Lighthouse Bay (36 page)

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: of 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?

I
sabella 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.”

“You flatter me, Berenice. Really, I am nothing special nor interesting.”

Berenice seems about to say something when her eyes catch across the room. “Ah,” she says, “there’s Lady Lamington. Wait right here.” She elegantly climbs to her feet and heads across the ballroom. Isabella watches her, then sees a flash of light from the corner of her eye. She turns. Two tables away, a photographer is taking a picture of a group of women.

Her heart bangs. A photographer. And she is fairly sure she is in the frame. He says to the assembled group, “Just hold still. One more for the society pages.” And she knows she must leave. Now.

She shoots from her chair and hurries, Cinderella-like, away from the ballroom. Berenice sees her and calls out, but she runs, head down. Matthew is still in the courtyard. She calls to him, “We must leave. Now.”

He hears the urgency in her voice and hurries to her side. Seconds later they are safely inside their apartment.

“What happened?” he asks, as she falls into a chair with her head in her hands.

“A photographer for the newspaper.”

His grunt of disapproval tells her what he is thinking. He knew it, he knew she shouldn’t have taken the risk of coming out so publicly, not when Percy is searching for her. And yes, she knew it too. She knew it, but she still did it because she wants saloon-class tickets to Sydney and New York for her and Xavier, and she wants to be able to take a lease on a good home when she gets there. She wants too much. And those who want too much are often foolish enough to risk everything.

I
sabella stands on Berenice’s front doorstep in one of Berenice’s altered dresses. Matthew waits across the road with their luggage. A maid has gone to fetch the lady of the house, and Isabella has no idea if Berenice will be angry with her for running off last night. But she has brought a gift and she wants to make sure Berenice gets it.

The door opens again and Berenice stands there, her pretty mouth is pressed into a line.

“Berenice. Lady McAuliffe. Please let me apologize for—”

“For embarrassing me in front of the governor’s wife? By all means. Go ahead and apologize. I shall be living down that particular mortification for months to come, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t make yourself feel better with a simple ‘I’m sorry.’”

Isabella swallows over her guilt. “I had to go, right at that moment and not a second later. And I
am
sorry. I would have saved you the embarrassment, but I . . . My safety was at risk.”

“More mystery, Mary?”

“I’m afraid so. You’ve been so kind to me, kinder than I deserve. Please, may I come in just for a few moments? I have a gift for you.”

Berenice wavers, but her heart is good and her temperament is naturally sunny, so she smiles a little and stands aside to let Isabella in.