THE JADE'S SECRET GARDEN

Chapter 1

    Sag Harbor, New York

     Claire Pennington scratched the last number into the ledger book and breathed a long sigh as she pushed herself away from the desk. Always before she'd felt a sense of satisfaction when the figures came out right, but today well, maybe she was only tired.

Pushing her wire rimmed spectacles back up her nose, she checked the time on the pendant watch pinned to her blouse. Nearly five o'clock; her mother would have dinner ready soon. She retrieved her gray woolen mantle and bonnet from the coat hook on the back of the office door and put them on.

 "Uncle Phillip?" She called, tying up the ribbons of her bonnet as she went out into the store.

 No one was about. The shelves along the walls were neatly stacked with bottles and tins and bolts of fabric. On the long counter stood the tall glass jars full of colourful hard candies that the local children loved so well. But all these items were far too familiar to Claire to hold her interest for more than a second. Just then Phillip Trent, a balding man, lank and long-legged, came out of the storeroom.

  "Finished already, my dear?" he asked, unrolling his shirtsleeves.

 Claire nodded. "The books are  on your desk," she explained. "You may check the figures for yourself if you like."

"No need. You know that I trust your work. You've scarcely made an error in the five years you've been helping me. Why, Mr. Smith at the bank was saying to me just yesterday that you have a surprising  head for figures for a young lady."

Claire studied the tips of her shoes, feeling the color rise in her cheeks. "How nice of him to say so," she mumbled in reply, but even such a compliment, coming from one of the few, eligible bachelors in town, couldn't rouse her spirits today. "Well, I'd best be going," she continued. "Mom will have dinner started." 

 "Give her my best," Uncle Phillip said, "and Richard, too."

     "I will."

 The bell overhead jangled as Claire pushed the door open, and the bracing wind that swept down Main Street made her shiver and pull her mantle closer around her as she stepped onto the plank walk. The afternoon sun was waning, lending an orange hue to the sky behind the row of the buildings of which her uncle's store was a par Instead of hurrying home, though, Claire lingered for a moment, staring wistfully down Main Street toward Long Wharf. There was only a pair of ships docked there now, and a handful of men milling about, but Claire could remember a time when, standing in this same spot, she'd been able to look out and see a forest of ships' masts and sailors from all parts of the world swarming over the docks. Not too many years ago Long Wharf had been crowded with oil cellars, cooperage, warehouse, and smithies all there to service the whaling ships.

Sag Harbor was dying. It had begun in '49, when gold was discovered in California. The sturdy whaling men who'd been backbone of the town soon decided it would be easier to make their fortune by picking gold nuggets up off the ground in California than by spending years in chasing whales across the globe, and so they'd sailed off, never to return. Most of the younger gentlemen headed west as soon they reached manhood, and when the war began in '61, the rest were called away. Without the likes of such vibrant and adventuresome men, the village just wasn't the same anymore.

 Claire's grandfather, John Pennington, had been a whaling captain in the early days, and when she was a child, her father had brought her here, to this very spot, to watch the goings on as he told her stories of the redoubtable Captain John. Her brother, Richard, eight years her senior and always the sensible fellow, said often that was her problem. Her head was too full of Dad's stories, and no good could ever come of that. Maybe he was right.