May: Daughters of the Sea #2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Here, I’ll help you do that, May.”
    “I said I could manage,” she said a bit too sharply. She was not used to people paying much attention to her, especially an attractive young man older than the boys she knew in school.
    “I don’t doubt it,” he said with an undisguised twinkle in his eye.
    Was this fellow actually flirting with her? There was a dead man on the cot, three others half drowned, and a body swirling out in the eddies off the island. Yet this Rudd Sawyer put his hand on top of hers, took the knife, and started cutting the loaf of bread. The touch of his hand sent a surprising thrill through her. She caught her breath, feeling a twinge of guilt, and pulled away.
    “May!” It was her mother’s voice from the back bedroom. “May, what’s going on?”
    “I told you, Ma,” May called back. “Ship went up on The Bones. We got Captain Haskell here with his crew from the
Alba Jean”
    “Well, I need my stomach powders now! My digestion’s in a frightful way and —”
    “Yes, Ma!” May felt the color rise in her cheeks. She was mortified. How her mother could be talking about her stomach, her digestion, at a time like this defied all reason.
    May looked over at Rudd. “She’s—she’s —”
    “Poorly,” Rudd said with a sympathetic half smile.
    May was too embarrassed to say anything. She turned and went to fetch the powders her mother demanded.
    When she had tended to her mother, she took chowder and bread up to her father and assured him that the broken chimney had not caused the catastrophe. Although in truth she could not be certain. Then she returned to the kitchen. Rudd had gone out to bring wood in from the shed to build up the fire in the stove and the hearth. “Wind seems to be dying down,” he said when he came in with several logs.
    “Hope so,” Captain Haskell replied. “Question is if it dies down enough should we try and haul these fellows out of here?” He nodded at the rescued men, who were lying on the piles of bedding that May had fixed up for them. “Or bring the doctor here? That one in the corner looks like he might be working up to pneumonia. Lungs sound wheezier than a pecked set of bellows.”
    There indeed was an ominous rattle coming from the man’s chest. Captain Haskell turned to May. “You should get on to sleep, May. You’ve done enough for the night. We can’t thank you for all your kindnesses.”
    May glanced toward the cot, where the figure of the dead man peaked and dipped beneath the sheet like a forsaken landscape. “Don’t worry none about him. We’ll get him out of here first thing,” the captain said.
    She shook her head softly and began to say something, but words failed her. How could she explain that it was not just the drowned man who she was worried about but the lost sailor as well? The other she had seen so clearly when they had not, the other, whom she thought she could have saved. She felt Rudd Sawyer’s eyes again resting on her. She touched her hair nervously. She was not accustomed to anyone looking at her—at least not in this way—and not a very handsome man.
    “Well, good night,” she said. And not even daring to look at him she went to her bedroom. She knew his eyes were following her.
    But sleep seemed impossible. Her mind kept turning to her father and his completely irrational fear of hergoing into the water. Yes, she understood that he did not want her to jump into a stormy sea. That made sense. But that look of terror on his face had revealed more than just a momentary fear. Until she had turned fourteen she had never thought about it much before, but now that she was almost sixteen her urge to swim sometimes seemed overwhelming but never as intense as on this night. She had a mind to dash up those stairs and ask him. Demand that he give her an explanation. But how could she? Every time she thought of the terror she had seen in his eyes she knew she could not ask him. She couldn’t bear to cause him any more