The Karma of Love (Bantam Series No. 14) by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online Page B

matters!’

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    The next day they ran into bad weather.
    When Orissa awoke she heard the straining shrouds and guy ropes creaking in the force of a high wind and the splash of the spray as it drove over the bows.
    The ship was rolling and pitching and Neil began to feel sick from the moment he awoke.
    He was tearful and irritable between bouts of vomiting and Orissa, aware at first of a queasy feeling, soon found she had no time to think of herself.
    The Steward brought dismal accounts of the other passengers.
    “All incapacitated, Ma’am,” he told Orissa. “It’s always the same this time of the year. The Dining - Saloon is deserted!”
    It was impossible for Orissa to leave Neil, so the Steward brought their luncheon to the cabin, and she coaxed the child to eat something knowing it was better to be sick on a full stomach rather than an empty one.
    She tried to amuse him by telling him a story but after a while he fell asleep and she decided it would be a good opportunity to have a little fresh air.
    By now it seemed as if she had found her “sea-legs” and she no longer felt sick, but she had a painful headache from the stuffiness of the cabin.
    She put on her cloak and bonnet and, after asking the Steward to look in every ten minutes or so to see if Neil had awakened, she started an unsteady passage to the more sheltered side of the ship.
    It was not easy to walk and she had to hold on to whatever she could on the way.
    However she had a longing for air and finally she let herself out onto the deserted deck which was heaving up and down beneath her feet.
    It was impossible to walk about. The sea was so rough and the wind so strong that she knew that if she went near the rail her cloak might be whipped away from her, and certainly her bonnet would go at the first gust.
    She could only therefore stand supported against the outside wall of the cabins sheltered from the rush and spray of the waves but still encountering some of the more violent blows of the wind which beat the tendrils of her hair against her cheeks so furiously that they hurt.
    Yet she felt there was an exhilaration in it.
    It seemed part of her own mood of getting free—of trying against impossible odds to escape from everything she hated in England.
    The noise of the storm prevented her from hearing a door open and the first intimation that she was not alone came when a deep voice beside her said:
    “I see you are a good sailor, Mrs. Lane.”
    She turned her head to see Major Meredith standing there, his grey eyes on her face and she was instantly conscious that she must look untidy.
    “I am proud to find that I am,” she answered. “I was not certain when I awoke if I would succumb like the poor little boy I am looking after.”
    “He is all right?” Major Meredith enquired.
    “He is asleep,” Orissa replied.
    She had the stra nge feeling they were making de sultory conversation which was of no importance, when they should be speaking of other things.
    Then she remembered how dangerous Major Meredith could be and how Charles was afraid of him.
    She decided that because of this she must be as ordinarily polite and as pleasant as any woman in her position would be if a man of Major Meredith ’ s social consequence condescended to her.
    A sudden lurch of the ship made her stagger for a moment and Major Meredith’s hand went out as if he would support her, but he did not in actual fact touch her.
    Orissa looked away from him towards the green waves at one moment curving high and next swinging low in a swirl of white-crested water.
    “You look as if you are enjoying it,” he said.
    She thought there was a mocking note in his voice.
    “I am,” she answered simply. “There is something exhilarating and exciting in the ship pitting its strength against all the might of the ocean.”
    “You are not afraid?”
    “I think I should only be afraid if we had to turn back,” Orissa replied.
    “That is unlikely,” Major