The Shallow Seas Read Free

struggle with a grim determination, gasping for breath. She had to go back to Singapore, to Zhen.
    Tigran held her firmly until her desperation lessened and she let him support her. She looked up, and he saw that in the distraction of her mind she did not recognise him.
    I have to go back, you see,” she said shakily, in her most reasonable voice. She shook her head. “It’s a mistake. Can you take me back please?”
    â€œYes, I will take you back, but now rest a little and take some refreshment.”
    As he felt her legs fail, Tigran took her in his arms and signalled a man to fetch the Javanese maid who had been brought on this voyage to care for Charlotte. In the cabin, he laid her gently on the bed. She did not stir, and he saw she was asleep, overcome with sickness and emotion. He left the maid to care for her, changed his clothes, felt briefly the place on his cheek where her blow, surprisingly strong, had landed, and went back to the deck.
    Tigran Manouk was the master of this brig, Queen of the South , and a fleet of merchant ships, part of his vast empire in the Dutch East Indies which included coffee, tea, sugar plantations and factories, indigo farms, ship-building, banking. His father, Gevork, an Armenian merchant, had become one of the richest men in Java—so rich that, on occasion, he had bailed out the impoverished Dutch government in Batavia as it struggled to take over administration of the former VOC possessions.
    Charlotte Macleod had been just eighteen when Tigran met her in Singapore. He had been visiting his sister Takouhi and his niece Meda, a lovely, sweet-hearted girl, daughter of the new settlement’s master architect, George Coleman. George had fallen in love with Takouhi years before in Batavia, where, as a young man, he had built sugar factories and embankments for Tigran’s father. George and Takouhi had been together for eighteen years, until Meda fell dangerously ill.
    Grief tightened its fingers around Tigran’s chest, and he took a deep breath of windy, salty air. Takouhi had been sure that a return to the cool hills of Java, the jamu and the magic of the dukun would cure her child, but they had not. Meda had died only a few months ago. It was a blow so shattering that no one had yet recovered. George, crushed, had resigned his government position as Superintendent of Public Works and disappeared to Europe. No word had been heard from him since.
    Takouhi and Charlotte had become close friends in Singapore. When George left, Charlotte had written to Takouhi, and Takhoui dispatched Tigran to fetch her friend and bring her to Batavia. This Tigran did gladly, for he had, the very night he had met Charlotte, and to his own vast surprise, floated like a powerless moth inexorably and dangerously into her flame. Love had taken possession of him, and try though he had for a brief moment to reason her from his heart, he had realised, with a strange and joyful acceptance, that he would not be able to forget this woman. She was like an exquisite melody, a haunting tune which inhabited his mind.
    Now he could hardly believe his good fortune in having her here. He frowned. There was a man—Takouhi had mentioned a man in Singapore. A love affair. It would cause a great scandal, for Charlotte’s brother, Robert, was the Chief of Police of Singapore, and such a storm would have doubtless meant the end of his position. That was all Tigran had known when he set out on this voyage.
    But he knew more now. Charlotte’s reaction to this departure told him of the violence of her feelings. Love is the devil’s weapon, he thought, for it forces reason and all the natural instincts of self-care from the mind, like a damnable battering ram. His own feelings for Charlotte were of an intensity he had not believed possible at his age. Tigran was forty years old, toughened and shielded by experience—so he had believed—from life’s jolts. His looks belied his