That night she had paced Andrew’s study in nervous recollection of the empty, lonely year that was past. Her position in the colony was ambiguous. There had been no invitations to any of the parties or receptions held during that time ‒ and she admitted now that she had gone on desperately believing that this was out of consideration for her mourning. But there was no mention of invitations in the future, nor had one come from Government House for more than twelve months.
Another year without social acknowledgement from Mrs. King would mean the end of the position Andrew had won for her in the colony.
The realization of this had driven her, early the following morning, to write a letter to Madame Balvet, announcing her intention of bringing the children on a visit to Banon. But the inspection of farm and house was over, and now she must face her problems.
She touched the thick paper before her uncertainly. If she accepted the situation as it stood, she told herself, her sons would grow up in an unhappy position midway between the emancipists and the officer-clique. And whom would they marry ‒ the daughters of ex-convicts? They would, in time, fight Andrew’s battle all over again; however little real thought they gave to it, unconsciously they would hold her responsible. Sara had no intention of being pitied by her own sons.
With sudden impatience she ripped the sheet across, screwed it up tightly, and threw it into the fire.
‘Cher Louis …’ she wrote for a second time.
If only Louis would return ‒ there was her salvation. Louis would come back to Banon, wifeless, and with a young daughter to take care of. No man remained for long in such a position. He must be made to marry her. If she were the wife of a free settler again there would be no need for David to pretend that he hated his friends, in order to spare her feelings ‒ or for him to instruct Duncan in the things he must not say to her. Louis could do all this for her ‒ if he would.
She frowned heavily over the words on the paper. This year of waiting had so far brought no letter from Louis. It was quite possible that he had married again in England; it was even possible that he no longer wanted to live here in New South Wales. Many things were possible, and the power of Madame Balvet must not be overlooked. The idea had taken only a week to grow in her mind, but already possessed her utterly. Louis must return ‒ and somehow be made to marry her.
‘Louis! Louis …!’ she whispered. ‘Why do you not come back?’
She thought with a kind of helpless rage of the distance separating them ‒ the distance and the time. She realized uneasily the diverse influences which might be at work on him; other women would find him attractive, either for himself or his fortune; he might be beguiled by the ease and luxury of life in London; he might hesitate now to bring a young daughter to the loneliness of Banon. A dozen different things might combine to keep him away from her. She looked savagely down at the paper in her hands. Even this would take six months to reach him ‒ and perhaps by then he would no longer care for the news of Banon.
The sense of her own inactivity infuriated her. She thrust her chair back abruptly, and began to pace the room. How did one influence a man at thirteen thousand miles distance? How did one, in the dull, hard-working life of the colony, compete against the brilliance of London society? Did Louis remember her in fashions that were outmoded, as the mother of three children who always seemed to crowd about her? Her conversation lacked the lustre of the drawing-room ‒ and she did not possess the mysterious quality of Madame Balvet. She pressed her hands together as she paced. What could she do? Only write Louis that his farm had been inspected with the ruthless efficiency Andrew had taught her. She paused. Perhaps efficiency was not what Louis looked for in a woman. Would he have preferred a charming bewilderment?
She halted before the fireplace, her hands locked tightly together.
‘Andrew would have known what to do,’ she said aloud, ‘He would have known how to handle Louis.’
There appeared nothing incongruous to her in the idea that Andrew would have bent his mind to this problem of Louis. Marriage to the Frenchman, if it could be achieved, would be a business proposition, a move which Andrew himself would have approved. It would be a step taken to safeguard the interests of his sons, to hold together the possessions he had built up, until they were old enough to take them over from her. Andrew would not easily have forgotten his own fight against her position as an ex-convict, and the ways it might affect their children. He would have been prepared to go to even these lengths to protect their interests. She thought of Louis, his dark, thin face, and his air of worldly wisdom. Comparing him with Andrew, she wondered if it would ever be possible to love him deeply, apart from being attracted by him ‒ and she wondered if he would ever love her. She thought Louis had the passion of love, but not the tenderness; his knowledge of women would be wide, but superficial. Probably many had interested him for a time, but she doubted if any one woman had ever wholly possessed him, absorbed him. Louis would never sit at any woman’s feet to take her orders. He was an individualist, unpredictable; his emotions not to be trusted completely, even in marriage. He was unbiddable, uncertain ‒ and somehow she must get him back to New South Wales.
Suddenly she dropped into the low chair before the fire, balancing on the edge, and holding her hands to the blaze. The heat scorched her face, yet she savoured the warmth, which seemed, momentarily, to take away her fear and doubts about the future.
Then she cupped her chin in her hands. How would Jeremy behave if she married Louis? Jeremy loved her; he worked with the purpose of three men because of that love, and the love he had had for Andrew. Many times during the past year she had thought about Jeremy ‒ thought regretfully that his position was no better than her own. He might love her deeply, but his love would not benefit her children. Jeremy, who, after Andrew, was of greater worth than any man she had known, was an ex-convict like herself. Did he ever think of asking her to marry him? That much she never knew. He seemed to understand every thought in her head, the motive for every action; he knew all her harshnesses and cruelties, as Andrew had never done. It was always Jeremy who had pointed out her failings, forcing her to live up to his idea of what Andrew’s wife should be. With no illusions about her, yet he still said he loved her.
Slowly, she shook her head at the thought. There must never be an exchange of love between herself and Jeremy. Emancipist and emancipist … If she married again it must be to pull herself upwards, to regain what Andrew had won for her. Marriage to Jeremy would be going over completely to the opposite camp; that was not to even be considered. In ten years from now, her sons should not have to regret the follies their mother had committed.
But she was well aware that Jeremy had the qualities she would never find in Louis. Jeremy was devoted and loyal, with sometimes an unnameable tenderness in his voice when he spoke to her. For her sake he was working himself half to death on three farms that would never belong to him; all these years he had helped build up a fortune in another man’s name. She supposed that she had loved Jeremy, in a fashion ‒ not as her love for Andrew, nor for Richard ‒ ever since the night of the convict raid on Kintyre. Perhaps it went back even before that, but her jealousy and suspicion had masked any love she might have felt. If it were possible … She shut her thoughts off abruptly. Jeremy was an ex-convict.
She rose and walked back to the escritoire. The blank page with its two written words stared up at her. She felt a sudden weariness and contempt for herself as the realization of what she would do to Jeremy, and what she would do to her own feelings. She must presently sit down and write to Louis, calculatingly telling him how diligent she had been in his interests, convincing him in unwritten words how diligent a guardian she would be to his child. She knew she didn’t in the least want to mother this unknown daughter of his, but that was part of the bargain she had made in her own mind.
She sat down again and picked up the quill. The trouble was that the bargain did, so far, exist only in her own mind. Louis was thousands of miles away
, beyond her reach, beyond her influence. She gave a quick sigh, and then she began to write.
For more than an hour she wrote, and was still writing when she heard the sound of horses and a carriage in the drive beneath her window. She looked up at the clock; it was after ten, and no one travelled so late without good reason on the lonely Nepean road. Puzzled, she went to the window and drew back the curtains. The carriage had halted some distance away; there was a confusion of voices and sounds as servants called to each other and one of them scrambled to the roof to untie the boxes. Suddenly, in the light of the lanterns they had placed about, she recognized the figure of the man who stood talking to Madame Balvet. He turned and leaned into the carriage, and when he faced the light again, he was carrying a child in his arms, well wrapped in rugs against the cold March night.
Louis had come back to Banon!
Sara waited only long enough to see that no woman alighted with him, and then she let the curtain fall into place.
She hurried across the room, the draught of her passage sending the sheets of her letter swirling. They came to rest on the carpet with a gentle rustle. With her hand on the door-knob, ready to rush out into the hall, she paused, and turned back. Deliberately she walked to the dressing-table, bending close to it, examining her face carefully. Would Louis think she had changed? Had she grown older since he left? To her own eyes she didn’t look any different, but how would he see her compared with the cherished pale complexions of London? From a drawer she brought out powder, and flicked it across her face, anxiously peering at the result. Her hair had already been loosened and brushed for the night; it hung over her shoulders, the same bright colour he would remember. She looked at it with satisfaction, and at the slimness of her figure, which the wrapper revealed. Then she went to the cupboard and took down another wrapper. It was sea-green silk, and Andrew had once said it was like her eyes.
Before she left the room she tore the pages of the letter in two; the pieces burned merrily on the fire. She watched them with a flush of excitement on her cheeks. The letter need never have been written. Louis had come back ‒ alone.
The hall candles had all been hastily lit. The front door still stood open to allow the manservant in with the boxes. The wind blew down directly off the mountains, and Sara shivered as she paused to take in the scene. Louis and Madame Balvet stood close together, talking excitedly in French; the child had almost disappeared into the depths of a high, winged chair. Her hood had slipped back, revealing black hair, and waxy white skin. Her eyes were closed; she took no notice of the bustle about her. Sara started forward.
Louis turned at the sound of her footsteps. Immediately, he came towards her with both hands outstretched.
‘Sara!’
He wasn’t changed. His tanned skin was as tightly stretched as ever across the prominent cheek-bones; he had the same quick, light walk. He was smiling, and at the same time half-laughing.
‘Come, Sara! No word of welcome for me?’
She took his hands tightly in her own. For a moment she found it difficult to speak; she had the sensation of tears pricking at the back of her eyes, and her throat was dry. She was disconcerted; she had not expected his return to affect her in this way. The eighteen months without sight of Louis had made him almost a stranger in her own mind. It was a relief beyond anything she had imagined to find him still familiar, still as he had left the colony. But there was an added familiarity. Crossing the hall, it seemed to her, for perhaps just a second, that she was moving forward to greet her own father. Here was the same thin, dark face, the lean body. Sebastian Dane might also have laughed in just this way.
‘Louis!’ she cried, in a low voice. ‘Of course I welcome you! No one more than I. But this is so unexpected …’
He shrugged. ‘Am I to wait about in Sydney until you give me permission to come to my own home? We arrived back two days ago, and they told me at Glenbarr that you had gone to Banon. I told myself, Louis, there she is ‒ taken possession, as always. She is ruling like a despot at Banon, while you kick your heels here in Sydney. Go and surprise her! Rout her!’
He bent and kissed her hand. ‘And here I am!’
She smiled delightedly. ‘Never was defeat more welcome. I shall retreat with all possible speed and grace.’
‘Oh, but no, Sara! I shall have to have a few days to get used to seeing you, before I let you go back.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘A few days …! I can’t stay so long here alone.’
‘Let gossip make what it will of your staying here,’ he said shortly. ‘Are you not my business partner? And are you not … But, enough of this!’ Laughingly, he tugged at her hand. ‘We chatter too much. Come, I want to present my daughter to you.’
She was led forward to the winged chair. A middle-aged woman, who was obviously a nurse, stood diffidently waiting orders. Madame Balvet was there before them, touching the child on the shoulder to rouse her. Dark, sleepy eyes opened, and looked up wonderingly at Sara.
‘Elizabeth,’ Louis said quietly, ‘this is Mrs. Maclay. You remember I told you about Mrs. Maclay’s three little boys you should have to play with?’
For a few seconds the child stared uncomprehendingly. Then with an effort she collected her wits, and began to push herself forward in the big chair. She rose on unsteady legs, and started to sink in an uneven curtsy. Sara’s hand stopped her.
‘I’m glad to meet you, Elizabeth,’ she said gently.
The child did not answer, merely turned her eyes down to the floor. Her little white face looked pinched and cold, and she plucked at her cloak in a gesture of shyness.
Sara turned slightly. ‘Louis …?’
He nodded, signalling to his housekeeper. ‘She is so tired, ma petite! She has had too much travelling, too much excitement, after all the months of the voyage. In the morning …’
Madame Balvet stooped and lifted Elizabeth up into her arms. From her new height she regarded them solemnly.
‘In the morning,’ Sara said, ‘you shall meet the three little boys. One of them is just your age.’
For a second it seemed that Elizabeth would smile. But she nodded, with a quick jerk of her head, and then settled down against Madame Balvet’s shoulder. Sara and Louis watched her as she was carried away. The nurse trailed behind uncertainly.
‘I hardly know what to make of her,’ Louis said softly. ‘She’s still shy with me, even after all the time we’ve been together. Precocious, I suppose, in ways ‒ and I didn’t mend matters there, for I spoiled her shamefully in London. I’m convinced she wasn’t happy in that great barrack of a house in Gloucestershire, and yet I can’t truly say she seems happy away from it. She might be better here. She rides, of course, as if she had been born on a horse ‒ and she very nearly was. Her mother’s nature is in her in parts.’
‘Does she look like her mother?’
He smiled. ‘That’s the one characteristic of her mother’s I had hoped for ‒ and Elizabeth has it in abundance. She will be a beauty.’
Then he touched her shoulder affectionately. ‘But let us not stand here, Sara! Come with me into the dining-room ‒ Madame Balvet is sending food there.’
Sara sat with him while he ate supper, her fingers curling about the stem of the glass of wine he had poured her.
Madame Balvet insisted upon waiting on him herself. She came and went with trays, two spots of unaccustomed colour showing vividly on her cheeks.
Louis talked rapidly as he ate ‒ disjointed scraps of news and questions thrown at Sara.
‘England is at Nelson’s feet ‒ but most of them don’t care for Emma … Bonaparte had his Grand Army camped on the cliffs of Boulogne.’
‘Invasion?’ Sara asked.
He shrugged. ‘Nelson is there, anyway.’ Then he pointed a chicken leg at her, laughing. ‘But should the good people of England become too frightened of invasion, there’s always the scandals of the Prince of Wales to divert them. Mon Dieu, how that man spends money! He lives, in what is presum
ed to be domestic bliss, with Fitzherbert ‒ who, happily, has the Pope’s brief to tell the world that she’s truly married to His Royal Highness. Poor Princess Caroline is always in trouble of one sort or another ‒ but the people who loathe the Prince rally about her.’ He gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘What atrocious taste she has! My belief is that she could have kept him faithful, more or less, if someone had taken the trouble to show her how to dress. He could hardly be expected to live with such a guy.’
He finished his wine, and pushed the empty glass towards Madame Balvet to be refilled.
‘I made the acquaintance of the Barwells’ Lady Linton,’ he said. ‘She still entertains the Prince occasionally. She’s prodigiously fat. Always seems to wear purple, though I can’t imagine why. Her complexion is the colour of an orange moon.’
Sara smiled at his expression.
He finished his meal, and turned directly to the housekeeper.
‘The box I showed you, Madame ‒ the small one ‒ I should like it brought here.’
She nodded, and left the room.
Louis turned back to Sara. ‘I saw John Macarthur several times when I was in London. He’s pining to be back here. I think he’s expecting to return fairly soon. The court martial, of course, was all in his favour, and I don’t believe our unhappy Governor has come out of the affair very well. Macarthur has a plausible tongue, but the samples of merino wool he brought did far more to win him favour than any other thing. He comes back with a grant of land in the Cowpastures.’
‘Wool …’ Sara murmured.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “wool” … Wool will be more important to this country than anything else. Macarthur has seen that all along. Agriculture will not expand beyond our own needs, but wool will make our fortunes abroad.’
‘Always the businesswoman, Sara! You have not altered, my dear!’
She lifted her head, and her colour heightened a little. ‘And why not? What else is there to occupy me here? I haven’t any gossip of the Court, or of Nelson’s mistress, to beguile you. Treat me kindly, Louis!’
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