Secret Harbor Read Free

as if he was mentally undressing her.
    She hated him so violently that she knew she could not stay in the same room without telling him so.
    She made the excuse that she wished to retire to her bedroom, but when a servant told her what time dinner was served she was forced to wash and change and go downstairs, making herself behave as her mother would have expected, with dignity.
    As she had anticipated, by this time her father had already had a great deal of drink, and so had their host.
    Grania was aware that the rum punches were not only strong, but their action was accumulative.
    By the end of the dinner neither man made any pretence of eating; they were only drinking, toasting each other and her, and making it quite clear that she was to be married as soon as the ceremony could be arranged.
    What was so insulting to Grania was that Roderick Maigrin had not even paid her the lip-service of asking her to be his wife but had taken it for granted.
    She had already learned in London that a daughter was not expected to question the arrangements her parents made on her behalf when it came to marriage.
    She wondered at first that her father could think that a coarse, elderly, hard-drinking man like Roderick Maigrin would be a suitable husband for her.
    Then what they said to each other and the innuendos in Roderick Maigrin’s remarks made Grania sure that he was paying her father for the privilege of becoming her husband, and her father was well satisfied with the deal.
    As course succeeded course she sat at the dining-table not speaking but only listening with horror to the two men who were treating her as if she was a puppet with no feelings, no sensitivity, and certainly with no opinions of her own.
    She was to be married whether she liked it or not, and she would become the property of a man she loathed, a property as complete as any of the slaves who only lived and breathed because he allowed them to.
    She disliked everything he said and the way he said it.
    “Any excitements while I have been away?” her father asked.
    “That cursed pirate Will Wilken came in the night, took six of my best pigs and a dozen turkeys, and slit the throat of the boy who tried to stop him.”
    “It was brave of the lad not to run away,” the Earl remarked.
    “He was a blasted fool, if you ask me, to take on Wilken single-handed,” Roderick Maigrin replied.
    “Anything else?”
    “There’s another damned pirate, a Frenchman, scudding about, called Beaufort. If I see him, I’ll blow a piece of lead between his eyes.”
    Grania was only half listening, and not until the meal had ended and the servants put a number of bottles on the table before they filled up the glasses and left the room did she realise she could escape.
    She was quite certain her father, at any rate, was past noticing whether she was there or not, and she thought that Roderick Maigrin drinking with him would find it difficult if he tried to follow her.
    She therefore waited until she was sure they had for the moment forgotten her existence, then quickly, without speaking she slipped from the room, closing the door behind her.
    Then as she went up the stairs to the only place in which she felt assured of any privacy she wondered what she could do.
    Trembling she was frantically trying to think if there was anybody on the island to whom she could go for help.
    Then she knew that even if they were prepared to assist her, her father could collect her without their being able to prevent it or even protest.
    As she stood on the landing trying to consider what she should do, she heard Roderick Maigrin laugh, and it sounded like the last horror to impinge upon her consciousness, and make her realise how helpless she was.
    She felt it was not only the laugh of a man who had drunk too much, but also of a man who was pleased and satisfied with his lot, a man who had got what he desired.
    Then, almost as if somebody was explaining it to her in words, Grania knew the