An Unconventional Heiress

by Paula Marshall

  ‘Well, I think that you’re wonderful,’ said Lucy fervently. ‘I couldn’t possibly have done what you did. I should have died. Even the sight of blood makes me feel quite ill. And you ruined your pretty dress, too—after all the work you put into it.’

  ‘To say nothing of all the blood I spilled learning to sew whilst I made it!’ Sarah answered her friend lightly, but she was exceedingly grateful for Lucy’s kindness, which soothed her sore heart a little after John’s criticism and that of the regimental ladies. She would not forget, either, the open admiration with which Dr Kerr and Tom Dilhorne had treated her. She thought it odd that a pair of ex-convicts seemed to have more generous hearts and minds than their supposed betters.

  For his part, Alan Kerr was struggling to come to terms with his feelings for Sarah Langley. Tom had twitted him about them and, as usual, Tom was telling the truth as he saw it. The problem for Alan was the vast gulf that lay between them. How could he, transported and disgraced, dare to aspire to capture the heart of Sarah Langley? Yet every time he met her she fascinated him the more, with the result that his errant body was likely to betray him.

  And here he was, visiting her again, this time to examine Nellie and the baby in order to find out whether they were well enough for Tom to drive them to the farm.

  Sarah received him with every appearance of pleasure: indeed, she was extremely gratified by his recent changed manner to her. He thought that he had never seen her look so well and his heart leapt at the sight of her. To suppress its ill behaviour he asked, in his most doctorly manner, ‘I trust that I see you well, too, Miss Langley?’

  ‘Very well. In fact, I flourish. I am supposing that birthing babies agrees with me,’ and her green eyes shone at him.

  Her frank manner, so different from that of the other women he met, delighted Alan now that he was no longer the target of her anger. To stop his errant mind from betraying him as much as his body, he looked for a neutral topic of conversation and saw it in an oil painting, which stood on an easel in the corner of the room.

  ‘Is that John’s work?’ he asked. ‘May I look more closely at it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Sarah watched him walk across the room and bend a little to examine it. No, he was not conventionally handsome, nothing like Charles, but there was a strength and power in his face, as well as in his body, which Charles had lacked. His voice, with its slight Scots burr, added to, rather than took away from, his attractiveness to her. She wondered how he had managed to remain single when simply to look at him made her feel breathless, and (confess it, Sarah!) rather shivery.

  He turned, and she blushed a little, as though what she was thinking was reflected in her face. ‘Your brother has excelled himself in this, Miss Langley. It is Watson’s Bay, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, and thank you for the compliment.’ She debated for a moment on whether to tell him the truth. She decided that he deserved it. He had been kindness itself to Nellie and could not have been more so if she had been a lady and not a poor servant girl of dubious morals.

  ‘I had better admit to you, Dr Kerr, that you are looking at my work, not John’s.’

  ‘Your work!’ He swung back towards the painting. ‘Then I must compliment you again. This is a very fine piece. John himself has never done better. There is a wildness about it that is typical of the scene. You have not painted a piece of England transplanted.’

  Sarah could scarcely contain her pleasure. ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘I am not kind at all. You have a remarkable talent. Did you paint much back home?’

  ‘A little. I had the same teacher as my brother and we learned together. However, as you must know, Dr Kerr, a woman trying to paint seriously is regarded as a very odd thing.’

  He waved a hand dismissively, finding himself admiring her more than ever. ‘Not when a woman paints as well as this.’ He looked across at her again. ‘You are a remarkable woman, Miss Langley, you have many talents and an admirable courage and determination. Not many persons of your station would have cared for Nellie as you did. I honour you for that.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Kerr.’ Sarah’s voice was unsteady.

  He continued, ‘I know that you are suffering for it. Every tabby cat in the colony must say her malicious piece. You must not mind them, though: their opinion is of no value.’

  Her laughter was unforced. ‘I only wish that they could hear you. You hearten me. Of course, you are right, they disapprove of me exceedingly, particularly because I have been stupid enough to speak my mind.’

  She began to laugh again. ‘Now, why should I tell you that? I have spoken my mind to you often enough.’

  Alan had resumed his seat. He leaned forward, ‘You are honest, Miss Langley. Don’t forget that I have frequently spoken my mind to you. I hope that we may now meet in peace.’

  He felt a shocking compulsion to kiss her, there, on the corner of her enchanting mouth. What could he be thinking of? Her delightful freedom of manner would disappear very quickly if she had the slightest notion of what he was coming to feel for her. Desperately, to try to recover himself, he added, ‘You must understand, Miss Langley, that for every person who disapproves of you, there is another who honours you for what you did.’

  ‘You must not over-refine on my conduct,’ Sarah told him, but she was pleased nevertheless. She found that she did not wish him to leave, for she had never yet been able to speak so freely to a man as she was now speaking to Alan Kerr.

  Neither did he wish to leave. His eyes roved the room and he saw a portfolio propped against the book case on the far wall.

  ‘Yours, Miss Langley?’

  Sarah nodded agreement. For the moment, and for a reason which she did not understand, speech seemed suddenly beyond her.

  ‘May I inspect it?’

  Again she nodded.

  Alan picked up the portfolio, opened it, and examined its contents, exclaiming as he did so. He found Nellie and Sukie there, engaged in household tasks. Mrs Hackett, her face hard, stood disapprovingly in the kitchen doorway. John was caught in a few vivid strokes: talking to Lachlan Macquarie, drawing a kangaroo, his face screwed up in concentration. Halfway through he found something that Sarah had forgotten: himself, talking to Tom Dilhorne, both of them in characteristic poses. He was leaning forward a little and Tom’s billycock was on the back of his head.

  Alan looked up at her. ‘I was right,’ he said slowly. ‘You have a rare talent.’

  He rose and she rose with him. He put the portfolio down on a side table and stretched out his hand to take hers. Sarah’s lips parted and he bent his head, whether to kiss her hand or her cheek she never found out.

  A door slammed. Baby Sarah could be heard crying, John was calling for Carter. Face to face, they broke away.

  ‘I must see to John’s dinner.’ Sarah stammered, and Alan ground out,

  ‘I must be off to the Macarthurs. Their baby has the colic.’

  They were awkward together where a moment before they had been on the verge of something true and different.

  I must be mad, Alan thought, riding down the street, quite mad. She is beyond me. For a moment there I thought that she returned my feelings. I thought…oh, to the devil with what I thought. I cannot think anything, I am a disgraced ex-convict and she is a lady and that must be the end of it.

  Deep down, though, he hoped that it was not.

  Chapter Seven

  Governor Lachlan Macquarie was not popular with the 73rd Highland Regiment or the free citizens of New South Wales. Some of the officers defended him a little, but since he continued to favour the Emancipists, with whom he considered that the future of the colony lay, his unpopularity grew.

  John liked him, but shared the general opinion of his policies and avoided conversation about them as much as possible. Alan Kerr he liked and respected, but he disapproved strongly of Tom Dilhorne because Tom offered him none of the deference which he, a Langley of Prior’s Langley, considered to be his due.

/>   Privately he thought that Sarah had been encouraged in her reckless behaviour by Tom, and Sarah’s frequent attempts to point out that she had involved Tom in Nellie’s trouble, rather than the other way round, went unheeded.

  For many reasons, including her brother’s obvious prejudice, Sarah, who had at first accepted the Exclusives’ view of the Governor, came to understand that his vision of a colony run by colonials, even if they were convicts, and the descendants of convicts, must be correct.

  ‘After all,’ she said one day to John and Lucy when they, and the Middletons, were picnicking at Watson’s Bay, ‘the soldiers and the clerks come and go. Only the Emancipists like Dr Kerr and Tom Dilhorne stay.’

  ‘Then the colony will never come to anything,’ was John’s riposte to that.

  Since this was obviously the popular view of the matter, Sarah, for once, held her tongue. She thought, ruefully, that she was growing up a little in being more cautious of airing her opinions. It was something that she was learning from Tom Dilhorne. What he said, and what he thought, she was beginning to understand, were often two quite different things, although she also realised that he was always honest with her. Doctor Kerr, of whom she was seeing more and more, since he was frequently a dinner guest of the Langleys, was a quite different man: his moral sense and his honesty were his most distinguishing characteristics.

  Sarah was becoming used to topsy-turvy seasons, so picnicking in the open in what in England would have been late winter had ceased to amaze her. Lucy accepted the weather as the norm and Sarah wondered how she would manage in England when, as was inevitable, the Regiment returned home.

  The nine-days’ wonder of Nellie’s confinement and Sarah’s part in it had died down. Tom had driven Nellie, the baby and Sarah—much against John’s wishes—to Grimes’s farm where a genuine welcome awaited them. Sarah was fully accepted again in colonial society and Governor Macquarie made it quite plain that she had always possessed his confidence and his support.

  The latest subject of gossip was the perpetual problem of the Irish. They numbered a large part of the convict population, having been transported after the failure of the Irish uprising. They were also the most rebellious since they were political prisoners and had little in common with the prostitutes and thieves with whom they were classified.

  Their recalcitrance earned them frequent floggings, and exile to Norfolk Island or Van Diemen’s Land where discipline was brutal. There had been some loose talk that they might be considering another uprising—there had been one in 1804—and that some of the more hardened and long-term English convicts might join them. The Governor’s attempts to moderate the harsh discipline under which they were compelled to live had met with no favour from the military or the Civil Service, and many of the convicts themselves despised him because they thought him to be, in their words, ‘an easy mark’.

  Sarah was telling Lucy of Kevin Riley’s visit. She had asked Alan Kerr whether he could account for the difference between the slovenly Nellie and her trim and apparently educated brother. He had told her that Riley was self-educated, was free on licence and was determined to get on in life despite having been sent to the colony for involvement in the same robbery as Nellie.

  He was also something of a political rebel as a consequence of having been taught by Father Harold, one of the priests transported for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

  ‘How like you, Sarah,’ Lucy remarked, ‘to find out about such things. I must confess that most of the convicts look and sound pretty much the same to me, rather dirty.’

  ‘But not Tom Dilhorne and Dr Kerr,’ said Sarah, a trifle naughtily.

  ‘Oh, them, they’re different,’ proclaimed Lucy, but she could not have said wherein the difference lay. Instead she added, ‘Let’s talk about jollier things like the Governor’s Banquet and Garden Party. You’ll need a new dress for them.’

  ‘Surely not,’ Sarah said. ‘I thought that they were mostly outdoors.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s only the most stand-up and knock-me-down event of the whole year.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘Grander than the New Year’s Ball,’ she teased. ‘I can’t imagine anything grander than that.’

  ‘Don’t fun, Sarah. I know that you’ve been to reviews, galas and balls back in England, but for Sydney the Governor’s last grand party of the summer is really the season’s highest point.’

  ‘Well, the last gown I had made for a great occasion came to a sad end,’ sighed Sarah. ‘What do you think will happen if I make another? An earthquake, perhaps?’

  ‘Or a hurricane,’ said Lucy brightly. ‘Not that there won’t be lots of great occasions in the future. Life here is never dull.’

  Sarah suppressed her amusement. She had already been surprised by the frantic nature of the pleasure-seeking in Sydney. It seemed that in an effort to compensate for their isolation and distance from home, everyone was determined to pass the time as entertainingly as possible.

  She often wondered how this hectic life struck the compulsory visitors to New South Wales who plodded around Sydney paving the roads, building the bridges, hospitals and barracks, and installing the essential services that made the Exclusives’ lives so easy. Alan Kerr, on a recent visit, had expressed impatience at this constant pleasure-seeking and had praised Sarah for running her little school and her expeditions to paint and draw the countryside and its many strange animals. Most of Sydney’s inhabitants showed little interest in what lay around them.

  John looked up from his work and said, ‘I think that it’s time we were going home. With all this talk of a possible uprising, we ought not to invite trouble.’

  General agreement to this followed. While she and John packed up their painting equipment, Carter began to collect the remains of their picnic. Sarah, watching him, thought that he, like herself, had changed since they had arrived in Sydney. Whilst his manner to John remained respectful, there was no doubt that it was more free. He had taken to slipping out to the nearest grog shop to drink with the Emancipists and Sarah had been amused to notice that there was more than a hint of Tom Dilhorne in his manner.

  It suddenly struck her that he might not be so happy to return to England as John had assumed. Her brother had recently begun to talk more often of their going home. He was finding England, in retrospect, more attractive than it had seemed when he had left it.

  Sarah, absent-mindedly climbing into the carriage, asked herself how she felt about returning home. Sooner or later, they would leave. I would miss this, she almost said aloud, while the carriage rolled them back to their temporary home through the geranium hedges and the stalls laden with the last fruits of the season.

  She avoided thinking that what she would miss most was not the scenery, nor the weather, but her growing friendship with Alan Kerr, and yes, Tom Dilhorne, too. They were totally unlike the men she knew back home, and not for the first time she contrasted Charles unfavourably with them. His charming idleness suddenly seemed intolerably empty.

  What, after all, had he ever done, or hoped to do, but inherit?

  Lucy’s forecast that Sarah would need a new gown was correct. Mrs Middleton supported her daughter, and after visiting Tom’s store, where he ordered bale after bale of muslins and silks to be unrolled and displayed before her, Sarah finally decided on a turquoise silk whose colour was to be its only adornment. He also produced a box of tortoiseshell head combs decorated with fake diamonds, made of paste, and a fine lace shawl for her to wear, mantilla-style, falling from the crown of her head to her shoulders.

  For such a cold-seeming, practical man, his interest in female haberdashery seemed extraordinary. She said as much to Alan Kerr one evening while they drank tea after he had dined with the Langleys.

  Alan, who found these meetings with Sarah both a delight and a strain—her nearness troubled his errant heart—said, ‘Well, he’s a merchant and a successful one. Everything is grist to his mill. Don’t underestimate him, he’s probably the cleverest man you’ll
ever know. Does this question mean that you’ve been buying for the Governor’s Banquet?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah always found herself a little shy with him. It would never do for John, or any other guest, to know of the extraordinary effect that Alan Kerr was beginning to have on her. ‘I suppose,’ she added slowly, ‘that you scarcely approve of such an event.’

  ‘On the contrary. The Governor is celebrating the founding of the colony. That must be something of which we all approve.’

  ‘All of us—?’ began Sarah, and then stopped, aware that she was touching upon the forbidden topic—how and why he, and so many others, had arrived in the colony at all.

  Alan enjoyed her rosy confusion and the delicacy that had prevented her from ending her previous remark. ‘Why not? I didn’t choose to come here, but now that I am here, I must make the best of it as many others do. God knows, the colony needs doctors. Besides, even if it were possible, I would not now return to my old home, even if I thought that a welcome awaited me if I did.’

  He stared into the fire, the first of the season.

  John, who was sorting through one of his portfolios to find a watercolour of a wombat that he wished to show Alan, looked up.

  ‘Forgive me for asking, Kerr, but do I infer from your words that you would have nothing to return to in Scotland?’

  ‘Of course you may ask. The answer is simple. I collect that you know my story—Macquarie is sure to have told you of it. My family threw me off after my trial. My father made it plain that I was no son of his, and that I was not to pollute the family home should I avoid hanging.’

  The words were lightly spoken, but Sarah could guess at the bitterness that lay beneath them. Impulsively, she put out her hand to him. ‘Oh, shame, forgive me for saying this, but for a father to treat his son so cruelly…’

  He looked at her gratefully. ‘I thought that I had lost all feeling over it long ago. Tonight I find that I was mistaken—but you must not condemn him overmuch, Miss Langley. What I did and said was unforgivable, even if it was drunken foolishness, not treason. I was a silly, opinionated boy who deserved to be punished—although not perhaps as greatly as I was.’