Georgie Lee - The Captain's Frozen Dream

With any luck, the cart carrying the things he’d purchased in Greenland would arrive in the morning, before he ran out of excuses and delays to keep Katie here. On it, packed tight in sawdust and woodchips, was the one thing he knew would make her stay.

He was betting their future together on it.

Chapter Three

Katie marched across the kitchen garden to where Conrad stood by the cart, unloading crates, his jacket draped over the side. He’d avoided her all morning, leaving her to Miss Linton’s scowl at breakfast before secluding himself in his study to speak with the estate and mine managers. The part of her which still cringed at the nasty accusations she’d levelled at him last night was glad he’d stayed away. She wasn’t proud of what she’d said, but it was the truth and better he know it now than be led on by her silence into believing in something which no longer existed.

‘You’ve avoided me long enough. I insist on going back with this cart once it’s unloaded,’ she demanded, startled when he straightened. The strings of his shirt were undone and open, revealing the light chest hair underneath. The memory of his bare muscles beneath her palms, the soft sun caressing his shoulders as she held tight to him in the tall grass on the Downs nearly rattled her out of her purpose. They’d never gone far enough to completely compromise her, but they’d indulged in a few pleasures, the memory of which made the skin of her thighs tingle.

‘You can’t. It’s going back to Portsmouth.’ He slid the last crate off the wood and carefully laid it on top of the stack beside the wheel.

‘Then call the chaise.’

‘Matilda has use of it this morning.’ Conrad leaned against the cart and propped his elbows on the rough wood to face Katie, not as the angry, drunken man from last night, but as the self-assured one who’d won her heart two years ago.

‘Then saddle a horse. I’ll ride home,’ she insisted, eager to get away from him and his state of near undress.

‘Come, Katie, you don’t know how to ride.’ He playfully tapped the end of her nose, his touch as unnerving as his jibe.

‘I know what you’re trying to do, Conrad, and it won’t work.’

He picked up the crowbar lying beside the cart. ‘What am I trying to do?’

‘Keep me here.’

He slid the bar between the crate and its lid and pushed down. The nails broke free in a screech of metal against wood. ‘You’re right.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, I have something for you.’ He shoved the lid aside and dug through the straw until he found what he was searching for and raised it up into the light.

Katie gaped at the sight of the elongated skull, dark from its long rest in the earth, and all desire to hurry home vanished. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘I purchased it from an Inuit in Greenland before we boarded the ship for home. I had a great deal of free time on the voyage and cleaned the bones, the way you taught me.’

Their eyes met and the memory of their time alone together in the evenings, sitting side by side at the table in the conservatory while she positioned his hand over the bones, passed between them. His cheek would rest against hers while she’d reach over his wide shoulder to guide the small metal pick between his fingers in the patient removal of dirt from bone. She didn’t think he’d remembered the lessons, not with all the kisses and caresses which had distracted them.

She ran one fingertip over the smooth curve of her opal ring, regretting the loss of those days. They’d been some of the happiest of her life, but there was little time to ponder them or their passing as Conrad held out the skull to her. She took the heavy thing, her excitement heightened by the sweep of his fingers across hers.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

She held it up to examine the row of long, dagger-like teeth lining the jaw, struggling as much to comprehend the animal as to avoid Conrad’s piercing gaze. ‘It’s marvellous. Like nothing I’ve ever seen in any of the books or private collections. It’s certainly not an ichthyosaur .’

‘Ichthyosaur?’

‘It’s what the lizard with the flippers Miss Anning found is called now. Mr Konig named it in his paper to the Royal Society last year. They rejected mine.’ She lowered the skull, bitterness marring her excitement.

‘Then they were fools.’ Conrad’s solidarity was only a slight comfort. ‘What will your father think when he sees it?’

‘He won’t see it.’ Katie set the skull down on the flat bed of the cart with a thud, irritated by how little the man knew and how much she was left to explain. ‘He’s dead.’

Katie felt more than saw Conrad stiffen with shock. She was too focused on the skull and holding back the tears blurring her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her pain, or to appear so weak and fragile around him. She wanted to be as resilient as she’d always been, but she was failing.

Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. He was hot from working and the heat penetrated the thin shirt to warm her tearstained cheeks. There’d been no one to hold her like this the day her father had died, or during all the lonely ones afterwards. ‘What happened?’

She didn’t want to answer, but she was too tired and worn down by carrying the pain alone to stay silent. ‘A patient had come to see him and he’d turned her away. I was angry, we needed the money and I told him if he didn’t earn some, I’d sell his fossils. He stormed out of the house, saying he’d find the one which would save us, something a private collector would pay a fortune to possess. A miner found him a few hours later at the bottom of a ladder, his neck broken.’

Katie squeezed her eyes shut, unable to block out the memory of her father’s limp body as the miners had carried him into the house. The foreman had swept the dining table free of her father’s fossils, making the bones clatter over the floor like pieces of broken china. Another man had crushed one beneath his work boot as he’d jostled with the other men to lay out her father’s body. Then they’d filed out, uttering their apologies and leaving her with nothing but the tragedy, bills and bones. ‘The only things he left me were his debts, and after what your uncle did to me there were few in England who’d purchase my finds. If it hadn’t been for my American collectors, I wouldn’t have had any buyers and I would have starved.’

‘I’m so sorry, Katie.’ His voice vibrated through his chest, the way it had on the Downs when she’d cried against him as she’d revealed for the first time the anguish of her mother leaving. In between sobs, she’d described the loneliness of sitting in the window at Whitemans Green waiting for her to return, and the letter which had arrived three months later with news of her death. Then, just as now, Conrad had tenderly rocked her, making her feel safe and loved in a way neither her father, nor the mother who hadn’t cherished her enough to stay, had ever done. ‘You should have told me sooner.’

She pushed out of his embrace, her heart nearly shattering at the absence of his warmth, but she steeled herself against it and her weakness. Despite the comfort he offered, she didn’t want to depend on anyone, especially someone who might disappear over the horizon as easily as her mother had. ‘I didn’t tell you for the same reason you didn’t explain to me minute by minute the hardships and suffering you experienced while you were gone.’

‘I’m not asking for the details, only the broad strokes.’

‘And now you have them. So you may return to London and Mr Barrow and publish your journals and enjoy everyone in the Admiralty and the Naturalist Society falling at your feet.’