Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley

Author:Susanna Kearsley [Kearsley, Susanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2018-04-23T14:00:00+00:00

Lydia

There were some things that could not be repaired.

She’d learned this small and sad truth in the months and years since Joseph had returned home from Oswego. At first they had been thankful he’d come back to them unbandaged and with all his limbs, and walking; that his outward wounds had healed so soon and left no scars. But they had come to realize that where Joseph had been broken was on some deep, inner surface that could not be seen and was beyond the reach of any doctor. And along the broken places bits of who he had once been had fallen and been lost, like all the tiny chips of porcelain that had scattered in the ashes of the hearth the time her mother had once dropped a cherished platter, so that even though her father had with patience and determination pasted it together so the seams but barely showed, there still remained, along those seams, small voids and tiny imperfections where those chips had once been that could never be recovered.

To a stranger at their table it appeared the platter had been cleanly mended.

She knew otherwise.

He did not call out often from the nightmares anymore but she still knew each time they plagued him from his restless wanderings. And when his demons came by day she knew that, too, from how his eyes would brighten and his breathing grow more rapid as his body tensed beneath whatever pressures were assaulting him.

But sitting as he was now, with her drawing pencil in his hand, his papers spread out tidily across the empty dining table, it was to her as if one of those small bits had been found among the ashes and retrieved with care and fitted into place again.

She’d always liked to watch him draw his plans for ships—the lines so straight, the measurements meticulously reckoned—for beneath all that precision lay an artistry she much admired.

The Spanish captain found it of great interest. Drinking brandy with her father in the chairs across from Joseph he leaned forward on the table as he watched the plans take form. “You mean to lengthen her?”

Joseph, at work, seemed too deeply absorbed to be rude or suspicious. “Yes. She’s been practically severed already just here. There’ll be no cost or effort to add ten more feet for an increase in cargo space, and,” he remarked, “she can carry more guns.”

“Guns are always a good thing,” the Spaniard agreed.

At his side, her father took a sip of his own brandy—a rare thing for him. He seldom drank and when he did preferred the rum that Daniel sometimes sent them from Jamaica, but on this day the Spanish captain had brought brandy from his private store, by way of saying thank you for their hospitality, and so her father had indulged.

She knew that Benjamin would have outdone them both had he been there, for he loved brandy, but he was not there and she did not know where he was.

She knew where Mr. de Sabran was.

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