Dream Time (historical): Book I

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “I never wanted to be first!”

  Their grandmother looked as startled as Annie felt.

  Daniel stepped forward, as if he had made a decision. Never before had either her brother or she made a decision. Not one that wasn’t influenced by their grandmother. Or maybe even this one was influenced by her, because Daniel looked as though he were finished with letting her control his life.

  Did her brother, like herself, need desperately to find himself? To prove himself?

  With her heart afire with fear, she saw her twin silently, coldly, turn and walk out the door, out of the mansion, out of her grandmother’s and her lives.

  “Where do you think Daniel’s gone? This isn’t like him.”

  Annie watched her grandmother pacing the parlor. No one would have guessed she was eighty-six, such vitality emanated from her. “You don’t know that. He hasn’t lived here since he was twelve. Why did you send him to Harrow, Nana, when he only wanted to stay here in Australia?”

  “I had his destiny to consider. Our colonial prep schools could never provide the kind of education needed for a country’s leader.”

  Destiny? Did she think she was a divine force shaping human beings? “Then why couldn’t you have just sent him to a smaller boarding school in England?”

  The old lady stopped pacing, and her black alpaca skirt swirled about her high-buttoned boots. “Trust me. I know what’s best for my grandson.”

  Annie wondered why Nana didn’t remember often enough that she was her granddaughter. An education in the colony had been good enough for Annie.

  “Don’t you think Daniel’s old enough to make the decision about what’s best for himself, Nana?”

  Nan Livingston waved a hand in a dismissing gesture. “Daniel is immature for his age.” She resumed her pacing. “Where could that child be? Annie, tell Wright to get the phaeton and drive down to The Rocks. I want him to check out all the pubs and dives. Tell him not to forget the brothels on Pitt Street. Daniel could have taken it in that young male’s brain of his to go on a bender in order to assert his independence.”

  Annie pivoted and headed for the servants’ quarters, on the lower floor at the rear of the three- story Georgian mansion. She got no farther than halfway down the long corridor with its frames of Romney portraits and marble busts. Her footsteps slowed, faltered, then stopped.

  After all, Annie is your watchdog.

  That remark hurt. Yet in a sense, she supposed it was true. In her mind’s eye she saw the letter . . . saw herself waving it like a captured flag.

  Nan Livingston had used the letter in subtle ways to gain her objectives, just as she used Annie.

  Why did she let her grandmother use her?

  Because she so desperately wanted her approval.

  Her footsteps resumed. In Annie, Nan Livingston had found a reluctant ally.

  Cold seeped through Daniel’s bone marrow. He burrowed deeper into his Chesterfield. Wind whipped the velvet collar, torn by brambles, against his chilled cheeks. He curled his body into a fetal position around the base of the teak tree and willed his mind to numbness, willed his mind to dream again.

  The dream had been a pleasant one . . . of his parents, hugging each other, with Annie and him playfully trying to squeeze between them. Laughter, hot Christmas sunshine, cinnamon smell of plum pudding, hot spiced claret, evergreen decorations.

  Like warm amber liquid pouring from a brandy bottle, the dream flowed from that Christmas holiday to another holiday, summer vacation. Home at last after his first year at Harrow. A sunny but cold July day and the letter. The letter from Harrow.

  Daniel whimpered in his sleep.

  He had been terrified at leaving home for boarding school. He had begged not to be sent away. His crying had irritated Nanny. She had had her way about Harrow, just as she had had her way about Oxford and her way in arranging every damned detail of his life. Even if it had meant using unorthodox means.

  So, he had sailed away to England. More than nine hundred boys from twelve through eighteen lived and studied at the ivy-wreathed college. After Sydney, with its wide-open spaces and sparkling waters and easy-going mateship, Harrow had seemed gray and crowded and oppressive.

  As a colonial, he hadn’t fitted in. Furthermore, he had been small and delicate and uncoordinated, which left him watching rugby and boxing from the sidelines.

  Bespectacled Benjamin, a second-year student, had been the sunlight in that overcast first year. Slow but affable, Benjamin had offered consolation in return for guidance in ancient history, divinity, Greek, Latin, science, and mathematics.

  “The first year is always the hardest for hazing, Daniel. Make it through that and you can make it through anything.”

  Desperate for friendship, Daniel couldn’t deny the boy’s request to help him cheat on those all-important exams. The exams that meant being sent back home a disgrace if one didn’t pass.

  It was Daniel who had been sent back home a disgrace. The letter from Harrow announcing his expulsion for cooperating in cheating had been a shame that he didn’t think he could bear. Certainly unthinkable in the Livingston family. His grandmother had thought he had merely returned home for the summer holidays.

  Of course, she was bound to learn the truth sooner or later. But to learn of his dishonor as she did—through the letter . . .

  Dreading the coming confrontation with his grandmother, Daniel had intercepted the letter from Harrow’s administration brought by the mail packet. He had wanted to know its full contents and prepare her himself for the worse.

  Mortified, he had been reading its castigation of his shameful deed when Annie had playfully yanked the letter from his hands.

  Though she might have given it back immediately, the terror revealed in his face had prompted her to dash down the backstairs, waving the letter like a captured flag. But Nanny had captured Annie next—and the letter.

  Heat from humiliation had burned red splotches on his cheeks. In his dream, he could even feel his cheeks burning.

  Damn Annie. Treacherous Annie. Always spying on him, telling on him, siding with Nana. Annie wanted to be the cherished child. To the point of this latest betrayal that had resulted in his grandmother choosing his own wife. Damn Annie to bloody hell.

  Something nudged him back to reality. The dream slipped away, and the burning in his cheeks was from the bitter cold morning.

  And the nudging . . . he opened his eyes to find what it was that nudged him: the cold barrel of a Winchester jabbed at his genitals. “Bat an eyelash and you’ll find your poke stuffed up your arse, lad,” warned Frank Smythe.