The Sacred River by Wendy Wallace Page B

Harriet’s breathing. It was shallow but soft, neither badly impeded nor quite clear. It was foolish to hope that Harriet would be completely cured as soon as they reached Egypt, yet in some primitive part of herself Louisa had hoped exactly that. She had wished for a miracle, a means to silence the words Mr. Hamilton had conveyed from her mother and that she had continued to hear, as if they had planted themselves in her ears. Death is near .
    Harriet rose from her chair, brushing crumbs from her lap.
    “I’m going to look around the garden,” she said, standing between the long, open doors.
    She was wearing a tea gown in a floral print and Louisa, seeing her slender waist, the curve of her long neck, had the sense that still afflicted her sometimes, of loss, because Harriet was taller by a head than she, a woman, not a child.
    “Shouldn’t you rest for a few minutes?” she said. “Digest your breakfast.”
    “I am perfectly all right, Mother.” Harriet turned to face back into the room and the sun lit up her hair from behind in a scarlet halo. “By the way, Mr. Soane said he would call on us. He asked me to tell you.”
    Harriet walked into the garden. Louisa stared after her as the dog rose from under the table and trotted out, his claws tapping on the tiled floor.
    “Dear Harriet is in better health already,” said Yael, spreading jam on a piece of bread.
    “Sea air always agreed with her,” Louisa said, cracking the shell of the egg on the rim of her plate, peeling the sharp shards from the softly solid albumen. Her mind was racing. How could Eyre Soane call, when he did not have their address? It was impossible. He was taunting her.
    “Perhaps some of our fellow passengers have lifted Harriet’s spirits. I believe she enjoyed making the acquaintance of Mrs. Cox, and Mr. Soane.” Yael chewed and swallowed, took a sip of coffee. “You seem troubled, Louisa.”
    “Is that so?”
    “You know that . . .” Yael regarded her with her earnest gray eyes. “That if I could aid you by any means, I would.”
    Louisa put down a half-eaten slice of cheese, rolled up the napkin, and pulled it through its ivory ring, looking at the carved elephants condemned to walk forever in a circle.
    “Thank you, Yael,” she said, more stiffly than she intended. “You mean well, I’m sure, but I am not troubled by anything. Please excuse me. I must finish unpacking.”
    Back in the bedroom, surveying the peculiar contents of her trunk, wishing again she had thought to slip in a fourpenny card of pins, Louisa found that her hands were shaking. She had a feeling of time having turned inside out, of the present being flimsy and contingent, less real than the past.
    Sitting on the bed, closing her eyes, she found herself again back in the flint house of her girlhood, hearing the cry of gulls. Louisa was home from her walk on the sands, her head spinning, unable to sit down as her mother urged and take a turn with shelling the glut of peas. Amelia Newlove looked up at her from her chair by the fireplace.
    “Whatever is it, Louisa?”
    “I met a man,” she said, “and his family. On the beach. An artist.” She avoided her mother’s eyes. “He wants to paint my picture.”
    Louisa had never heard of a person famous enough to go by their first name alone. But her older sister, Hepzibah, staying with the family for a summer holiday following her marriage, informed her that all England knew about the painter Augustus, member of the Royal Academy, whose pictures of goddesses and muses sold for vast sums.
    “ Diana the Huntress fetched a thousand guineas. Imagine! Did he offer you money, Izzy?”
    Louisa shook her head.
    “How very proper. He is an honorable man. He will reward you afterward. He will make you celebrated.”
    Next morning, Hepzibah woke her early with hot water and said she must bathe and brush her hair, couldn’t arrive looking like a gypsy. After her sister’s scrubbing of her, Louisa discovered she