False Colors Read Online Free Page A

books to read to engage his mind, how he could bring back that furtive but unconscious smile, and broaden it.
    “You look happy, Mr. Donwell.” Mrs. Harper pushed away her plate to make room for a ghastly pickled thing in a glass jar, just as her husband dithered his way through the door and favored all three of them—the two humans and the tadpole-like creature with a human head that swam in its bottle between them—with a near blind but benevolent smile.
    “I am,” Alfie agreed. “I’ve put a right hard horse of a captain behind me, and I love the beginnings of things; when it’s all to do, and you can believe this time... this time it’s all going to work out fine.”
    “Ah,” Harper gave him a dusty smile, “the optimism of youth.”
“But sometimes it does go well, my dear.” His wife rose to give him the brush of an age-worn kiss on his cheek, her hair white and shining as his powdered wig. “Sometimes it does.”
Alfie’s heart twisted, seeing what he wanted, so close and yet—for him—so seeming unattainable. A life-long love. Even if he could take advantage of Cavendish’s innocence to seduce him, how likely was it still that the man would want him to grow old with?
    Passing through the straits of Gibraltar into the heat of a Mediterranean summer, the Meteor left behind the fog and cloud where the North Atlantic current met the coast of Morocco. After a morning spent trimming the sails to catch every elusive breath of breeze, John leaned against the rail of his small quarterdeck and decided to allow the men to enjoy this last day of peace before Algiers. There would be tension enough tomorrow. For today, let them drift easily and gently east on the warm African current.
    Over the past weeks, sailor-like, he had achieved a certain detachment from the future. Today’s tasks demanded attention today, whether or not there would be a tomorrow. The period of grace thinned. It drew to a close. If he let himself, he could imagine the future as a reef and feel the breakers surge towards it. Yet even now there was nothing at all to be done to mend the situation. Over the past few nights he had studied his maps and pondered until sleep overset him, left him slumped over his plank desk, hair-ribbon in the ink. He knew the disposition of the harbor, the currents, reefs, rocks and even the color of the sea-bed in exhaustive detail. He had done all he could. Worrying would not achieve any more.
    Setting aside the problem of Algiers until such time as he could act on it, he fetched a crowbar from his cabin and decided to check the provisions which Hall, the purser, had suspiciously condemned. How likely was it that all the beef brought aboard— the beef that had weathered three months patrolling with little more than a change of color—should have become inedible overnight? More likely the man intended to sell it and line his own pocket as soon as they made port.
    Meteor trotted through the seas like a well-bred horse. Even at this relaxed pace, with a following wind, she dug her head into spray with each wave. Beneath their lashed tarpaulins the mortars glistened like basking seals by her bow. In a cabin below decks someone played a flute. A thread of music wound its way up the stairs. So quiet at first, it could have been the Meteor herself given voice, echoing with breathy woodwind sweetness in the hollow spaces of her hold.
    Resting his crowbar on his foot, John listened, enchanted, as the melody bundled together the sunshine and the spray, ran up into the sky with them and burst in a firework of notes. When the passage ended, John’s cheeks ached with a smile. Thank you , he addressed the empty horizon, and the Spirit who rested between earth and sky, God and man, life and death. Thank you for this moment; for the knowledge that you are here with me.
    He’d thought the piece ended, but now it came again; a rush of notes like a dryad shaking out the leaves from her hair. Even the impulse to pray deserted