To The Ends of the Earth by June Gadsby

Author:June Gadsby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: falling in love with two men, victorian romance novel, gauchos riding wild in the mountains, life in the high andes, man who prefers men cannot be her lover, mountain glaciers and untamed gauchos, patagonian woman with a scandalous past, shocking victorian ladies, spanish dancers that dazzle
Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.

Chapter Ten

The sight of Blodwen gathering driftwood and pampas grass along the shore was not unknown to the townsfolk of Puerto Daffyd. She was always to be seen at this time of year, stocking up on the free winter fuel that lay there just for the taking. And anyone who got there before the Widow Evans would find themselves taken severely to task.

She placed a sodden tree branch in her barrow, the weight of it almost too much for her, and straightened her back with a groan. At the water’s edge, where the foaming wavelets crept up the sandy slope beneath the rocky breakwater, Dora was standing, staring out to sea as if expecting her personal boat to come in at any moment. The dear child did not understand what was happening to her. To be so far away from her roots, even if those roots were tenuous, as they were in Dora’s case, it was hard on the poor girl.

‘Dora! Dora, my lovely, leave that dream and come and give me a helping hand, will you?’

It was some moments before Dora reacted and Blodwen was opening her mouth to shout a second time when the girl gave a shudder and looked quickly over her shoulder.

‘Aunty Blodwen, I don’t want there to be a baby inside me,’ she said with a little, spasmodic jerk of her blonde head. ‘Are you sure about – you know, what you said?’

‘Don’t you know anything, girl?’ Blodwen put her hands behind her, rubbing her tender spine and stretching it back into an upright position. It took longer these days to get herself straightened up. ‘And don’t you go shouting those words so that the whole of Patagonia will hear you.’

She saw the rise and fall of Dora’s flat chest, and the nervous fiddling of her fingers as she turned and walked back to the barrow, a single piece of shipwreck timber in her hand.

‘I’m sorry, Aunty Blodwen, I really am, but I can’t seem to get things straight in my head. A baby!’ Upon which, she scrunched up her face and closed her eyes tightly, squeezing out tears like drops of glycerine, onto her pallid cheeks.

‘You’ll be telling me next that you can’t be pregnant because that husband of yours has never kissed you!’

The pallid cheeks flushed pink and the watery eyes returned quickly back to the sea where the wind was driving fret before it, almost invisible as it fell, but as wet as any real shower of rain.

‘You think I’m stupid, don’t you, Aunty Blodwen.’ Dora’s words came thickly and ended in a sobbing intake of breath before she clamped her lips together. ‘I know how a baby is made. It’s just that – that…’

Blodwen placed a hand on the girl’s thin shoulder and squeezed hard, which brought forth more sobs.

‘There now, child. No tears. It’s wet enough I am already with the salt water that’s in the air today. Besides, you’re a married woman and tis no business of mine, except…’

‘Aye, Aunty Blodwen?’

‘Except I’m worried for your wellbeing.

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