‘What happened here?’ Alec demanded of Tregloan.
‘He grabbed her wrist and tried to pull her onto the dance floor,’ Tregloan said. ‘Wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘I just asked the lady for a dance,’ the black bearded man responded.
‘Outside, Jennings,’ Tehan said in a voice that brooked no argument.
‘One of yours?’ Alec enquired.
Tehan grunted and Jennings balled his fists at his side, hot angry eyes going from his boss to Eliza before he stomped outside with Tehan following. Alec watched them go with a feeling of disquiet. He knew Jennings’ type. They were trouble.
The master of ceremonies for the evening hurried to the bandstand and cleared his throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, time for a reel.’ His voice sounded unnaturally high and it took a moment or two for the band to resume playing.
Slowly the crowd relaxed and the dance floor filled again while those not dancing gathered in knots to discuss the altercation that had just occurred, casting furtive glances at Eliza Penrose, who stood in the company of Netty Burrell, and the Tregloans.
Alec joined them. ‘Are you hurt, Miss Penrose?’ he asked.
‘See for yourself,’ Netty said, holding up Eliza’s right wrist, where the deep red marks were already beginning to purple into bruising.
‘The man was drunk,’ Eliza said. ‘He tried to drag me on to the dance floor.’
‘He pulled her right over and when Tregloan here went to help her, he threatened to hit him. That’s when you came in,’ Netty said.
Eliza looked up at Tregloan and smiled. ‘Thank you for intervening.’
Tregloan shuffled his feet. ‘Don’t like to see a lady imposed on like that. I knew your father, Miss Penrose. My cousin worked at Tregear. He was a good man.’
Eliza gave him a tremulous smile and she laid a hand on his arm. ‘Thank you, Mr Tregloan.’
The young man smiled. ‘This here’s my wife, Jenny.’
Jenny Tregloan held out her hand. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Penrose.’
‘Go back to the dancing,’ Eliza said. ‘I’m all right.’
The Tregloans moved away, taking up a place in a set of the Lancers, and Eliza turned to Alec. The gas lights caught the unshed tears that glistened in her lashes.
‘I think I would like to go home,’ she said.
Alec looked for Ian. He was participating in the set to the best of his ability and his eyes were only for Susan Mackie. He didn’t need Alec to be his nursery maid. With Jennings somewhere in the dark, Eliza Penrose needed him more.
‘I’ll escort you home,’ he said. ‘Netty, if you have a chance, could you tell Ian to make his own way home?’
Netty smiled, her gaze also on Ian and Susan. ‘I think the lad is more than capable of finding his own way home, Mr McLeod.’
‘Did you come alone?’ Alec asked Eliza as they threaded their way to the door.
Spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. ‘As you probably know very well, Uncle Charles is in Melbourne and Mrs Harris had no wish to attend, but I came with Netty Burrell.’
Relieved that the young woman’s reputation was not irretrievably damaged, Alec offered her his arm and they stepped into the night.
The shock of the cold after the warm press of the hall caused Eliza to catch her breath. The whole evening had been a disaster, from her choice of gown to the incident with that man, Jennings. A respectable grieving woman wouldn’t even have considered going to a dance, let alone actually taking to the floor.
After her lack of proper mourning and her eagerness to take the position at the school, the matrons of Maiden’s Creek would surely label her a troublemaker.
‘Take my arm, Miss Penrose, the road’s a bit uncertain in parts and I’d hate for you to twist an ankle in a pothole.’
She hesitated before slipping her hand into the crooked arm he offered her. His warmth and solidity provided a reassuring presence and walking next to him, she had a sense of safety and security she had not felt since her father’s death.
‘I’m sorry to have spoiled your evening,’ she said.
‘You haven’t,’ he said. ‘I only went for Ian’s sake. I’m not one for dances.’
‘I can’t get used to the fact that it is the end of June and midwinter,’ Eliza said. ‘Such a back-to-front country.’ She could see only the profile of his strong face in the dark. ‘How long have you been in Australia?’
‘Five years. After the hills and mists of Scotland, I wondered what I’d come to. It was midsummer and the country around Ballarat was baked hard, the bush tinder dry. Then we nearly froze in winter. But I’ve learned to love the Australian bush and the strange seasons.’
‘Do you miss the Highlands?’
Alec laughed. ‘I’m not from the Highlands,’ he said. ‘Never been further north than Fort William. No, I was born and bred in Lanarkshire in the heart of the coal mines.’
‘And I come from the tin mines of Cornwall.’
‘Aye, but the difference is you were the lady in the grand house on the hill, while I and my family lived in a two-up, two-down row house in Wishaw.’
‘What does that matter? I don’t have the grand house any more. I have nothing. My father and his hubris saw to that. You are an educated, intelligent man. The mine superintendent, no less. How did you escape?’
‘Escape,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. I would call it luck.’
‘Why?’
‘My father was a great believer in education. He fought for Ian and me to attend school, even though my contemporaries were already going down the mine at the age of twelve. But that would have been my fate if it hadn’t been for my schoolmaster. He spoke to my father and persuaded him I should apply for a scholarship. My father worked extra shifts to ensure I attended the Scottish Episcopal College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Glenalmond.’
She smiled. ‘It sounds more like a bible college.’
‘It was intended to train young men for the ministry of the Scottish Episcopal Church, but beggars cannot be choosers. From there I won another scholarship to university in Edinburgh. I studied geology and spent some time in Germany learning engineering. I had no intention of going back to mining.’
‘But you did?’
‘I had no choice. My mother died and my father was in poor health so I had to return to Wishaw for Ian’s sake. I count myself lucky.’
‘Some people,’ Eliza said, ‘can be lucky and for others such luck as they may have had trickles out of their fingers. That wasn’t luck, Alec McLeod, that was your own hard work.’
‘And you, Miss Penrose?’
‘Eliza,’ she said.
‘Eliza.’
‘I am not one of the lucky ones,’ she said. ‘If anything, the opposite. Did Will tell you the sad story of the Tregear mine?’
‘He mentioned that your father made some poor investments.’
‘Tregear itself was just about worked out so he cast around for other opportunities. When they failed, we lost everything. Everything. Will came out here to work for our uncle and my mother moved in with her sister in Bath. As for me …’ She shrugged. ‘When you are trained for nothing, you have to make do with what you have. In my case I had two choices: either a lady’s companion or a governess. I chose the latter. I found that while I loved teaching, being a governess was not to my liking, so I have been teaching at a ladies’ academy for the last three years. Then came Will’s letter about the Shenandoah … The rest you probably know.’
Alec said nothing, but the muscle in his arm tensed beneath her fingers and he seemed to draw her closer. They had reached the path leading up to Cowper’s house and she slipped her hand from his elbow.
‘I can make my way from here,’ she said.
He didn’t move. ‘I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I didn’t see you safely to your door, Miss Penrose.’
Eliza recognised a stubborn man when she met one so she chose not to argue but set off up
the path with Alec following. Halfway, she caught the toe of her shoe on a rock and nearly fell, but Alec caught her arm, righting her.
‘Such silly shoes,’ she said apologetically. ‘I knew I should have worn something more sensible. They’re ruined now.’ It seemed everything about this harsh landscape conspired against the pretty and frivolous.
The front door was locked and Eliza gave a tentative knock.
It was answered by Mrs Harris, dressed in her nightgown and a man’s dressing gown, her hair in a long plait over her shoulder. She held up a lamp. ‘I didn’t expect you home so soon,’ she said and her gaze drifted past them to the Mechanics’ Institute below where the music drifted up on the still night air.
‘I—I … felt a little unwell and Mr McLeod was good enough to walk me home,’ Eliza said in the full knowledge that Mrs Harris would hear the whole ghastly story in due course. One thing Eliza had learned very quickly in her short time in Maiden’s Creek: gossip ran around the town like mercury through the crushing tables.
Mustering her last shred of dignity, Eliza turned and thanked Alec for escorting her home. He turned away, taking the steep path with the ease and agility of a man used to the hills. She lingered at the door until the night swallowed him up before turning inside to the warmth of her own bed.
Rather than return to the dance, Alec went home. Even as he approached the cottage, his instinct prickled. The door to the cottage stood ajar. He paused and called out Ian’s name, a habit, even though he knew Ian wouldn’t hear him, but the cottage was in darkness and he had no reason to assume his brother had returned early.
He pushed the door fully open and took a step back, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. A plaintive meow announced the presence of Windlass and he could make out the shape of the cat crouched under a bush. He clucked encouragingly but Windlass did not move, voicing his displeasure to Alec.
Alec swallowed and stepped into the cottage, fumbling for the candle and safety matches they kept just inside the door. His shaking fingers closed on both and he lit the candle with difficulty before holding it up. The small flame illuminated a scene of devastation.
While the town had been at the dance, someone had broken into the cottage and every room had been ransacked. The drawers in the dresser had been pulled out and upended, and the cupboard doors stood open, crockery, pots and pans strewn across the floor. The bits and pieces on the mantelpiece, including the McLeod family clock that they had brought from Scotland, had been swept onto the floor. The glass and the casing of the old clock were smashed beyond repair.
A gasp behind him made him start and he nearly dropped the candle as Ian stepped across the threshold. He stood for a long moment beside Alec, his gaze darting from one corner of their humble home to another.
Ian moved first. He stooped and picked up the studio portrait taken of their parents on their wedding day. The frame was in splinters and the glass shattered. He looked at Alec with tears in his eyes. ‘Who would do this?’
Alec shook his head and checked the two bedrooms. Like the living room, both had been thoroughly turned over: the mattresses pulled from the bed and slit open, shedding stuffing across the room like snow, the chest of drawers upended, and on the floor was every item of clothing. Alec’s travelling box had been pulled from under the bed, the lock forced open and his personal papers torn and scattered. The image of Catriona and himself on their wedding day, which he kept by his bed, lay face down on the floor. He turned it over, his chest constricting at the sight of the cracked glass that now obscured Catriona’s beloved face.
He sank to his haunches in the middle of the detritus of his life and ran a hand through his hair. His bed had been shifted in the search and, fortuitously, the clod who had moved it had dragged one of the legs onto the loose board that concealed the plans. He shifted the bed and lifted the floorboard, relieved to see the oilskin package still secure in its hiding place.
Ian’s footfall creaked on the floorboard behind him. ‘Who would do this?’ he asked again.
Alec lifted the package out and twisted to look up at his brother. ‘I think I know.’
‘Who?’
‘Black Jack Tehan and his men.’
Ian looked down at the package in Alec’s hand. ‘Were they after the plans?’
‘I suspect they were.’
‘I told you they would bring trouble.’ Ian’s normally calm eyes flared with anger. ‘Have you told her about them yet?’
Alec shook his head. ‘I need to find an appropriate time.’
Ian snorted and turned back to the living room where he began to restore order with much banging of pots and scraping of furniture. He had every right to be angry.
Alec stood and set the package down on the ruin of his bed. He joined his brother, stooping to pick up the broken clock. Every Sunday night his father’s ritual had been the winding of this clock to ensure the gentle tock would carry them through another week.
‘Where’s Windlass?’ Ian asked, turning in a circle.
‘Outside and very cross,’ Alec said.
‘I suppose we should be grateful that the thugs didn’t take out their frustration on him.’
A lump rose in Alec’s throat. Whoever had been sent to look for the plans did not need to inflict so much damage and killing a defenceless animal could well have been part of the sport. ‘He’s smart,’ he said. ‘He knew to stay out of sight. He’ll be keeping low and will be back when he’s hungry.’ Or at least he hoped so.
It didn’t take the brothers long to restore order to their simple home. Ian, who was handy with a needle, even managed to mend the mattresses sufficiently to allow them somewhere to sleep.
Just as they were about to go to bed, Windlass appeared at the back door, demanding an apology for the inconvenience.
Alec lay awake on the now lumpy mattress, his arms behind his head and the purring cat on his chest, staring up at the ceiling while his mind roiled. If anyone was responsible for the sacking of the McLeod house it had to be Tehan.
Tehan was the only other person who knew of, or suspected, the existence of Penrose’s plans and it could be no coincidence that he and his crew had come into town that night. The question that went unanswered was whether Tehan was acting for himself or for Cowper.
Alec needed to talk to Eliza but he just didn’t know when or how.
‘Face it, you’re a coward, McLeod,’ he told the cat and suspected Windlass probably agreed.
Twelve
8 July 1873
During the week following the dance, Eliza settled into a routine at the school, where Flora Donald had—with a great show of reluctance—increased her two half-days to full days. Between navigating the treacherous waters of Flora Donald’s ongoing antagonism and a number of students who simply did not want to be tied to a school desk, Eliza found she returned to Cowper’s house exhausted at the end of a school day.
Charlie O’Reilly managed three or four days a week at most and as she was always the last to arrive and the first to leave, Eliza could never keep the child long enough to learn more about her. The child seemed to have no friends. During breaks she perched on a log on the far side of the yard, never invited to join in the skipping games or hopscotch by the other girls. The only one who showed her the slightest kindness was Joe Trevalyn. Joe was hampered from joining in the boy’s rough-housing games by his club foot but, the other children seemed to accept and like the boy and he was no outcast, unlike Charlie.
One damp Tuesday morning, Charlie arrived very late. She skulked into the room and before she could slide onto the bench next to Joe, Flora called Charlie up to the front of the room. Charlie went slowly, her gaze on the floorboards, dragging her feet.
‘You’re late again, Charlotte. And where were you yesterday?’
‘Sorry, miss,’ Charlie said.
Eliza took a breath—up close she could see the child had a blackened eye. It was probably a few days old, already yellowing.
‘As writing l
ines seems to do nothing for your punctuality, hold out your hand.’
Charlie’s mouth tightened and she held up a shaking hand. The children behind her seemed to hold their breath as Flora brought the cane down with well-practised strokes on the child’s palm, twice, sharply. Charlie hissed with the pain but otherwise made no sound.
‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ Flora said. ‘Go back to your seat.’
Charlie returned to her place beside Joe. The boy leaned over and whispered something to her. Eliza hoped they were kind words.
At the end of the day, Eliza positioned herself at the door and managed to catch Charlie by the frayed and filthy collar. She pointed at the child’s desk in the schoolroom. ‘Wait there for me,’ she ordered.
When she had seen the last student safely off the premises, she returned to Charlie, who sat biting a filthy fingernail. She reminded Eliza of a half-tamed animal, seeking human contact but ready to flee at the first threat.
‘I gotta go,’ Charlie said. ‘Ma’ll kill me.’
‘Who gave you the black eye? Did your mother hit you?’
‘Nah, that was one of her customers. I was too slow. Ma doesn’t hit me unless I’ve done something real bad. Please can I go, Miss?’
‘I won’t keep you long,’ Eliza said. ‘I would just like to know more about you. Let’s start with your age.’
Charlie shrugged.
‘You must know how old you are?’
‘I think I’m ten,’ Charlie said grudgingly. She was so small she could have been mistaken for a six-year-old.
‘What am I to do with you?’ Eliza wondered, flicking through the results of several short tests she had given the child. ‘Your arithmetic is well in advance of your age but your reading is that of two levels below and your letter hand is appalling.’
‘I suppose you’re going to try and stop me coming like that bastard, Emerton,’ Charlie said, turning a face full of defiance to Eliza.
‘You do not, under any circumstances, swear in front of me or any of the other children, Charlotte.’
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