Dark Torment

by Karen Robards

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll think about it.” Dominic’s words were formal, but his expression had warmed.

  Sarah felt hope rise inside her. Maybe they could stay on Lowella after all, if only Dominic’s colossal pride did not stand in their way. She watched wide-eyed as her father looked at Dominic, hesitated, then thrust out his hand.

  “Welcome to the family, Gallagher.”

  Dominic looked at that outstretched hand for a moment in silence. Then he smiled, crookedly, and clasped Edward’s hand with his own.

  “I’m honored, sir.”

  Sarah looked at those joined hands, the one short and wide, with splayed fingers spattered with freckles, the other brown as teak, long-fingered and, as she knew from experience, strong, and felt a lump rise in her throat. These two men whom she loved more than anyone else in the world . . . she wanted to hug them both. Instead, she smiled mistily as her father harrumphed and disengaged his hand, turning away. Then she gave in to the urge to plant a kiss on his weathered cheek. Whatever else happened, she could not but be grateful for the events that had restored her father to her. For the first time since she was a tiny child, Sarah felt secure in his love.

  “Be happy, daughter,” he said gruffly, his eyes almost as misty as hers. Before either of them could fall further under the sway of their emotions, he stepped away from her, his attention shifting to the flat brown parcel in her hand.

  “What is that you have?”

  Sarah looked down at the package, remembering it for the first time since Tess had called her into the hall to give it to her.

  “It’s addressed to you, Pa.”

  “Ahhh. I’ve been expecting this.” He took the package from her and tore it open, a satisfied expression on his face as he inspected the governor’s seal. “Your papers have arrived,” Edward continued, addressing Dominic, who still looked brooding. “As of this moment, you’re a free man.”

  “I thank you for your efforts on my behalf.”

  “No thanks necessary. You’re a member of the family now, and I do for you what I’d do for Sarah or Lydia or that girl of hers.”

  “Still, I appreciate the effort.”

  Edward nodded his head once in acknowledgment, and signaled to his daughter with his eyes that she could escort him to the door.

  “He’s a proud man, Sarah, and you may have trouble with him yet. I doubt he’ll be willing to stay on at Lowella—under the circumstances, I don’t think I would myself, so I can’t blame him overmuch.” He sighed. Sarah noticed that his face was gray beneath its sunburned ruddiness. A twinge of concern pierced her.

  “Pa . . .” she began, her hand coming up to catch his arm as he staggered a little before grasping the edge of the doorjamb to steady himself. “Are you all right?”

  “Must have had too much wine,” he muttered, not looking at her. Then he thrust the papers into her hand. “You keep these by you, Sarah. I don’t want to give them to him. I’ve had dealings with that kind of damn-your-eyes Irishman before: liable to take offense at the drop of a hat. And we don’t want that. I’m looking forward to seeing my grandchild.”

  Sarah laughed a little unsteadily. Her father was taking that aspect of the situation—indeed, every aspect of it—far better than she had expected.

  “Don’t worry, Pa, you will. I’ll see to it.”

  “Planning to rule the roost, are you, girl?” He chuckled, pinching her chin. Sarah was relieved to see that he was standing without support now, and the normal ruddy color had returned to his cheeks. “You two should have some bang-up battles. I only wish I could be around to see them.”

  Sarah frowned quickly. “What do you mean, Pa?” Something about his tone made her uneasy. Was he ill, and not telling her? It would be like him, she thought.

  “Why, what do you think I mean? Just that like all married women, you’ll likely be going to a home of your own, if not now then in the future. And I won’t get to witness the taming of the shrew.”

  “Or vice versa,” Sarah said, smiling. Edward chuckled again in response.

  “Or vice versa,” he agreed, grinning at her. Then, with a look over her shoulder: “You’d best be getting back to your husband. He’s looking a mite serious. And I’m going upstairs to lie down for a bit.”

  This was so unlike her father—he was far more likely to leave his daughter’s wedding directly for the breeding pens—that Sarah’s earlier concerns were roused once more.

  “Pa, don’t you feel well?”

  “I feel fine. Oh, you’re wondering about me lying down?” His grin widened, and he winked at her roguishly. “Now that you’re a respectable married woman, I guess I can tell you: it has to do with Lydia. She’s taking a nap, don’t you know.”

  “Ahhh.” Sarah nodded, returning his grin.

  Where once such an obvious reference to what went on between a husband and wife would have shocked her to her toes, now she didn’t feel so much as a quiver of unease. Probably because she was possessed by a similar urge to get her new husband upstairs. . . . Her father pinched her chin again and left the room. Sarah turned back to Dominic, who had poured himself another glass of wine and stood staring out the window at the front lawn.

  “That went rather well, considering,” she ventured, speaking to his broad back.

  He turned his head to regard her steadily over his shoulder. “Yes, it did, considering,” he said, his lip curling. “Considering that you disgraced yourself by marrying a convict, and your father buried his prejudice and resentment and, out of love for you, offered me the charity of his home, and . . .”

  Sarah was staring at him, hurt and startled. It took her a moment to gather her wits for a reply.

  “Dominic, what is the matter with you? You’ve hardly spoken to me for the past week.” The fear that had kept recurring but that she had tried to hold at bay surfaced and had to be expressed. “Do you—you do want children, don’t you? Or is it me? Did you not want to get married after all?” Her voice faltered over this last. Despite her best efforts, her eyes were very wide and vulnerable as they met his.

  He laughed, harshly, setting aside his glass before coming to catch her by the shoulders.

  “Tell me something, Sarah: just when did you find out that you were with child? Before or after you decided to sink yourself below reproach by marrying me?”

  Sarah blinked up at him as the import of his question sank in. He suspected that she had married him, despite his convict status, only because of the coming child.

  “After, Dominic,” she said with quiet force.

  He stared down at her, his blue eyes searching her face. She met his gaze steadily, hoping to convince him by sheer force of will where words, she knew, would not suffice.

  “Sarah . . .” Whatever he had been going to say was cut short by Liza, who was looking both confused and excited as she entered, bringing with her a man who, despite his dusty traveling clothes, had the precise look of a lawyer or other businessman.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Liza said breathlessly, her eyes agog as they moved from Sarah to Dominic and back again. “But this gentleman—he says he’s come all the way from England, looking for the earl of Rule!”

  XXVIII

  It was the dead of winter. Sarah, clad in a longsleeved, loose-waisted wool dress of unrelieved black, clutched her voluminous cape closer about her as the wind nipped at her pinkened cheeks. The orchard was bare now of fruit, the trees stripped of leaves. Sarah stood beneath the interlocking gray branches, looking east at the distant blue haze of the mountains, white capped now with snow. A single tear rolled from her eye to trickle forlornly down her cheek. She wiped it away with an impatient finger. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to shake the black depression that had been her constant companion for weeks. And she did try. She very much feared that such unrelenting misery was bad for her unborn child.

  It had been more than four months since her wedding, and in that time her world had changed so much that it was no longer recogn
izable. Dominic had gone back to England with that man who had come to inform him that the earl of Rule had died. As the earl’s legal if not natural son, Dominic had inherited the title and entailed property. Which meant that, to Lydia’s chagrin, Liza’s excitement, and her father’s thigh-slapping pride, Sarah was now a countess. And, she thought bitterly, much good it did her.

  She should have gone with Dominic, she acknowledged now. He had asked her, just once, and she had refused. The thought of leaving Lowella, and her father, to journey to a strange and frightening land with a man who was scarcely more familiar had suddenly terrified her. Her child would be born on alien soil, would never know the blistering heatwaves and frigid winters of New South Wales, would never see Lowella. . . . And her father—how could she leave her father, never to see him again? Because she didn’t fool herself that they would one day return for a visit. And even if they did, she had had the strangest certainty that her father would no longer be waiting. . . . She had tried to explain all this to Dominic, but the words had tumbled out in a confused jumble and he had gotten angry and stalked away. And the next day he had gone. Though she had longed to, she had not asked him to stay. He had to go; according to the man who had come to find him—a representative of the old earl’s bank—there was considerable question as to whether John Dominic Frame was alive. If so, he was heir to the title, but if he was dead, a nephew of the old earl’s, who had been willed the unentailed property, got everything, including the title and Fonderleigh. The nephew had already filed a claim, and if Dominic did not appear in person the bank very much feared that the nephew—a known spendthrift—would win. If it had been only the title, Sarah thought, Dominic would not have cared, would not have gone, but for Fonderleigh. . . .

  Sarah’s heart ached as that lean, dark face rose in her mind’s eye as clearly as though he stood before her. Would she ever see those Irish blue eyes again? Honesty forced her to admit that she probably would not. Ireland was so far away, and by now she and their unborn child were in all likelihood only dim memories, if he thought of them at all. After all, as Lydia took some pains to point out, Dominic was an earl now. With his new title, the wealth that had been entailed on him, and his dazzling looks, he would be able to take his pick of women. Why should he remember a sharp-tongued, bossy female whose looks could most charitably be described as passable and who was well past the first blush of youth? Because of the child she carried? As Lydia also gloried in reminding Sarah, a man could father a passel of children by many different women. What did she think was so special about hers? Every time Lydia said that, Sarah mentally hugged the unborn infant who was as yet only a cumbersome bulge where she had once been so slim. Whether or not Dominic, or Lydia, or anyone else thought so, this child was special, to her at least. Boy or girl, she loved it. Its presence inside her had been the one talisman that she had clung to during the past dark days.

  Even if she could have, Sarah thought, staring sightlessly at a soaring hawk as it winged into the distance, would she really have done any different? If she had, she would not have been with her father when he died.

  Her instincts concerning Edward had been right. He had been dying for some time, of a wasting disease, and had known it and told no one. Even when he heard that Dominic was returning to Ireland and thought that Sarah might be going with him, he had held his peace. But Sarah wondered now if she had not known even then, on some subconscious level. If that had not been part of her reluctance to leave.

  Two months ago, Edward had collapsed at the breeding pens. Two aborigine workers had carried him home and put him to bed. He had never left it. Sarah, Liza, and Lydia, to the woman’s credit, had nursed him devotedly, making sure that one of them was always with him and that he was never left alone. Though the doctor they summoned from Melbourne had told them bluntly at the outset that he was going to die, they had all refused to believe it until the very end. Only six weeks ago, when Edward had been scarcely more than a flesh-covered skeleton with staring gray eyes, had Sarah accepted the inevitable. And a week after that, Edward had breathed his last.

  At the end, Sarah and Lydia had held his hands while Liza cried copious tears in the background. It was near dawn, and they had sat that way all through the night, the two women who were not friends sitting on either side of the man who had played such a major role in their lives, a frail shadow of himself. As crimson feelers of dawn crept past the horizon to bathe the world in a pink glow, he pressed a kiss to his wife’s hand and smiled at his daughter.

  “I would have liked to have seen my grandchild,” he whispered. And died.

  Remembering, Sarah dashed more tears from her cheeks, and started walking again, her movements purposefully vigorous as she took deep gulps of air. Even in the winter chill, walking about outdoors—riding was forbidden her for the duration of her pregnancy—was the highlight of her day. It was the only way to escape the oppression of the house.

  It was late afternoon when Sarah decided, reluctantly, that she must go back inside. It would not do for her to make herself ill by exposing herself to the elements for too long a period. She had to think of the child. So, with dragging feet, she returned to the house. Entering through the kitchen—Mrs. Abbott, who had shed a deal of weight in the past arduous weeks, could always be counted on to try to cheer her with a smile—Sarah found Tess hard at work peeling vegetables, while Mrs. Abbott poured juice over roasting meat. Mary was nowhere in sight. Sarah guessed that she was busy waiting on Lydia. Now that Lydia was part owner of Lowella, she had decided that she needed the services of a personal maid, which, as she had never let anyone forget in all the years she had lived on Lowella, she had enjoyed in England. And Mary, as the more graceful and self-effacing of the maids, had been selected. Which left Mrs. Abbott and Tess to do the work that had previously been done by three. Sarah supposed that she should protest the new arrangement. As Lowella’s co-owner according to the terms of her father’s will, she had the authority to do so. But so far it hadn’t seemed worth the inevitable quarrel.

  “Can I get you something to eat, lamb?” Mrs. Abbott turned from what she was doing to look at Sarah with concern. Sarah knew that her increasing thinness, apart from her swelling belly, worried the older woman.

  “Just a piece of bread and butter, I think.” Sarah wasn’t hungry, but for the baby’s sake she forced herself to eat regularly, “Don’t bother yourself, Mrs. Abbott, I’ll get it.”

  She loosened her cloak, hanging it on a peg inside the door, and walked over to the table to cut herself a slice of just-baked bread. She slathered the thick slab liberally with butter, poured herself a glass of milk, and with a wave of her hand left the kitchen. Today she just didn’t feel like company; she would take the bread and milk to her room and eat it there.

  Lydia’s voice floated to her from the front parlor as she passed its open door, stopping her in her tracks.

  “I think crimson brocade, don’t you, dear? I’ve ever liked crimson brocade window hangings. Be sure you get the measurements right, girl.”

  This last, said in an entirely different tone, was clearly addressed to Mary, who, as Sarah saw as she came to stand in the door, was stretching string the length and breadth of the wide windows overlooking the front lawn. Lydia’s earlier remark had just as clearly been meant for Liza.

  Watching the two dark heads close together as mother and daughter sat side by side on the somewhat shabby gold settee, pouring over a book with illustrated furnishings, Sarah sighed. There was no getting around it. She would have to acquaint Lydia with a few hard facts before she bankrupted them all.

  “I’ve told you before, there’s no money to redo the house.”

  Lydia and Liza looked up simultaneously. Both were dressed in the same sober black as Sarah wore, and neither looked particularly well in it. Their faintly olive complexions called for brighter colors.

  “I believe I may spend my money as I please.”

  Sarah barely managed to stifle one of Dominic’s more descriptive oath
s. Unlike its creator, it had stayed with her, although she tried her best to banish it from her mind.

  “Lydia, please try to understand. There is no money. Not until after shearing.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Lydia . . .”

  “You’ve been crying again, haven’t you?” Lydia changed the subject with a taunt. “Poor Sarah, you really do have something to cry about: deserted by your husband, and you huge with child. But you really shouldn’t, you know. It makes you look even worse than usual. Sort of pink-eyed, like a rabbit.”

  “Mother!” That was Liza, getting to her feet and frowning down at Lydia in the first display of defiance against her mother’s authority that Sarah had ever witnessed. “Why are you always so unkind to Sarah? Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

  “Liza!” After a moment’s stunned silence, Lydia too rose to her feet as her voice swelled with outrage. “How dare you speak to me in such a fashion! Let me remind you, young lady, I am your mother.”

  “And Sarah is my sister!” Liza said determinedly.

  Mother and daughter glared at each other. Sarah hurried to intervene before a full-scale war could develop.

  “Liza, dear, thank you very much for your championship, but it really isn’t needed. I’m quite accustomed to your mother’s ill humors. Lydia, if . . .”

  Mary, who had gotten very busy indeed at the window as this interchange developed, interrupted.

  “Miss Sarah . . .”

  “Hush, girl, haven’t you learned not to speak unless you are addressed yet?” Lydia shook her head with disgust. Then she added under her breath, “Really, these natives! There’s no teaching them anything!”