Page 60 of Better Love Next Time
He shooed her away, and she returned to the basin to refresh the cloth.
He walked out to the gallery, staring at his ragged reflection in the window, with the river and trees and ships mocking him in picturesque contempt. Her feet padded behind him.
Do not turn to watch her.
He turned to watch her.
She walked toward him, her hips swaying, her black curls elongated and springing from the heavy length.We will never be lovers again,she had said.
He had been successful driving his point home. Why did he feel like he had failed?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Present Day
Southampton, England
The summer was passing quickly,the weather gloriously sunny and warm and pleasing to the tourists who continued to arrive in Southampton who sought the health-giving properties of sea bathing and the spring water discovered near Portland Terrace. Thanks to a visit fifteen years past by Frederick, Prince of Wales, who bathed his royal person on the western shore, they were building townhomes in a more modest style of Bath. On the West Quay, an enterprising fellow had built a bathing machine where the sea would enter through locks, and those able to afford the expense could bathe in shaded, splendorous surrounds replete with refreshments and attendants.
Adjacent to the bathing machine were the Long Rooms, a series of rooms boasting amongst others, a ballroom, card rooms, a spacious dining hall, and a music room.
A hundred yards south of St. Clair Shipwrights and hidden by a wall of oak and sycamore was the northern end of a newly paved promenade, the Beach, curving south from CrosshouseQuay to the Town Quay. With Althea Dixley her companion, Kitty walked in the morning light, the tourists murmuring conversations and polite bursts of cheer flitting through the trees.
“It promises to be a beautiful day,” Althea said under her large grey bonnet.
Agreeing, Kitty lifted her face to the sun and sought solace from her worries. Yes, it was warm, sunny, and perfect for shipbuilding. Maybe if there were not genteel tourists bathing in special machines and walking without a care, she might not be as concerned. If they had more employees, she might not resent those laughing tourists.
The brawl and twenty-one stitches had not stopped Julian from working on the cutter with Sam and the boys. In the evening, he still visited the numerous taverns along the quays. Every attempt at recruitment was met with reticence. Julianwaswell-liked. But men and their wives required the security of commissions. Contracts, in other words, from the Royal Navy or merchant traders.
Julian did this for her. He could have sold the property. She suspected with the promenade so close to their yard, an enterprising man would have snatched it up for a pretty penny and built more attractions for the wealthy.
With the economy favoring smugglers due to the Stamp Act and the colonists refusing to trade with England, Julian had parleyed with the associates of smugglers. They had promised to relay his offer, but that was all.
“This is good,” Julian had said with the confident smile she had seen every day. “We have enough lumber for three cutters.”
The wood, in the drying house from before, had already been shaped and seasoned. And seasoning, she had learned, took at least a year. Every step was scheduled in months and years, frustrating scales of time she thought rivaled castles. At times,she could kick Julian for walking away, and then she would look down at the emerald wedding ring on her finger. If Julian hadn’t deserted his dream, he would have been in Southampton, not Huntingdonshire. He could not have saved her from Lord Staverton. Or from jumping from the garret window.
Since the night of the brawl—it had made the papers though no one could say who started it or why—Julian began sitting next to her on the settee in the gallery when he returned from the taverns at night. He didn’t appear to notice this change while she wrapped her arms around her middle to stop from brushing the hair from the tired yet determined line of his jaw. She also chastised herself for wondering on the comely serving wenches who had surely sat on his lap.
As she and Althea entered the yard, Kitty shaded her brow. Julian, Sam, and the boys were fitting the second deadwood along the length of the keel just ahead of the sternpost. Julian had scored notches where the timbers, forming the sides, would fit. Without sufficient labor, inserting the timbers would take weeks.
“And soon it will be winter,” Kitty said aloud as Sam’s youngest son brought over a mallet and a bucket of nails to Julian. Progress would slow or cease depending on the weather.
“He that gathereth in summer is a wise son,” Althea said.
Kitty gazed upward, feeling time speeding past her like the breeze blowing on the newSt. Clair Shipwrightssign. She looked at Althea. “We should assist them.”
Althea’s serene grey eyes brightened to silver. Like she had been waiting for a signal, her companion hurried through the loft’s wide doors and returned with two mallets. Together they marched to the slipway where Sam held the deadwood at the bow, and Julian, at the stern, showed Sam’s oldest son how to tap a nail.
Catching sight of Althea’s brown skirts as she picked up the second bucket of nails, Julian turned in his crouch to Kitty. His gaze fixed on the mallet in her hand. “What are you doing?”
“If a boy can hammer a nail?—”
“They are not nails. They are trennels.”
“Then we can.”
Althea added, “‘Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.’”
