An Unconventional Heiress

by Paula Marshall

  Later, being driven home with John, he said, to her no small amusement, ‘My dear, I must urge you to be careful. We are in a strange and exciting place and I feel that it would be unwise of you to become fixed on any of the men whom you meet here, because of that. Captain Ramsey is a good enough fellow, but he is not the man for you. I understand he has little beyond his pay and must therefore be beneath your consideration.

  ‘I also trust that you see fit to talk to Kerr and Dilhorne after such a fashion that they get no false notions, either. These Emancipists do not seem to know their place, and they fail to know it most of all.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Sarah, ‘I have no intention of marrying yet—if at all—and certainly I am not fixed on anyone at the present.’ Was she being entirely truthful in saying this? She was not too sure—but then, she wasn’t sure of anything at the moment—only that Alan Kerr was having the most strange effect on her.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, my dear. Now let us leave this topic and talk of better things.’

  ‘Such as?’ Sarah could not help saying.

  ‘Now, my dear, you are not to tease me. I have only your best interests at heart, you know.’

  The trouble was that Sarah no longer knew what her best interests were!

  More than that, quite unknown to her, Tom was not the only person present at the party who knew that Alan and Sarah were attracted to one another. Sukie, for one, approved entirely of the comfortable understanding that they had apparently reached. The military men she dismissed with scorn and she considered the officials to be a namby-pamby lot. Since Alan’s care for Nellie and the baby he could do no wrong. After all, if the Doctor and Miss Sarah were to get hitched then she, Sukie, would not lose Miss Sarah.

  She confessed all this to Carter on the way back home. ‘You women are all the same,’ was his only comment, ‘matchmakers, every one of you. What you really want is to see us poor fellers get caught.’

  Sukie ignored this. She had long made up her mind that she would do everything she could to see that George Carter stayed in New South Wales. Carter, however, needed little persuading. He had already decided that he would remain behind when the Langleys left. He liked the freedom of the colony and reckoned that he could easily find employment, or perhaps work for himself. He was useful with horses and was tired of being John Langley’s man. George Carter wanted to be his own man.

  ‘To what do I owe this honour?’ Tom was twitting Alan Kerr who had just arrived in his store, his medical bag in his hand.

  ‘Not to buy anything, that’s for sure,’ Alan teased back. ‘Sarah Langley sent their kitchen boy to me this morning to ask me to come and examine Annie Bell. She’s worried about her health, and thought that it would be a good idea for me to see her when her mother isn’t present. Apparently the mother is consistently denying that anything is wrong with her.’

  ‘Well, Sarah’s class is present in the back today,’ Tom told him, ‘but if Annie is the thin child with the persistent dry cough she isn’t there. But look in on them, by all means; I may be mistaken.’

  As usual, he wasn’t. Alan walked in to discover that the children were bent over some improvised desks, busily copying Sarah’s beautiful handwriting set out on a blackboard—also improvised.

  She walked towards him, her face unhappy.

  ‘Could we speak in the shop? I wouldn’t like the children to hear us.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Alan led the way to a niche behind the counter where Tom had a desk and a bookcase. He was busy serving a customer.

  ‘Just as I was leaving home, Mrs Bell arrived to tell me that Annie was not coming to my class in future. She said, most rudely, that Annie was wasting her time bothering with book learning and that she had found work for her in one of the woollen mills near Jenkins Wharf. You may imagine how shocked I was. I’m sorry that I’ve brought you here for nothing.’

  ‘Do not trouble yourself about that. Instead, tell me why the child worried you so much.’

  ‘Oh, Alan—’ and in her distress Sarah called him by his Christian name for the first time ‘—you should have seen her last week. She’s painfully thin and has this horrible dry cough. She was scarcely strong enough to write on her slate. I would have thought she was more fit to be placed in a hospital rather than a manufactory—and so I told her mother, who immediately left, cursing me for a busybody. Do you think that Tom has any influence over her?’

  Tom, who had arrived in time to hear Sarah’s last few sentences, shook his head. ‘Mrs Bell is the biggest damn fool in the colony, begging your pardon, Miss Sarah. Her husband died of trying to make her see sense. I’m not surprised that she took no notice of you.’

  ‘So that’s that, then,’ remarked Sarah glumly. ‘Annie is destined to be a hand at Dempster’s Mill—for a short time, any way. I would wager that she doesn’t have long to live. I’m sorry to have brought you out on a wild goose chase, Alan. I know how busy you are.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ he told her again. ‘You know that I’ll always come when you call. If I see Mrs Bell, I might try to have a word with her.’

  ‘Thank you for that, too,’ Sarah said, offering him her hand like a frank boy. She was beginning to tire of curtsying and bowing. Their handshake lasted a fraction longer than politeness demanded. Sarah’s eyes glowed and their manner to each other betrayed them again to the observant Tom before Alan left.

  He sighed. The pull between them was so strong that he could trust neither of them to behave sensibly. He was beginning to wonder if he would ever feel for a woman what Alan was plainly feeling for Sarah Langley.

  Somehow, he doubted it.

  In the days following the Governor’s Banquet Sarah found that public life in Sydney became much less hectic—other than Lucy’s birthday party there was, for the time being, little in the way of excitement. On the other hand, her private life was growing much more intense. Stephen Parker was tireless in his pursuit of her, ignoring her attempts to convince him that she merely wanted him as a friend. A fresh outbreak of trouble in the kitchen added to her woes. And then, if all this were not enough, there were her feelings for Alan Kerr to cope with.

  Her hours in the back room where she taught the little ones became a haven of peace where she could forget everything, and so she told Alan one afternoon when he visited her, after most of her class had left, to look at yet another child, Bessie Machen, who was showing signs of starvation and neglect.

  His examination ended, with the verdict that he would ask Tom to investigate what was happening in the child’s home. ‘It may be,’ he said, ‘that there is too little money going in to feed the family properly. By her manner with me, the child is not being mistreated—unlike poor Annie.’

  He handed Bessie back to her and Sarah cuddled the poor wan thing. Alan looked thoughtfully at the woman he was coming to think of as his Sarah. She seemed more subdued than usual.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘you seem a little tired, Miss Langley. Is anything wrong? Are you doing too much?’

  ‘Yes,’ she told him in her usual frank manner, ‘I do feel a little tired, but not because I’m overdoing things. I’m having to cope with a lot of nonsense at home. John seems to disapprove of everything I do, and for the past few days Mrs Hackett has been worrying me with her constant complaints that someone is stealing our food.’

  ‘Stealing your food!’ Alan began to laugh at the mere idea of such a thing. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Oh, but I am. It seems that first some leftover sausages and some vanilla blancmange disappeared. After this the elves disposed of various other tit-bits which La Hackett had been saving for herself or for us. I know that it must be annoying for her, but she acts as though John or I have been getting up in the middle of the night in order to eat them. I’ve had a word with Sukie and Carter but they profess to know nothing. La Hackett appears to suspect Katie, Nellie’s successor, but she seems too simple to steal anything.

  ‘Unfortunately I told Mrs H, rather frivolously
, that the fairies must be responsible and now she’s more angry with me than with the thief—if there is a thief.’

  Her expression was tragi-comic, but Alan suspected that Sarah was finding the problem of running a small handful of servants in Sydney greater than that of managing a large one at Prior’s Langley where the staff had numbered over seventy.

  ‘On top of that,’ she added, ‘Mrs Hackett is being more difficult than ever with the result that Sukie has reverted to being flighty again. Nellie’s replacement is proving quite inadequate and only Carter is his usual solid self. And all this just when I thought that I had everything domestic beautifully arranged—it’s all falling apart.’

  Alan smiled tenderly at her. She was running her hand through her chestnut curls while she spoke and he always found her most enchanting when she was at her most informal. The rapport between them was never greater than when he came to examine her small charges. She had suggested recently that, except when there was an emergency, he might consider visiting the children once a week to look for the first signs of trouble. This had been prompted by his remark that doctors were wrong to wait for illness to happen: they should do more to prevent it from happening at all by making sure that people ate the right food and were not compelled to work overlong hours.

  ‘You know that I will always do everything I can to help you, but I fear that solving the problem of the missing food is beyond my powers.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ Sarah continued, ‘that is, if you can bear to hear any more. But this is the most serious thing of all. Yesterday Mrs Bell arrived on my doorstep, shrieking that she wished to speak to me at once. John ordered her to be turned away, but I intervened and asked her what the trouble was. Whereupon she began, in the vilest terms, to accuse me of having stolen Annie. It’s quite ridiculous really—first Mrs Hackett seems to think I’m making away with the food and now I’m accused of kidnapping little girls.’

  Alan would have loved to kiss away the worried frown on Sarah’s face. Instead all that he was able to do was to say, as reassuringly as he could, ‘Don’t worry too much, Miss Langley I’m sure that there’s a perfectly rational explanation for the food, and Mrs Bell can hardly be serious over Annie.’

  ‘She seemed serious enough. I think that I succeeded in convincing her that I had not kidnapped Annie, if that is the right word, but it seems that the child has disappeared, and I can’t help worrying about what might have happened to her. There are some dreadful persons about in Sydney—as we both know. If she has been taken to The Rocks she might never be seen again. John didn’t help matters by telling me that I shouldn’t put myself in situations where trollops can insult me in my own home.’

  Her expression was so sorrowful that Alan could tell how much she was affected by Annie’s sad tale. Her usual ebullient manner was quite gone. Greatly daring, he placed his hand over hers. ‘You must not repine. There is little you can do, or could ever have done, for Annie. Once her mother had decided to send her to the mill the matter was beyond you. There is no law against the employment of eleven-year old girls and their working for sixty hours a week in a manufactory. To be fair to her, Mrs Bell almost certainly needs the money Annie can earn there. Worse than that, Sydney needs the mill. It is necessary if the colony is to provide its own goods without relying too much on what is brought in from England.’

  ‘Good God, you cannot be defending the use of children, Dr Kerr,’ she flashed back at him.

  ‘No, but life is not just, as I well know. After all, I don’t suppose you gave the matter a thought until you arrived here and saw what was happening to Annie yourself. Great Britain is full of mills employing children even younger than Annie.’

  Sarah bowed her head in acknowledgement of the justice of what he had just said.

  ‘But I do know now, and I cannot pretend that I don’t. I sometimes wonder what has been happening to me ever since I came to New South Wales.’ She lifted her great green eyes to him in almost unconscious supplication.

  ‘I never thought that I should care about such things. Indeed, I doubt whether I ever had a serious thought at all before I came here. But none of this helps Annie. Could you look out for her when you are on your rounds? She must be somewhere.’

  He lifted Bessie from Sarah’s knee and offered her one of the comfits he kept in a screw of paper in his pocket in order to rid children of their fear of him.

  ‘Yes, I promise to look for Annie, and I shall ask Tom to do so as well. You know, Miss Langley, before you came to New South Wales you lived a very sheltered life. But Sydney is relatively small, and it is not possible for you to be unaware of what is happening in the world around you.’

  Alan did not add, ‘The other women in the colony do not see what is happening around them, and never will. What distinguishes you is your compassion.’ He did not want to leave her, would rather have stayed to comfort her, but his duty called, and it was one of the rules he had made since he had arrived in New South Wales that he would never resist that call, whatever the cost.

  Sarah watched him go with more reluctance than she had ever felt before. She had tried to tell John something of her mental confusion and of her worries about Annie and the other unhappy children, but he had looked uncomprehendingly at her and advised her not to trouble herself about such things.

  ‘They are not a woman’s concern, Sarah, and that’s the top and the bottom of it. There’s no law to prevent a mill owner from hiring children, most of whom are the offspring of criminals and loose women.’

  After her discussion with Alan, Sarah felt John’s lack of pity even more deeply. Alan had told her much the same, but he had also demonstrated distress that matters should be so. She knew that he frequently attended the poor of Sydney without asking for payment, and that this was a matter for criticism among some of the Exclusives who felt it wrong that they should be asked to pay when others weren’t.

  When Mrs Middleton had complained of this to Sarah, she had pointed out that Dr Kerr lived a hard life himself, very different from that of most of the Exclusives, but had been met with the answer, ‘Indeed, he’s lucky to live a free life at all, never mind indulge in luxuries.’

  Sarah was beginning to find it difficult to talk of such things not only to John, but also to many of the people whom she met in her daily round.

  Chapter Nine

  The day of Lucy’s birthday party was as fine and bright as any since Sarah had arrived in the colony. She had not treated herself to a new dress, but had chosen to wear one of those which she had brought from England. It was a white muslin with pale blue trimmings and a parasol and a tiny straw hat to match.

  She had debated on what to give Lucy for a birthday present until Tom Dilhorne had taken her aside in his store and shown her a fan which he had just unpacked. It was Chinese and had delicate porcelain panels mounted inside the cream feathers and intricate ivory spokes. Each panel had a flower or a bird painted on it. Sarah, entranced, bought it immediately and could hardly wait to see Lucy’s face when she gave it to her. Tom spoke briefly to her of the missing Annie. He had been unable to find any trace of where she might have gone—or where she could have found refuge.

  She was thinking of this when she ran lightly upstairs that afternoon to dress herself for Lucy’s party. Mrs Bell had been round again and was finding an unlikely ally in Mrs Hackett. Not that Mrs Hackett had any real sympathy for either Annie or her mother, but she was more than happy to use them to show her disapproval of Sarah these days. She was always comparing her unfavourably with her brother. ‘A proper gentleman he is, who knows a gentleman’s place,’ she was fond of saying.

  Sarah tried to forget all her many worries. An afternoon and evening of innocent fun with Lucy and her friends were what she needed. She was debating which of her reticules was more appropriate for the ensemble she had just put on when she heard a door slam and the sound of running feet on the stairs.

  As once before, Sukie burst into her bedroom in a state of ill-defined panic. />
  ‘What is it now, Sukie? I haven’t time to engage in a new argument with Mrs Hackett. You really must learn to live with the woman.’

  ‘It ain’t that, Mum.’ Miss Sarah and proper diction seemed to have flown out the window, thought Sarah in exasperation—as had Sukie’s neatness of dress. She was nearly as flyaway as she had been before Nellie’s baby had been born.

  ‘Oh, Mum, you must come with me, now.’

  ‘Indeed, no. I’m off to Miss Middleton’s birthday party. I’m already late because of Mrs Bell’s latest eruption. Tell me when I come back.’

  ‘It’ll likely be too late by then, Mum, I mean Miss Sarah. It’s Annie.’

  Sarah’s heart gave a great lurch. She threw her reticule on to the bed. ‘Explain yourself, Sukie. What do you mean by saying it’s Annie? Annie is missing.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mum, Miss Sarah, she ain’t. Come with me and I’ll show you.’

  Dear God, thought Sarah. Mrs Bell is right. I am involved in Annie’s disappearance, or Sukie is, which comes down to the same thing.

  She seized Sukie by the shoulders. ‘You know where Annie is, then?’

  Sukie was suddenly in an agony of fear. ‘Yes, oh, Miss Sarah, you must come with me. I think that she may be dying.’

  ‘Dying!’ Sarah picked up her shawl and threw it around her shoulders. Lucy’s birthday party flew out of her head. ‘If that is so, then I will come at once.’

  ‘We’d best dodge old Hackett,’ cried Sukie, ‘she don’t know about Annie. She’ll be out of the house soon. She’s visiting that friend of hers this afternoon.’

  Again, as once before, she grabbed Sarah’s hand and led her down the stairs, this time across the garden at the side of the house and towards the paved area before the stables where Carter stood waiting for her.

  ‘Does this mean that Carter is involved in hiding Annie, too?’ asked Sarah.