An Imperfect Princess by Catherine Blakeney Read Free Book Online

after breakfast, with confirmation that others had spotted the fireball
that had fallen over the sea, and that a strange boat had indeed washed up on
the beach.  The tenants on the land were surethe ship had fallen from the
sky. The older gentleman said this with an air of disbelief. 
    The Cornish
people weren’t as superstitious as their neighbors to the northeast, but even
then a perfectly valid scientific explanation might fall on deaf ears once they
settled into a belief.  The locals were as stubborn as Marilyn.
    There was a
delay as Clarissa announced she needed to change from her morning gown into
something more suitable for a visit to the beach, at which point Marilyn said
she wanted to go down there in her finest dress.  Marilyn’s long suffering
governess explained that doing so would probably ruin the dress and that the
pinafore she was wearing would do just fine.  The child sulked in the foyer
while they waited for Clarissa to descend.
    The four of them
marched toward the beach on the far edge of the lawn. As they walked, they were
greeted by a group of servants and farmers whose own curiosity had been piqued
by the rumors.
    “It was a
fireball the likes I’ve never seen, my lord,” Jeremy Wright the stableman said,
gripping his cap and glancing nervously at the distant sea. “I reckon it must
have... well, it must have hit that little boat.  The windows were cracked from
what I could tell.” 
    “I saw that
fireball as well.  It was just a normal shooting star.”
    The older man
shook his head.  “No milord... I’ve seen those.  This was a giant ball of fire
from the sky.” He glanced up at the heavens, as if expecting another one to
fall upon them any moment.  “It was a sign from God in Heaven.”  He turned the
hat in his hands, bending the felt. “And I’ve never seen a boat like that
either.  It’s not Cornish.  I’m not even sure it’s English.”
    James always
felt a bit out of place around his tenants.  His father and brother had been
beloved by the people here, and they had maintained an active involvement in
farming and fishing.  They had known everyone by name and could rattle off a
profession and their extended family without blinking.  James, on the other
hand, was still struggling to remember the difference between Mr. Wright the stableman
and Mr. Wright the cooper.
    The ragtag group
picked their way down the stairs hewn into the stone wall that separated the
estate land from the beach proper.  They were greeted by yet another crowd of
curious onlookers, but none had dared to approach the ship until James was
there with them. 
    The scene on the
beach before them was desolate.  A ship had indeed washed up on the shore,
fatally wounded, with a gaping hole in the side and cracked windows in the
front.  It was the most unusual boat any of them had seen; not a small craft,
but one that did not appear to have any decks or sails.
    It did not occur
to anyone that it was not a boat.  It had clearly come from the ocean, had it
not?  Shipwrecks off the coast of Cornwall were all too common and there had
been exotic vessels before, although none quite as exotic as this.
    “I reckon that
what we saw last night was a lightning ball that struck her, my lord,” another
one of the farmers said, scratching his head.  “Although it didn’t look like
any fireball I’ve seen afore.”
    “Struck her and
stripped her of her mast and sails?”  The earl looked thoughtfully at the
wreckage in the distance.  Something about the ruined vessel was bothering
him.  It appeared to be made of metal , not wood, with glass fittings. 
The cargo hold was shallow, and he’d pay money to see it actually float even
when it didn’t have a ragged, pierced dent in the side.
    “Well, let’s
have a closer look,” he said, and he began to pick his way down the footpath
that led to the beach below the cliffs.
    He was very
afraid that whoever had been inside that boat had not escaped.  He had