Billie's Kiss Read Online Free PDF

looked.’
    He touched her cheek. ‘You must be tired, dear. And cold. Have you been up here without your shawl?’ His hand was warm. Billie tilted her face momentarily into his cupped palm. Then she went by him and let herself down the ladder into the gloomy passage.
    Edith was upright on her bunk, with her face clean, and an unpinned hat perched on her damp hair. Her feet were in her shoes but unfastened. The cabin stank of vomit, sweat, and distress. Billie crouched at her sister’s feet and got the buttonhook from the bag at her belt and began to prise the kid-covered buttons through their stretched holes. Edith’s feet were swollen, were fat and tender to the touch. ‘Please God don’t let me have to spend the rest of my time lying down,’ Edith said. ‘I’m afraid they’ll have to carry me off the ship. What an embarrassment.’
    â€˜It’s Lord Hallowhulme’s cousin whose cabin we’ve taken,’ Billie said. ‘There will a carriage for them, surely.’
    â€˜But we were expected at Southport, Billie,’ Edith said. ‘On Thursday.’
    â€˜I mean, we can take their carriage as well as their cabin.’
    Edith smiled. She drew her foot away from her sister’s hands. ‘Leave it a little undone at the ankle, or I’ll be crippled. My feet are all pins and needles.’ Edith showed no sign of moving. She said she’d wait till the ship was at a complete stop.
    Billie went to find Henry. She was concerned that they would have to carry Edith between them. Henry met her underthe hatchway, and they paused in the now-motionless square of light by the foot of the ladder. Henry said that the sailors who had carried his writing case, microscope, and leaf press onto the ship could be trusted to carry his burdened wife. He took Billie’s hands and told her to stop fretting. ‘It’s unlike you.’
    The Gustav Edda quivered as its anchor chain played out.
    â€˜You must compose yourself a little,’ Henry said. ‘I think I saw Hallowhulme himself on the pier. Waiting for us. Wearing a frown.’
    â€˜He’s waiting for his cousin and the boys in uniform,’ Billie said. And then she burst into tears. ‘The water looks so cold,’ she sobbed. ‘And where are the trees?’
    Henry tried to make her raise her face. He pressed her shoulders softly back against the timber wall, then touched her chin. ‘Love?’ he said. ‘My poor girl.’ He cleared a tear away to kiss her gently under one eye.
    Billie turned her head so that their lips brushed. Henry started back, a fraction of an inch, broke contact. They exhaled together, and their breath mingled and encased their faces, warm and moist like summer in the south. Henry stared at her, his face pale and shining, then moved nearer again. He touched his mouth to hers, parted his lips, and something passed from his mouth to hers.
    The mooring lines were made fast. Billie heard – registered hearing – an order about the gangplank. She pulled away from her brother-in-law, shoved him aside, and swarmed up the ladder. She stepped once on her own hem, fell into the opened hatch cover, and heard stitches part. Henry caught her ankle. At his touch Billie felt a crippling spasm somewhere inside her. She jerked her foot free and stumbled onto the deck, her legs clumsy, the space between them filled as if something there had swollen to twice its normal size.
    The cold wind burned her face.
    Billie plunged through the four gentlemen. One of thecadets staggered, his cap fell and rolled on its brim. A hand caught at her arm – Hesketh, incensed, and implacable. She threw her whole weight back to break his grip, and fell on her hip, sucked air and a whiff of the tar between the timbers on the deck, then sprang up again and ran.
    She made for the gangplank, which two seamen at the rail were still guiding into place. The plank’s far end