The Girl From Eureka

by Cheryl Adnams

  ‘Come, Miss Indy, let us join the party, shall we?’

  Knowing, without doubt now, that she was completely besotted, she hooked her arm through his and he escorted her to the wedding banquet.

  ***

  Two long planks of flat wood had been joined together to make a wedding table, and guests sat around it on a selection of chairs, tree stumps and wooden crates. Even a wheelbarrow served as a seat for a rather tall miner nicknamed Shorty.

  The table was filled with platters of food that had been brought by the guests in lieu of gifts. Damper, sweet apple tarts, pickles of all varieties were spread before them, along with the now shredded parts of the whole lamb which had been roasting on a rotating spit above a campfire. The aroma had Will’s stomach rumbling loudly. The bride and groom sat close together in front of plates piled high with food. But neither seemed that interested in eating, Will noted, as they stared into one another’s eyes.

  ‘The lamb no doubt cost a pretty penny,’ Will said, hoping to waylay the looks of carnal lust in the bride and groom’s eyes. He was beginning to feel singed from mere proximity to the heat they radiated.

  ‘I know a man,’ Trevor said with a wink when Will questioned him on how he had acquired it.

  Will opened his canvas carry bag that sat beneath his chair and pulled out a bottle of good brandy, handing it to the groom. ‘A wedding gift.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Trevor said and stood to shake Will’s hand heartily.

  ‘Share it later in good health. Away from this drunken rabble.’

  Will turned to Indy to find her staring at him, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

  ‘What?’ he asked, confused by her expression. ‘Why do you look at me that way?’

  ‘Expensive brandy? A little pricey for a soldier’s wages, wouldn’t you say.’

  Will shrugged a shoulder. ‘I know a man,’ he repeated Trevor’s words.

  Indy continued to stare at him until he gave in and explained. ‘I may have appropriated it from the latest supply wagon. Those thieves on the road from Melbourne are notoriously sneaky.’

  ‘Sneaky indeed.’

  ‘The Commissioner had box loads of the stuff. He’ll not miss one bottle,’ Will said, glancing back to where Trevor and his bride were hiding the bottle away beneath the table.

  ‘As I live and breathe.’ Indy stared agape at him. ‘Lieutenant Marsh, the most honest of all the men I know, pilfering from his own superior officer. Going back to the old ways?’

  Will felt a niggle of discomfort at being reminded of his misspent youth, but he smiled and dug his fingers into her ribs, ‘I blame your influence.’

  ‘I don’t steal, Lieutenant.’

  He gave her a look of disbelief.

  ‘No more than absolutely necessary,’ she added and Will chuckled richly.

  They began the feast and Will enjoyed the change in food. It was a thrill to his tastebuds after months of army rations.

  ‘How did the two of you meet?’ he asked Trevor and Eliza. ‘Did you know each other in Ireland?’

  ‘No,’ Eliza said taking a delicate sip of champagne. They’d managed to rustle up one bottle for the wedding. ‘Trevor came over with his ma and brother from County Clare. In fifty-one was it, Trevor?’

  ‘Fifty-two,’ Trevor corrected through a mouthful of food. ‘My brother died on board the ship before we reached Melbourne. Caught the fever and just never recovered.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Will said, as he was about to take a bite of delicious lamb.

  Trevor shrugged it off. ‘It’s the way of things on a long journey, I suppose. My mother only lasted here a year longer. She came down with influenza in the winter of fifty-three. Complete bastard of a winter, was that one. She’s buried up there in the cemetery. Along with hundreds of other poor souls who’ve lost their lives in this stinking arse-end of the world.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Eliza said, bringing the subject back around to Will’s question about how they’d met. ‘I came in on the boat in October of fifty-three. A few months after his mother passed over, God rest her.’

  ‘And I was down at the docks to find me a wife,’ Trevor said, puffing himself with pride. ‘There I stood in me Sunday best, along with hundreds of other poor buggers, looking to catch a bride. She didn’t have to be pretty. She just had to take care of me, like my ma used to. I needed a cook, someone to do me wash, and darn me breeches and socks when they became holey. Instead, I see this vision of loveliness in a pale pink dress stepping down off the gangplank. I was sunk like the merchant Madagascar in August.’

  ‘Interesting analogy,’ Will put in. ‘They still haven’t found that ship.’

  Eliza giggled. ‘He was carrying a posy of carnations. Oh, he was handsome alright, but so were many of the other gentlemen waiting by the docks.’

  ‘Hey now!’ Trevor objected.

  ‘But I was no fool,’ Eliza said, a shrewd glint in her eye. ‘I’d heard the rumours of men looking for wives, just so they had someone to do their cleaning and cooking, and to give them their wants in the bedroom after dark. I wasn’t about to become some man’s whore or whipping girl.’

  ‘Atta girl,’ Indy tossed in.

  ‘I offered to escort her and her cousins to Ballarat,’ Trevor continued where Eliza left off, and Will marvelled at the perfect synchronisation of their storytelling. ‘And once she’d settled in, I set about courting Miss Eliza. I asked her to marry me after that first week, but she refused. And she continued to refuse me for nigh on nine months.’

  ‘Nine months!?’ Indy exclaimed. ‘Eliza, you tease.’

  Eliza giggled. ‘Ah sure. But by then I knew he loved me. I’d made him fall in love with me, and in doing so, I fell in love with him too.’

  Trevor and Eliza kissed slowly, sensually. Will felt the need to avert his eyes, an unwelcome voyeur in their moment of intimacy. But when he crossed glances with Indy, seeing the hooded gaze, the heat in her eyes as she watched the two lovers kiss, was like a punch of lust directly to his groin.

  ‘I asked her to marry me—again,’ Trevor said, bringing Will back to the conversation. ‘And finally she said yes. Do you know what it is to wait for a woman for nine months, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Uh, no,’ Will answered and dared another glance at Indy. ‘But I can imagine.’

  He didn’t want to imagine it. The agony of having to wait nine months for Indy wasn’t a thought he should be entertaining. They were not compatible, as Eliza and Trevor so obviously were.

  ‘You’re a hard-won woman, Miss Eliza.’

  ‘To be sure she’s been harder on me since,’ Trevor said, his deep and booming laugh one of true contented happiness. ‘It’s a tough life we’ve made for ourselves here, Lieutenant, and it gets tougher by the day.’

  ‘Please, call me Will,’ he told Trevor and the man nodded and tipped more whiskey into Will’s pannikin before he could stop him. ‘Forgive me for asking but why do you stay in Ballarat if it’s the—what did you call it?’

  ‘Arse-end of the world,’ Indy offered, taking a bite of lamb off the bone. She had the meat in her hands and was gnawing on it. Will could only marvel at her unladylike table manners, but the meat was so good he could see himself doing the same thing to ensure he got every morsel.

  ‘I stay because I got the fever too,’ Trevor said sighing heavily.

  ‘Are you ill, man?’ Will asked concerned.

  Trevor leaned forward as though he had a deep dark secret. ‘I got the gold fever!’

  He slapped his thigh and laughed raucously, his mates joining in.

  Rolling her eyes, Eliza stood from the table. ‘Now, Mr Hennessy, you’ll dance with me if you know what’s good for you.’

  ‘Sure, I know what’s good for me,’ Trevor said. Standing from the table, he took his wife’s hand and led her away to the small clearing nearby. ‘Strike up the band!’

  And with that, the little troop of musicians, made up of two bodhran drums, a guitar, a banjo and a fiddle, began a polka.


  No slow romantic waltz for the Irish, Will thought with a grin, as Trevor took his wife in a strong hold and they proceeded to trample the dry grass beneath their feet.

  Will turned to Indy. ‘Come, milady. I believe I owe you the first dance.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, her expression a picture of mock horror. ‘You saw what I did to poor Mr Lawrence’s feet at the ball.’

  ‘You did not step on my feet at the ball,’ Will pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but that was a slow dance,’ Indy said, suddenly looking shy and unsure of herself.

  Leaning closer he stared deeply into her eyes. ‘I am willing to risk it, Indy. Are you?’

  It was a rare thing to see the strong, independent Indigo Wallace lost for words, and he was enjoying having the upper hand with her for once.

  ‘Yes.’ Her reply was a quiet squeak and she cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I’m willing.’

  Standing, he took her elbow and lightly lifted her from her seat, directing her out to join the flock of dancers.

  He enjoyed seeing Indy in movement. Yes, he had danced with her at the ball but she had been in his arms. Now, in this lively dance, he could admire her in motion from a distance as she moved from partner to partner. She could be surprisingly graceful considering she was like a bull in a china shop a good portion of the time.

  Mesmerised, he followed her movements in and out of the circle of dancers, lifting her skirts so as not to trip. And her smile when she looked at him, filled him with a euphoria so heady, he lost his breath through more than just the exuberance of the dancing. He’d thought she was a pretty girl, but when she smiled like that, just for him, it was like the sun coming out. Seeing her naked in the river that day had proved to him she was indeed a woman in body, but her actions since had proved her a woman in mind and spirit as well.

  Dammit, he never should have thought of the river again. He’d done his best to put the vision of her perfect naked body out of his head. But on lonely nights in his tent at the government camp, her image came to him and kept him warm. Warm? The thought of her sweet, pale breasts had his body nearly setting fire to the sheets.

  Shaking his head to clear the image, he watched her dancing and laughing with such joy. The indigo dress she wore was dusty at the hem, her straw bonnet long since discarded, and tendrils of blonde curls were already falling out of their pins. And watching her, he felt the fist tighten around his heart. His rough Indy; how she made him laugh. How she made him feel alive. Whether she was arguing with him, or looking at him with such unashamed want in her eyes. He enjoyed both sides of her. The prickly and the passionate. He had never had such a feeling before. A feeling he could find no words to describe. Could this be what it was like to be in love?

  He stopped dancing, stopped smiling.

  Love.

  The thought was so frightening to him, he walked away from the dancing and sat on a nearby log to catch his breath. Was the liquor befuddling his brain? It had to be the liquor, for him to be thinking himself in love? He’d stayed away from love deliberately, and had been helped along by the fact that he rarely remained in one place long enough to form attachments. The army had seen to that. The army was his life. He would not stay in Victoria forever. One day, not too far in the future, his regiment would receive new orders and he would be taken away from this land and on to another. Away from Indigo Wallace.

  ‘Lieutenant, are you unfit to dance like the Irish?’

  Indy was standing in front of him, smiling cheerfully and flushed from the dancing. The song had ended without him realising and the musicians had begun yet another spirited reel.

  He tried to smile. ‘I fear I am unfit.’

  She laughed and sat herself down beside him on the log.

  ‘Do they not make a lovely couple?’ she asked. ‘Are they not glowing with all the love between them?’

  Will followed Indy’s unusually dreamy gaze towards the happy couple. Trevor and Eliza sat alone at the huge table of food; not eating but kissing as though no one were watching.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, still shocked at his own recent thoughts of love.

  ‘You suppose?’ Indy asked, fixing him with a mocking glare. ‘Last of great romantics here, folks.’

  Will stood up so suddenly, the imbalance nearly caused Indy to slide off the other side of the log.

  ‘I must get back to camp,’ he said, as she righted herself.

  ‘But there’s still cake to be had. You can’t leave before cake,’ Indy said, frowning at him. ‘What’s the matter, Will?’

  Her frown deepened and he wondered what she read in his expression. But before he could speak or make a move to leave, the bride approached, seeming to have finally come up for air.

  ‘May I have this dance, Lieutenant?’

  He was trapped. How could he refuse the bride?

  ‘Of course, madam. It would be my honour.’ He bowed and offering his arm, he led her back to the dancing.

  ***

  Bewildered, Indy gazed after him from her seat on the log. He’d been cheerful one moment and then become so sullen the next. She’d never understand the capricious moods of men.

  The ladies liked him—that was evident. Caroline Chesser had been doing her very best to flirt with him all day. But then Caroline Chesser flirted with all men, married or not. Some of the men were less than thrilled to see a member of the regimentals amongst the wedding party, but most had heard the story of how Will had saved Trevor’s life, and for that fact alone they kept their concerns to themselves and accepted him, at least for one day. But Indy could see others, outside of the Irish settlement, looking in with disgust and disapproval. She couldn’t blame them, but she also didn’t believe a man should be judged by the company he kept. From what she had seen so far, Will Marsh was a decent man. He was more than a decent man. He was a good man.

  She watched him dance with the bride, and then Annie. And when his eyes met hers across the dance floor of spring grasses and wildflowers, she felt that tug in her chest once again. She’d never felt anything so strong. It both thrilled and unnerved her. She’d had her fair share of male suitors. Since she and her mother had landed in Melbourne she had been made offers by men five, ten, even fifteen years older than herself. Her mother, thank God, had refused to let her go into a marriage until she turned eighteen. And when she had come of age, Indy had chosen instead to stay single and to take care of her mother.

  She was at the table ravenously forking a piece of delicious wedding cake into her mouth, when Will finally found her again. The sun was beginning to set, casting a golden hue over the fields that turned the dull brown dirt into a blaze of reds and oranges. A cooling breeze set the tall grass in the nearby fields swaying in time to a slow tune only it could hear.

  ‘It’s been a wonderful day,’ she said, smiling up at him contentedly.

  He reached out and with a finger removed some leftover cream from the corner of her mouth, popping it into his own. She licked her lips, thinking the gesture incredibly intimate and seductive.

  ‘I really must go now, Indy.’

  She nodded slowly, resigned that he would have to leave her eventually. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

  ‘No, you should stay here. It’s not safe for a lady to be walking around after dusk.’

  ‘Step one foot out of here alone and you’ll be dead before your boots hit the road to the government camp.’

  ‘They do like their guns, don’t they,’ Will said with a disapproving frown.

  ‘Come along,’ she said looping her arm through his. ‘I’ll protect you from the big, bad diggers.’

  ***

  They walked through the rest of the Irish section of camp, the safest for him since he had saved a countryman. He even got a few head nods of gratitude from Trevor’s mates on the way out to the main road.

  Reaching the rear of the stables, where he had tethered his horse, it was significantly quieter. Only the occasional horse’s snort or the stomp of a hoof could be
heard.

  ‘This is as far as you go,’ Will said, turning to face her.

  The warm glow of the setting sun cast a halo around her dishevelled blonde hair. An angel she wasn’t. But right now, oh, how he wanted to kiss the devil out of her.

  Instead, he dipped his head in farewell. ‘Miss Indy. Thank you for a lovely day. I bid you goodnight.’

  But before he could move, she looked up at him from beneath her long dark lashes. Her eyes were his undoing. Such wide, bright orbs of blue. He’d seen sunsets over oceans on his travels that had less lustre than Indigo Wallace’s eyes. She could be so soft when she wanted to be, and dangerously appealing with it. And the look on her face left no doubt that she wanted him to kiss her.

  He knew it was a mistake, even as he took her face between his hands and lay his lips to hers. Softly, lightly, he let his tongue trace her full upper lip and thrilled at her gasp.

  Fire ignited within him as he leaned away, leaving only a breath between them.

  ‘Indy.’ He groaned, part agony, part ecstasy.

  ‘Yes?’

  Her fingers splayed against his chest, grasping at his coat, giving him no chance to escape. Then her mouth captured his. She took control, and he was lost. Lost in the sensations of her warm mouth, her warm skin. Reaching up, he removed the last remaining hairpins, so that her hair fell in untamed curls. His hands followed their movement as they cascaded down her back to her waist. He urged her body closer to his, as her arms went up and around his neck. Electricity shot through his entire body at the touch of her fingers to his nape. His kisses became more impassioned and he knew he was losing the strength he needed to remain a gentleman.

  A gunshot broke the air, and loud cheers floated out of the campsite. More boisterous wedding celebrations he assumed, but it was all the distraction he needed. He pulled back and her wide, pleading eyes nearly broke him again. She licked her lips.

  ‘You should go back.’ He spoke the words, but didn’t believe them. ‘Enjoy the rest of the party.’