Daughters of the Summer Storm by Frances Statham (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📗

clothes that Shaun had purchased for her, as if she were some charity child. Dainty underwear—petticoats—and an Indian muslin dress of pale green with satin sash—and slippers, too. The man had forgotten nothing, even to the matching parasol to shade her face from the sun.

Taking off the blue robe, Marigold dressed in her new finery and went to the mirror to survey herself. Only the shoes were a little large. Everything else fit.

She would pay him back, she promised herself—Shaun, as well as Jake.

Jake—she had forgotten that she had given him this address. He would be bringing the carriage and horses to this house, now owned by Shaun Banagher. Why had her mother and father not written to let her know the house had been sold? Now, the only thing she could do was to leave a message for Jake with one of the servants.

A half-hour later, Marigold walked down the front steps and started toward the wharf. She would have no trouble getting someone to take her across the sound. Her father would pay when they reached the island.

The main trouble would be in finding a boat that was not in use. She might have to wait for some time before one became available.

Marigold walked down the street, her parasol shading her face and golden curls from the sun. A group of children, watched over by their nursemaids, played games on the green. Emerald green, the grass—like Shaun Banagher's Irish eyes—darker than the dress he had purchased for her. Angry with herself for still thinking of him, she deliberately put the man out of her mind and thought instead of the trip to the island.

Crane was worried. Marigold should have shown up at the wharf long before now.

He sat looking out from his vantage point, surveying the entire length of the wharf and watching the dock workers with their rhythmic hoisting of the bales of cotton onto the boats.

Could Marigold have gone to Midgard first? But no, she knew better than that, with the malaria in full epidemic on the low country plantations—the miasma ready to lay low any white person who ventured into the bogs or swamps.

But even if she went to the townhouse, it should not have taken Marigold this long, since she had such a head start.

It must have been a shock to her, Crane decided, to find the house on the battery occupied by strangers. He smiled grimly to himself, glad now that he had not told her of the letter he had received from Robert Tabor, saying that the townhouse had been sold and they had gone to Tabor Island for the summer.

Crane's smile disappeared and a frown took its place. Could the people in the townhouse have taken Marigold in and given her shelter? He had not thought of that possibility.

If she did not show up within the next hour, he would go to the house and inquire. Since there were no boats to the island for another two hours, she could not slip past him if he left the wharf for a time.

It did not suit him, having to be in Charleston. The blasting in the gold mine would have to be delayed, just when he had discovered another rich vein. If it had not been for Jake—

His anger at the black man overwhelmed him. Not only to take Marigold across the river in spite of her husband's objections, but to disappear, leaving Crane to travel the much longer route, since the ferry was on the wrong side of the river. Crane felt sure it was Jake, too, who had paid for his wife's lodging on the way. Marigold had no money of her own. He had seen to that.

The knowledge that Jake would soon be apprehended calmed him. Crane determined that, once caught, the black man would never again be free to come and go as he wished. The penalty for horse thieving was hanging, and Jake would soon be swinging from the gallows.

The hour was almost up when Crane left the café and walked out onto the wharf. There was still no sight of Marigold. A coldness suddenly pervaded him. What if Marigold had never reached Charleston?

Suppose some man had seen her and desired her? It would have been so easy for someone to break the lock on the door at one of the inns—if indeed the door even had a lock. And Jake would have been too far away to hear her cry for help.

In agony, he saw the scene before him—a man slipping into her room, the muffling of her scream, and the struggle between them, before the man took his pleasure of her, caressing her soft young body and doing things that no man had a right to do with Crane Caldwell's wife. Even at this moment, he might be taking his pleasure of her.

Crane broke into a cold sweat, and his hand gripped the wooden railing. He would kill him. No one would get away with taking Marigold from him. He would hunt the man down if it took the rest of his life. . .

The slender figure in the pale green dress walked down the steps that led to the wharf. With relief, Crane realized it was his wife Marigold.

He took his handkerchief from his coat and wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead. Nothing had happened to her. She was safe. His imagination had run riot, as it had done so many times before.

Crane walked rapidly toward her, stepping out from behind the stack of cotton bales into full view. "Marigold," he said, "thank God you're safe."

Marigold gasped at the sudden appearance of her husband. "C-Crane," she said in dismay, backing away from him. But he did not seem to notice her aversion to him.

"I have been so worried about you. You should not have come all this way alone. If you had waited a day or so, I would have come with you."

Marigold could only gaze at him in disbelief. He acted