George held Lachlan’s hand even tighter, as if silently telling him, ‘so hang on, fight as you have always fought for everyone else, and hang on until they arrive …’
Lachlan smiled faintly. He knew what George was silently saying, and nodded. ‘I understand, George … I’ll do my best.’
‘You always do.’
And then an overwhelming sense of peace came over Lachlan as he looked into George's dark eyes. A feeling of trust and faith that he knew would never be broken. With George Jarvis there at Gruline, the boy would always have a man around, a man who truly loved him. A man who would help him in the ways that only another man can, a fine man.
Cool mind, clear judgement, warm heart. That was George Jarvis.
Lachlan closed his eyes and let his mind drift along a path of memories that led all the way back to that day in India when he had first set eyes on that small struggling slave-boy in the bazaar at Cochin … It had been a long road from Cochin to here, a long road through long years, but it would be that same little slave-boy who, as a man, would take good care of his own little boy now.
He smiled to himself. Oh yes, as always, George Jarvis was right: ‘Heaven's way always comes around.’
Epilogue
When the news of Lachlan Macquarie's death in London reached Australia, the bulk of the population of New South Wales went into mourning. Shops and houses put up their shutters for a week, and the Gazette draped its pages in black.
The church bells of St Philip’s church tolled at dawn and at dusk for seven days. Emancipists met in sad groups in each other’s houses. Old swags wept openly on roadways, and streams of young male and female convict servants joined the long silent procession through the shuttered town towards Sydney harbour where – at sunset on the seventh day, scarlet lines of soldiers stood with hands raised to their hats in silent salute as a bugler played The Last Post.
To a stranger arriving in Sydney, it must have seemed as if a monarch had died. But to the people, Lachlan Macquarie was more than merely a king. He was, and always would be, ‘The Father of Australia.’
‘He was a perfect gentleman, and a supreme legislator of the human heart … Whenever the sculptor shall imagine a guardian angel for New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, the chisel of gratitude shall portray the beloved and majestic features of General Lachlan Macquarie.
Hobart Town Gazette, 1824
JARVISFIELD
A mixture of the Arabic blood of her father, and the English blood of her mother, Elizabeth (Beth) Jarvis grows up on the estate of Jarvisfield in Scotland. A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of uncommon beauty who enslaves the hearts of two young men, while loving only one.
Lachlan Macquarie Junior, rich and golden, and the heir to his famous father’s estate, is the joy of his mother’s heart, until she finally realises that the only man her son is capable of respecting, and the only one who can control him, is Beth’s father, George Jarvis.
Based on the true-life stories of the Macquarie, Jarvis and Dewar families, and set in the natural beauty of the Island of Mull, JARVISFIELD is the third book in The Macquarie Series.
Also by Gretta Curran Browne
(The Macquarie Series)
By Eastern Windows (Book 1)
The Far Horizon (#2)
Jarvisfield (#3)
The Wayward Son (#4)
(September 2013)
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(The Liberty Trilogy)
Tread Softly On My Dreams
Fire On The Hill
A World Apart
*
Ghosts In Sunlight
*
Ordinary Decent Criminal
(Novel of Film starring Kevin Spacey)
Relative Strangers
(TV Series Tie-In)
Dark Days, Dark Nights
First Class
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www.grettacurranbrowne.com
The Far Horizon Page 20