The Bushranger's Wife

by Cheryl Adnams

  Pru clapped along with him until Henry fell back on his bottom again, letting out another gurgling giggle.

  ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ Pru gushed.

  Jack’s heart was so full of love for them he thought he would burst. What wouldn’t he do to protect his family? He may never have killed a man before, but he would gladly kill anyone who even attempted to harm his beautiful wife and son.

  ‘He is wonderful,’ Jack said, pulling her against his side and kissing her. He rolled her onto her back on the blanket.

  ‘Jack! Henry,’ Pru tried to argue and squirm away from him, but he only held on tighter and kissed her more fervently.

  ‘He doesn’t mind his mummy and daddy kissing, do you, son?’

  Henry crawled across the blanket and joined in the cuddle, making them all laugh.

  ‘Da!’

  And the laughter stopped.

  Jack sat up and stared at Henry who had plopped back to his bottom again.

  ‘Did he just …?’

  Pru sat up, too, smiling broadly.

  ‘Did he just say “Da”?’

  ‘Oh, Jack, I think it’s too early for him to know actual words.’

  ‘For other kids maybe, but my boy is a genius!’ Jack scooped Henry up and tossed him in the air, catching him easily. The giggles coming out of his child had him higher than any shot of whiskey could ever achieve.

  ‘Say it again, son. Da. Da.’

  ‘Da,’ Henry repeated and squealed with laughter when Jack tossed him in the air again.

  ‘My son is a genius!’ Jack announced proudly.

  ‘I hardly think one word makes him a genius,’ Pru teased, ruffling Henry’s soft hair. ‘And it’s barely a word.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Standing and speaking in the same day? We should enrol him in the new school.’

  Pru took Henry from Jack. ‘It’s a few years too soon for that.’

  ‘Not for my boy.’

  Pru laughed again. ‘Are you going somewhere?’

  ‘Huh?’

  She lifted his new bowler hat from the grass where he’d dropped it. He’d seen it in the newspaper. It was the latest fashion statement and he’d ordered it from London. The thing had cost him a fortune. It was his downfall, his addiction to the latest fashion trends. A man in business had to look good though.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ His mood soured when he remembered his meeting with Viktor. He glanced at his pocket watch.

  Damn, he was running late.

  ‘I have to go into the office for a while.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday,’ Pru complained.

  ‘Coaches still run on weekends, my love,’ he said. ‘You wanted me to be a businessman. If I’d stuck with bushranging I would run my own schedule and I would be able to spend my Sundays with my darling wife and genius son.’

  ‘Until you ended up with a bullet in you, again,’ Pru sighed. ‘Very well. Will you be home for dinner?’

  ‘I shall do my utmost.’

  He kissed her deeply. He hated the thought of leaving her, or of handing over so much of his hard-earned—well, hard-stolen—cash to a man as vicious and corrupt at Viktor. But, he reminded himself again, he was doing this for her. For her, and for Henry. They wouldn’t be safe until Viktor had been paid, and was gone from the district.

  As he reached the side of the house, heading to the stables, he turned back once more and smiled at his little family, a picture of love and innocence in the late afternoon sunshine. Yes, he would do anything it took to keep them safe.

  ***

  When the sun began to set, the evening cooled and it was time to get Henry fed and ready for bed. Jack had said he would only be a short while, and as she prepared dinner she wondered what could be keeping him. A drink with Bobby most likely. Sharing the good news of his genius son. She chuckled. She couldn’t begrudge him that pleasure.

  The knock at the door surprised her. She’d been expecting Jack, but why was he knocking at the door?

  ‘It’s about time.’ She opened the door and immediately wished that she hadn’t when she saw the man standing there. Tall and slim, with unkempt hair and a growth of beard, she took him for a drifter.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, keeping the door only slightly ajar.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’

  ‘Are you a friend of his?’

  He snorted derisively. ‘You could say that.’

  She was sure she had never seen this man before and she really didn’t like the way he looked at her. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Viktor.’

  Viktor? How did she know that name? Her mind rolled back through all the conversations she’d ever had with Jack. A vague recollection came to mind, a long distant memory of the name. Then she noticed the scar across his left eye, and it hit her like a cold wind coursing through her body. Viktor the Vicious.

  ‘Jack’s not here,’ she told him, and tried to close the door on him.

  But the door wouldn’t close and she looked down to see that he had stuck his foot in to keep it open. Being stronger than her, he easily pushed the door wide open again and she had to step back as he walked in.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t just push your way into my home.’

  Her son took that moment to gurgle and Viktor wandered across to the little bassinet on the floor next to the rocking chair.

  ‘Cute little bugger,’ Viktor said and Henry let out a cry when he leaned down to rub his belly.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he asked, scowling further, if that was possible.

  She wanted to say that Henry didn’t like Viktor any more than she did, but she felt it was safer to hold her tongue.

  ‘He’s hungry.’ She leaned down to pick up her beloved baby. ‘I need to feed him. So if you don’t mind, you should come back later, or wait outside ’til Jack gets home.’

  Pru ground her teeth with frustration when Viktor ignored her and simply sat at the dining room table. ‘I’ll wait right here.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ she questioned, hoping she’d find some way of getting him to leave.

  ‘Jack owes me money.’

  ‘Why would he owe you money?’ she asked. The arrogant smirk on Viktor’s face did nothing to calm her nerves.

  ‘You and I both know what he is. What he does for a living.’

  ‘What he did,’ she corrected him.

  Viktor huffed out a laugh. ‘You thought he’d quit?’

  Pru didn’t answer. Was Viktor lying or had Jack started bushranging again?

  ‘A man of the highway can slow down but he’s never gonna be anything other than a highwayman. He’ll keep on thieving ’til he’s caught or taking the long dirt nap.’

  Pru felt the betrayal deeply. She couldn’t believe it. Jack was still bushranging? When Henry was born, he had promised her it would stop. She steeled her gaze. Whatever anger she felt over the possibility of Jack’s continuing bushranger ways, she wasn’t about to discuss it with this revolting man.

  Henry cried again.

  ‘I have to feed Henry,’ she said, moving to the bedroom.

  She could be a polite host and offer the man a cup of tea while he waited but she didn’t want to encourage him to stay.

  She pulled the door closed behind her and unlaced the bodice of her dress to provide Henry with her breast.

  He latched on hungrily and she let out the nervous breath she’d been holding. But that breath was hastily dragged back in on a gasp when the door opened.

  Viktor stood there staring at her unashamedly as he leaned against the door. His eyes went to her breast and she used a cloth to cover herself and Henry’s head.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, trying to keep her voice calm for Henry, but she was livid. ‘Get out of here!’

  He didn’t make a move. Just continued to stand there staring at her, a lascivious smile on his ugly face.

  ‘Jack won’t be happy, Viktor,’ she tried. ‘Leave now and I won’t tell him abo
ut this.’

  ‘He owes me money,’ Victor said slowly. ‘And he’s been dodging me. I’m not going anywhere until I get it. And if I don’t get it soon, maybe I will take what’s owed to me some other way.’

  He stepped further into the room. Pru pulled Henry from her breast and covered herself. Henry screamed in protest at having his dinner interrupted. She stood to move towards the door but Viktor blocked her path. Her anger was quickly replaced with fear, for Henry and for herself.

  ‘If you so much as harm one hair on my boy’s head, I’ll kill you,’ she said, trembling with the combination of rage and fear. ‘Jack will kill you.’

  ‘Jack doesn’t have what it takes to kill another man,’ he said with a snort. ‘Never has. I always did the dirty work. I am good, at the dirty work.’

  ‘Jack may not have what it takes to kill a man,’ Pru said. ‘But I do.’

  Viktor laughed loudly, setting Henry crying again. ‘Yeah, I’d bet you fight like a wildcat. I bet you do other things like a wildcat, too.’

  Henry stopped crying long enough to spit up some of his dinner and Pru moved towards the armoire. But as she opened the top drawer to retrieve another cloth for him her eyes fell on the revolver that lay there. She’d hated it when Jack had shown her all the guns he’d hidden around the house. Now she blessed him silently for teaching her how to shoot one.

  When Viktor took another step towards her, she put her hand in the drawer and pulled out the gun, aiming it at him. He looked stunned for a moment before he smiled again.

  ‘Well, well. You’re a feisty one, aren’t ya? Now I see why Jack likes you.’

  ‘Get out,’ she demanded quietly. She wished her voice and her hand were steadier, but she was doing okay considering the panic she felt.

  ‘Do you know how to use one of those things?’ Viktor asked. ‘Don’t shoot your hand off, little lady.’

  She lowered the weapon a little and he laughed.

  ‘You see, it is too heavy for a woman to hold,’ Viktor said. ‘You can’t even lift it to my chest.’

  ‘I’m not aiming for your chest.’

  He looked down at where she was pointing the gun and frowned, clearly horrified to see she was aiming at his nether regions. He did take a step back then.

  ‘You might not die, but it will sure as hell hurt and you’ll bleed like a stuck pig,’ she told him. She could see it in his eyes that he was thinking over his options. ‘Now move.’

  He backed out of the bedroom and she followed him cautiously, a screaming Henry in one arm and the revolver in the other hand still pointed at the mass of his belly. She was careful to stay at a safe distance from him. It would be easy for him to overpower her if she got too close.

  When they had made their way across the house to the front door, Viktor stopped.

  ‘Tell Jack I’ll find him.’

  ‘Out!’ she said motioning with the gun.

  He gave her one last filthy look before turning and stomping out onto the porch, down the stairs and back to his waiting horse. She didn’t move until she’d seen him go more than a mile down the road.

  As the panic fled her body, she let out a whimpering breath, and allowed herself a moment to cry with Henry who was still wailing. Then she rushed back into the house, put Henry down in his play area, while she ran around locking every possible door and window and moving heavy furniture up against the doors so that no one could break their way in. For the windows that wouldn’t lock, she had to get a little inventive.

  When she was convinced that she and Henry were locked up tight and safe, she dragged the rocking chair to the middle of the room and sat with Henry happily back at her breast and the gun in her hand pointed at the door.

  Chapter 16

  Annoyed and exhausted, Jack rode quickly back to the house. He’d missed Viktor by minutes. The son-of-a-bitch hadn’t waited. And now he’d have to find another way to get him the money without Pru knowing. He needed to keep her and Henry well out of it. And he needed to make sure Viktor had no idea where he lived.

  D’Artagnan snorted as the house came into sight.

  ‘Nearly there, boy,’ he said, giving him a good pat on the shoulder.

  After settling the horse in the stable with oats and water, Jack dragged himself up to the porch. Lifting the latch he pushed at the front door. It didn’t budge. Baffled, he went to the window. Peering in through the glass, he could see Pru asleep in the rocking chair with Henry asleep in the bassinet beside her.

  He smiled. His little family. Not wanting to wake her, he carefully slid the window frame up as quietly as he could. It wouldn’t have mattered how quiet he was, because when he put one foot inside, he stepped on something that made a God almighty racket. Once his second foot was inside the room, he looked down to see a collection of pots and pans and even the chamber-pot collected beneath the window.

  When he looked up again, Pru was standing in the middle of the room with a gun pointed right at him.

  ‘Pru?’

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, exhaling a heavy relieved breath as she lowered the gun, rubbing at her sleepy eyes.

  Jack looked around the house. Both doors had been barricaded from the inside with whatever furniture she could shift by herself, every window had something either in front of it or was set up as a noisy trap just as Jack had come across.

  ‘What in blazes is going on here?’

  She rushed forward and he caught her as she crushed herself to him.

  ‘Pru, you’re shaking,’ he said concern filling him. He took the gun from her hand, scared it would go off considering the violence of her tremors.

  ‘Pru, please tell me what happened?’ he tried again, but she just continued to hold him tightly.

  When Henry cried, she seemed to recover a little of her strength. She stepped away from him and went to Henry. Jack laid the gun on the bureau beside him and went to take Henry from Pru as she picked him up.

  ‘What’s going on? What happened here tonight?’ he asked. ‘Why is the house barricaded up like the Eureka Stockade?’

  She looked weary, but there was still fear in the deep forest of her eyes. He sat her down at the table and, juggling Henry in one arm, poured himself a glass of brandy. Before he could take a sip, she took the glass from his hand and drank the entire contents in one belt. She rarely drank since she’d been breastfeeding Henry, but saying nothing he poured another glass for himself and sat beside her.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Viktor happened,’ she said.

  Fear and fury warred within him. ‘Viktor was here?’

  ‘He said you owe him money.’

  The tone of her voice alerted him. The panic had gone from her eyes and the irritated expression she wore said it all. What lies had Viktor told her? The bastard must have headed straight here when Jack had only been a few minutes late. How the hell had he even known where he lived? He must have asked around. Jack had kept this place a secret when he’d been bushranging, before he’d met Pru. But he had to admit that plenty of people in town now knew that Jack Fairweather and his wife lived in the little homestead between Ballarat and Ballan.

  ‘I’m not bushranging again, if that’s what he told you.’ He shook his head furiously. ‘He didn’t believe me when I said I’d gone straight. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What did he say? What did he do?’

  ‘After barging his way in here, I told him to wait for you in the sitting room, but he followed me into the bedroom where I was feeding Henry.’

  It took him a moment to realise what that meant as she took Henry and held him close, as if she needed to know he was protected.

  Jack went very still.

  ‘He saw you … he watched you …’ Jack began but couldn’t finish the sentence. Viktor had leered at his wife while she was half dressed. She’d been doing something so natural for a mother and had been made to feel uncomfortable by a lecherous criminal. Viktor had a reputation for being the lowest of men with very little respect for women,
and Jack didn’t put it past him to stoop so low as to threaten a woman and her child. But Pru was his woman. And Viktor would pay for that.

  He stood up and paced the floor, the fury rolling through him like a freight train.

  ‘Are you still bushranging, Jack?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why does he think you owe him money?’

  ‘That was from years ago,’ Jack assured her. ‘Before he went into prison. I owed him his share from that heist. He came to collect.’ She stared him down, as though she could make him confess his lies with a look. Had he been a lesser man, had he actually been lying, that look would have broken him.

  ‘Just when exactly do you think I would have time to go back out on the road?’ he asked, taking Henry back from her again. He hoped to remind her that he was her loving husband and the father of his child.

  ‘Very well.’

  She stood and took Henry from him again. There went his shield. As she disappeared into the bedroom, Jack turned his thoughts to Viktor. He stilled owed Viktor money and the man would come calling again.

  Pru returned a moment later, having put Henry in his little bed, and began to make tea.

  ‘Pru …’ he tried.

  ‘Viktor isn’t going to stop looking for you, is he?’

  ‘Oh, yes he will.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Pru spun around, a small frown of concern crinkled between her eyebrows. ‘Are you going to pay him?’

  He didn’t answer her. He was thinking, planning.

  ‘Jack? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’d kill him before he tried to come back here again,’ he said, his voice low and dangerous.

  ‘No, Jack, you will do no such thing,’ she said, moving towards him. ‘You’ve already been shot once. I won’t go through that again. Henry’s fine. I’m fine. We had the gun and we protected ourselves. It was good that you left it and showed me how to use it.’

  ‘You’re a good shot,’ he said, calming a little. ‘Better than me.’

  She smiled, ‘I know. I managed to convince Viktor of that, too. Scared him enough that he left.’

  Jack’s teeth ground together again and he couldn’t stop imagining all the possibilities of what might have happened.