An Unconventional Heiress Read online

  He had watched Sukie wander desolately off, and if her words had affected him at all, it was to remind him that he was cutting Tom out of his life. Tom, to whom he owed so much. He deserved better than that. Briefly, for the first time in weeks he wondered what Tom was doing—and at the same time acknowledged how much he was missing him.

  Sarah, in an effort to forget the past, applied herself to her drawing and painting almost feverishly. She discovered that her pain over the breach with Alan, far from destroying her abilities, had apparently served to enhance them.

  One, afternoon, sitting with her sketchbook on the edge of town, the faithful Carter and the Langley carriage nearby, she was a little surprised to see Tom Dilhorne coming towards her. He dismounted, and after a word with Carter came over to where she sat and squatted on his heels in order to examine her work.

  She was finishing a water-colour of the native rose whose fragrance could be smelled throughout Sydney when it was in full flower. She had begun to fill a folio book, devoted to the wild flowers of the region, some months ago, but her busy life and involvement with Alan had slowed the work down. Now she was painting as though her life depended on it.

  Tom said nothing until she had completed the wash which she was busy laying down. Then, ‘You’re a talented lady, Miss Sarah.’

  She smiled a little wanly. ‘One does what one can, Tom.’

  ‘Aye.’ He said nothing further for some minutes while she mixed colours to her satisfaction. ‘I hear that you and Mr Langley are leaving us shortly.’

  ‘Yes.’ She was as brief as he was.

  ‘There was a time when I thought that you might be staying.’

  Her smile was painful. ‘Did you, Tom? John and I never intended to stay when we came here.’

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I said, Miss Sarah.’

  Sarah grew tired of fencing with him. Once it had pleased her, but after Alan had deserted her, everything seemed wearisome, too much of an effort. Except for her painting, that was.

  ‘I know what you said, and I also know what you meant. However, the reason why I might have stayed no longer applies, as you well know. Now shall we talk of other things?’

  ‘We might if I were a gentleman, but I’m not a gentleman so that don’t signify, as you people would say.’ His idle drawl was even more pronounced than usual. ‘What beats me, Miss Sarah, is how you can be so clever on that little piece of paper, and so stupid about your life. Why, I do believe that even poor Miss Sukie has more common sense than you.’

  The scene before her, wavered a little. ‘Good God,’ she reflected, ‘I never cried until I came to this benighted place, now I am going to turn the waterworks on in front of Tom!’

  She put down her brush and looked at his quizzical, brown face. She grasped suddenly that she had never really taken him seriously before. To her he had always been odd, dependable Tom Dilhorne, her rather grotesque friend. Could it be that she had always looked at the people around her as mere appendages of herself? What did she actually know of him, the real Tom Dilhorne who was the centre of his life as she was of hers?

  ‘I know that I must appear stupid to you, Tom, but consider how difficult life is for a mere female. What can I do? I was never the sort to connive and deceive to gain my ends. I cannot lasso Dr Kerr and compel him to speak to me again, and it’s not only my pride which prevents me from running screaming into the street to gain his attention. Believe me, in a case like mine, it would be easier for me to be Nellie or Sukie than Miss Sarah Langley of Prior’s Langley.’

  Tom’s silence was even longer than usual. He rose to his feet and walked a little way away from her. Sarah continued to paint vigorously. She wondered whether he would speak again before he left her. Carter stolidly watched them both. It was typical of her changed way of thinking that she wondered what he was making of it all.

  Tom returned to her side as suddenly as he had left it. ‘I shan’t plague you again, Miss Sarah. Believe me, I have only your best interests at heart.’

  ‘I know that, Tom, but matchmaker is an odd role for you to play.’

  ‘Aye, I’m sometimes a bigger fool than God made me. Trouble is, I want my friends to be happy, and happy is plainly what you and Alan Kerr are not.’

  Sarah was touched. ‘One day,’ she told him, ‘before I go home, I want to paint your portrait—with the Blue Mountains in the background. Simply to see it when I am home again in the orderly fields of England will take me back to a place where I once thought that I could live my life. I shan’t forget this afternoon.’

  Tom believed her. She would have made a superb wife for his friend, who was busy throwing away his hopes of happiness with her for reasons which he did not understand.

  ‘Nor I,’ he said, and, tipping his hat to her he wandered back to his horse. If it was Alan she wanted, then she ought to have him, and by damn, if he could help it, then Alan she should get, even though she was more than he deserved after the daft way he was behaving!

  Tom had stopped to talk to Sarah on his way to a meeting called by the Governor to discuss the likelihood of a rebellion by the Irish and the steps which might be necessary to deal with it, should one break out.

  He had called together all the notables and leading lights in the colony including Tom and Alan. The officers, particularly their Colonel, were annoyed at the presence of so many Emancipists, even when Macquarie explained that it was important to discover what rumours were running around among the ex-convicts, and those who were dealing directly with the convicts themselves.

  The general feeling was that Macquarie was making a great fuss about nothing. Most of the convicts’ resentment, it was suggested, was the result of the Governor’s own policies. His ambitious building and road-making plans were creating a great deal of gruelling hard work for them which they naturally resented. This did not necessarily mean, though, that they would support an uprising.

  Colonel O’Connell even went so far as to say that if the Governor wished to avoid one, then all he had to do was scale down his supposed improvements. This, however, was not the general feeling of the meeting. Most, indeed, thought things ought to continue as they were. Major Middleton was particularly loud in his denunciation of doom-laden prophecies, quoting the experience of his fellow officers which gave this one the lie. Many nodding heads supported him.

  Tom, who felt that the matter was not being taken seriously enough, interrupted the Major’s lengthy speech to say, ‘That’s not what I have heard, Major Menzies. Happen my friends are different from Major Middleton’s. They all seem to think that the Irish are planning a major uprising, like the one in ’04, and that this time they are arranging to include the other convicts in it. Not all will want to join in, but as usual, the hotheads are the noisiest, and they will influence the rest and drag many of them along.’

  ‘Your friends,’ sneered O’Connell. His tone was one of pure disgust. ‘Pray who might they be? Fine friends, indeed, if they know of treason and do not report it.’

  Tom, having made one of the longest public speeches of his life, was equable. ‘Well, I know that they aren’t your friends, Colonel, and I wouldn’t expect them to be. But they are in a position to know what’s being said, and to tell me to pass it on. If you won’t listen to me, then that’s your choice—you certainly wouldn’t listen to them.’

  This was irrefutable, and Alan thought it right to add his voice to Tom’s. ‘There’s a strong feeling among the Irish that if they don’t rise now, they will never be able to do so again. Sydney is rapidly changing those who are sent here. Only the hard core feel loyalty to their Irish past.’

  ‘Well, you’re the expert there,’ said O’Connell, sneering again. ‘But a felon sent here for committing treason is the last person I should go to for advice.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ Macquarie called them to order. ‘This is not the time for recriminations.’ The expression on Alan’s face after O’Connell’s comment told him that he must go carefully or worse might follow.<
br />
  It was plain that in Kerr’s current black mood he would not hesitate to call O’Connell out if he were allowed to continue to insult him. Consequently Macquarie said in his blandest voice, ‘I brought you together to ask you for your advice over the possibility of an uprising. Since, however, it appears that there is a split between you, wariness must be the order of the day and it would therefore be best for actual planning for such an eventuality to wait until the arrival of more definite information. I hope, though, that you will all agree that those responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the colony must be put on their guard.’

  ‘And that,’ said Tom to Alan, who had been unable to avoid him after the meeting was over, ‘is no more and no less than you might have expected. Macquarie’s afraid of what might be said back in England if he spends too much money on preparing for a rising which never happened.’

  Alan looked a little sideways at his old friend. If Tom owed much to him—for it had been Alan who had educated him on the long voyage out from England—then, he, too, owed much to Tom and educating him had been a small reward for the other man’s saving of his life. He had been a raw young gentleman, inexperienced in the world of gaoled and gaoler, and Tom had enabled him to survive when he might have gone under. Yes, he owed him a debt of gratitude which he could never completely repay and he suddenly felt sorry that in his despair he had been avoiding his friend.

  He put out his hand to clasp Tom’s, and that cool customer fully understood what his friend was trying to tell him ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘Ye’ve been dodging me, mate.’ He had not called Alan ‘mate’ since their first days on the transport bringing them to New South Wales.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom. I’ve had the black dog of despair on my back again. I thought I’d lost it I when they transferred us from Norfolk Island but, recently, it sprang there again, without warning.’

  ‘You’d not like to talk about it, mate?’

  ‘Some day, not now. I feel ungrateful for not wishing to when I think of all that you have done for me from the very first day we met.’

  Tom sighed. ‘Oh, be damned to that. You saved me on Norfolk Island when you stopped that swine from having me beaten to death by claiming that I was your medical assistant and that the colony would suffer if I snuffed it.’

  Alan laughed for the first time in weeks. ‘Yes, and I didn’t know then how little time it would take for me to train you to be one. You should have been a doctor yourself.’

  Tom’s laugh was genuine. ‘Oh, aye, we could spend the rest of the day working out which one of us owed the other the most. I thought of training for a doctor when at last we arrived here, but the notion of making money, and showing the nobs what a poor convict could do if he put his mind to it, attracted me the more. As to confiding in me—well, if you don’t feel inclined to, then that’s that.’

  He paused before repeating what he had said to Sarah, ‘You know that I’ve only your best interests at heart.’

  ‘I’ve always known that, so you will understand that there are some things of which I cannot speak.’

  ‘True of all of us, mate, true of all of us. If ever I can help—you know where to find me.’

  With that they parted and Alan found, almost immediately, that talking to his old friend had eased his mind. It was possible for him to think of Sarah without too much pain, although he still found it difficult to imagine ever speaking to her again. It was useless telling himself that he was being childish—it was as though everything that had happened to him since that fatal evening when he had drunkenly destroyed his previous life had led to this final rejection.

  Nevertheless, after meeting Tom, something which had recently been troubling him took on a stronger force. As time passed he had begun to think that it was a little strange that neither John nor Sarah appeared to have told anyone in Sydney of the grand match which was waiting for her back home. Certainly Tom had given no indication that he knew of it.

  On the other hand John was a gentleman, and he would surely not lie over such a matter. It would be against the gentleman’s code of honour. Nevertheless this new notion that he might have been deceived would not go away, however often he told himself that he was now, in effect, deceiving himself.

  One afternoon on a sudden impulse, he walked to Sarah’s makeshift classroom in the hope of seeing her and setting his errant mind at rest. However short and bitter their conversation might be, he could at least wish her well in her grand future and try to convince himself that he would be better off without her.

  Unluckily he had chosen the very day when Sarah was having one of her rare absences and Sukie was busy supervising the little ones, proud to show off her new accomplishments in reading and writing.

  ‘I’ll tell Miss Sarah you called,’ she told him eagerly.

  Alan was brief. ‘If you like.’ He hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry that he had missed her.

  ‘It’s Miss Lucy’s wedding next month and Miss Sarah is helping to make the bridesmaid’s dresses.’

  Alan knew that he was not welcome at the Middletons and would be unlikely to be asked to the wedding. He rather liked Major Middleton and was reasonably friendly with him, but Mrs Middleton possessed all the colonial wife’s dislike of ex-convicts, however much of a gentleman they might have been before their conviction and would certainly veto his appearance at the wedding as a guest.

  He packed his bag and left, ruefully thinking that even fate seemed determined to prevent him from speaking to her again. Perhaps it was all for the best. What sort of wife would she have made for a disgraced colonial doctor when she had been part of the highest society in England and had run her brother’s great house?

  Sukie took the earliest possible opportunity to tell Sarah of Alan’s visit. Poor Sarah would rather have missed a hundred meetings with Lucy’s bridesmaids than have missed one chance of speaking to Alan. Like him she thought that fate was working against her. Well, she would soon be gone and once she was home again she might find it easy to forget a colonial doctor with whom she had thought herself in love, and who had seemed to love her before he had dismissed her from his life forever.

  She might think that—but she did not believe it… Instead, she tried to concentrate on making her last days in the colony as full and happy as possible She spoke to John about a visit to Nellie and the baby before she left, and although he considered this as yet another example of Sarah’s new and reprehensible weakness for consorting with servants, set about arranging it. After all, she would soon be home again, mixing only with her equals.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The incident that sparked off the Rising—or, rather, encouraged some of the convicts to join the Irish—was, as these things often are, a minor, indeed rather silly one. Sarah learned of it from Lucy Middleton on the last afternoon she spent with her before visiting Grimes’s farm.

  ‘It’s really the funniest thing,’ she told Sarah when the tea-board was brought in, ‘I only heard about it this morning from Papa. You’d not guess what it was, try you never so hard.’

  ‘Then don’t keep me in suspense, tell all,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Well, it seems that one of the convict gangs was working on the barracks at the edge of town. Since they were sent there, several of them have tried to escape into the bush, but the soldiers guarding them have always succeeded in stopping them. One of the convicts was an actor transported for forging a bank draft when he couldn’t get work. Georgina O’Connell says she’s seen him about and that he’s a handsome fellow. He kisses his hand at all the ladies he sees.’ She paused.

  ‘And that’s the story?’ asked Sarah, disappointed.

  ‘Oh, no, there’s more to come. Papa said that the convicts secretly caught a kangaroo when the soldiers weren’t watching them very carefully. They killed the poor thing and then skinned it.’

  This time Sarah was incredulous. ‘Caught a kangaroo without the soldiers knowing? You must be funning, Lucy.’

  ‘Well, the poor things
aren’t very clever,’ said Lucy knowledgeably. ‘Papa often says that they’re nowhere near as bright as most of the convicts and, looking at Tom Dilhorne and Will French, you can see what he means. Anyway, they cured the skin and gave it to the actor. Yesterday, when they were bricklaying and the soldiers were having yet another chat, the actor put on the skin and started to jump away—in order to escape, of course.

  ‘Unfortunately the soldiers thought that he was a real kangaroo and began to shoot at him. You can imagine his fright: there he was, hopping and jumping away, freedom beckoning, when balls started to whizz around his head. Finally the poor fellow felt compelled to pull the skin off and beg for mercy.’

  Sarah could scarcely speak for laughing. ‘Lucy, I vow that you must be making this up!’

  ‘No such thing.’ Lucy was comically indignant. ‘It seems that when he threw his skin off one of the soldiers thought that it was aborigine magic, and fell on his knees, howling for God to save him from the devil. It took some time for his fellows to convince him that it was only a poor escaping convict he was frightened of.

  ‘The rest of the story isn’t so funny. Papa says that the actor has been sentenced to a flogging for trying to escape, and will be put permanently in irons. He says that the sentence is deserved, but that there is a great deal of bad feeling about it. All the other convicts believe that the sentence is too harsh and inappropriate and it’s even rumoured that they have begun to mutter about joining the Irish in an uprising. Papa says that at the moment it would have been wiser for the Colonel to be merciful.’

  ‘I think that the actor ought to be given a pardon for inventiveness,’ said Sarah. ‘It certainly makes a change from all this fretting about the Irish and the goings-on of the Emancipists.’