Lucy: Daughters of the Sea #3 Read Online Free Page A

bestowed upon them modest sums of money and never missed sending presents for Lucy.
    Yet Marjorie was pleased when they moved to New York for Stephen to take the pulpit of St. Luke’s. Despite her friendship with Priscilla, they really weren’t anybody in Baltimore, for Southerners had long memories, and as the old families went, she and her widowed mother, Rose, had been little more than “dependents.” Slightly above servants but still charity cases with no real background.
    So when Marjorie and Stephen moved to New York five years after their marriage, it was as if the slate were wiped clean. She could talk about her dear friend Priscilla Bancroft Devries, but people didn’t know the details and she need not inform them — although she was inclined sometimes to elaborate a bit. New Yorkers weren’t quite so passionate about genealogy as Southerners were.
    When Stephen had told her of the opportunity to adopt Lucy, Marjorie had one stipulation — no one must know that she was adopted. Not even Priscilla. She did not want any “entailments” interfering with her daughter’s chance for a brilliant marriage. And now there was this chance, the wonderful opportunity to be on an island with some of America’s richest families. It wouldn’t be like New York. The parish of St. Luke’s was respectable enough, but its standing was somewhat diluted because of its location so far downtown. Nevertheless, it was a springboard to the office of the bishop, just as Bar Harbor would serve as a springboard for Lucy’s marital prospects. And then there would be no more teetering on the terrifying edges. They would be in the thick of it, or “the thick,” as Marjorie Snow sometimes thought of it.

 
    U NTIL B RIDGEPORT , the glimpses of water had been brief, but now the views became more expansive, especially as they entered Rhode Island. Lucy kept her face pressed to the window. A sensation had begun to build in her. This was no mere train ride. When she looked out the window, it was not simply a coastline that unspooled before her but an edge, and she was being drawn close to that edge. It dared her in a sense — or was it beckoning her?
    Lucy sat across from her mother and father in a private compartment on the New York–New Haven–Hartford railroad. The click of her mother’s knitting needles occasionally surfaced amidst the cacophony of the train’s wheezes, groans, and clanking wheels. Her father was browsing through old sermons, or so she supposed, until she heard him say, “Marjorie, the Althorps apparently have a cottage on Bar Harbor.”
    “Really, dear? The downtown Althorps or the uptown ones?”
    “The downtown ones. Edward and Felicity of our congregation.”
    “Well, I never thought they had the means.”
    “Nor did I, but here they are listed as members of the tennis club.”
    “Oh, Lucy, I do hope you’ll take some tennis lessons.” Marjorie dropped her knitting in her lap. “Lucy, did you hear me?”
    “Huh?” Her eyes were fastened on the expanse of gray-green water of a deep bay.
    “Oh, Lucy, don’t say ‘huh.’ That is so coarse.”
    “Sorry, Mother. What were you saying?”
    “I said I hope you will take tennis lessons.”
    “Oh, Mother, I don’t think I’d be very good. You know, my foot and all.” Lucy tried to imagine herself chasing a ball on a tennis court, stumbling about in much the same manner she did in conversations at parties with people like the Ogmonts and the Drexels. She could imagine Denise De Becque, Elsie Ogmont, and Lenora Drexel in their tennis whites snickering at her, and felt a twinge in her stomach.
    “Nonsense!” her father boomed. Stephen Snow was speaking in a voice he seldom used in the pulpit but often used in his home when contradicting either his wife or Lucy. “Your foot is so much better. Vastly improved, and the only way to keep improving is to try new things. There are such opportunities in store for you, Lucy. You must not squander