An Unconventional Heiress Page 25

  So he sat on the bed beside her and rested her head on his breast again, so that she could feel his heart beating, strong and true.

  ‘Happy now, my darling?’ he asked her tenderly.

  She looked up at him, her face mischievous. She was very much the old lively Sarah, the Sarah that neither Riley’s camp nor the bush could tame. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but there is one thing that does worry me a little.’

  His own face anxious, he said, ‘Now what can that be, my love?’

  ‘It’s this, Alan. Now that I’m going to stay with you in New South Wales, I do hope that you’re not going to have to make a habit of rescuing me. I think that two such efforts are quite enough, don’t you? Any more would be excessive and might cause unwelcome gossip, besides being exceedingly troublesome and time-consuming for the pair of us.’

  His shout of laughter was spontaneous, as was his kiss.

  Soon, quite soon, she fell asleep, with her head on his chest, as she had done in the bush, and this time no nightmares of death, loss and sorrow came to plague her.

  The excitement created by the Rising continued even after Sarah and Dr Kerr had been brought safely home. Kevin Riley and his followers were never to reach the Blue Mountains. They were caught by Pat Ramsey’s detachment of soldiers some twenty-four hours after Sarah and Alan had been found.

  Alan brought Sarah the news: she was out of bed and was resting on a sofa in the Langleys’ parlour. She had already told Alan, Tom and John that only Kevin Riley’s intervention had saved her from rape or worse and that she wished to plead for mercy for him when he was tried. It proved useless to ask John to support her. His guilt over his own folly in sending her into danger had made him declare that all those who had captured Sarah should be hanged.

  Sarah, still unable to walk without pain because of her wounded feet, listened to Alan when he described how the rebels had been paraded in chains after they had been brought back to Sydney.

  ‘What is likely to happen to Kevin Riley?’ she asked him.

  ‘He is almost certain to be hanged. He was one of the leaders of the rebellion and it was his men who captured you. There is a great deal of feeling about that.’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Had it not been for Riley I should not be here. He saved me from death and dishonour in return for what I did for Nellie, which was little enough in the great sum of things, and I did not do it for reward. Is there no way in which I can speak on his behalf?’

  ‘I’m bound to warn you that the military want him to be hanged. Even Pat Ramsey is fierce against him, and Pat is not a bloodthirsty monster.’

  ‘I do so wish that I could walk,’ she exclaimed. ‘What worries me is that I hear that there are plans for a summary execution. Can that be true?’

  Alan did not like to tell her the truth, but respect for Sarah’s integrity and courage had already made him resolve never to treat her as though she were a mindless doll.

  ‘Yes, I fear that there is a real danger of that.’

  She sat up. ‘Then, somehow, you must take me to Government House. I am sure that Lachlan Macquarie would not want the full force of the law used against a man who risked the anger of his followers by sparing his victim when they called for her mistreatment.’

  Sarah’s strength of will had never been more plain, and, because by saving her Riley had indirectly enabled them to come together again and be reconciled, Alan agreed to do as she wished.

  ‘I’m not sure that you’ll achieve anything, though,’ he warned her. ‘The feeling against him is so strong.’

  ‘But the Governor is the ultimate judge,’ she said vigorously, ‘and he is a fair man. He has nothing to prove, either, unlike John and O’Connell, who are trying to forgive themselves for their misjudgement by wanting the most condign punishments to be handed out.’

  Alan gave his forthright love an admiring look. ‘I do believe that you’re becoming as shrewd as Tom. Very well, let me take you to Government House where you may practise your new-found skill on Macquarie—and who knows what might happen!’

  He carried her in his arms into the Governor’s office, despite John’s disapproval. Macquarie listened to her carefully and considered the matter for a few moments before he replied to her.

  ‘My dear Miss Langley, I can certainly make you one promise: there will be no summary executions without proper trial while I am Governor of New South Wales. I am here to uphold the law, not break it. As for Riley being spared hanging because of his merciful treatment of you, I will make sure that his behaviour towards you will be mentioned at his trial and will be borne in mind when he is sentenced. More I cannot say.’

  It was exactly what Sarah had hoped of the Governor, given his known reputation, and so she told Alan and John. There was nothing more she could do for Riley.

  Of them all, Sukie was the most annoyed by Sarah trying to save him from hanging. ‘Miss Sarah’s a deal too good,’ she declared, for she could not forgive the rebels for what they had done to Carter, albeit that he was slowly recovering from his injuries and, despite his recent experiences, was still determined to stay in Sydney with her. Her usual diatribes on the subject always ended with, ‘If I had my way I’d hang ’em all!’

  ‘Even Nellie’s brother?’ asked Sarah, leaning on her stick when she entered the kitchen to hear Sukie giving Mrs Hackett a piece of her mind.

  ‘I know he’s Nellie’s brother, but his lot had no business nearly killing my poor George.’

  It was Sarah who got her wish, not Sukie. After much grumbling from the military it was agreed that because of his behaviour towards Sarah he should not be hanged, but sent to Van Diemen’s Land instead. Neither Alan nor Sarah was comfortably sure that they had done Riley any service by having his sentence commuted. Van Diemen’s Land was the most cruelly savage of the penal settlements.

  ‘Nevertheless, I couldn’t see him hanged, it wouldn’t have been right. It was his life in exchange for mine and Governor Macquarie saw it that way, too.’

  She did not tell Alan that because she was happy she wanted others to be happy also. In the end none of the remaining rebels was sentenced to death. Clemency reigned as the Governor had wished.

  ‘I think that this might well be the last of the Risings,’ he told Sarah, John and Alan when he invited them to dinner after the trials were safely over. ‘The colony is beginning to change. There was very little sympathy for the rebels this time. People are trying to build a new life here in a new land, the old life forgotten. Even the convicts and the Emancipists, or perhaps I should say particularly the convicts and Emancipists, feel like that.’

  ‘That’s what Tom Dilhorne says,’ offered Sarah.

  ‘Ah, yes, the man of common sense himself,’ said the Governor, amused. ‘Mark my words, Miss Langley, your future husband and Tom will be two of the mainstays of New South Wales when I am long gone. Are you aware that there is a proposal to call the new land Australia? The aborigines, its original natives, have always been known as Australians. Soon the name will describe all those who live here, regardless of their origin.’

  If John looked down his nose a little at the Governor’s forthright glimpse of the future, Alan and Sarah welcomed it. They were in the first glow of happiness that followed their official betrothal, although Sarah always privately maintained that their first real betrothal had taken place in the bush.

  She had entered Government House still using her stick, and the Governor’s wife, Elizabeth, had asked her if she would be recovered enough to act as chief bridesmaid at Lucy Middleton’s wedding, which had been put off until all the formalities connected with the Rising were over so that they would not be allowed to spoil the year’s most brilliant social event.

  ‘I am nearly well enough already,’ Sarah said. ‘My feet have almost recovered. The worst thing of all is that I am still occasionally plagued by nightmares. I sometimes wake up thinking that I am back in the bush—but they are getting fewer and Alan says that they will pass, given time.’

&nb
sp; So, when Lucy was married, Sarah was there and caught Lucy’s bouquet as soon as it was thrown. ‘As is only right,’ said Lucy happily, ‘seeing that your wedding follows so soon after.’

  To the surprise of every Exclusive in Sydney, Alan and Tom Dilhorne were both guests as well. Lucy had put her foot down and, despite her mama’s protests, had announced that it was only proper that the two men who had saved Sarah between them, Emancipists though they might be, ought to be present in order to support her. Lucy was slowly beginning to turn into someone far more formidable that the sweet young girl that her mother, and propriety, expected her to be.

  Alan had persuaded Tom to buy yet another new suit in honour of the occasion. ‘It will do for my wedding, too,’ he told his friend, who was going to be his best man. Amid some grumbling from Tom, the Regimental tailor turned him out after such a fashion that he was, as at the Governor’s Banquet, indistinguishable from all the Exclusive guests. He joked to Alan that he was now turning respectable in appearance and manner—except when it paid him not to be!

  Alan and Sarah’s wedding was, by contrast, to be a quiet one, with only a few good friends invited.

  ‘I don’t want a great brouhaha, and neither, I think, do you,’ said Sarah to Alan. ‘I know that many do not approve of our marriage, whatever they say to our faces. Besides, many secretly think of me as damaged goods after our nights in the bush. The only people I want to be present are those who truly care for us.’

  They were seated in the Langleys’ small garden behind the house, glasses of lemonade before them and Sarah’s macaw screeching in the background.

  ‘That is what I want,’ said Alan his face grave, ‘but I must say this now before it is too late. Are you sure that you are doing the right thing in marrying me? After all, what John said is true. You could have a splendid match back in England. Think of the difference between that and living here at the other end of nowhere with a half-ostracised doctor.’

  She put his hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘It’s noble of you to say that, Alan, but I don’t want a splendid match and a title: what I want is you. I want you so badly that I am having difficulty in not throwing myself at you, begging you to anticipate our wedding night. Oh, I’m not a fool, I know that it’s not always going to be easy, that there may even be times when I shall regret what I have done. But in the end it all comes back to the fact that, rightly or wrongly, what I want is to live here with you, helping you in your medical practice.’

  He took both her hands in his, saying hoarsely, ‘Indeed you may help me, my darling, and so far as anticipating our wedding night is concerned, if you look at me like that much longer I am in danger of anticipating our wedding night in John’s back garden, and that would never do. I burn for you, and yes, I know that you burn for me. I also know that there may be difficult times ahead for us, but, my darling, I have seen how you behaved in the most difficult time of all, and I know that we shall win through together.

  ‘Now let us drink our lemonade and think of the Arctic wastes or of a snowy night in Scotland lest we both forget ourselves. Allow me only one chaste kiss on your cheek.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Sarah, ‘so long as I may kiss yours.’ She was rapidly discovering what she had only suspected before: that really loving a man meant that mind and body were both engaged. She no longer felt her body to be treacherous: it was telling her that her choice of Alan for a mate was a true one.

  Consequently, there were few brides who could have looked more radiant than Sarah Langley did on her wedding day. The small company present, which went on to the Reception afterwards, was an exclusive one. Governor Macquarie, together with his wife, attended; Pat Ramsey and Stephen Parker acted as his aides. Frank and Lucy Wright—Lucy was Sarah’s Matron of Honour—were also present on this extraordinary occasion, where Tom Dilhorne and all the Langleys’ servants were included among the guests of honour. Even Mrs Hackett deigned to join in the celebrations, although she did sit at the back of the church, glowering at everyone. She had never quite recovered from the fact that no explanation had ever been found for the missing food.

  Lucy’s mother acidly commented, ‘The only surprise is that On and Off Abe hasn’t also been invited.’

  Lucy replied mischievously, ‘Well, he was, only he chose to go walkabout two days before the wedding.’

  Sarah walked down the aisle on John’s arm, with Alan and Tom Dilhorne waiting for her at the altar, to hear Sukie shrill out in a highly audible whisper to the recovering Carter, ‘I allus knew that Dr Alan and Miss Sarah were made for one another.’

  Unknown to both Alan and Sarah, Tom had already enlivened his own day by remarking to John Langley that he was relieved that he hadn’t had to shoot him after all, and that seeing his friend and Sarah being married was a rare treat which he hoped that John was enjoying as much as he did!

  Regardless of John, or anyone else for that matter, the two main parties in the wedding later agreed that the day seemed as if it would never end. At last all the celebrations were over and they were left to enjoy their wedding night in the house that she had shared with John. He was lodging with the Middletons until he left for England.

  A radiant Mrs Lieutenant Frank Wright and her husband were the last to leave. Tom’s departure was early. He announced loudly to anyone who would listen that it was time that the newly-weds were left alone to enjoy themselves: a hint of which few took notice, but with which the said newly-weds were in full agreement.

  ‘The only good thing that I can say about our sojourn in the bush,’ Alan remarked, when they were alone at last, ‘is that I didn’t have to share you with others. I thought that today was never going to be over. I will say one thing for Tom—he seems to have more fine feelings than all our Exclusive friends put together, even if he doesn’t always express them in the most tactful or delicate fashion.’

  ‘Are you going to be tactful now?’ asked Sarah softly, leaning forward and beginning to untie his cravat. ‘If so, I shall insist on carrying you up to bed rather than the other way round if that is the only way in which I can get there.’

  ‘I suppose that is a hint as delicate as Tom’s, so I’ll do my best to oblige you, madam,’ said Alan, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her up to her bedroom—which was now theirs, ‘but only on condition that my cravat is not the only piece of clothing we shall be removing tonight.’

  ‘What,’ said Sarah, panting as though she had run upstairs with him and not the other way round, ‘am I not to wear this truly elegant nightgown that Sukie made for me with her own fair hands?’

  Alan, who was now kneeling on the bed after pulling off his shirt, leaned over her, murmuring, ‘Later, perhaps—or perhaps not.’

  ‘Now what kind of answer is that?’ replied Sarah, while he was turning his attention to removing her wedding dress.

  Once Alan had manoeuvred it safely over her head he tossed it on to her bedside chair, saying, ‘An answer that depends on how much we enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘I hope that there’s no doubt of that,’ she threw back at him, ‘since I have spent the three weeks since we were rescued looking forward to tonight.’

  ‘No more than I,’ Alan told her; he was now off the bed and was busily divesting himself of his breeches. ‘You have no notion of the state I have been in, too. Delaying marriage is a matter guaranteed to try a man’s body as well as his soul.’

  When Sarah began to remove her petticoat and drawers, he threw himself on to the bed beside her before she had time fully to appreciate the sight of a naked man, fully aroused.

  ‘No, allow me,’ he told her. ‘It’s a husband’s privilege to prepare his wife for the final act.’ Which he did by transforming her into Lady Eve before the fall, lying alongside his Lord Adam.

  ‘Oh, is there an etiquette in all this?’ asked Sarah mischievously. ‘I wasn’t aware of that. Please do instruct me. I shouldn’t like to be doing the wrong thing.’

  They both began to laugh together. Later Sarah was to muse
on how much mirth there had been in their mutual pleasure. Nothing that she had read, heard, or overheard, had ever led her to believe how joyful the whole business was.

  Laughter over, Alan knelt over her where she lay, open before him. ‘Oh, Sarah,’ he whispered, his voice as soft and loving as he could make it. ‘I shall try not to hurt you, but in the throes of pleasuring the woman he loves a man cannot always keep that promise.’

  Sarah rose a little, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘No need to tell me that,’ she said. ‘Dear Alan, you are as gentle a man as I have ever met. All your patients bear witness to your kindness and how hard you try to save them from unnecessary pain.’

  The look that she gave him was so loving that Alan’s hitherto fine control was lost. He muttered something which she could not quite hear, and then his hands roved over her body, touching and stroking her, first gently and then more strongly, until he brought her to the point where she was begging him for more. What that more was Sarah did not completely know—only that she wanted it and would not be complete until she had it.

  At last, aware that his bride was as ready for him as she would ever be, Alan entered Sarah to achieve the perfect union in which mind and body both share: a union that transcends and transforms the mundane acts of everyday living and loving. When both lovers climax together the two become one in that brief moment of time when the conscious self is lost so that, afterwards, it is hard to describe what actually happened in words which make sense.

  Afterwards, lying there fulfilled, his arms around her and hers around him, Sarah murmured brokenly to Alan, ‘I had not known…I could not imagine…or describe, now it is over, how wonderful that was… Is it always like this for everyone?’