by Laura Martin
The silence stretched out for so long George wasn’t sure Alice was going to answer at all.
‘Bill is the reason I’m here,’ she said eventually.
‘The reason you were transported?’
She nodded, then laughed a little bitterly. ‘I know my decisions were my own, I know ultimately I am the reason I am here, but if that lying scoundrel hadn’t come into my life I’d be tucked up safe in my bed in Yorkshire right now, with one of my sisters on either side.’
‘He led you astray?’
She nodded. ‘In so many ways. You know when you meet someone and they sweep you away? They’re so unlike anyone you’ve ever met before. Bill was like that. He waltzed into Whitby, swept me off my feet and convinced me to run away with him.’
George sat back in his chair, imagining the ensuing scandal. Alice might not have been from the very upper echelons of society, but the same rules applied to everyone. No fraternising with men until you were married and certainly no running away with someone so unsuitable.
Alice shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe her own naivety. ‘At first everything was wonderful. He treated me like a queen, but then the cracks began to show. The money ran out, the shine wore off and Bill began to show me his true personality. It wasn’t very nice.’
He could just imagine a younger version of Alice, scared and trapped within her own choices.
‘We started working for a gentleman out in Hampstead,’ Alice said, her voice low and sombre, ‘and although most of the money we earned went to fund Bill’s drinking or his ill-advised schemes, I managed to squirrel enough away to buy food and pay our rent. Each week I would try to hide just a little something, to save up for the coach fare back home.’
‘Your parents would have taken you back?’
George saw the tears in her eyes as Alice nodded. ‘They were good people. I know I hurt them, caused them to suffer because of my behaviour, but they would take me back, I know they would. At least...’
It was two very different things taking back a daughter who’d made a few foolish choices about the young man in her life and taking back a convicted criminal.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter much now. I’m on the other side of the world and it’s unlikely I’ll ever go back.’
‘How did you get here, Alice?’ George asked.
‘It was a particularly bad week. Only Wednesday and Bill had spent all our money on drink. There was nothing for food and our landlord was threatening to throw us out if we didn’t come up with what we owed. Bill suggested we make a midnight trip to the house where we worked to liberate a few choice items.’ Alice shook her head at the memory. ‘I begged him not to go, followed him all the way to Hampstead.’
‘But you went in with him?’
‘Not at first. I refused to sink that low. Whatever else I’d become I was not a criminal. I would not take something that did not belong to me.’ There was a momentary flash of fire in her eyes, then it dwindled and died. ‘I started to walk away, then I heard the scream.’
Alice bit her lip, shaking her head at the memory.
‘I raced inside, thinking Bill had been hurt. Stupid girl that I was still cared for him despite everything he’d done to me.’
‘But it wasn’t him?’
She shook her head.
‘It was Mr Havers, the gentleman we worked for. He was lying in a pool of blood when I got there.’
‘Bill had hurt him?’
‘Hit him over the head with the hammer he carried in his bag of tools. Mr Havers was dead, I could see that from the first moment I entered. Bill thrust the trinket box he’d been in the process of stealing when he’d been disturbed into my arms and told me to run. We didn’t make it out the door.’
‘Mr Havers’s servants caught you?’
She shook her head. ‘Well, in the end I suppose they did, but I told Bill I wasn’t having any part of it. I stopped still and refused to move. He told me I’d be hanged and when I still refused he went to leave without me. By that time the rest of the household was up and they caught us easily.’
‘You weren’t charged for the murder, though?’ George asked. Murder would carry a much harsher sentence—if Alice had been convicted of that she would have been swinging at Tyburn many months ago.
‘No. Bill was covered in Mr Havers’s blood and he had a reputation as a dangerous man. The courts were pleased to see him sentenced to hang for the murder. Me, they just charged with theft for the box Bill had shoved into my hands. Luckily there wasn’t much of value in it so it wasn’t a capital offence.’
‘So you were sentenced to transportation. And Bill, did he hang?’
Alice grimaced. ‘I don’t know. He escaped prison when I was still in England—it was the talk of the city. Who knows if they’ve caught him now, if his sentence has been carried out.’
‘It’s a different life to the one you imagined, I’m sure,’ George said quietly. ‘And it was this Bill that visited you in your dreams?’
Alice nodded and he saw the fear in her eyes again. Even though they were half a world apart this man still held her in his dreadful thrall. There was no way he could be here in Australia, no way he had visited Alice while she lay feverish and hallucinating, but still she was afraid of him.
‘I know he wasn’t really there, but still...’
‘He wasn’t here, Alice, I promise you. It was just a dream. A nightmare.’
She closed her eyes for a minute, her breathing slowing, and for a moment George wondered if she had fallen asleep. Just as he was about to get up and quietly gather the dinner tray she opened them again, looking at him with a renewed intensity.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘Babbling on about my life. That’s the last thing you want to hear.’
She was wrong. He was interested in her life, from her early years to what had brought her to Australia as a convict. No doubt she’d left much of the story out, but now at least he understood a little about the haunted look in her eyes, a little about her deep distrust of men. It wasn’t only her time dodging the violent advances of her fellow convicts on the transport ship that made her mistrustful, but these earlier experiences, too. How awful it must be to fall in love and then to slowly realise the man you’d fallen for was a monster. ‘Get some rest,’ he said, standing and placing a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was cooler now, it didn’t have that feverish heat of the past few days, and he could feel the softness even through the thin cotton of her nightgown. ‘I’ll come and see you in the morning.’
As he left he paused by the door, looking back over his shoulder at her recumbent form. He knew she would never be free from this man who scared her so much, not while she didn’t know if he was still alive or not. Perhaps he could write to his aunt in London, ask her to make some subtle enquiries to see if this Bill had been caught and hanged. Only once Alice knew for sure could she be free.
For a moment he watched her, the subtle rise and fall of her chest, the flickering of her eyes behind her closed eyelids. He’d spent a lot of time in this room the past few days and he felt as though he was beginning to get to know the woman hidden underneath the protective shell she’d covered herself in.
A woman you like a little too much.
He tried to quiet the thought. George wasn’t entirely sure why he’d spent so long at Alice’s bedside—much of it was guilt, he was certain. Guilt for being the one who’d been the reason her wounds had become covered in mud, but deep down he knew there was more to it than just penance for his mistake. He liked Alice, liked her courage and her ability to stand for what she believed was right no matter the opposition. He liked the way her lips curled into a smile when she was amused and the quiet thoughtfulness as she pondered something he’d said.
There was guilt, but there was certainly a whole lot more, too.
Quietly he closed the door, try
ing to suppress the memory of Alice’s body pressed against his in the muddy pond. The soft curves, the red-gold hair that tumbled over her shoulders, the brilliant blue eyes that seemed wise and vulnerable at the same time. There was something about the way she moved, the way she looked at him. All of it made a deep and primal instinct stir somewhere deep inside him and with every passing day he was finding it harder and harder to pretend it wasn’t happening.
‘Guilt,’ he murmured to himself decisively. ‘That’s what you feel.’
Chapter Twelve
The sweltering heat continued without any break and the cloudless sky still promised no rain. George had taken to rising early, to getting out on his land for a few hours immediately after the dawn, then returning home for the heat of midday before heading out as the coolness of dusk approached. He was worried—not that he’d voiced his concerns out loud yet—as the wells all around his properties were drying up and the land was becoming cracked and hardened. The cattle were having to travel further to find anywhere suitable for grazing as the land became dusty and barren.
‘You look serious.’ Alice’s voice startled him from his reverie. George had been looking out of the dining-room window at the dusty enclosure where the kangaroos hopped in the shade of a few trees around the perimeter. It was past ten o’clock, but he was still finishing his breakfast, having risen before five to ride out to a patch of grazing land a few miles east of the house and returned as the sun rose higher in the sky.
‘Should you be up?’ he asked, eyeing her with concern.
‘If I look at those four walls of my bedroom for any longer, I swear I’ll go mad.’
George knew the feeling. He couldn’t bear to stay inside for any length of time, let alone the week Alice had been recuperating after waking up from her delirium. By this point he’d be climbing the walls.
‘Come join me,’ George said, motioning to the seat beside him.
‘I shouldn’t...’
‘Nonsense, sit down.’
She hesitated for a moment longer before giving him a hesitant smile and sitting down beside him.
‘Tea?’ he asked. ‘Or perhaps some toast?’
She glanced longingly at the thick slices of toast set neatly in the rack in the centre of the table with the block of butter alongside.
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘I’m not your guest.’
‘No, you’re not,’ he agreed. ‘You work for me. I own this house, I buy the bread and the butter, I can invite whomever I like to sit at this table and share my meals.’
She blinked and he knew he had been a little too forceful. She was right, of course, her place wasn’t at the table beside him, it was working in the kitchen or cleaning the house. Although nothing like as strict as England, even here in Australia the social order was important to people. Convict workers shouldn’t sit at their master’s tables, sharing their master’s food. Still, George had never felt comfortable with the divide. Both Robertson and Crawford had been convict workers when they’d come to the farm. After the fateful afternoon when they’d saved his life his father had welcomed them into the Fitzgerald home as if they were members of the family. Perhaps it was this example that meant he had never been able to rule with an iron fist like some landowners who took on convict workers. Or perhaps it was just his nature.
‘The toast does look good,’ she said, sliding into the seat next to him. He watched as she buttered a piece of thick toast and took a bite. ‘Delicious. So why did you look so serious before I disturbed you?’
‘I was thinking about the farm. We still haven’t had any rain while you’ve been convalescing.’
‘Is it normally this hot?’ Alice asked, looking out of the window, following his gaze from minutes before.
‘No.’ He laughed. ‘Everyone thinks of Australia as this hot, desert-ridden country, but they’re wrong. It’s so big it has a multitude of climates. In the centre it’s hot, with rolling dunes and red earth, but the south of the country is cooler, much more like England. And here we get the warm summers, the hours of sunshine, but it isn’t tropical or arid by any means.’
‘You’ve been to the centre of the country?’ Alice asked, her eyes widening.
‘When I was younger. My father loved this country, even back then when it was just a fledgling colony. He thought it was important for me to experience not just this small pocket of Australia, the area the English have claimed as their own, but to explore further afield. To see what it was like before we settled here, to understand the land and its people.’
George thought back to the six months they’d spent travelling deep into the interior, a time when he’d still respected his father, held him in awe even. Before that he’d not thought much about the country he lived in, having spent his entire life in Australia, but after that trip he had realised why his father never wanted to return to England. There was something captivating about the ever-changing landscapes and the tribes as different as people from England and Russia were to each other.
‘Wasn’t it dangerous?’ Alice asked.
George shrugged. ‘The people were mainly very peaceful. Cautious of us more than we were of them. The Bathurst War was still very fresh in their minds and we were given a wide berth even though we were venturing deep into their territories.’
‘You love this country, don’t you?’ Alice asked softly.
‘I do. One day I’m sure you will, too.’
‘I don’t know. It’s different when you’ve been forced to live somewhere. My life was in England. My home, my family...’ She paused, popping the last of the toast into her mouth as she got lost in her memories. ‘I suppose I’ll find out. It’s unlikely I’ll ever go back to England.’ She smiled, although there was sadness in her expression. ‘Perhaps ask me in twenty years, when I’ve had time to forget the harshness of my journey here and the first few months. Perhaps then I might feel differently.’
‘You could go back to England. Some do.’
‘Very few. The price of a ticket is so expensive. And it seems that even those who are determined to save up take so long to do so that by the time they’ve gathered enough funds they’ve made a life for themselves here. People they don’t want to leave behind.’
They fell silent. George could see Alice was contemplating the uncertainty of her future. It must be strange not to know even vaguely what your life would be like in five, ten, twenty years. Even though he wasn’t sure of the smaller details, George knew the general direction his life would take, he always had. In twenty years’ time he’d be running his farm, expanding it slowly over time. He’d have a wife, a brood of children, hopefully strong and eager to take on some of the more physical aspects of running a large farm. Alice didn’t have any of that certainty. She was stuck in a country she would never have imagined she would end up in, her future nothing like the dreams she would have had as a child.
‘I don’t want to think about the future,’ Alice said suddenly. ‘A week ago I was lying delirious in bed—things could be so much worse.’
It was wonderful to watch Alice slowly relax into herself. When he’d first brought her back to Mountain View Farm she had been negative all the time, thinking the worst in people. Now he was beginning to see flashes of positivity.
‘Would you care to take a little stroll around the garden?’ George asked. ‘If you’re feeling strong enough.’
‘That would be lovely. You can show me all the native plants.’
She stood, leaving the room for a few seconds to retrieve her bonnet that had rested on a hook in the hall since their last trip out together. That fateful afternoon when they’d ended up slipping and sliding through the mud.
‘Shall we?’ he asked, offering her his arm.
She hesitated for just a second, looking around her as if to check no one was watching, no one judging her too presumptuous for slipp
ing her delicate hand into rest in the crook of his elbow.
Outside it was sweltering, the sun high in the sky and giving off a brilliant white light. They walked quickly across the small exposed area until they were under the shade of the trees.
‘This is a eucalyptus tree,’ George said, pausing to take one of the leaves between his fingers and stroke it gently. ‘See how the leaves hang down towards the ground. All species of eucalyptus trees do that—it is an easy way to recognise them.’
They moved on, with George pointing out rather beautiful specimens of gymea lily and banksia.
‘This is one of my favourites,’ he said, pausing beside a delicate flower made up of a stem and six bell-like flowers drooping from it. ‘They’re called Christmas bells,’ he said. ‘My mother planted them many years ago and the hardy little flowers have flourished, despite their delicate appearance.’
‘You really love all of this, don’t you?’ Alice asked quietly, a look of wonder on her face.
‘I know it probably seems terribly dull...’
‘No,’ she said forcibly. ‘Not dull. Being passionate about something is never dull.’
‘Even when that something is botany?’
‘My father used to collect coins. He would search in curiosity shops and go to house clearances. The look of excitement on his face when he found a coin to add to his collection was heart-warming.’
‘What is your passion, Alice?’ he asked.
A darkness passed over her face and George regretted the question. Of course she hadn’t been allowed to indulge her own interests these past couple of years and it was cruel of him to remind her of the fact.
‘I don’t think I have one,’ she said, resting her hand on the bark of another eucalyptus tree, her fingers caressing the rough surface.
‘One day you will, Alice, once this is all over. I know it seems like your sentence lasts for ever, but in ten, twenty years’ time it will just be a distant memory, a small part of an otherwise happy life.’
‘That’s a very nice way to look at it,’ she said softly, her eyes coming up to meet his. George felt the ground lurch under his feet as she held his gaze. She looked beautiful in the sunshine, her hair curling in red-gold waves around her shoulders and her skin flushed in the heat. His eyes flickered to her lips, rosy and full and so inviting. In that moment he wanted to kiss her more than he’d ever wanted anything before in his life.