The Sacred River by Wendy Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

so.”
    Harriet picked up one of the cards and examined a man hanging upside down, his ankles suspended from the branch of a tree. It was humiliating to have one’s fortune told and even worse to experience the rush of unaccustomed hope she’d felt on hearing the prediction.
    “Do you really believe I could marry?”
    “Of course. Why ever not?”
    “There’s my poor health. And some people think red hair is unlucky.”
    “It’s clear as day, Hattie. You will join with a man whom you meet on the water.” Mrs. Cox gathered up the cards and slipped them back into a worn wallet of morocco. “I have seen one eligible gentleman,” she said, raising her finely shaped brows. “You must have seen him too, that day we first—”
    Harriet rose from the table, accidentally stepping on Dash’s tail as she emerged from the bench seat, making him whimper.
    “Excuse me, Mrs. Cox. I must return to my mother.”
    Bidding her friend goodbye, she picked up the dog and left the saloon, made her way down the spiral of iron steps to the second-class cabins. At the bottom, she stopped by a porthole, resting her elbows on its inside rim.
    On the other side of the glass, the sea was agitated and unsettled, rearing up around the ship as if it were trying to communicate something from the deep. The sea was becoming a companion, true and constant; Harriet felt a new pleasure every time she looked at it. Perhaps that was the union that Mrs. Cox foresaw.
    With Dash at her heels, she continued along the narrow passageway, bracing herself to meet Louisa’s anxious solicitude.

EIGHT

    Three times a day, all passengers sat down to meals in the dining saloon. They took up the same places, on the same turning chairs, at breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. Harriet’s was at the end farthest from the captain’s table, an isolated spot but with the advantage that she could see the whole saloon.
    The painter sat a few tables away. More than once, Harriet had seen him staring in their direction with a brooding look, his sketch pad open on the white cloth, chin resting on his knuckles. At first, Harriet believed that the man looked at her. He regretted having tried to kick her dog on the weather deck, she told herself, and was wondering how to make amends. Quickly, though, and reluctantly, she formed the impression that it was not herself who attracted his attention. It was Louisa.
    On the evening of Mrs. Cox’s soothsaying, the painter entered the dining saloon late. He stood in the doorway as his eyes roamed the room and came to rest on their table. Louisa was in a good mood. As they’d sat down, Captain Ablewhite had complimented her on keeping her sea legs, then sent two glasses of sherry to the table. Aunt Yael took only a small glass of wine once a year, on Christmas Day. Louisa had finished her own and begun on the other.
    In her dark satin evening dress, with the necklace of marcasite around her throat sparkling by the light of scores of candles in the crystal chandeliers, reflecting off the mirrors, she looked elegant and assured, like the subject of one of the paintings she admired. Louisa loved to walk to the National Gallery on a Sunday afternoon and stand in front of the great portraits in oil, identifying the fabric of the women’s costumes, speculating as to the meaning of the look in their eyes, the significance of the items in the background. Sometimes she ventured to recognize the tints and pigments used in the paintings, murmuring their names to herself in a private incantation that, when she was a child, Harriet had mistaken for prayer.
    Louisa chinked her schooner against Yael’s water glass and Harriet’s tumbler of Indian tonic.
    “I do believe you’re looking brighter already, Harriet,” she said.
    Aunt Yael put down her soup spoon.
    “Louisa, dear,” she said. “Do you know that man?”
    Louisa glanced up and Harriet followed her eyes. The painter was heading toward them with an air of purpose. Harriet felt the start