Читать книгу The Captain's Frozen Dream - Georgie Lee - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Katie marched across the kitchen garden to where Conrad stood by the cart, unloading crates, his jacket draped over the side. He’d avoided her all morning, leaving her to Miss Linton’s scowl at breakfast before secluding himself in his study to speak with the estate and mine managers. The part of her which still cringed at the nasty accusations she’d levelled at him last night was glad he’d stayed away. She wasn’t proud of what she’d said, but it was the truth and better he know it now than be led on by her silence into believing in something which no longer existed.

‘You’ve avoided me long enough. I insist on going back with this cart once it’s unloaded,’ she demanded, startled when he straightened. The strings of his shirt were undone and open, revealing the light chest hair underneath. The memory of his bare muscles beneath her palms, the soft sun caressing his shoulders as she held tight to him in the tall grass on the Downs nearly rattled her out of her purpose. They’d never gone far enough to completely compromise her, but they’d indulged in a few pleasures, the memory of which made the skin of her thighs tingle.

‘You can’t. It’s going back to Portsmouth.’ He slid the last crate off the wood and carefully laid it on top of the stack beside the wheel.

‘Then call the chaise.’

‘Matilda has use of it this morning.’ Conrad leaned against the cart and propped his elbows on the rough wood to face Katie, not as the angry, drunken man from last night, but as the self-assured one who’d won her heart two years ago.

‘Then saddle a horse. I’ll ride home,’ she insisted, eager to get away from him and his state of near undress.

‘Come, Katie, you don’t know how to ride.’ He playfully tapped the end of her nose, his touch as unnerving as his jibe.

‘I know what you’re trying to do, Conrad, and it won’t work.’

He picked up the crowbar lying beside the cart. ‘What am I trying to do?’

‘Keep me here.’

He slid the bar between the crate and its lid and pushed down. The nails broke free in a screech of metal against wood. ‘You’re right.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, I have something for you.’ He shoved the lid aside and dug through the straw until he found what he was searching for and raised it up into the light.

Katie gaped at the sight of the elongated skull, dark from its long rest in the earth, and all desire to hurry home vanished. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘I purchased it from an Inuit in Greenland before we boarded the ship for home. I had a great deal of free time on the voyage and cleaned the bones, the way you taught me.’

Their eyes met and the memory of their time alone together in the evenings, sitting side by side at the table in the conservatory while she positioned his hand over the bones, passed between them. His cheek would rest against hers while she’d reach over his wide shoulder to guide the small metal pick between his fingers in the patient removal of dirt from bone. She didn’t think he’d remembered the lessons, not with all the kisses and caresses which had distracted them.

She ran one fingertip over the smooth curve of her opal ring, regretting the loss of those days. They’d been some of the happiest of her life, but there was little time to ponder them or their passing as Conrad held out the skull to her. She took the heavy thing, her excitement heightened by the sweep of his fingers across hers.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

She held it up to examine the row of long, dagger-like teeth lining the jaw, struggling as much to comprehend the animal as to avoid Conrad’s piercing gaze. ‘It’s marvellous. Like nothing I’ve ever seen in any of the books or private collections. It’s certainly not an ichthyosaur.’

‘Ichthyosaur?’

‘It’s what the lizard with the flippers Miss Anning found is called now. Mr Konig named it in his paper to the Royal Society last year. They rejected mine.’ She lowered the skull, bitterness marring her excitement.

‘Then they were fools.’ Conrad’s solidarity was only a slight comfort. ‘What will your father think when he sees it?’

‘He won’t see it.’ Katie set the skull down on the flat bed of the cart with a thud, irritated by how little the man knew and how much she was left to explain. ‘He’s dead.’

Katie felt more than saw Conrad stiffen with shock. She was too focused on the skull and holding back the tears blurring her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her pain, or to appear so weak and fragile around him. She wanted to be as resilient as she’d always been, but she was failing.

Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. He was hot from working and the heat penetrated the thin shirt to warm her tearstained cheeks. There’d been no one to hold her like this the day her father had died, or during all the lonely ones afterwards. ‘What happened?’

She didn’t want to answer, but she was too tired and worn down by carrying the pain alone to stay silent. ‘A patient had come to see him and he’d turned her away. I was angry, we needed the money and I told him if he didn’t earn some, I’d sell his fossils. He stormed out of the house, saying he’d find the one which would save us, something a private collector would pay a fortune to possess. A miner found him a few hours later at the bottom of a ladder, his neck broken.’

Katie squeezed her eyes shut, unable to block out the memory of her father’s limp body as the miners had carried him into the house. The foreman had swept the dining table free of her father’s fossils, making the bones clatter over the floor like pieces of broken china. Another man had crushed one beneath his work boot as he’d jostled with the other men to lay out her father’s body. Then they’d filed out, uttering their apologies and leaving her with nothing but the tragedy, bills and bones. ‘The only things he left me were his debts, and after what your uncle did to me there were few in England who’d purchase my finds. If it hadn’t been for my American collectors, I wouldn’t have had any buyers and I would have starved.’

‘I’m so sorry, Katie.’ His voice vibrated through his chest, the way it had on the Downs when she’d cried against him as she’d revealed for the first time the anguish of her mother leaving. In between sobs, she’d described the loneliness of sitting in the window at Whitemans Green waiting for her to return, and the letter which had arrived three months later with news of her death. Then, just as now, Conrad had tenderly rocked her, making her feel safe and loved in a way neither her father, nor the mother who hadn’t cherished her enough to stay, had ever done. ‘You should have told me sooner.’

She pushed out of his embrace, her heart nearly shattering at the absence of his warmth, but she steeled herself against it and her weakness. Despite the comfort he offered, she didn’t want to depend on anyone, especially someone who might disappear over the horizon as easily as her mother had. ‘I didn’t tell you for the same reason you didn’t explain to me minute by minute the hardships and suffering you experienced while you were gone.’

‘I’m not asking for the details, only the broad strokes.’

‘And now you have them. So you may return to London and Mr Barrow and publish your journals and enjoy everyone in the Admiralty and the Naturalist Society falling at your feet.’

‘Careful, Katie, your anger near drips with jealousy.’

Katie stared down at the mess of bones in the crate, shamed out of her resentment. He was only trying to be kind. ‘You’re right, I am. No matter what I write or draw, my success will never match yours simply because of my sex. Only my connection to you and my father’s work has ever made anyone take note of me before.’ Even then they’d pinned her success on her feminine wiles, not her talent, listening to the vicious lies of Lord Helton and all those willing to repeat them.

‘Then this could be your chance to change that. If this animal is as unusual as you believe, then stay with me and study it, draw it and write a paper the Naturalist Society won’t be able to ignore.’

‘Last night you said you wanted me to give it all up,’ she challenged, confused by his change of heart and the wavering of hers.

His enthusiasm dimmed as he picked at a splinter on the edge of the cart. ‘I think we both said a number of things last night we regret.’

Yes, she regretted saying a great deal, despite most of it being true.

‘Even if I did stay and study it, I doubt anything I do, even on something as unusual as this, could sway the Naturalist Society members to support me. The last night we were at the society, they tore my father’s reputation to shreds, accusing him of plagiarism. It was the reason we finally left London.’

He flicked away the splinter. ‘Why would they do such a thing?’

‘Because of your uncle.’ She stomped her foot against the soft soil. ‘He wasn’t content to ruin me, but my father, too.’

Conrad banged his fist against the cart. ‘Then now’s your chance to ensure he doesn’t win.’

‘You make it sound so easy, but it isn’t.’ She ran her hand over the curve of the creature’s skull, thinking through each of the books she’d read in the Naturalist Society library and how no animal in any of them resembled this one. ‘You don’t know what it was like to stand there and watch them tear him, and me, apart, to have everyone whispering about you.’

‘No, but I know what it’s like to fight awful odds, to keep going even when you, and all those around you, want to give up.’ He shifted closer, his face set with determination. ‘If you think I’m going to let you surrender to my uncle, to crawl away and hide from all the difficulties, you’re very mistaken.’

‘It’s not your decision to make.’ For the past six months she’d hidden from the world, facing no one except through letters and doing all she could to avoid criticism and judgement. She didn’t want to enter it again and confront the hostile men who’d dismissed her research simply because she was a woman.

‘It’s my creature, and if you don’t think you’re up to the task of studying it, I’ll hire another,’ Conrad threatened.

‘You can’t.’ Panic burned through her at possibly losing such a specimen and how much like her father she felt at this moment. She’d cursed him so many times for being too involved with his research to see her, her mother, his shrinking medical practice and the mounting bills. Even after her mother had left, the fossils and his research had determined nearly every decision he’d ever made. Katie was about to allow them to do the same for her.

‘Don’t be afraid to show the men of the society what you’re capable of,’ Conrad urged. ‘This creature could be the making of you.’

He was right. With this animal, she could prove it was her brains and not her favours which had gained her past notice. If she succeeded, it would mean work as an illustrator, money from publishing books and pamphlets, and the security she’d craved since the day she’d taken over the finances in her mother’s absence and seen the harsh truth of her and her father’s situation.

Katie fingered one of the creature’s sharp teeth. Staying was risky. Conrad was tenacious in his determination to achieve whatever it was he set his mind to and now it was focused on her. However, she had only to hold out until Mr Barrow’s next order came through and pulled his focus, and presence, away from her. As much as she didn’t want to be here with him, leaving Conrad meant leaving the bones and she couldn’t do it.

‘All right, I’ll stay and examine the creature.’ A smile of victory spread over Conrad’s lips, as annoying as it was tempting, but she wasn’t about to let him believe he’d won. She was staying for her benefit, not his. ‘But it will be like it was when my father worked for you. You’ll pay me just as you paid him.’

Conrad scooped up the skull and laid it back in the crate. ‘I won’t.’

‘Then I won’t stay.’ She crossed her arms over her chest, as much to emphasise her seriousness as to calm her fears over losing access to the creature. ‘This is to be a business deal like any other and when it’s done that’ll be the end of it.’ And us.

‘All right,’ he conceded, picking up the lid to the crate and setting it down over the top, covering the bones. ‘Draw up a list of things you need from Whitemans Green and I’ll send someone to fetch them and close up your house. When you’re finished with your research you may keep the fossil, and the paper, and your drawings.’

‘If I’m to keep everything, what do you hope to get out of this arrangement?’

‘You.’ He brushed her lightly under the chin, the same self-satisfied smile he’d worn the first time he’d stolen a kiss from her in the study drawing up the corners of his wide mouth. ‘I’ll have Mr Peet bring the crate to the conservatory. I expect your work to be very interesting and revealing.’

Before she could tell him what to do with his expectations he slipped into the stable, his muffled instructions to Mr Peet carrying over the shift and whinny of the horses.

Katie slammed the top of the crate with her palm, dislodging the lid. It fell into the dirt, revealing the creature’s menacing smile. Her weakness and Conrad’s glib determination frustrated her. She shouldn’t remain here and torture herself with what couldn’t be or give Conrad false hope for reconciliation, but she couldn’t give up this specimen either.

Motion near the house caught her attention and she looked up to meet Miss Linton’s pinched scowl. Worry slid through Katie like it had the day she’d narrowly missed being hit by a rock falling from the side of a slate mine. She and Conrad had always been careful when Katie had been here before, only intimate with one another late at night or far from the house. She wondered how much Miss Linton had seen of her and Conrad’s embrace. It’d been innocent enough, but Miss Linton wasn’t likely to view it in such a way and it wouldn’t be long before the spinster was adding yet another nasty rumour to those already circulating. Once again Katie would be judged for something she didn’t do instead of on the merit of her work.

Katie picked up the crate lid and set it back over the animal. Tracing the words burned into the wood, she wondered if there was something more for her in life than fossils and research. Her father had never given her the chance to discover it and necessity had forced her to keep on with his work.

Katie made for the house, determined not to endure the spinster’s disapproving scowl or entertain her own doubts a moment longer. This was her calling, as much as it’d been her father’s, and she would use it to make her way and prove everyone like Miss Linton wrong. They might scoff at her in England, but in America there were many she corresponded with, their eagerness to acquire the specimens she unearthed matched by their enthusiasm to exchange ideas, illustrations and knowledge with her. They cared nothing for her gender or the rumours circulating in London and their admiration was such that Mr Lesueur had invited her to join him as an illustrator on his next expedition West. She hadn’t turned down his generous offer, but she hadn’t accepted it either. There’d been a time when she wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving England; now it was more tempting than ever. With the money from Conrad, she could afford passage, if she wanted it.

She paused outside the conservatory door, uncertain if she should leave, or if there was anything left in England to keep her here. She’d soon find out. Where Lord Helton and his vicious stories had lowered her, the bones could raise her up. If this animal was as rare as she believed, any paper she published about it would be the making of her. It had to be, she possessed little else to believe in.