by Sonya Heaney
They would go to Sydney as soon as he could manage it, he decided then and there, and he would show her something beyond sheep stations, bushland, and the dusty, rutted main street of town.
He grappled for a change of topic, but—rather predictably—she presented him with one all on her own.
‘I won’t be singin’ for anyone at any time, I’ll warn you. You’ll be thankful of that.’
‘Why would I require you to sing?’
‘Isn’t that what ladies in parlours do?’
‘Not in my parlour.’
‘Good,’ she said with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘I’m sure I’m terrible at it.’
The afternoon had reached that point where the warmth disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Robert caught an involuntary shiver from his companion, and he picked up the speed ever so slightly.
‘So, we’re agreed on this then?’ he asked once he’d opened the gate and brought them through, heading up the drive to the house.
She waited until they’d come to a stop to answer, and he nearly fainted in surprise when she took his proffered arm to descend to the ground.
Progress …
She tipped her head back to study him for a short time, the fading light casting shadows across her face, and giving angles to the rounded cheeks, making her seem more mature than he usually took her for.
‘Seems we are.’
‘Excellent.’ It seemed too proper for the situation, but he was suddenly overwhelmed with a surprising amount of relief.
They walked to the house as one, leaving the matter of horse and gig to Adamson with a murmur of thanks. Robert couldn’t avoid the involuntary thought they seemed like a pair already walking down the aisle of the church, with Alice’s bouquet on display, the effect only ruined by the appearance of Hutton at their heels.
‘Now, to tell Elizabeth and Mrs Adamson. Shall we go and find them?’
Her jerky nod was identical to the one she’d given him before, when she said one thing and thought another. There was a hesitation in her step, but she came with him, up the stairs and into the house, and all the way down the hall, following the feminine voices drifting out from the sitting room.
***
A trip to town wasn’t anything special—or at least that was what Alice told herself the whole way there the following week, knowing it was a big whopper of a lie. She stayed almost entirely quiet on the journey, leaving the talking to the Farrer siblings and their fancy English tones, only piping up when she was asked a question directly. She supposed she answered correctly each time, though she barely heard what was said.
The road seemed to have shrunk since she’d last made the journey. She was not at all ready for the sight of the first church spire at the crossroads, and nor was she ready for the cheery rows of two-storey terraces that had been popping up along the busier streets the past few years.
What she’d needed was another mile or twenty added to the road, so that she might have a little more time to compose herself and find the courage to hold her head high.
Were those people on the side of the road staring at her? She snapped her face straight ahead and refused to even peek. Likely they’d not even know her dressed as she was, and surely there were better scandals to be gossiped about in town than her recent betrothal to the man sitting across the other side of the carriage.
‘Alice Ryan,’ a voice from the street said none too quietly as they slowed to turn a corner, and she automatically swivelled at the sound of her name in time to see they were passing a gaggle of ladies she knew mostly from the church.
Who was she trying to fool? She was the best gossip in town at the moment, which was why she’d been shaking in her boots—well, the slippers she’d been wearing about the house that morning—for the better part of the day while her belly flipped over a thousand times at the thought of the spectacle she’d make of herself that afternoon.
She spared the ladies one glance, and then lifted a hand to wave when she saw them staring.
‘Good afternoon,’ she called loudly and with as much cheer as she could muster, startling the lot of them into stammered, rushed greetings that were only half done when their vehicle carried them away.
‘Nicely done,’ Elizabeth said quietly, and Alice didn’t think it was sarcastically said.
Once round the corner, the town of Barracks Flat stretched out ahead of them, a place that’d grown steadily since its foundation five or so decades earlier. Mills lined the river at the street’s other end, and at the rate development was taking place, soon they’d be matched in number by public houses.
Some fine homes had been constructed along the banks of the Murrumbidgee where it snaked around the settlement before drifting east towards the sea. Gold, silver and lead discoveries had flourished only briefly in the Fifties, but the people had come in droves, and plenty had stayed.
Set in a valley surrounded by gentle hills, with the larger mountains beyond hidden from view from most perspectives, it was a place that tended to extremes.
Alice winced at the sight of Wanted posters that’d been plastered across more than one shopfront, tattered now from being up so many days and subjected to the weather. But she couldn’t help turning back to try and make out the illustrations of men’s faces.
She couldn’t be certain, and really, she only managed a glimpse, but none of the vaguely menacing faces seemed to resemble Ian.
‘Word is the men have long since left the area,’ Robert said to her in an undertone. ‘It’s being said the roads are safe again.’
Alice relaxed marginally. Still, though, there was the warning from her brother to worry about, and she bit her lip too hard until Robert brought them to a stop.
***
At the sight of the Farrer vehicle with the man himself in it, several people called out a greeting as their arrival on Monaro Street was registered, and Robert handed the women down. He returned the sentiments politely but without giving anybody a chance to chat, aware of the curious looks he was receiving, and well aware that Alice was holding her head high, even as people who’d never before have given her the time of day were suddenly scrutinising her in a new light.
‘Will you be all right for an hour or so?’ he asked, directing the question at his sister.
She smiled at him, and glanced briefly at Alice, who looked enormously confident until one peered more closely. ‘Oh, I think we’ll manage.’
They parted ways, the women to pick up something frilly for a bonnet—at least that was what he thought had been discussed the day before—and Robert for the post office, where he had communications to make with both Sydney and Adelaide.
He crossed the street, kicking up dust with each step of his boots. He raised a hand to a man he knew more by sight than acquaintance, and then tipped his hat to a couple of ladies a decade or more his senior, removing it entirely as he reached his destination.
He had his hand on the post office door when he spotted two familiar figures across the road, and he froze.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ he said more loudly than he should have.
There was no reasonable explanation as to why this kept happening. If God was up there watching him, He must be laughing heartily at Robert’s constant bad timing.
Tom Wright led a lady down the walkway on the opposite side of the street. Their heads were close together in discussion, and they were seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. It suited Robert perfectly.
The lady turned then, before he could slip inside and hide, and Robert felt as though he’d been hit by the carriage they’d driven in on minutes earlier.
‘Damn,’ he whispered, because that was not Mrs Thomas Wright hanging onto his nemesis’s arm: it was the younger version. And Robert’s life had just become even more complicated.
Overcome with a new urgency, he threw himself inside the building with so much speed he came close to pulling the door from its hinges. From his position at the window he watched the lady like an inept spy.
The pair had stopped at a shopfront on the opposite side of the street, but only Wright was looking at the wares on display.
His daughter, who wasn’t meant to be anywhere near Barracks Flat at the moment, stared across the street, at the exact place Robert had just stood.
She’d seen him.
‘Damn,’ he said again, his blasphemy unheard under the conversation going on at the counter.
The father lost interest in the shop’s display—likely nothing expensive enough there for his elaborate tastes—and again held out an arm for his daughter. Martha stared towards the post office for a beat too long, and then marched her father off at a too-fast pace.
Sighing, and thanking God the Wrights had turned in the opposite direction to Elizabeth and Alice, Robert made his way to the counter and forced his thoughts in the direction of riesling and Germans and the Rhine Province.
***
Business done within the hour, including a drink taken at The Dog and Stile, where he smiled through the sly congratulations aimed his way, Robert found the two women waiting for him when he returned to collect them for the trip home. Alice was in the process of stuffing parcels into the carriage, and he overheard something muttered about wasted money.
They made a pretty sight, sister and fiancée, though he knew better to tell them as much and be disbelieved as an empty flatterer.
It astonished him, really, that he was thinking such things about Miss Ryan. Never in his life had it occurred to him to think of her anything other than a distant neighbour, and yet here she was, fair hair catching the light beneath that little hat, eyes alight with one strong emotion or another—presently amusement as she struggled to balance the packages.
Yes, she was a little less put together next to Elizabeth, and there was no mistaking the swear word that escaped when she nearly tripped over her skirt and upended herself on the pavement, but she was …
She was charming him. And it seemed that when a man was charmed by a person’s countenance he was capable of being charmed by her in other ways, too.
How had he not noticed before that there was a pretty girl beneath that scruffy exterior?
‘You’re staring, Robert,’ Elizabeth said, sounding abnormally pleased about that development. It was enough to bring him back to his senses.
‘It’s unusually hot for May,’ he said, ignoring her snort of amusement at the pathetic excuse. ‘My mind wandered.’
‘Oh, you poor fellow. Shall I drive us back if you’re feeling that peaked?’
He supposed the glare that remark earned was answer enough; he wasn’t going to honour it with words. Of course, that made his sister laugh at him outright.
Alice was stuffing more parcels into the carriage, and he overheard something else muttered about wasted money.
‘Leave her be,’ Elizabeth advised in a low voice. ‘I think she’s secretly pleased with her purchases, even if she’s unhappy about the cost of them. I couldn’t talk her into spending more than what was absolutely necessary.’
‘Of course you couldn’t.’ He was actually surprised at his sister’s success in convincing Alice to buy anything at all.
Before he helped Elizabeth up, he leaned closer still and spoke in a tone lower than a whisper.
‘Did you know Martha Wright is back?’
The shock on his sister’s face was his answer enough.
‘She isn’t. She couldn’t be.’
‘I’d beg to differ—I saw her walking on this very street less than an hour ago.’
‘You saw her?’ Elizabeth shook her head slowly, confused. ‘How could I not have known she was coming home?’
‘I saw her. She was across the street from me, walking with her father. I thought she might have written to let you know.’
Whatever was happening between the Wright and Farrer men, Martha and Elizabeth had been the closest of friends since childhood.
Elizabeth glanced quickly at Alice, who’d loaded her purchases to her satisfaction and was standing slightly off to the side, politely waiting for the two of them, in her mind still the outsider.
‘I’m sure she has her reasons,’ Elizabeth said. ‘What are you going to do about her?’
‘About Martha? She has nothing to do with whom I’m betrothed to now.’
Irritated by the behaviour of the Wright daughter as well as her father, and frustrated on his sister’s behalf at the snub by her friend—even if he had his suspicions why it’d happened—Robert left it at that for the time being.
He shook his head. ‘Every time I think I understand what that man’s up to, he pulls another trick.’
Elizabeth shrugged, deceptively dismissive of the whole thing.
‘I suppose we’ll find out in time.’
As irritated with himself as much as anyone else, Robert assisted his sister into the carriage and turned to his fiancée, who was again about to hoist herself up without any assistance.
He took her arm just before she’d have done it, and Alice hastily stepped back, stumbling a little, making him smile inwardly.
‘I’m meant to let you help me,’ she recited to him, ‘so that I don’t get me foot stuck in a skirt and end up on me—my arse in the middle of the street.’
‘Well, yes, but …’ he took her slightly aside and lowered his voice beyond the reach of Elizabeth’s hearing.
‘Need help with any more parcels?’
Alice looked at him, lips pursed against a smirk. ‘You could’ve asked a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Ah, but you were doing such a good job I wouldn’t want to have interrupted.’
She didn’t believe that for an instant, but didn’t call him out on it. Robert glanced down the street. They’d drawn a few spectators out of various shops, but everyone was keeping a polite distance.
‘How did your afternoon go?’ he asked, turning his attention to his fiancée’s heart-shaped face.
Alice drew herself up, looking like a young lady about to tell a huge lie, and then visibly reconsidered.
‘Nobody knows how to speak to me anymore.’
He could imagine. Most liked people to stay in the position they were born, not raise themselves higher, on purpose or by accident.
‘Should I have gone with you today?’
‘Oh, no. I just smile at them ’til they feel uncomfortable and have to speak to me the way they speak to Elizabeth.’ She frowned, but it was a fleeting expression. ‘In time it might be fun.’
She was unique, this one. ‘You’ll do,’ he murmured, more for his ears than her own, and then helped her into place up beside his sister.
‘So we passed the test, would you say?’ he asked breezily as they set off northwards. ‘You’re still going to marry me, yes?’
‘Mister Farrer, you made the offer and now you’re trapped. Of course we’re still gettin’ married, even if you’ve finally come to your senses and realised you’re mad.’
Chapter 10
Alice wasn’t stupid. Or at least, she didn’t think she was stupid too often. She was to be married in only an hour or so, and she knew what she was getting herself into.
Mostly.
Robert Farrer was a nice man, and she didn’t think that’d change after they married. He certainly was handsome with those dark eyes, and strong enough to lug her about when she was ill. Maybe that part was a little embarrassing, but it also gave her little shivers when she remembered it—good shivers, not fever shivers.
She smoothed a careful hand down her skirts, noticing how it tremored as she did so. The gown was the most beautiful thing she’d ever worn, not fussy or frilly, but so fine it made her afraid to move. It wasn’t white, but then that wasn’t what she’d wanted. The copper-coloured silk faille—as Elizabeth had called it—was so very, very pretty.
After having dressed her hair and heard too many declarations of her prettiness, Mrs Adamson and Bessie had disappeared to take care of some wedding breakfast matter or another, giving Alice a few minutes to herself.
The reflection of the girl in the mirror did sparkle just a touch, thanks to her new brooch. Her face seemed paler than usual, but her eyes were bright.
You’ll do she’d heard Robert say a few weeks ago. She bloody well hoped she’d do today.
A moment later she stiffened at the sounds of voices down the hall. Soon someone would come for her, but nerves she hadn’t wanted to admit to kept her feet rooted to the wooden floorboards of her room.
Last night had been her final one sleeping in this place, in this bed. Probably. She wasn’t all that sure about that part. She hadn’t much of an idea about what came next, but she was certain it’d be surprising.
She’d fancied herself in love with Declan Greaney from the other side of the river for two full years before she caught him kissing that Annie girl from the farm out west. She’d discovered them behind the church, so involved in each other they hadn’t even noticed Alice standing there, mouth gaping and mind confused.
It was only then she’d realised how Declan’s ears were a funny shape, and noticed how he always spoke like a genius when he really didn’t know much about anything. It turned out to not be the grand romance she’d imagined, and anyway, it was not long after that she’d begun to notice how handsome the local landowner was when he rode past her house most afternoons.
A cockatoo began screeching like a madman near to the window, and there was something so ridiculous about the bird that it helped to settle her nerves.
Alice almost smiled.
Maybe Mr Farrer didn’t love her any more than Declan Greaney did, but she didn’t mind as much as she should. It was a good match for a girl like her, even if it was a terrible one for her future husband. He didn’t love her, and if she loved him a little, he didn’t need to know about it. It’d be her little secret, and not for all the tea in China would she ever let him know.
She was smarter now than she was the afternoon she’d walked home crying because Declan had his hand up Annie Wilson’s skirts, and she weren’t going to be stupid about Robert Farrer. There were better reasons to get married than love.