She heard her mother’s squeal and opened her eyes again. Or tried to. One eye was beginning to swell shut where Donnelly had smacked her. It was making it hard to keep it open. It watered mightily.
‘I’m alright, Mother.’
‘But did he follow you here?’ Mary asked, her eyes darted to the front door, still wide open to let the fresh air in. ‘Is he coming after us?’
‘That would be some feat considering he’s dead.’
Both Will and Mary stared at Indy, their faces frozen in shock.
‘Oh, Indy, you didn’t,’ Mary said, sinking into a chair.
‘No, Mother, I didn’t,’ Indy replied. ‘A woman came along just in time. She shot him. He apparently killed her husband at the stockade. Slit the man’s throat even after he had been wounded by gunfire.’
‘Oh, will this nightmare ever end?’ Mary cried.
‘Yes,’ Will insisted. ‘It will end tomorrow when we are far away from here.’
‘He’s really dead?’ Mary asked, a tear running down her face.
Indy stood and went to her mother, pulling her in for a comforting hug despite her own pain.
‘It’s over, Mother. Warren Donnelly will never bother us again.’
They moved quickly once Indy’s eye had been patched up, packing everything they could possibly carry, ready to load onto the small wagon that Indy had purchased a few weeks before. It had originally been bought to carry vegetables to sell at market in Ballarat. Now, it was loaded with their most treasured belongings. The largest of the furniture, the beds and the dining table, would have to be left behind and that upset Mary a little but Indy promised she would buy more when they got to where they were going.
Will helped her dig up the vegetables in the garden so that they would have food for the trip, and he stared amazed when she unearthed a wooden box from beneath the garden bed and opened it. The size of the gold nugget in the box was incomprehensible.
She laughed at the look of comical astonishment on his face.
‘Didn’t you believe me when I said I had the third largest nugget?’
‘I thought I did but …’ he couldn’t finish his sentence as he ran his hand over the smooth, dull nobs of the nugget. ‘I thought it might be shinier.’
Indy just laughed again and they packed the box with its valuable cargo safely in a bottom compartment in the wagon.
They would spend one last, nervous night in the cottage before loading the wagon at dawn. Will stayed awake throughout it, expecting soldiers or the police to come looking for him or Indy.
An hour or so before the sun was due to rise, Indy woke. Leaving her mother in the bed they shared, she joined Will on the front porch where he had sat watchful all night.
‘We have a long journey ahead of us,’ she told him. ‘You should try to get a few hours’ sleep. I can take the watch.’
‘I’m sure the officers will be too busy just now, dealing with fugitive miners and their own wounded, to be concerned with a missing lieutenant,’ Will said staring out into the night. ‘But they’ll notice I’m gone eventually. And I won’t relax until we are well away from this place.’
Taking her bandaged hand, he pulled her into his lap, nuzzling into her ear. His nose was cool and she squirmed a little.
‘Mmm, you’re still warm from your bed,’ he murmured against her neck, taking a long inhale. The exhalation of his breath against her skin filled her belly with butterflies.
‘I wish you could have been in it with me,’ she answered, winding her arms around him and holding him close. He tipped his head back and took her mouth with his, strongly, desperately, as though all his fears and worries for her were pouring out in the kiss they shared. Leaning back to offer a quick kiss to her injured eye, he hugged her tightly against him.
‘It would have been crowded with your mother in there too,’ he said, taking his clever mouth and tongue to her earlobe.
‘Ha, ha.’ It was all she could manage as his kisses were making her weak.
‘There’ll be time for sharing a bed when we are married.’
Pushing him back, she stared at him. ‘Married?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what if I don’t want to be married?’
That deep line between his eyebrows was back. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to marry me?’
‘Perhaps I like being my own woman. Perhaps I don’t want some man telling me what I can and can’t do.’
Will laughed, ‘And what manner of fool do you think I am to believe I could ever tell you what to do, Indigo Wallace?’
She had to grin. ‘Well, then. If you are willing to concede that I shall never honour the “obey” portion of the vows, then I guess I can agree to marry you.’
‘The British Army is willing to concede,’ he said with a rich chuckle and kissed her again.
Her heart soared. She was engaged. Engaged to be married. She never thought she would see the day. She never thought she’d wanted to. But when they parted his smile faded.
‘What is it?’ she questioned.
‘I am no longer British Army.’
Regret crossed his features. He was a deserter, and she knew it didn’t sit well with him. Smiling sympathetically, she ran a hand down the tan-coloured shirt and the dark brown vest he wore.
‘But you look so handsome in civilian clothing, Will,’ she said, gazing deeply into his eyes.
Thankfully, his beautiful smile returned and he kissed her again. Would she ever get enough of his kisses?
‘I shall miss the uniform though,’ she said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘You did look so lovely in it.’
‘I still have it.’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively. ‘Perhaps I can put it on for special occasions.’
Her laugh was smothered as he captured her mouth in another heart-melting kiss.
‘I’ll marry you, Will Marsh. I never thought to marry, but that’s because I have never known love until now.’
‘I’ve never known love before you, Indigo Wallace,’ Will said and kissed her injured eye lightly.
The eye hurt more than she let on. But while the physical wounds would heal, the memories of the horrors that went on at the stockade on that December dawn would stay with them forever.
Epilogue
Four days had passed since the ‘massacre at the Eureka Stockade’, as the papers and gossips were now calling it. Jack thought it was probably safe enough for him to head back closer to town without being arrested just for being.
He rode up to the little cabin in the woods, his two fellow highwaymen beside him.
‘Hi ho, Mrs Mary Wallace!’ Jack called out his usual greeting as he neared the house nestled amongst the tall stringybarks.
There was no movement from the house. No one rushed out to meet him.
He called again.
Nothing.
Dismounting agilely from his horse, he stepped up to the door and knocked. His mates stayed where they were on their horses, eyes sharp as always for signs of the troopers. These were still dangerous times for bushrangers as much as they were for rebel diggers. Still there was no noise from inside the house. Jack peered through one of the small windows. He frowned at what he saw. Or rather, what he didn’t see.
Warily, he opened the door and stepped in. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness from the bright summer sun outside.
He blinked. Blinked again. A wave of shock enveloped him as he looked around at the shell of the house.
His eyes had not deceived him. Almost everything was gone. The dining table remained but Mary’s comfortable chair by the fireplace, the small end table where he’d shared many wonderful cups of tea with the Wallace women were all missing. Mary’s prettily sewn calico and lace curtains and all the feminine touches that had made the little cottage a home—they were all gone.
He peered into the small bedrooms. The beds were still there, the mattresses stripped of their sheets and covers. The shelves stood bare on Indy’s prized bookcase.
<
br /> What had happened here? A moment of fear overwhelmed him. Had they been taken away by soldiers? He’d heard that Indy had assisted fugitive miners; had given them her own dresses to see them safely on their way to Melbourne or Geelong. Had the military found them out?
He was about to rush out of the house in his panic when something on the fireplace mantle caught his eye.
Mary’s ceramic biscuit barrel.
Everything else in the house had been stripped. Why leave one biscuit barrel behind? He lifted the little ceramic pot from the shelf and taking the large cork lid out he peered in. The mouth of the container was just wide enough to fit his hand—he ought to know, he’d slipped his crafty fingers into it to steal a biscuit often enough.
He found biscuits—as you would expect in a biscuit barrel—but his hand also brushed against a piece of paper. He tugged it out and unfolding it he read:
‘To Whom it May Concern,
Should you be rebels or miners, use this cottage with our blessing, we’ve no need of it anymore.
We leave this place, Ballarat, which was once a place of hope but is now stained with the blood of so many who, like us, only wanted a better life.
We shall find our better life elsewhere.
Should you be the British Army, a soldier gives back his Queen’s shilling. He thanks you for his home and begs your forgiveness for his desertion. But he must take his leave from a military so lost in its mission to protect against tyranny that is has become tyranny itself.
PS: Jack, enjoy the biscuits as they will be the last you will see from us you mooching bushranger, xxxx. Indy.’
Jack let out a snorting laugh. He bit into the sugary biscuit and sighed. The last of these delights. ’Twas a crying shame. And a shame the Wallace women, with their soldier it seemed, had headed for greener pastures. He shoved the note into his pocket and, taking the biscuit barrel, he walked back out into the bright sunlight.
‘So do we get tea or what?’ Bobby called out.
‘Not here we don’t, lads.’
Mounting his horse, Jack took one last look at the empty little house, smiled a small, melancholy smile, then turning his horse he kicked it into a gallop and followed his mates into the bush.
Author’s Note: The Facts
In the early hours of 3 December 1854, the British Army attacked the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat with almost three hundred soldiers and police. It has been widely argued as to whether the army or the miners in the stockade fired first. The conflict lasted no more than thirty minutes, but in that time it is said (although there is some discrepancy in the reference books as to definite numbers) that approximately twenty-seven civilians and four soldiers were killed. Nine more soldiers and countless other civilians, including women and children, were wounded. Over a hundred diggers were arrested and eventually a group of thirteen miners were charged with treason including the Italian Raffaello Carboni and Timothy Hayes, and many others who had fled Ballarat to Geelong or Melbourne, who had prices on their heads. They were eventually acquitted of all charges and cheered on by thousands of Melbourne residents who had come to watch the trials and to condemn the actions taken by the British Government and military in the taking of the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat. The diggers’ commander in chief, Peter Lalor, was shot and severely injured in the stockade battle and eventually had his arm amputated. In November 1855 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council as Member for the new district of Ballarat, a role he stayed in until March 1856. The original Eureka Flag, damaged by the policemen who tore it down, is on loan from the Art Gallery of Ballarat and can be seen at the MADE Museum (Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka) in Ballarat, which sits on the site of the Eureka Stockade. Some say the constant petitions and battles by the immigrant miners were Australia’s first step towards an independent democracy. As for the soldiers, who have often been portrayed throughout history in film and literature as the villains, twenty-two soldiers of Her Majesty’s service deserted between December 1854 and the early months of 1855. In total, one hundred and sixty-five soldiers threw back the Queen’s shilling in Victoria alone. Their living conditions in the government camp weren’t much better than the squalor of the diggers’ camps. I have tried to show the facts of one of the most significant moments in Australia’s history but, as with all fiction, a little artistic flair is sometimes required. In 1854 the town of Ballarat was actually spelled Ballaarat. The word originated from two Aboriginal words balla and arat, meaning ‘resting place’. The town eventually came to be known as Ballarat. To save confusion for readers I used the modern, and more commonly known, spelling. While the main characters of this novel are fictional, to retain some authenticity some of the people depicted in the story were present at the events that happened during the time period. Extensive research allowed me to find their roles in the events that transpired in Ballarat in 1854. However any dialogue, description and action taken by those real persons in this novel are purely fictional.
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ISBN: 9781489273949
Title: The Girl from Eureka
Copyright © 2019 by Cheryl Adnams
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Level 13/201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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