from him. And he sees now that, despite those fond glimmerings of hope, they could never have been together. Sooner or later, he will disappoint her. It is right and well that she should go away. It is right that he will be alone again, though he suspects he will never be well again.
A soft knock at his bedroom door causes his heart to jump. Then it settles: o
f course it is just Isabella; not the police coming to round her up; not Percy Winterbourne with a pistol. She stands before him in a deep pink ball gown, with fitted bodice and puffed sleeves that are decorated with dark red ribbon. She wears long gloves and her hair is gathered loosely at the nape of her neck. He should tell her she looks splendid: a vision of feminine beauty. But he doesn’t think it. All he can think is, She doesn’t look like Isabella. She looks like somebody else.
If Isabella notices his lack of compliments, she doesn’t appear to mind. Instead, she straightens the tips of his collar and brushes a piece of fluff off his shoulder. “Are you all right?” she asks him, not meeting his eye.
“I am perfectly well,” he says, and he knows he sounds gruff but is unable to stop himself.
“Matthew, can you dance?”
“No.”
Isabella laughs, and now she looks like the woman he knows and loves. All the artifice is swept away. “Well, won’t we be a pair, then?”
“We can sit instead and listen to the orchestra.”
She puts her arm through his. “I don’t mind what we do. As long as we’re together while we do it.”
Arm in arm, they leave the apartment and descend the staircase. A small orchestra tunes up in the dining room, where beautifully dressed men and women move from table to table looking for their seating card. Isabella finds hers—Mary Harrow and friend—and Matthew is relieved to sit down. Already his suit has drawn a few disapproving glances. It is old and old-fashioned; he doesn’t have a sleek tailcoat like everyone else he sees. He wonders if Isabella noticed his disappointing clothes and said nothing, or if she really is blind to them.
The room is lit by gas chandeliers. The light glints off glasses and plates. The orchestra plays a soft bourrée as people take their seats and the first course is served. The parquetry dance floor stands empty for the present. A very young man sits next to Matthew and greets him cautiously. Matthew wonders if Lady McAuliffe sat him with a young man, presuming that Matthew was a young man too. Isabella is only twenty-three. He is nearly twice that.
His unhappiness deepens. He blames himself for being a fool. An old fool. An old, uncouth fool.
And then she turns to him and smiles, and the light of love is in her eyes and he wonders what she sees in him. But it is clear she sees something and his heart stirs. How is he ever to let her go?
Isabella needs a break to breathe. Her face is sore from smiling. All evening, women and their husbands have approached her, asking about her jewelry, when she intends to make more, shaking their heads with disappointment when she says she will not. One gentleman tells her his cousin in Sydney is a jeweler who exports to the whole world, and he should be pleased to introduce her.
No thank you. She has known enough jewelers in her time.
She is glad Matthew can’t or won’t dance. The French kid Louis heels she bought this morning pinch her across the bridge of her foot. She had forgotten how very tiring society is. She has spent so long curled up inside the lighthouse, much as a sea creature might curl up inside a shell—exposed, its instinct is to flee for cover.
She leans in to Matthew, to tell him she is exhausted, and when she looks up she sees a beautifully dressed, very thin woman approaching. “Come on,” Isabella says to Matthew, “out to the courtyard. I simply can’t speak to another person.”
Pretending she hasn’t seen the thin woman, Isabella grasps his hand and pulls. He rises, throws his stiff napkin on the table, and follows her. The tables are half empty now as the guests take to the dance floor. It is mostly men who remain seated, drinking, and the occasional elderly woman with tightly set curls and tightly set expression to match. The orchestra plays a lively waltz, and the ladies and gentlemen in their fine clothes move in considered rhythm around the floor. Isabella and Matthew head for the big double doors to the hall, and breathe deeply once outside in the courtyard among the dense tropical plants.
“Oh, Lord,” Isabella says. “I am exhausted.”
He catches her in his arms and she takes comfort against the rough material of his jacket, listening to his heartbeat. He strokes her hair gently.
Finally she stands back and looks at him in the reflected light from the chandeliers in the hall. “You must be even more exhausted than I am.”
“There’s no value in competing,” he replies, slightly gruff as he has been all evening.
Isabella looks up beyond the treetops to the stars. The night is cloudless, and the stars are like white dust spread with a careless hand across the dark blue. Soon, she will be looking at those stars from somewhere else on earth. For the first time she wonders what Matthew will do without her. Whether they will write to each other. Whether they will continue to love each other under the same stars, even though they will be apart. She has only ever seen this love as temporary: a short starburst of passion and color that would bloom and disappear just as quickly. But there will be an after, and she wonders what that after will feel like.
She reaches for the lapel of his jacket. “Tell me about the first time you wore this,” she says. She hasn’t asked about his wife, yet. A mixture of jealousy and fear has held her tongue. But tonight she feels she wants to know all of him.
He softens, all gruffness evaporating. “I was twenty-four when I married Clara. She was twenty. She was the daughter of a tea merchant, I was the teacher at the village school. We fell in love.” His voice catches in his throat. It is hard for Isabella to listen to this, very hard. When she speaks of Arthur, her voice doesn’t catch on the word love.
“We were married in the local church one summer afternoon,” he continues. “It was warm and all the windows stood open, and there was a frangipani tree in full bloom just outside the window. A rough wind came by at one stage and blew a few of the blooms into the pews. Forever I will associate the smell of frangipanis with my wedding. Waxy and sweet.” He closes his eyes momentarily, as though he can smell it now. Then opens them again. “Clara was not like other girls. She had a wildness about her that was uncontrollable. Selfish. Despite her woman’s body and her adult intelligence, she had the will and temper of a child. I was in love and my love was blind, and she quickly beat me down with her demands and her sharp tongue. If she was cruel to me, the next day she would be like sunshine, full of apologies and softness. We entered a cycle of contempt and forgiveness, until I grew tired and one day . . .” He takes a deep breath, runs his hand across his beard. “One day I said, ‘Enough, Clara,’ and I demanded that this time, just this once, she would do as I wanted rather than the other way around. She disappeared. For days. When she returned, it was because she was ill, and that illness claimed her life shortly afterwards.”
“I am so sorry,” Isabella says. She doesn’t say the other thing she is thinking: Clara sounds like a monster who would have eventually broken Matthew’s spirit. Then the thin anxiety roused by jealousy makes her say, “Do you still love her?”
He frowns as he thinks about this question. “It seems a lifetime ago,” he says. “I don’t not love her. But love seems to me to be something bright and present, and what I feel for Clara is neither of those things.”
They both fall silent for a few moments. Crickets chirrup and the music from the ballroom wafts out to them. Matthew smiles at her suddenly, grasping her hand.
“Here,” he said. “I have told you an untruth today.” He takes her other hand and stands back, in dancing position.
“You can dance?”
“Very poorly. But it won’t kill me to waltz with you in the starlight.”
Isabella smiles, and kicks off her shoes. They begin to dance. It is a little uneven at first, but then they catch each other’s rhythm and whirl quietly around the courtyard. Her heart thunders with excitement and love. His eyes are on hers, and she feels closer to him than she has yet felt. For this waltz, he is hers, her darling man.
“Ah, there you are!”
They stop dancing and turn to see Berenice at the courtyard entrance.
“I had rather wondered where you’d got to, Mary. The governor’s wife, Lady Lamington, wants to meet you. Come along.”
Reluctantly she drops Matthew’s hands.
He nods at her with an encouraging smile. “I might stay here and enjoy the fresh air a little more,” he says. “I’m afraid I’m not designed for crowds.”
Berenice waits while Isabella refastens her shoes, and leads her back towards the ballroom.
“Now, if she says she wants you to make her a brooch or some such, you simply mustn’t say no,” Berenice instructs. “She is a very important woman as I’m sure you can imagine and I . . . Oh, where has she gone?” Berenice scans the crowd. “No matter, she will be back. Sit here with me for a few moments while I catch my breath.”
They sit at two spare seats at the main table. To Isabella’s right is a very drunk man with thin white hair. He is expensively dressed, but he has gravy on his collar and the buttons of his waistcoat strain against his belly. Matthew may have cheaper clothes, but he is a hundred times the gentleman. Isabella turns her shoulder to the drunk man so she and Berenice are not interrupted.
“Your young man is not so young,” Berenice says with an arch of her eyebrow.
“I never said he was young. You just assumed,” Isabella countered lightly.
“Is he good to you? Kind?”
“Oh yes,” she says passionately.
Berenice looks Isabella up and down. “Mary Harrow, I have been watching you all night. And I watched you at high tea yesterday, and I have watched you since I first saw you sitting there with your back all straight and your knees just so on the upper deck of that paddle-steamer.”
Isabella’s pulse flickers at her throat.
“And you are not what you say you are.”
Isabella takes a quick breath. “I never said what I am, you’ll remember.”
Here Berenice breaks into a loud laugh, dispelling the tension. “Well, precisely. You dance around every question I ask you, which makes me suspicious. What has she to hide, I wonder. I thought you at first a banker’s daughter or some such, thrown on hard times. But your movements and your speech and your knowledge of society prompt me to believe that you are born and bred much above the middle class. Much more like my class, dear.”
Lighthouse Bay Page 28