TWELVE

The weather grew milder each day, and when the winds were sufficient, the ship traveled under sail, the noise of the engines stilled. Louisa felt as if she were neither in the world nor out of it, as if she were nowhere at all. At night, lying in the darkness with her eyes wide open, her mind turned to the girl she had been. Louisa had stifled her memory for so many years, it was as if that girl had died.

Louisa was fifteen when she first encountered Augustus. In those days, she was a hoyden. She never wore a bonnet or gloves except to church, her skin was brown as a gypsy’s, and she clothed herself in red as often as she could, from a secret conviction that it was the color of life.

Her mother, ever since she could remember, had insisted that Louisa was beautiful. Beatrice was clever, Amelia Newlove declared. Hepzibah had an artistic gift and Lavinia was born gentle. But Louisa was a beauty. Peering into the old oval looking glass in the hallway at home, Louisa could see no evidence of it.

Her brows were thick as a boy’s and demanded constant close attention with tweezers. Her mouth was too large, too definitely shaped, as if it had been drawn on her face with a pencil. Her hair was impossible. Was it true, she asked silently, walking the beach alone, listening to the midair squabbling of gulls. Was beautiful what she was?

Louisa did not know what she was. She didn’t share the trust in God that her older sisters professed. She saw no evidence of any God yet was ashamed to admit her unbelief to anyone but herself. Frightened as well, since if there was no God, for girls like the Newloves, what was there?

Still, she knelt by her bed each night, thanking the Lord for his blessings and asking him to help those in greater need than she. Who could be in greater need than she, Louisa wondered, sliding between darned sheets in a darned nightdress, brushing sand off her knees, curling up to try to generate some warmth.

On Sundays, after lunch, she put on her favorite dress—a hand-me-down from Hepzibah, the color of rubies—and walked on the beach, dreaming of the life she would have. Its details were uncertain but it would be far from Dover and she would be at its center, not at the edge of everything, as she felt herself to be. After their father died, they had no society at home to speak of and Louisa longed for company. For a suitor. Even a glance from a man old enough to be her father, a lingering look while his wife’s fair head was turned and his small son watched mutely—even such an impoliteness was welcome. She nodded as she walked past, feeling his eyes drawn to her like iron to a magnet, sensing his gaze as she carried on over the sands.

It was late May and the summer was beginning cool and wet. The next Sunday was rainy, the sand scarred with shallow depressions, the beach deserted. Louisa walked for an hour, then went home in low spirits, but the following week, she saw the man again. He was alone, standing on the shore as if he were waiting for an omnibus, puffing cigar smoke into the air over his head in short, fierce bursts.

“There you are,” he said as she approached, pretending not to have noticed him. “At last.”

“Good afternoon,” she said stiffly.

He fell into step beside her, walking along the water’s edge, the dark stink of tobacco mingling with the smell of salt and rotting seaweed. He wasn’t much taller than she and he labored as he walked, his breath heavy, his watch chain rattling on the horn buttons of a check waistcoat under his overcoat. The tide was coming in, surreptitiously, flicking its tongue over the sand. A wave reached his boot and he kicked at it, splashed foam in the air.

“Damned stuff.”

Louisa giggled.

“It’s just the tide. It’s coming home, sir,” she said.

“Home?” he said.

They had reached the end of the bay, under the cliff, and could walk no farther without wading out through the water, over the rocks, around the point. He threw the end of his cigar into the sea, turned to Louisa, and put his hand under her chin. His fingers were roughened and bent, the nails flecked with blue and black paint. He turned her face one way then another, tilting it to the sun.

Louisa wasn’t given to blushing, to displaying her feelings on her face, as some of her sisters were in the habit of doing. Her burning was all on the inside and the gesture, the sureness of his touch, lit a fire in her.

The man let go of her jaw.

“I’m going to paint you. We stay at the dower house. Come in the morning, early.”

She shook her head.

“I cannot. My mother won’t—”

“Yes, she will. Tell her Augustus wants you for a model. I’ll be waiting.”

He looked at her again, up and down, as if he owned her. A faint, urgent ringing traveled through the still air. Lavinia was summoning her from the garden of the house on the top of the cliff, banging on the old saucepan with a flint. Louisa looked up, shading her eyes with her hand, squinting into the distance. High up above was the figure of a boy, dressed in a sailor suit and so still that for an instant she thought it was a statue that looked down at her.

“I must go now,” she said to Augustus. “Good day.”

Turning back in the direction of the house, she walked away, faster than she knew she could, weightless, skirting around her footprints in the sand, and his, as the water began to fill them. She felt as if she could have walked on the surface of the sea, all the way along the bay.

And so it began.

•  •  •

As the ship proceeded southeast through the Mediterranean Sea, past shoals of porpoises and huge floating turtles, past fishing vessels and, occasionally, a steamer traveling in the other direction, Louisa kept to the cabin. She rested on her bunk or sat at the small table with her tatting. She’d brought a pattern and a quantity of silk, intending to complete a tablecloth while they were away. One purl, one plain. Two purl, two plain. One purl, one plain. The repetition soothed her.

There was nothing to worry about, she insisted to herself. If Eyre Soane had recognized her—and she couldn’t be certain that he had—she would avoid him. They would never meet him once they arrived in Egypt; she had seen from the globe what a large country it was. The idea of not encountering him again prompted a sense of loss. As much as Louisa dreaded it, she found herself longing to see Eyre Soane, to hear tidings that only he could provide.