The Ragged Heiress Page 9

  Captain Sharpe seemed similarly nonplussed. He cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘I was sorry to learn of Mr Froy’s indisposition, ma’am. I trust he is on the road to recovery?’

  Eveline eyed him coldly. ‘I won’t beat about the bush, Captain. I understand that the Caroline is sailing for England this evening.’

  ‘That is so, ma’am.’

  ‘The doctor says that my husband should return home at the first possible opportunity.’

  Lucetta held her breath, crossing her fingers. She wanted this for Papa but even more for herself and Sam. She knew it was selfish of her, but the desire for his company filled her soul with an urgent need that was frightening in its intensity.

  ‘And you require berths on the Caroline?’ Captain Sharpe said, visibly relaxing.

  Eveline inclined her head. ‘Yes, Captain. Is that possible?’

  ‘It can be arranged, ma’am. We have a full complement of passengers but I will be pleased to allocate my own cabin to you and Mr Froy. We can accommodate Miss Froy and your maid, but I am afraid they will have to share.’

  ‘I don’t mind in the least,’ Lucetta said earnestly.

  Eveline shot her a withering look. ‘Thank you, Lucetta. I think we might take that for granted.’

  Captain Sharpe mopped beads of perspiration from his brow with a pristine white handkerchief. ‘Is there anything else, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, indeed there is, Captain. As I’m sure you are aware, at least half my husband’s consignment of cargo is stuck at the bottom of a gorge in the north of the island. It must be retrieved and loaded before we sail.’

  Captain Sharpe’s mouth opened and closed several times, reminding Lucetta forcibly of a goldfish that she had once owned. It had swum round and round in its glass bowl until one day the cat decided it was hungry enough to go fishing and had gobbled it up, leaving a sad little fishtail in evidence of the evil deed. She clenched her fists in her lap as a bubble of near hysteria rose in her throat. She willed her mother to accept the fact that fate had intervened and the wretched furniture was as good as lost.

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot delay the ship’s departure, ma’am.’

  ‘I might remind you that my husband has shares in your company,’ Eveline said coldly.

  ‘I am well aware of that, Mrs Froy, but I’m afraid what you ask is impossible. The natives have only just commenced work again after Nyepi, and I’m afraid it would take more than a day to retrieve the goods.’

  ‘Then I insist that you defer sailing until such time as the cargo is complete.’

  Lucetta glanced anxiously at Captain Sharpe and her heart sank. She could tell by his expression that his reply was going to be in the negative.

  He shook his head. ‘That is impossible, I’m afraid, Mrs Froy. We sail on the tide this evening and I have orders to pick up another cargo in Java.’

  Lucetta jumped to her feet. ‘Mama, surely it is better to take half the merchandise and get Father safely home?’

  ‘Leave this to me, Lucetta,’ Eveline said, rising from the chair. She faced up to Captain Sharpe, even though he was the taller by a good head and shoulders. ‘My husband will report your intransigent attitude to the board of governors when we get home, Captain.’

  ‘That is his prerogative, ma’am. But, if you so wish, I can arrange for the remainder of the cargo to be shipped by the Caroline’s sister ship. The Louisa should be in Sydney by now and is due to arrive here in about a month’s time.’

  Eveline met his gaze with a look of pure steel. ‘That really isn’t good enough. Do I have to remind you that you were supposed to take the whole shipment back to London?’

  ‘With respect, ma’am, I cannot challenge the orders I receive from the company’s agent in Bali. If Mr Froy was well enough he would acknowledge that profit comes before everything, and he would appreciate that fact.’ Captain Sharpe’s voice deepened and his bushy grey eyebrows snapped together over the bridge of his bulbous nose, which was suspiciously red at the tip.

  Lucetta glanced anxiously at her mother, expecting her to collapse beneath a look that might have quelled a mutiny at sea, but to her astonishment Mama did not seem in the least perturbed. In fact she seemed almost to be enjoying this battle of wills.

  ‘Don’t think you can browbeat me, Captain. My husband’s profits depend on shipping the whole consignment back to England.’

  ‘Then what do you suggest, Mrs Froy?’

  ‘I’ll agree to your terms providing I can be certain that the rest of the cargo will be retrieved, restored and made ready to be taken on board the Louisa. And I want someone trustworthy and resourceful left in charge of the entire operation.’

  ‘I’m sure the company’s agent will be only too happy to oversee matters, ma’am.’

  ‘No, Captain. I want Mr Cutler to stay behind and take full responsibility for a valuable cargo.’

  ‘Mama, please,’ Lucetta cried, clutching her mother’s arm. ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘Be silent, Lucetta. This doesn’t concern you,’ Eveline said, focusing her full attention on Captain Sharpe. ‘Do you agree to my terms, sir?’

  ‘You drive a hard bargain, ma’am, but you leave me little choice. Mr Cutler will remain in Bali as you request and I will make him responsible for the retrieval, storage and shipping of your goods.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain Sharpe,’ Eveline said graciously. ‘I knew we could come to a civilised arrangement. Lucetta, we must return to the consulate immediately. There is much to do.’

  Lucetta stared at her mother in disbelief. The heat in the cabin was intense and she was finding it difficult to breathe. Her mother’s pale oval face swam before her eyes and she felt herself falling into nothingness.

  ‘She’s coming to. Fetch Sister Demarest.’

  Lucetta opened her eyes and saw a fresh young face hovering above her. For a moment she thought she was dead and that she was looking up at an angel, but then she realised that the halo was merely a white cap with sunlight reflecting off its starched surface, and there was an almost overpowering smell of disinfectant in the air. She was dimly aware of the sound of scurrying footsteps and the soft murmur of female voices. She licked her dry lips and tried to speak but she was weak, so very weak that the words would not come. Where was she, and – even more frightening – who was she?

  ‘Don’t try to talk,’ the disembodied face said, smiling. ‘You’ve been very poorly but you’re on the mend now.’

  ‘That will be enough, Nurse Hastings.’

  The smile faded and the young nurse drew back respectfully as Sister Demarest arrived at the bedside. She thrust a thermometer under Lucetta’s tongue and took her pulse, all done efficiently but in stony silence. ‘You are lucky, young lady,’ she said at last, in a cool clipped voice. ‘Nurse Hastings, give the patient a bed bath and then she may be able to take a little gruel.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Nurse Hastings scuttled away to do her bidding and Sister Demarest stood over Lucetta, staring down at her with an impassive expression on her sculpted features. ‘Are you able to tell me your name?’

  Lucetta tried to focus her eyes on the face above her, but there seemed to be an impenetrable fog in her brain. She felt panic rising in her chest as she tried to remember who she was. She must have a name. Everyone had a name, so why couldn’t she remember hers? She closed her eyes and opened them again, hoping that perhaps this was a bad dream, but nothing had changed. She shook her head as hot tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her neck to dampen the pillow beneath her head.

  ‘Never mind,’ Sister Demarest said in a softer tone. ‘It will come back to you. Rest now.’ She glided away, moving gracefully as if she were skating on ice.

  After a futile attempt to raise herself onto her elbow, Lucetta realised just how weak she was. She could barely lift her hand to brush the tears from her cheeks, but with an effort she managed to turn her head very slightly from side to side. She could see uniform ro
ws of beds with pale-faced women lying as stiff as corpses beneath crisp white coverlets. It dawned on her then that she was in a hospital but how she came to be here and why, were two of the unanswered questions that both terrified and confused her.

  Nurse Hastings bustled up to the bedside carrying an enamel bowl, a sponge and a towel. ‘Here we are again, miss. I’m sorry I don’t know your name, but we call you Daisy between ourselves.’ She set the bowl down on the bedside cabinet. ‘I’ll just pull the curtains, Daisy, and then I’ll give you a nice wash. You’ll feel heaps better then, and maybe you could manage to eat some gruel.’

  Nurse Hastings chattered away cheerfully as she performed the bed bath routine efficiently but gently and with respect for her patient’s modesty. Lucetta was suddenly aware of her wasted limbs and emaciated body. Had she always been so stick-thin? She really could not remember.

  ‘There we are, Daisy,’ Nurse Hastings said, slipping a clean cotton nightgown over Lucetta’s head. ‘You’ll feel better in no time. I’ll just get rid of the slops and then I’ll bring you your breakfast. Hold your arms up so I can get them into the sleeves, there’s a good girl.’

  As obedient as a small child, Lucetta did as she was told and then fell back on the pillows completely exhausted by the effort. ‘Wh-where am I?’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re in the London Fever Hospital. You’ve been here for almost three weeks and your brothers have been very worried about you. They’ll be so pleased to know that you’re on the mend. Now you rest, while I go and get that nice hot bowl of gruel.‘

  Lucetta absorbed this information in silence as she watched Nurse Hastings draw the curtains with swift bird-like movements. She hurried off taking the bowl and towel with her and her small feet made pitter-pattering sounds on the bare linoleum.

  Brothers! The idea of having brothers seemed so alien to Lucetta as to be impossible. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  It was pitch dark and all around her people were shouting and screaming. The deck was wet and slippery and tilted at an alarming angle.

  ‘Abandon ship.’

  ‘Oh, my God. We’re sinking.’

  ‘Get out of me way, girl.’

  She was being pushed and jostled by frantic people wearing nothing but their night clothes. Children were crying and clinging to their mother’s skirts. Dazed and disorientated, Lucetta tried to push her way back towards the captain’s cabin where she had left her parents before retiring to the small cabin she shared with Gertie, but it was impossible to go against the surge of panic-stricken passengers. The deck lurched beneath her feet and then tilted crazily. She was slipping and sliding towards the ship’s railings as people jumped overboard in order to avoid being crushed by the weight of those being thrown against them. There was nothing she could do to save herself. She tripped and would have fallen but someone grabbed her by the arms and she found herself lifted off her feet and tossed into the air. For a few brief seconds she was flying upwards but then she plummeted down into the inky black waters. She was going down, down, down. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning.

  ‘Wake up, Daisy.’

  Someone was shaking her gently by the shoulders. Struggling for breath, Lucetta felt the waters release her body and she opened her eyes.

  ‘You were having a bad dream,’ Nurse Hastings said, raising her to a sitting position and piling pillows behind her back. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat. Can you feed yourself, or would you like me to help you?’

  Lucetta clasped her hand to her chest. The dream had seemed so real. The cries of the desperate people rang in her ears and the taste of the filthy polluted water lingered on her lips. ‘What happened to me?’ she whispered. ‘Why am I here?’

  Nurse Hastings held a spoonful of gruel to Lucetta’s lips. ‘You were shipwrecked, Daisy. The Caroline collided with a paddle steamer in thick fog. It was in all the newspapers. You were one of the lucky ones, but then you took sick with the typhoid and that’s why you were transferred here.’

  Lucetta swallowed a mouthful of warm sweet gruel. ‘In my dream there was darkness and the water was cold.’

  ‘Do you remember your name?’

  ‘No. I wish I could, but I can’t.’ Shaking her head, Lucetta blinked back tears of weakness. ‘I don’t know who I am.’

  Nurse Hastings fed her another spoonful of gruel. ‘You will, Daisy. It will all come back to you as you regain your strength. And there are two people very eager to see you.’

  * * *

  ‘I don’t know you,’ Lucetta said, staring at the two rough-looking men who claimed to be her brothers. ‘I think you have the wrong girl.’

  Stranks curled his lips in an ingratiating smile. ‘Come now, Lucy my duck, you must remember me. I’m Norman, your big brother what used to dandle you on his knee when you was a baby.’ He nudged Guthrie who was standing at the foot of the bed, clutching his cap in his hands. ‘As did you, Lennie. Ain’t that right?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Guthrie muttered. ‘We’re your brothers, Lucy.’

  Lucetta stared at them trying in vain to place their faces. They looked vaguely familiar but surely she would have instantly recognised blood relations. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you at all.’

  Stranks laid a badly wrapped paper parcel on the end of the bed. ‘We brought you something to wear, ducks. You can’t come home in your nightgown.’

  ‘Come home?’ Lucetta said faintly. ‘I am not well enough to leave hospital, am I?’

  She cast a pleading look at Nurse Hastings who was standing by her side with the protective attitude of a small but determined guard dog.

  Nurse Hastings eyed Stranks and Guthrie with obvious distaste. ‘It’s not up to me, Daisy. I mean, Lucy. It’s for the doctor to say if you’re fit enough to leave our care.’

  ‘The young doc who’s been looking after you says you can home if there’s someone to look after you,’ Stranks said, shooting a look of pure malice at Nurse Hastings. ‘It ain’t up to you, nurse.’

  ‘I really don’t know you,’ Lucetta protested weakly. ‘I think there’s been some mistake.’

  Nurse Hastings laid her hand on Lucetta’s arm. ‘Don’t upset yourself, my dear. I’ll go and speak to Dr Harcourt. He’ll sort this out.’ She marched off towards the office at the end of the ward.

  ‘Get dressed, girl,’ Stranks said gruffly. ‘We’re taking you home and that’s that.’

  ‘Hold hard there, Norm,’ Guthrie said in a low voice. ‘Don’t scare her. She’s been very sick.’

  Lucetta warmed to Guthrie. He had the look of a shaggy old mongrel, but she was quick to hear a note of genuine concern in his voice. ‘I have been ill,’ she agreed. ‘And I’m still very weak. Perhaps I should stay here for a while longer.’

  ‘They need the bed for someone who’s really sick,’ Stranks said impatiently. ‘We’ll leave you to get dressed and then we’re taking you out of here, like it or not.’

  ‘C’mon, Norm,’ Guthrie muttered. ‘We’ll wait outside the ward until she’s ready.’

  ‘All right,’ Stranks said reluctantly. ‘But we’re not going without you, Lucy. If the doctor says you’re well enough then you’re coming with us.’

  Lucetta lay back against the pillows and watched them leave with a sinking heart. Dr Harcourt had already told her that she was well enough to go home, providing he was satisfied that she would be well cared for. He was a nice young man, earnest and pleasant-looking if not exactly handsome. She had grown to like him during the past week when she had been recuperating on the ward. She had discovered that not only had he several younger sisters but that he and Nurse Hastings were first cousins. It was obvious that they were fond of each other, but Lucetta suspected that Mary Hastings’ feelings went a little deeper than mere cousinly affection. Her cheeks would flush prettily if Dr Harcourt teased her, something he would only dare to do if Sister Demarest was otherwise occupied.

  With her world shrunk
to the size of the hospital ward, Lucetta wove fantasies around the young couple during the long nights when sleep evaded her. She imagined Mary dressed in her wedding finery, smiling happily on the arm of her new husband Dr Giles Harcourt. Closing her ears to the sighs and moans of the other women on the ward, Lucetta saw herself as a guest at the wedding, welcomed into the two families. She knew that it was only a dream, but escaping to her imaginary world was a comfort during the lonely hours of darkness. After almost a month, Lucetta had begun to feel quite at home on the ward. Her own identity continued to evade her and she was quite frankly terrified of leaving the security of the hospital, particularly if that meant accompanying the two uncouth strangers who claimed to be her next of kin. She lay rigid and frightened with the sheets pulled up to her chin as she kept her gaze fixed on the office door, waiting with bated breath for it to open.

  She did not have to wait long, and the expression on Mary Hastings’ face confirmed her worst fear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Daisy, but Dr Harcourt thinks you are quite well enough to go home with those two who claim to be your brothers.’

  Lucetta snapped to a sitting position. ‘You don’t think they are related to me, do you?’

  Mary turned away to draw the curtains around the bed. ‘It’s not for me to put ideas in your head, but I will say that I don’t see any family resemblance between you and them. They’re not your sort, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I think I do, or rather I don’t feel as though they’re my blood relations.’ Lucetta clutched her forehead with both hands, squeezing her skull as if by doing so she could force her memory to return. ‘I can’t remember anything. I just can’t.’

  ‘There, there, Daisy. Don’t upset yourself. I’m sure it will come back in time.’

  Lucetta shook her head, allowing her hands to fall to her sides. ‘I just don’t know, but it seems I have no choice but to go with them. Will you help me dress, please, Mary?’