Whispers of Heaven Read Free Page A

Tasmania. London pickpockets and Irish Whiteboys didn't usually make good butlers.
    Jessie's quick footsteps echoed down the wide, black-and- white marble hall. Despite the house's exterior medieval trappings, its floor plan was very much that of a Palladian villa, divided into a cross by two intersecting hallways, a main hall running through to the wide rear door, and a smaller hall, running east to west, which contained the grand main staircase of polished blackwood at one end and the servants' stairs at the other.
    The morning room occupied the northeast corner of the house and had been placed to catch the morning sun, although Beatrice usually kept the shutters half closed at the room's twin sets of French doors, so that only a pale light suffused the space. It was a feminine room decorated in rosewood and ivory-toned floral damask, with a white marble mantelpiece surmounted by a massive, gilt-framed mirror. It was there that Jessie found her mother, gowned in the black silk of mourning and seated on a settee dating back to late in the last century. Her embroidery frame lay idle in her lap.
    In her youth, Beatrice Corbett had been considered quite a beauty, her figure slender and tall, her features striking and regal. She was still a striking woman, her attire always ruthlessly neat and correct, her hair never anything but impeccably coifed, although affluence combined with repeated childbearing had thickened her figure, while the passing of the years had hardened her once soft, pretty mouth into a sour downward tilt.
    She didn't rise when her daughter entered the room, although she did set aside her embroidery and stretch out her fine white hands, a suspicion of wetness adding a shine to her pale gray eyes. "Jesmond. Thank goodness. I was beginning to fear something had happened to your ship. The winds along the coast have been dangerous lately."
    Tossing aside her bonnet, gloves, and handbag, Jessie stepped forward to take the tips of her mother's carefully manicured fingers, surprised almost to the point of speechlessness by her mother's words. It was the closest Jessie had ever heard her mother come to mentioning what must surely have been the most wrenching, unforgettable tragedy of her life, the tragedy that explained why Beatrice Corbett had not traveled to the small neighboring port of Blackhaven Bay to meet the coastal ketch bringing her daughter from Hobart Town, where all the London ships docked. The same tragedy lay behind Warrick's brooding restlessness and the aimless rebellion of his life, but no one in the family ever mentioned it.
    "I'm fine, Mother. The voyage was blessedly uneventful. We're late because I asked Warrick to stop at the quarry on the way here. I've always so loved that view of the house. I am sorry."
    Beatrice shook her head and smiled. "I should have known." Her grip on Jessie's hands tightened as if with a sudden spasm of emotion. "It's so good to have you home." And then, unexpectedly, she rose with the graceful elegance for which she had always been famous, and enfolded Jessie in such a crushing embrace that Jessie could feel her mother's heart beating hard and fast. For one long, unforgettable moment, Jessie held her mother close, breathed in the familiar lilac- scented talc that brushed her mind with sweet whispers of gentle, half-forgotten childhood memories. Then Beatrice dropped her arms and stepped back, her gaze falling away from her daughter's as she self-consciously brought up one hand to touch the flawless French roll just above the nape of her long neck.
    Jessie watched her mother resume her seat and reach for her embroidery frame, and knew that they would never speak of her mother's reaction to either her absence or her homecoming again. Emotional moments, like tragic ones, were never spoken of in the circles through which Jesmond Corbett moved. It was the English way, to go through life with a stiff upper lip, no matter how unpleasant or even heartbreaking current