Peter-Mills&Boon version-Week7

“The Works” as Richard Delaney Esq. liked to describe them lay in a small, remote harbour.

They were surrounded by a chain of bleak windswept mountains whose rugged faces were  exposed through great carpets of snow.

As he stood on the top of the steps of the stationmaster’s house, Richard Delaney stared out momentarily at the harbour waters.  To his fastidious eye they had a pitiless, cold-blue steel quality, softened only by curtains of pale flickering reflections of the snow-clad mountains that surrounded them.   To his utter dismay there was no sign of a sail on the horizon, where a sea mist was beginning to gather.

Pulling up the collar on his fur coat, he decided to explore the deserted whaling station.

Aimlessly, he wandered amongst the ramshackle sheds and storehouses that lined the twisting, rusting rail track that wove its way between them.  Standing at the entrance to the huge hangar he gazed in despair at the machinery, bound in great coils lying motionless and the abandoned sheets of metal lay scattered about the floor.   Richard Delaney shrugged his shoulders.  To a man of his sensitivities, there was something eerie and haunting about this deserted place.   For the life of him, he could not understand why it had been chosen for their rendezvous.

His reverie was shaken by the insistent sound of a foghorn coming from seaward.  He turned, startled, and raced over to the quay.  The fog he had observed earlier had thickened and spread.  Putting his telescope to his eye, through the mist he was aware of a glimmering light from a ship that, like some phantom, lay at anchor there.

As the dim light faded he stood on the steps of the quay, straining to see and hear through the swirling mist.   At last there was the sound of muffled voices, the steady splash of an oar.   His heart beat faster.  Forms emerged from the mist:  a boat, a sailor rowing, a figure in a fur cloak and hood.   The boat banged against the quay and the next moment Lady Caroline was in his arms.