Grace Arising by Emma Lombard

Author:Emma Lombard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emma Lombard

CLIFFVIEW COTTAGE, DARLING POINT, 16 FEBRUARY 1842

In the empty bedchamber upstairs, Grace stared out the window, its white-painted frame perfectly displaying the bay’s glistening blue expanse. The promontory cliffs of the Heads coming into the harbour were a hazy grey in the distance.

Seamus was out there. Had his anger over her decision to remain been usurped by his duty to the ship and his men? For his sake, she hoped the hurt in his heart would not smoulder like a slow-creeping peat fire, flameless from the outside, charring all in its path. She wished she had explained the pain in her own heart better. How the thought of leaving Emily and Edwin squeezed her pulse to a standstill and took her back into the colourless, lifeless years of her childhood nursery. She dared not risk abandoning her children as she had been. Neither Mother nor Father had loved her in a way that appeased her soul. It was demanding enough accepting this pain in herself without transforming it into the words Seamus needed to understand it. Stinking seaweed, she should have tried harder.

She had been in her new home a week now. Toby had seen a printed advertisement about the sale of Cliffview Cottage outside the post office. Enquiring after Marcus Turner, the previous owner, Toby had quickly made the purchase as Seamus’s agent, fortunately before Mr Turner had begun selling any furnishings or objets d’art.

The Turners were rumoured to be travelling back to Europe after almost a decade of social exclusion had finally pushed Mrs Turner to breaking point. Marcus Turner was one of a new generation of local-born colonists. Despite his political achievements, his wealth, and his fashionable estate, his convict-stained origins stuck to him like tar. His long-suffering British wife had been tolerated as ladylike and amiable, but she was never called upon by the elite of Sydney’s society. After years of struggling to be accepted, Mrs Turner had insisted the family leave.

It was the first home Grace could truly call her own, and she had an odd sensation that the cottage yearned to be filled with the squeals and laughter of a young family. Now, on the horizon, ships with sails in full bloom carried their hulks towards the docks or whisked them towards the open sea and the promise of adventure and profits. With practised watchfulness, Grace shifted her focus beyond the hazy, grey line where the ocean met the land to the clouds in the distance.

Goodness! It was almost impossible to believe that gales and cricket-ball-sized hailstones had battered the little colony just two days before. She had experienced worse, of course, when the Discerning had tipped in the storm, but it was a spectacular sight nonetheless. From this same window, she had watched the blue-and-gold blazes of lightning light up the harbour like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night. The angry, purple arc of clouds had swept across a vast tract of land, pelting hail and rain on the inhabitants and animals below.

Her

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