The Wind and the Spray Read Online Free Page B

was because the three were so alike, quiet charmingly, winningly alike, alike enough not to be just a man holding in each arm the two children of another man, this man beside her, but holding his own sons.
    She glanced at her employer.
    “They don’t resemble you.”
    “No, they don’t. They’re Blakes.”
    “But you’re Blake.”
    “Who said so?”
    “Mr. Kittey.”
    “I’m sure he didn’t, he’s been attending us Larsens for years.”
    “Larsen! Then ...” She glanced to the children on the little quay, to the man.
    “That’s Peter Blake, my sister’s husband, in other words my brother-in-law.”
    “And—the children?”
    “His children, of course, isn’t that obvious? As I said, they’re Blakes, not like Nathalie at all.”
    “Nathalie?”
    “My sister, and a Larsen. Not”—his brows coming together in a furious line—“that you’d ever notice that fact.”
    “You mean she has red hair and you have fair.”
    “Not fair, weathered, and I didn’t mean that at all, I meant other differences.”
    He did not tell her what differences, so she went on in a strain of her own.
    “So it was Mr. Blake who wanted someone titian,” she murmured.
    “Do I look that sort of fool?” he returned.
    “He is the brother-in-law, not you.”
    “We’re both brothers-in-law,” said Larsen with patient forbearance as though with a small, very stupid child, “but I think I know what you mean. You believed I was the married man, but you were wrong.”
    All at once he was smirking slyly but quite delightedly. Then with eyes sparkling diabolically he turned on Laurel and gave her an almost ear-to-ear maddening grin.
    “Yes, you were wrong, I’m not the married man but that man, remember?”
    “What man?”
    “The one available male,” he reminded, “on Humpback Island, but the one”—his eyes swept her baitingly—“with other ideas.”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    ALTHOUGH they were within speaking distance of the people on the jetty, Luke turned the boat seaward in a wide curve.
    “It needs the right phase of tide and the right swell as well as dead reckoning to moor at any of the Hump piers,” announced the man by Laurel’s side. “Luke will have to do a second run.” He took out, rolled and lit a cigarette.
    Laurel stared out at what she could see of her future headquarters ... a craggy coastline with an occasional break of creamy beach, behind the crags thick jungles of trees except where the forest had been cleared for plantations, a few rolling hills that were quite moderate but appeared higher because Humpback Island was only a small place, two hills of the group loftier than the rest.
    Her eyes took in details, but her mind did not register them. She was thinking indignantly of what this man beside her had just said
    She did not comment on his explanation of the second run, instead she broke out impulsively, “You don’t care about women, do you, Mr. Larsen?”
    There was no impulsiveness in his reply. He said quite coolly and very surely, “No, I don’t.”
    Luke was turning the Leeward now, turning it slowly, watching for his opportunity, keeping his eye on the pier. The boat almost stopped, the engine barely ticked.
    “Want a reason?” asked Larsen of the girl.
    “Not particularly.”
    “All the same you’re getting it. I don’t want you to think I’m one of those anti-female obsessed characters who just go in for woman-hating for a whim. Mine is no whim.”
    “No?”
    “No.”
    He paused, then wheeling abruptly he caught hold of her arm, quite harshly, then he veered her round to face the south.
    “Look at that,” he said.
    She realized that before she had only been looking at the northern end of the island, at the crags, forests, clearings and hills. Now she saw something quite different.
    Here was industry ... that was obvious from even this far out ... there were two docks, two jetties, a number of decks and ramps, winches, wires, booms, marker buoys, a craft much bigger than