Children of the Tide Read Online Free PDF Page B

softly as she’d lain beside him on the bed and he’d fumbled with the buttons of her bodice.
    He had been hypnotized by her, struck by a melting, terrible need to possess her; and yet he hadn’t forced her. It was as if she willingly, yet timidly, acquiesced to a need stronger than either of them could ignore.
    ‘Rayner,’ he’d breathed in answer as his eyes feasted on her nakedness.
    She’d touched his lips with her fingertips and gently traced around his eyes. Then she’d closed her eyes as he bore down on her and he saw the long lashes brushing her cheek. ‘Is that – what I should call you, sir?’ Her words fluttered, she drew in small gasping breaths and he thought that he had hurt her, though she assured him that he hadn’t.
    He’d cradled her in his arms and given her gentle kisses on the top of her head; he’d felt loving and protective towards her and, as sleep overcame him, he knew most surely that he must see her again.
    He was awakened early the next morning by the street sounds outside the window of the room, and found that she and her friend had slipped away. He’d thrown back the crumpled covers and stared at the dark red patch staining the white sheets and remembered now with shame; the relief, yet joy, that he had felt on discovering that she had been a virgin.

3
    Isaac had left for the firm, Aunt Mildred and Anne were still in bed, and Gilbert was nowhere to be seen when James and Sammi, who had breakfasted together in almost complete silence, finally boarded the carriage which had come to collect Sammi.
    ‘Mother seems to have washed her hands of me,’ James said bitterly. ‘I knocked on her door but she wouldn’t see me.’
    He looked down at the baby in her arms. ‘I feel nothing for it. Should I?’
    ‘No tenderness for something small and helpless?’ she asked, embarrassed that James had admitted that the child might after all be his.
    ‘Well, I feel sorry for it, but, well, it doesn’t feel like mine. Not like Sam that you gave me.’ He fondled the pup’s ears as it sat beneath his seat. ‘I’m so sorry that you have to take the pup back, Sammi, but Mother couldn’t possibly let him stay, not now, if I’m going away.’
    ‘It’s so unkind,’ Sammi said hotly. ‘How could your mother send you away? Or the child?’
    ‘Oh, she’ll never accept the child, and I don’t think she knew what to do with me in any case, now that I’ve finished school. She says that I moon about.’ He stared moodily out of the window. ‘I suppose I do. I never quite know what to do with myself. I miss the other fellows, you know. We used to have such grand talks.’
    The carriage rattled on through the hamlet towards the turnpike road, and Sammi looked out of the window at the surrounding countryside and the neatcottages and handsome mansions. It was a desirable place to live, she thought; near enough to the River Humber to feel the breezes from its waters, and good air coming down from the Wolds. A prettier place than her own Holderness countryside.
    ‘But not the place for you, James.’ She spoke her thoughts out loud. ‘It’s perhaps as well that you have to go away.’
    ‘What?’ James, locked in his own thoughts, looked perplexed.
    ‘Why don’t you get in touch with your master from school? You know, the one who said you should paint. Ask his advice.’
    ‘It’s odd that you should say that. Peacock. I was just thinking of him.’
    The carriage slowed in front of the redbrick workhouse just outside the town, and came to a stop. James pulled down the window and put his head out.
    ‘Is this the place, sir?’ Johnson called down from his box.
    ‘Tell him no, James,’ Sammi said impulsively. ‘We’ll try the charity homes first and ask them, this looks so gloomy.’ She was thoughtful as they drove on into the town, and then suddenly said, ‘Let’s walk. We’ll ask Johnson to wait for us. If the guardians see us in a carriage they might not be inclined to take him.’