Eden Falls by Jane Sanderson Read Free Book Online Page A

Lady Millbank said coldly. Her brother was a fool; she’d always known it, but three weeks on the
Cassiopeia
had revealed new heights of ineptitude and now here he was, dribbling lemonade and failing, once again, to defend her position. She cast her gimlet eyes around the room, looking for prey. The boy who’d accompanied them to the hotel on those dreadful bone-shaking contraptions was occupied, still, with the luggage, which had now been piled up just inside the hotel entrance. Lady Millbank was able to count one, two, three – no –
four
unoccupied negroes in the boy’s vicinity, and yet he strove alone to organise the trunks and suitcases into manageable lots. And there was the rude young woman with the lemonade. Her tray was empty now, and she beat it gently against her hip as she walked, like a percussion instrument. Something about her – her casual, swaying gait, her long, exposed neck, her bare, brown feet – made Lady Millbank look away with a new flush of anger. Where was the owner? He and his pitiful sidekick presided over a shambles. She was beginning to rue the day that Charles – ever the enthusiast for new experiences – had burst into her drawing room, flapping in her face a printed advertisement extolling the beauties and benefits of Jamaica, courtesy of Whittam and Co.’s bespoke holiday service. Well. Mr Whittam must be sought out, she decided now. Sought out, and called to account.

Chapter 5
    I f he was entirely honest, Tobias was no more at home at Portsmouth docks than he was in one of his colliery yards. He felt the same sense of dislocation, the same fundamental lack of interest, as he did when he stood in the shadow of the winding gear, feigning interest in a safety report or the monthly productivity figures from one or another of his pit deputies. It rattled him considerably that Thea was right: a new motorcar would have set his pulse racing, be there ever so many – and most of them still in mint condition – already parked in the garages of Netherwood Hall. It rattled him, too, that Thea could still rattle him. He was trying to achieve immunity from her repertoire of chilly barbs; she was sharper than he was: funnier, cleverer. He felt like the underdog in a sparring contest. Outclassed, unable to equal her in mental acuity, he aspired instead to indifference. Thus far, he hadn’t attained it.
    ‘Watch your back, guvnor. Coming through.’
    Behind him a burly stevedore, bearing an implausible load of timber on each shoulder, wove a path around the earl and along the crowded wharf. There was such purpose and industry here that Tobias felt like an obstruction. He tried to look as though he belonged, and gazed out past the crowded docks to the harbour mouth itself, the passage of water beyond which lay the open sea and the rest of the world. The sight, Tobias was sure, would stir many a man’s imagination, but he remained unmoved. He had not the slightest interest in seamanship; he possessed none, and believed he had no urge to acquire it. The sea, through his eyes, looked grey and uninviting, and in his experience, the greater the expanse of it, the smaller and lonelier one felt.
    ‘And again, sir.’ It was the same docker, walking towards him now, with great loops of thick rope adorning his person. It was as if he intended to taunt. Tobias held his ground, affecting a nonchalant stance. He groped for his cigarette case; a man who was smoking always looked more comfortable, more gainfully occupied, than a man who wasn’t. He took a drag, blew the smoke out through his nostrils, checked his fob: half past two, give or take. Where the devil was this Carruthers fellow, then? Just behind him, as it happened. He spoke, startling Tobias, who jumped in alarm and dropped his cigarette.
    ‘Lord Netherwood, Gordon Carruthers – oh, I do apologise…’ He bent down to retrieve the cigarette from the cobbles, then, handling it gingerly, passed it to Tobias. It had suffered on its journey,