The Sea Without a Shore Read Online Free PDF Page A

swimming to free the lure the last time.”
    Which was enough to say about the fishing trip, he decided. Miranda knew his work was dangerous, but there was no need to tell her how dangerous bad luck could make his leisure.
    He gestured her ahead of him to the cast staircase. The steps were slippery, so that put him in a position to catch her if she fell; a vanishingly improbable event, but a reflexive matter of courtesy.
    “That’s, ah, the builder, you mean,” he added. “Ah, and he’s coming for me, not Adele?”
    The only Tom Sand Daniel knew was the major contractor who as a favor—though Daniel wasn’t sure who the favor had been to , exactly—had built the community building which Daniel had given to Bantry. Daniel had gotten on well with Sand the few times they’d met, but they were barely social acquaintances.
    Sand was also the husband of Bernis Sand. Daniel knew as little as possible about Adele’s intelligence work, but he couldn’t help making that connection when heard the name.
    “Yes,” Miranda said, pausing for Daniel at the top of the seawall. “I told him you were out fishing, so I don’t think he could have thought I meant Lady Mundy.”
    “Another woman would have told me that I was treating her as though she were a moron,” Daniel said. “You are far too sweet to say that, even if it’s true—for which I apologize.”
    He grinned and kissed her. A pair of housewives chatting on one’s doorway giggled, and a man—one of the trio on the seawall—cackled, “Give her another one, Squire! She’s too pretty to stop there!”
    Miranda was tall and fair, attractive by any standard. She wasn’t beautiful at a glance, but even on first meeting she had projected an aliveness that set her apart from the conventionally lovely girls whom Daniel had dated to that moment.
    Daniel waved to the idlers but avoided eye contact. He was the Squire whenever he visited Bantry, in fact though not by law. He had the respect of everyone on the estate and their due deference also—but a free citizen’s deference didn’t mean slavish kowtowing. Though Daniel was first among equals, the folk he’d grown up with were his equals as men and women.
    “It was a little awkward,” Miranda said in a low voice as they walked toward the manor house. “Chloris”—the housekeeper, Widow Greene—“took the call and told me that Master Sand was calling for the Squire. I picked up the phone and said that you were fishing, but that I’d have you call back as soon as you got in. And I called him Tom, because of course we’ve been introduced.”
    “Right,” said Daniel, nodding. He hadn’t seen the problem yet, but he knew there had to be one for Miranda to be agitated.
    “He hadn’t planned to tell anyone but you that it was him calling,” Miranda said. “Chloris recognized his voice, and I didn’t realize that he hadn’t identified himself. He was surprised when I called him ‘Tom.’”
    Daniel laughed. “Chloris has an ear for voices,” he said. “I doubt she’s heard Tom Sand speak more than half a dozen times in all her life, and that just a few words each. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from him.”
    He looked sharply at Miranda as they reached the veranda. “Did he say what it was about?”
    “He asked to come to dinner,” Miranda said, entering as Daniel held the door for her. “He said his wife wouldn’t be along. I told him that he was welcome, and that if he liked, I’d leave Bantry.”
    She paused in the front room. The rambling old building was being spruced up now that Daniel was spending time at Bantry again, but the air held a cutting hint of the bleach which was being used on the mold.
    “He said he wouldn’t think of putting me out, but that yes, he’d appreciate privacy with you during dinner,” she continued, holding Daniel’s eyes. “I know it wasn’t my place to invite him, but he sounded so worried, and I didn’t know how to get you.”
    Daniel took her