Across the Sands of Time Read Online Free Page B

be too long.
    Dust motes jigged and swirled in the golden beam of light before her eyes. Fighting sleep, Thea thought she heard the surging of the tide against the harbour wall beyond, where no tide had come for decades. She frowned, too overcome with tiredness to be bothered to look. Closing her eyes, she gave herself up to slumber.
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    â€˜In heaven’s name, wench! How many times do I have to tell you? Fetch me another flagon up from the cellar, won’t you?’
    Polly Dakin steeled herself, hating the smell of brandy on her father’s breath, determined not to give in.
    â€˜Father, it must be nearly the hour for the mail coach to arrive. The driver will need you to help change the horses. Remember last time? You stumbled and almost got trampled on. You mightn’t be so lucky again.’
    Wallace Dakin’s coarse red face turned an ugly purple hue, and his pale grey eyes bulged in anger. Giving in with a regretful little cluck of her tongue, Polly whirled round and smartly left the busy tap-room.
    Directly opposite was the door to the cellar. She yanked it open, descending the steep stone steps to the bottom where the kegs of ale and casks of wine and spirits were stored. The former was delivered openly and legitimately by the brewer’s cart every Monday.
    The latter Polly felt fit to wonder about. There was more here now than yesterday. How had it got here? And when had it come? Shrugging the matter aside for now, she seized a flask of good French brandy and remounted the steps.
    She was a pretty girl with a lot of curling chestnut brown hair and bright, intelligent hazel eyes, the legacy of her mother who had been a Platt before her marriage. The Platts were a well-to-do Parkgate family and it was common knowledge that Marion had married beneath her.

    Polly loved her attractive mother and even had it in her to feel a spark of fondness for her father. Wallace, when not in his cups, was a handsome, larger than life man with a mane of red-gold hair and bushy beard and eyes that flashed with humour.
    She could see how in his youth a girl might have been swept off her feet by him. A charmer, her mother had once said. Polly’s brother Edward, the elder by eleven months, had inherited a fair share of the Dakin charm.
    As had Polly, although she was not aware of the fact. Swinging the door shut, her lips tightly compressed, she went to place the brandy on the table in front of her father, where he sat on a stool by a sizzling fire of peat and driftwood. Without a word she gathered up her thick woollen shawl from the peg behind the door, threw it across her shoulders and went outside.
    Sharp October rain stung her face as she made her way carefully across the straw and dung-strewn tavern yard, heading for the harbour where the ferry from Flint would dock once the tide was fully in. The boats ran infrequently now, due to the canalizing of the river to run on the Welsh side and the subsequent silting up of the harbour at Parkgate.
    Father told of how it used to be when the ferry boats put in at regular intervals and Parkgate had been a thriving fishing port, with cod and herring being salted on the quayside and the air ripe with the smell of fish and rowdy with the banter of the fishwives.
    Coming to the edge of the quay, Polly stood peering into the distance, the wind blowing her hair and billowing her brown homespun skirts about her small, determined figure. Sometimes, John’s boat could be seen out on the estuary when he returned from checking the herring nets.
    Thinking of him, his merry brown eyes and ready smile, Polly could have hugged herself. She and John Royle had been meeting in secret for the best part of six months now. What with Father never in the best of humour and her mother in poor health, they had thought it best not to disclose their feelings for the time being.
    Polly did not mind. John loved her and she him, and for now that was all that mattered.

    There was no sign of