The Lightkeeper's Bride by Colleen Coble Read Free Book Online

you happen to find the child?” her father asked. He picked at a piece of lint on his trousers.
    There was no easy answer to that question. Not with her mother and the constable listening. “I think I’ll fix some tea. Would you care for some, Constable?”
    “No, thank you. My wife is keeping supper warm for me, so I’d best hurry home. But Miss Katie, why would someone be looking for you? What have you stuck your nose into now?”
    “Perhaps he dislikes telephone operators,” she said, forcing a smile. “Eliza is missing, Constable. Maybe she’s reluctant to help them and they came back for the baby to . . . encourage her.”
    Brown pursed his lips. “The argument you overheard. Perhaps it was the same man, and he wants to know what you heard.”
    “I heard nothing that would tell me who he was.”
    “He might not know that,” the constable said. “I have a man combing the waterfront for Eliza. Until we sort this out, please, Miss Russell, stay in public places, will you? I don’t like how reckless this man has already been, trying to get to you.” The constable clapped his bowler back onto his head and headed for the door.
    Katie left the room before anyone could ask more questions. Even pouring hot water into the teakettle didn’t settle her shaking hands. So the man was looking for her , not the baby. What could that mean? Her hands shook as she filled the tea caddy with loose tea. She poured hot water from the teakettle on the stove into the teapot then retrieved the cups from the cupboard. Her stomach growled and she felt a little sick. Perhaps a tea biscuit would settle her nerves.
    “Katie?” Her father stood in the doorway with his tie askew and his vest unbuttoned. “Do you know more than what you told the constable?”
    She turned back to the tea and poured it into her cup. “Do you want tea, Papa?”
    He blew out a sigh. “Yes, please.” She put sugar in his tea then handed it to him. His gaze probed her face. “Are you ready to tell me?”
    She nodded. “I was on the phone with Eliza. A problem with the lines caused her phone to ring when I was calling another customer. She let the phone dangle, and I heard her speaking with a man.”
    “What man?” his voice trembled.
    Something about his voice . . . She stopped and replayed in her head the conversation she’d heard. That’s why the man sounded familiar. He sounded like her father. But it couldn’t have been. Her father would never betray Mama.
    “Katie, you’re beginning to alarm me.”
    She lifted her eyes to his. “It sounded like you, Papa,” she said.
    “Eliza told the man she needed money from him to raise the baby or she would go to his wife and daughter.” She licked dry lips. “Is little Jennie your child?”
    Tea sloshed over the edge of the cup and into the saucer as he put the cup on the counter. “This is not an appropriate subject to discuss with you, Katherine.”
    His use of her full name betrayed his agitation even more than his shaking hands. “I have to know, Papa,” she whispered. “Another man took Jennie with him because he wondered if the child might be his brother’s.”
    “What man?”
    “The new lightkeeper. Will Jesperson.”
    “I don’t know him.”
    “He arrived in town today.”
    He stroked his mustache. “He took the child?”
    She nodded. “But if this baby belongs to you, we must tell Mama.
    She will want to do the right thing and bring her here.”
    He sighed. “Eliza Bulmer is a–a woman of loose morals.”
    It was true. All of it. She couldn’t bear to think of it, but she had to know. “She told you Jennie was your child?”
    “I’m not going to discuss it with you, Katie. It’s most inappropriate.”
    She steeled her emotions against his stubborn gaze. “Because you don’t want to admit what you’ve done to Mama? Or because you doubt Eliza’s veracity?”
    His brows drew together. “This doesn’t involve you.”
    “I’ve been dragged into it, whether you like it