Read Good Hope Road: A Novel for Free Online

feet. ‘No,’ he said, his voice suddenly distant. ‘No, not any more.’ He removed her hand from his arm, a frozen expression on his face.
    ‘Major Stonebridge,’ Madeleine began, ‘I meant no—’
    ‘Jim, I’ve bored your guest enough with my ramblings,’ the Major interrupted. ‘Show her around the rest of the house – the library, perhaps.’ He limped stiffly from the room, the sound of his cane echoing on the parquet floors.
    ‘Whatever did I say?’ Madeleine said, bewildered, to Jim. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset him.’
    Jim shrugged. ‘He just didn’t fancy a waltz with you,’ he said mock solemnly, trying to lighten the moment.
    ‘Oh, but I wasn’t . . . you know I wasn’t suggesting that he dance with me!’
    ‘It was nothing you said.’ Jim paused, his face tightening as he searched for the right words. He shook his head. ‘Nothing that you did.’ He opened the door to the library. ‘Here, what would you like to see first? The family hoard of whale teeth, or Captain Stonebridge’s journal?’
    ‘Why don’t you have dances here any more?’
    ‘We used to, when I was little. Things changed after the Major got back from France. And after my mother died . . .’ He shrugged again.
    She took the box of whale teeth he held out, absently opening and shutting its blue velvet-lined lid. ‘How long ago?’
    ‘My mother? Soon after the war, about a year or so later. I was ten.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply.
    He turned to the bookshelf, pulling a weathered pigskin journal from a shelf. ‘A journal that belonged to my worthy ancestor. The good Captain wrote every day of his adult life.’
    She opened the journal, turning pages at random. ‘Tidal longings . . .’ she murmured. The light from the casement windows threw diamond patterns across the walls and the russet of her bent head. ‘So do you harbour them, too?’ She looked up, a smile playing about her lips. ‘The Major told me that it skips a generation sometimes, but surface it does, time and again – the Stonebridge men and their fondness for the sea.’
    Jim chuckled, settling himself against the desk. ‘Sure, I think about it sometimes. What it’d be like to live at sea, nothing around but wind and high water. But no, this is home and the Connecticut’s more than enough for me. The Connecticut river,’ he elaborated. ‘Fishing. Swimming. Canoeing. If you behave yourself, I might even take you there sometime.’
    Shutting the journal, she reached behind him to place it on the desk then straightened to look him square in the face, parting those soft, ruby, contoured lips. ‘And if I don’t?’
    Their eyes met, held. Before he could come up with a suitable retort, she’d stepped away.
    The Major sat in his armchair and stared unseeing into the black mirror. The afternoon had been a mistake from the start. He should’ve known better. It was the way the boy had mentioned her visit though, the studied casualness of his tone, as if it didn’t matter much either way, when clearly, she did.
    The bowtie he’d put on with such care only a couple of hours earlier felt close and stifling. He tugged at it and it came apart, the ends hanging about his neck.
    He should’ve known better. Too long. Too long since he’d last played host, and it was probably too late now. When a man had lived for a time with only the very familiar, the smallest unknown variable could upset everything. Even the most innocent of questions came fused with fault wires, threatening to destroy the shaky equilibrium so hard won, so painfully assembled over the years, exposing the bleached bones of memory long buried.
    Dances, she had asked about, tapping her heel on the wooden floor, and it was as if the years had rolled back in an instant.
    He could clearly hear the band, as if it were still playing from the stage set up in the corner of the dance floor; a mighty go they were having at the song too. The light from the sconces was reflected