A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman
Читать онлайн.| Название | A Catch of Consequence |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Diana Norman |
| Жанр | Историческая литература |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Историческая литература |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780007404551 |
A CATCH OF CONSEQUENCE
Diana Norman
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2002
Copyright © Diana Norman 2001
Diana Norman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007105441
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007404551
Version: 2016-02-09
To my cousin, Aeron
CONTENTS
The woman feathering her boat round the bend of the Charles River into Massachusetts Bay that early morning on August 15 1765 was about to save someone’s life and change her own.
Later on, in rare retrospective moments, she would ask herself: ‘What if I hadn’t?’ A useless question, suggesting there’d been a decision – and she made no decision; Makepeace Burke could no more watch a fellow-creature drown without trying to help it than she could stop the wind blowing.
That’s not to imply that Makepeace was a gentle woman. She wasn’t; she just hated waste, and unnecessary death was wasteful.
If her boat was dirty, she was clean in a scrubbed sort of way, or as clean as you can be when you’ve been hauling in lobster-pots since before dawn. A virgin who, by 1765 American standards, was like her boat in being ancient. At twenty-four years old, she should have been married with children but she’d been both unfortunate and picky.
The gangly figure in faded brown cotton, her skirt pinned up washerwoman style, a leather cap tied tightly under her chin to hide her hair giving her the look of an insect, propelled her boat with the professionalism of a sea-dog. Bobbing along in the sunlight, from far off she resembled a