Most shared Emily’s opinion, though. Sarah discovered that Caroline was enormously wealthy, but of no birth at all, and it was rumoured that she was hunting for a husband and a title.
Sarah recovered from her malaise to come downstairs to find Charles hanging on Caroline’s every word. He explained apologetically, for explanation was needed, that he felt sorry for her, and in Sarah’s absence wished to make her a little happy. Sarah laughed, complimented him on his kindness to her friend and forgot the matter.
Even when, back in London, Charles cancelled several engagements with her at short notice, and John had told her, quietly, that on one particular day when he had cried off, John had seen him in Hyde Park, squiring Caroline, Sarah had replied easily, and, as she later understood, blindly, ‘Oh, I know about that. Charles is too kind.’
The legal formalities dragged on and the wedding day drew no nearer. Charles’s caresses, which had at first possessed an ardency which faintly frightened Sarah, now diminished. Her half-awakened senses resented this sudden cessation, and she became a little irritable.
One afternoon, reading, for painting had become unattractive to her in the face of Charles’s disapproval, she heard the doorbell ring and Charles was announced. She remembered that it had been raining and his hair was damp. The new dark fashions suited his blond beauty and he had never looked so handsome. Her pleasure at seeing him for the first time in several days was unfeigned.
‘Pray sit down, my dear. Today has been a dead bore: your arrival has brightened it for me.’
To her astonishment he refused. ‘Thank you, no, I prefer to stand.’ His manner was constrained and abrupt. ‘What I am going to say to you is very difficult for me, but it is important for both of us.’
‘Yes?’ she queried, somewhat puzzled. Even then she had no notion of what he was going to say. The memory of her innocence was so painful to her that even now, over a year later and thousands of miles away, she writhed as she recalled it.
‘I think that you will agree with me that we have made a grave mistake.’
‘A grave mistake,’ she echoed, mystified.
‘There is not that between us which would make for a satisfactory marriage. Be honest, Sarah, you must know that what I am saying is true.’
‘No, you be honest, Charles,’ she flashed back at him. ‘What are you trying to say? Until this minute I thought that we were happy together. I know that the lawyers have been making trouble, but John has assured me that the matter has now been settled.’
Charles assumed an expression of great virtue. ‘This has nothing to do with the lawyers, Sarah. It’s the two of us. The first false glow of our affair has died away. I honestly believe that we would be better apart. As friends, if you like, but not married.’
This cannot be happening, she thought wildly. Who is this stranger who has taken Charles’s place and is saying these things?
‘You can’t mean this,’ she said, her face drained of colour and her whole body trembling as though she had suddenly been afflicted by an ague. Even to herself she sounded childish and futile. ‘Why, only last week you assured me how happy we were together.’
His expression grew even more noble. ‘I was trying to spare you, Sarah, and trying to convince myself that we could enjoy a successful marriage. But I was wrong. I think that you would be better off with someone who shared more of your interests.’
‘My painting,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s my painting, isn’t it? Or is that only an excuse? For what, Charles, for what?’ If only he didn’t look so insufferably noble, as though he were somehow conferring a favour on me.
He did not answer her directly, simply said. ‘If you promise to release me, Sarah, I would say that the break was at your bidding. No discredit would rebound upon you.’
‘But you are jilting me.’ Sarah came out with the horrid word at last. ‘And everyone will know the truth, whatever you say. I have been besotted with you and you have been avoiding me. Why, Charles, why?’
Something in his face, some memory, some half-heard comments that she had refused to acknowledge, brought the truth home to her in a sudden blinding flash.
‘It’s Caroline Wharton, isn’t it?’ Her voice rose. ‘Isn’t it, Charles?’
His face told her everything. She whirled away from him, trying not to cry. ‘Oh, go to her. Get out of my sight. Be friends! Friends! I never wish to see you again. You disgust me. I disgust myself. Say what you please, but go—at once.’
She had run from the room. It was at an end. He had gone. He had left her for Caroline who was richer, more biddable and would do everything he wished so long as she ended life as Lady Amborough. She was Sarah Langley, spinster, rejected and found wanting, the butt of gossip and smiling behind hands. The unpalatable truth, that he had left her, was plain to all who knew them. Her love for him had been so openly expressed, and his sudden preference for Caroline so obvious to all but herself, that there was no deceiving society.
Now, here in this barbarous country she had narrowly escaped being soiled goods into the bargain. Why, even Alan Kerr would have rejected her if Jem and Charlie had had their way with her.
Gradually the cordial did its work and she fell into a troubled sleep. Her last thoughts were that there was tomorrow to live through and John and Dr Kerr to see again.
For several days Sarah remained in her room. Dr Kerr visited her and his manner towards her was strangely gentle. She thought ruefully that it had taken a brutal assault on her to bring them to some sort of a truce. She wondered how long it would last. At first she dreaded going out into colonial society for she was well aware that the servants’ grapevine would have spread around Sydney what had happened on the cliffs. In retrospect she was grateful to Dr Kerr for his reticence in punishing her assailant on the spot rather than subjecting her to the humiliation of a trial.
Her total recall of the disastrous end of her betrothal to Charles, so long buried from view in her memory, had in a strange way enabled her to face life again without worrying overmuch what others thought of her. Her near death on the cliffs made her earlier experience seem more trivial, even though it still hurt. Whatever the reason, with John and Lucy Middleton by her side, she faced the knowing looks of the Sydney matrons and the colony’s officers without feeling quite the scalding shame she had expected.
Lucy’s staunchness, kindness and tact helped Sarah to recover. She might have almost come to believe that she had dreamed the whole thing had there not been certain unforeseen consequences of her ordeal.
The Governor’s New Year’s Ball was the next great event in Sydney’s social calendar and the pair of them went shopping for silks again in Tom Dilhorne’s store. He happened to be present that day and greeted them with, ‘Your servant, ladies, and what may I do for you?’
‘Silks again, Mr Dilhorne. We have come shopping for silks so that we may look to our best advantage at the Governor’s Ball.’
‘Then you have come to the right place.’
He began to pull bolts of cloth from a stand behind the counter, saying to Sarah when he returned with them, ‘I trust that you are feeling well, Miss Langley.’
There was nothing in his expression or tone to suggest any double meaning in his question, but when he walked towards her Sarah found that she had a strong impulse to dash to the door.
Since her misadventure her only contact with men, apart from Dr Kerr who was always careful not to touch her, or to come too near to her, had been with John and Carter. The latter always kept a respectful distance from her when he accompanied her on her sketching expedition.
In Tom’s proximity—and she had never experienced such a thing before when she had been with him—she felt her breathing quicken and a feeling of suffocation come over her. She moved away from him to a counter where ribbons and cords were on show and began to examine them closely.
Tom looked keenly at her pale face and shaking hands and made no attempt to move nearer to her. On the contrary, he retreated to the other si
de of the counter to continue his conversation with them.
‘Ye’ll be making the gowns yourself, ladies. That should be a new experience for Miss Langley.’
‘Yes,’ said Lucy brightly. ‘Sarah has promised to help me with my lace trim.’
‘Aye.’ He was laconic. ‘Happen Miss Langley knows the latest London fashions.’
Sarah made an effort to be civil, although her voice sounded strange to her ears. ‘Any London fashions which I know are, I fear, already a year out of date.’
‘But newer than Sydney fashions,’ said Tom. ‘I think you’ll make the fashions this year, Miss Langley.’
Sarah was aware that he was trying to be kind, and that the effort was proving too much—for her, not for him. She was sure that she was about to choke. Luckily, Lucy saw her pallor and her distress, and covered it with her seemingly artless chatter. Sarah was beginning to grasp that Lucy’s chatter was seldom artless. She managed to joke with Tom, before she left, that any dress which she made would be remarkable for being finished at all.
Once out of his shop Lucy led Sarah home and made her drink some of the Madeira which John had brought from England.
‘I’m a fool these days,’ Sarah muttered. ‘Thank you, Lucy.’
She forgot her malaise when it did not return. Dr Kerr had told her not to overdo things so she spent most of her spare time at the Middletons, or in the little studio that she and John had set up in one of the upstairs rooms. Dr Kerr stopped visiting her once she seemed to be on the way to recovery. John told her that he had gone to one of the tiny settlements between Sydney and Paramatta where there had been yet another outbreak of fever. The Governor was hoping that he would return in time for his ball. Sarah was a little surprised to discover that for the first time she could view meeting Dr Kerr again with equanimity.
Sarah set out for her first colonial ball having completely forgotten her uncharacteristic behaviour in Tom’s store. John escorted her and she wore the deep cream silk that Tom had recommended. Lucy was demure in pale blue, and despite her mother’s glowering looks ran to meet Sarah after she had been received by the Governor.
Mrs Middleton was not entirely certain that she approved of Lucy’s friendship with Sarah, but her family’s place in the best society in England more than made up for Sarah’s odd notions about the treatment of Emancipists in Sydney.
The band of the 73rd Highlanders was playing in the vast ballroom that was Government House’s most remarkable feature. There were great bowls of flowers everywhere and the Governor’s welcome of Sarah had been as warm as he could make it. He assured her of his sympathy, and of his relief that she had taken no real harm from her unfortunate misadventure. Her reply was muted because either the scent from the massed flowers, or the heat of the ballroom, was making her feel a little breathless. He had taken her hand and bent to kiss it: it was only with difficulty that she prevented herself from wrenching it away.
Somehow she managed to retain an outward composure that enabled her to enjoy the airs which the band was playing. Her dance programme was soon filled, and compliments on her appearance were profuse, but she soon discovered that the ball, to which she had looked forward with almost feverish anticipation, was not proving the happy occasion which she had imagined.
She was once again on the edge of the malaise that had afflicted her in Tom’s store. Frank Wright was her partner in the quadrille, and on taking his hand she felt her breath shorten. The end of the dance brought her some relief, and she moved gratefully over to where John and the Middletons sat. She saw that Dr Kerr had already arrived and was talking to an animated Lucy.
Captain Parker, her partner in the next dance, a waltz, came up to claim her.
‘Miss Langley, charming as ever,’ he murmured when he bent over her hand. Sarah’s inclination was, as it had been with the Governor, to wrench it away, but she controlled herself with an effort, saying, ‘One might almost imagine one’s self in London tonight, Captain Parker.’
‘Indeed, Miss Langley. The Governor certainly knows how to give a ball.’ To her dismay she found herself retreating from him as he spoke: the air in the ballroom seemed stifling and she brought her fan into action—which he took as an opportunity to flirt. Mercifully—or so it seemed—the band began to play, to which Captain Parker’s immediate response was to say, ‘By Jove, Miss Langley, the waltz, let’s show them how it’s done in London!’ He seized her round the waist and pulled her towards him.
The stifling sensation that had threatened her all evening became overwhelming. Stephen Parker’s laughing face turned without warning into that of the whiskered Charlie. She had barely time to register her fear and her revulsion before she felt herself falling forward into blackness…
Sarah had never fainted before, and when, later, she returned to consciousness she had little idea of what had happened. Captain Parker and the ballroom were gone, and she was in an anteroom, lying on a sofa. An anxious Lucy, holding a glass of water and Sarah’s shawl, was standing by the door, while Dr Kerr was at a little distance from where she was lying, his face grave.
‘There, Miss Middleton,’ he said, ‘I told you not to worry. The heat of the ballroom overcame Miss Langley, and now that she is out of it she has recovered.’
Sarah stopped herself from saying, ‘It was not the heat,’ when she caught Dr Kerr’s eye on her: an eye that almost held a warning.
She took the water that Lucy offered, and swung her legs off the sofa: an unwise move for her head began to spin again, and Lucy put out her hand to steady her glass.
Once her head stopped spinning, Sarah noticed that Dr Kerr made no effort to touch her, and after Lucy had steadied her glass, gently discouraged her from putting an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. Now how does he know that? Sarah thought. How does he know that I think that I should scream if anyone so much as laid a finger on me?
Almost as if in response to that unspoken thought, Dr Kerr turned to Lucy and said, ‘Miss Middleton, I wonder if you would be so good as to try to find Miss Langley’s brother. I collect that he had arranged to play cards with some of the officers and the Governor’s aides in one of the drawing rooms immediately before Miss Langley’s fainting fit.’
When Lucy had gone he knelt down beside Sarah, and said gently, ‘Miss Langley, I know that you cannot bear to be touched, and that you are strongly affected by the nearness of my own sex. I assure you that this is no uncommon consequence of such an attack as you have suffered. You must believe that this reaction will pass in time—but time is what you need.’
Sarah raised her head and looked at him unsteadily. ‘I’m a fine lady,’ she said simply. ‘You told me so once. Aren’t I allowed to have a fine lady’s vapours?’
‘Come,’ he said, smiling, ‘that’s better. I shouldn’t know you if you were not firing broadsides at me.’ But his eyes were anxious. She could not help noticing that the delicacy with which he avoided touching her, or coming near to her, reflected a depth of feeling of which she had not thought him capable.
Her own smile in response to his riposte was a watery one.
‘I’m afraid that my ship is quite sunk, Dr Kerr and the cannon ceased firing before it foundered.’
‘I do not believe that, Miss Langley. Gallant spirits are never completely overset, and yours, I am sure, are gallant.’
To her disgust, on hearing the kindness in his voice, Sarah’s pent-up tears fell at last. She could not control them. She had never wept over Charles’s desertion of her, but it was as though the loss of Charles, of home, and the recent attack, added to Alan Kerr’s changed manner to her, were all too much. She did not know which of her hurts was causing this storm of pain, nor did it seem to matter. She only knew that at last she could give vent to her feelings.
Alan Kerr, watching her, shared her distress. At what point in their relationship he had come to see the true Sarah Langley behind the stony façade with which she faced the world he was never sure. He was only sure that his feelings towards her had c
hanged. He had now acquired a fierce desire to protect her, to shield her from the world’s despite.
He rose, and made sure that the door was firmly closed so that he could hear—and deter—any person who sought to enter. He still made no effort to touch her—as much for his own self-control as for hers. He handed her his handkerchief which she took without a word, abandoned to everything. Pride and decorum were alike forgotten. In the months since her betrayal and her humiliation she had never once allowed her self-control to slacken. Even on the cliffs she had refused to let herself collapse—and now, suddenly, all her self-control was gone.
Alan Kerr found himself staring at a portrait of the late ill-fated Governor, William Bligh. Ever since his taunt to her in Hyde Park on the afternoon she had gone there with the Middletons, about her reasons for leaving England, he had become aware that something more than a mere flighty spirit lay behind her urgent and biting manner.
He had seen her quail while he spoke, watched her lift her head to confront him, and, on later reflection, he would have given much to recall his own careless words. They had seemed so idle at the time—though even then, perhaps, he had sensed some loss, some deep hurt. The attack on the cliff could not be solely responsible for the agony that she was suffering, although it had undoubtedly stripped her of her defences.
Presently a small voice behind him said, ‘Thank you, Dr Kerr, for your recent kindness to me.’
He turned. Sarah was looking at him, tremulously, her eyes red-rimmed, but her expression had lost its hopelessness. He went to the side-table beneath Bligh’s portrait where a decanter of red wine and some glasses stood. He poured out a short drink and handed it to her. Sarah took it gratefully, and, on lifting it to her lips said, shyly for her, ‘Will you not take a glass with me, Dr Kerr?’
He stiffened slightly and his previous haughty reserve was almost on him again. ‘You must excuse me, I fear, Miss Langley, but I never drink alcohol.’
An Unconventional Heiress Page 7