Even as she spoke, a sliver of doubt cut through her memory. Yes, she had been innocent, but he had most assuredly not been so naive. Richard had known the possible consequences of that liaison in the conservatory and yet he had let it happen.
‘What happened? Why was my father told your ship was lost at sea?’
‘A storm blew us off course and our ship was so badly damaged we had to hold over in Rio for repairs. When we got to Savannah, we were four months overdue. I can only assume that we were still floundering at sea with a broken mast when the Savannah agent telegraphed your father. If you hadn’t panicked …’ He spread his hands as if to apologise for something that had been none of his doing.
‘If I hadn’t panicked?’ Adelaide said. ‘What would you have done, if I hadn’t removed myself from my father’s house?’
He stiffened. ‘I would have done what I intended to do: marry you. There may have been a few raised eyebrows, but the child would have been born in wedlock and we—we would have been together.’
‘I had no choice.’ Adelaide could not hide her bitterness.
Richard picked up the tea and took a sip. ‘After we docked in Liverpool, I went to your home with every intention of asking for your hand. Your father—’ He set the tea cup down and his face twisted in anger. ‘Your father told me you were dead. I asked where you were buried so I could visit your grave, but he just ordered his man to throw me from the house.’
He loosened his tie and pulled a chain from beneath his shirt. Her breath caught as she recognised her locket. ‘I have worn this every day of my life and there is not a day goes by when I have not thought of you, grieved for you.’
She touched the place where the missing locket had once hung around her own neck. Its absence now felt like a betrayal.
He readjusted his tie. ‘But we must continue living, mustn’t we, Adelaide? I took a ship for India and made a good life for myself, managing a tea plantation. Made some money. Enough to live comfortably and support a wife and family.’
Adelaide looked down at the cup she held in her hand, the tea cooling rapidly. ‘And do you have such a wife and family?’
‘No. It was only ever you, Addy.’
She searched his face to test the sincerity of that statement. He returned her gaze with guileless blue eyes brimming with unshed tears.
‘What changed, Richard? Why have you come looking for me now?’
‘I received a letter from your father’s solicitor advising me that Sir Daniel was dying and he wanted to see me. He had important information he wished to impart to me. I considered tossing the letter in the fire, but curiosity got the better of me. I returned to England and found your father was indeed on his deathbed.’
Adelaide blinked, his words catching at her heart. ‘His deathbed?’
Richard nodded. ‘He died six months ago. Of course you wouldn’t know. I’m sorry, Addy.’
Adelaide lowered her cup to its saucer and let the news of her father’s death sink in.
Before her escape, he had always loomed large in her life, a booming, unloving presence who had never forgiven his only child for the death of her mother. And yet, even in the ten years of her exile, there had been few days when she hadn’t thought of him, pictured him in his shiny top hat and heavy overcoat on the Liverpool docks, counting in his ships. She had always looked over her shoulder, expecting him to appear behind her, larger and more menacing than he had ever been in reality. It came as a shock to think that he had gone and could no longer bend her to his will.
She picked up a spoon and stirred her tea, watching the leaves at the bottom of the cup swirl and eddy, wondering about the decisions she had made in her life and how different it might have been if she had stayed to face her father’s wrath. Would he have forgiven her? Allowed her to marry Richard? Could Danny have been born in wealth and comfort?
This was pointless speculation. What was done was done.
‘How did you find me?’
Richard paused. ‘Your father told me,’ he said and the hand resting on the table clenched. ‘He’d known where you were all the time.’
Adelaide let the teaspoon clatter against the side of the cup.
A wave of anger and disbelief washed over her. The momentary softening of her heart for her dead father evaporated and a red hot rage rose in her.
‘He knew? He knew and yet not once did he try to contact me?’
Richard nodded
‘Addy—there’s more.’ Richard leaned over and placed his hand on hers.
She looked down at it: soft and white with manicured nails. Not a hard workman’s hands. For a fleeting moment she thought of Caleb and his long, clever fingers that carried the gift of healing.
She pulled away, folding her hands on her lap beneath the table, and looked into his earnest blue eyes, fighting the urge to pick up her cup and hurl it at the wall. What more could there be?
‘Go on.’
Richard flinched as if she hit him. ‘It was he who told me about the baby. Another secret he had kept all these years. It’s all I have been able to think about since that day. I couldn’t imagine how it has been for you, bearing our child and carrying that responsibility alone. How lonely and abandoned you must have felt.’
The background thump, thump of the stampers echoed the beating of her heart and seemed to overwhelm them both. They sat without speaking for a long, long time.
After all, what words did she have?
With shaking hands, she poured herself another cup of the cold, stewed tea with no intention of drinking it, but the action calmed her.
Richard cleared his throat, but his voice cracked again as he said, ‘I would like to meet my son.’
My son.
Adelaide’s steely resolve began to crumble. She took a deep, steadying breath but despite this, her eyes filled with tears and she found the words sticking in her throat. All she could do was shake her head and look down at her hands, twisting together in her lap as she struggled to control her emotions.
He screwed up his eyes against the betraying tears. ‘Ten years, Addy, ten years of wasted time when we could have been together. I hope your father is rotting in hell.’
‘No.’ Adelaide held up her hand. ‘Don’t say that. For all his faults, he was still my father.’
‘And you can forgive him for driving you away—for lying to me? For forcing you to live like this, working for a living as a postmistress?’
The derision in the last word cut her to the heart and she stiffened. She couldn’t let him dismiss everything she had done with one glib statement. She was proud of the life she had made for herself with no man by her side.
‘Despite what you may think, I have made a good life for myself and Danny. I am paid well for my work and I enjoy it.’
He held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry, Addy, I didn’t mean to offend you.’ The distress had gone from his eyes. They gleamed as he leaned towards her. ‘Please tell me about Danny? After everything you have been through, you called him Daniel after your father?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I thought of naming him for you, but it is enough that he looks like you.’
‘Does he? When can I meet him?’
At the yearning in his face, a wave of panic washed over Adelaide as the web of lies in which she had cocooned her son tightened around her throat.
She grasped Richard’s hand, her fingers tightening around his. ‘There is something you must understand, Richard. He doesn’t know the truth. He thinks his father was lost at sea, that we—I am a widow. I use my mother’s maiden name. The world knows me as Mrs Greaves. He can’t know that you are his father and that I—we were never wed.’ Tears caught at the back of her throat and ran unchecked. ‘I can’t let the world know …’
Richard returned her grasp, forcing her to look at him. ‘Addy, I understand. No one needs to know the truth, least of all Daniel. Once we are wed, no one will be any the wiser.’
She blinked. ‘Wed?’
‘Of course.
I have to make it right, Addy. All of it.’
Adelaide extricated herself from his grip and rose to her feet to pace the floor.
‘Addy?’ His chair scraped as he pushed it back.
She turned to face him. ‘It’s too much, Richard. I have to think.’
He stood up and faced her, grasping her forearms. ‘What is there to think about? We have lost too much time already. We can leave tomorrow. Marry by licence in Melbourne and be on the next boat back to England within the month.’ He tightened his grip on her. ‘It’s time to come home, Addy. Time for both of you to resume your place in proper society, not waste your life in a place like this.’
She shook her head. ‘No, not just like that, Richard. I have obligations here that must be taken care of. As you said, we have lost so much time already, another few days will make no difference.’ She unwound her arms from his grasp, reversing the grip so she held him. ‘Please understand, I have changed and there is no doubt you have too, Richard.’
‘What is there to understand? It’s simple. You loved me once. Love can come again.’
She let go of his arms and took a step back. ‘I thought I loved you, Richard, but I was a child. I have had a lifetime to survive since then. I need time—we all need time to get to know each other again.’
He stared at her. ‘I am his father, Adelaide.’
Dread wrapped itself around her heart. ‘We can tell him the truth in good time, Richard, but please, promise me you will be guided by me? Allow me to introduce you to him as an old family friend, let him get to know you first. The rest can follow.’
Richard turned away, dashing his hand through his hair. ‘If that’s how it must be. Addy—’
She stepped back and held up her hand. ‘No. No more, Richard. I need time. Leave me.’
He nodded and picked up his hat from the day bed. He circled the brim in his hand. ‘When will I see you again?’
‘Come to supper tonight. I can introduce Danny to you and we can proceed from there.’
Richard nodded and repeated faintly, ‘Supper. Yes, that would be nice. Thank you for the invitation … Mrs Greaves.’
As the door closed behind him and the crunch of his boots on the gravel path receded, Adelaide sank onto a chair, willing her breathing to return to normal.
Was it only yesterday morning she had woken up to a regular day? Her thoughts had been of Caleb detained at Shady Creek, wondering when she would see him. In a few short hours, every lie she had told, every pillar on which she had constructed her life, had begun to crumble. Nothing seemed real any more. Nothing.
Her head pounded with the thousand conflicting thoughts and emotions and she laid her head on her arms, wanting the relief of tears, but they would not come.
Twenty-Two
The Catholic priest at Buneep sent a message with Constable Brown that he would not bury a man on the Sabbath and Caleb and Russell were forced to wait until Monday morning before they saw Ernest Bowen laid to rest in a quiet graveyard on the Shady Creek property. It was midday before they turned back to Maiden’s Creek, riding in silence through the heat of the day and arriving in the early evening.
They returned their horses to the livery stable and parted ways. At the post office, Caleb lifted the latch on the side gate and trudged down the path to the back door that led into the kitchen.
Netty answered his knock. ‘You can’t come in,’ Netty said. ‘Miss Adelaide’s not—not up to visitors.’
‘Is she unwell?’
Netty fidgeted. ‘Headache,’ she said. ‘It’s the hot weather.’
Caleb thought he understood. After all, as a doctor, he was hardly unfamiliar with women’s ‘headaches’, but he found something unsettling in Netty’s evasive manner.
‘Is there something I can do?’
Netty shook her head. ‘No, nothing. I’m sorry but there it is.’ She paused. ‘Is it true what Amos said? Bowen is dead?’
‘It’s true.’
‘Then I suppose you’re here to stay for a while.’
‘You suppose right,’ Caleb said. He doffed his hat. ‘Tell Adelaide I shall call on her tomorrow evening. Goodnight, Netty.’
‘Goodnight, Caleb.’
Netty had dispensed with the formality of ‘Mr. Hunt’ long before Adelaide.
Annoyance and confusion dogged his weary footsteps back to the doctor’s cottage he had, until recently, shared with Bowen. Now, according to Russell, as the acting town doctor, the cottage was his. He had to pass the Britannia and a sizeable crowd had gathered there, spilling off the verandah onto the street, blocking his path.
Caleb cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, ladies and gentleman, can you let me through?’
But far from parting, the crowd closed in around him.
‘We’ve been waiting for you, doc.’ Yorkie Oldroyd stepped forward, calling down to Caleb from the verandah of the hotel. ‘Is it true? Is Dr Bowen really dead?’
Caleb nodded. ‘We laid him to rest at Shady Creek this morning.’
A murmur went through the crowd and once again all eyes turned to Oldroyd, who seemed to have been appointed an unofficial spokesman for the crowd.
‘Were it the drink?’
Caleb frowned. ‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘Cos that’s the story going around.’
In a loud, clear voice Caleb said, ‘No. He died of a brain haemorrhage. Any other story is false.’
The crowd seemed to visibly relax, murmuring among themselves.
A woman with a baby held to her pushed her way to the front of the group. He had treated the baby for croup. She now seemed well, sleeping peacefully in her mother’s arms. ‘You’ll be stayin’ on though, won’t you, Dr Hunt?’
‘We don’t want no one else,’ Oldroyd said.
‘I have agreed with Mr Russell I will stay in an acting capacity until another doctor can be appointed,’ Caleb said.
The murmur grew louder and Caleb held up his hand. ‘You have my word, I’ll not leave Maiden’s Creek without a doctor.’
That didn’t seem to satisfy the crowd. ‘There’s work enough for two doctors,’ a man said.
‘I agree with you and you also need a hospital, but that is conversation to be had with the council another day,’ Caleb said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired and dusty and longing for my own bed and a beer.’
The woman with the baby nudged a basket at her feet. ‘This is for you, doctor. Enough for your supper and something for your breakfast.’
Caleb picked up the basket and lifted the cloth. The smell of hot pie rose enticingly.
He thanked her and the woman coloured. ‘Least I could do. If it hadn’t been for you, little Eve here’d be dead.’ She looked at the babe in her arms and smiled.
Oldroyd cleared his throat. ‘I saw what you did with that smallpox scare.’ He waved a hand at the hotel. ‘There’s a room at the Britannia you can use for a proper surgery. You can set it up with a desk and whatever else you need. We need proper medical care here and we’ve agreed that we’re going to get together to raise money for a hospital.’
‘Then you need to speak with Mr Russell. He would support such a proposal.’ Caleb spread his hands. ‘I see you folk have it all organised. Thank you, Yorkie, a proper surgery will be a godsend and thank you kindly for the supper, ma’am. It smells good. Now perhaps, if you can let me through, we’ll see what the morning brings.’
The crowd parted and he climbed the path to the cottage. The little building had been baking in the heat of the last two days and Caleb opened the doors and windows to try to let some cooler air waft through. He set his bag and the basket containing his supper on the table and looked around the untidy room. Battered old medical books covered in dust and ash were piled higgledy-piggledy on the mantelpiece. Caleb picked each one up and set it to rights, finding several notebooks written in Bowen’s neat hand at the bottom of the pile.
He flicked through them and his pulse quickened. They contained the doctor’s observ
ations on medical conditions he had encountered since his arrival in Australia fifteen years earlier and were far more use to Caleb than the stuffy, outdated volumes. He placed the notebooks onto the armchair and turned to the basket of food. Apart from the pie, he found a bottle of ginger beer and a slab of cake.
After he had eaten, Caleb went looking for Bowen’s stash of whiskey, finding several bottles hidden under the doctor’s bed. He sat in the battered armchair beside the unlit fireplace, a glass in his hand, and began to read Bowen’s notes. If he was now a registered medical practitioner, he owed it to the people of Maiden’s Creek to be the best he could be and he had a great deal of catching up to do.
Engrossed in a description on the treatment for snake bite, a timorous rapping on the door made him start.
And so it begins, he thought, as he set the book aside and rose to answer the door.
For a long moment he thought he must have been imagining the knock as he held up the lantern and peered into the empty darkness.
‘Who’s there?’
A slight woman in a gown several sizes too big for her came forward into the light thrown by the lantern, her head lowered, her arms wrapped around her.
‘Are you looking for the doctor?’ Caleb asked.
The woman raised her head and Caleb recognised the pockmarked face.
‘Posy?’
The girl’s lips trembled and she nodded. ‘I heard you was back and I was wondering if you could spare me a penny or two?’ The woman’s voice shook. ‘I’ve had nothing to eat since yesterday and I’m awful hungry.’
Caleb stood aside. ‘Come in, girl. I’ve some pie left over from my supper you can have.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t—’
‘Yes, you can, but if you want tea you’ll have to make it yourself.’
Posy stepped into the little parlour and stood looking around her as Caleb set the leftover pie on the only clean plate he could find.
‘There you go. Eat up.’
The Postmistress Page 19