Clockwork Gold

by Jenny Schwartz

This was the best time of year to see the country. In early spring the new growth from winter rains carpeted the ground. Wildflowers were everywhere in bright splashes of yellow and pink, red and white. Birds wheeled in large flocks through the sky. Galahs shrieked and the smaller birds twittered like static on a phonograph record.

  The people of grimy London who admired chirping budgerigars in maybe ten to a cage in the pet shops, would be downright amazed to see flocks of hundreds flashing their green and blue wings.

  Away to the south, avian activity centred on a stand of trees. Waterholes were vital in this landscape. In summer they would be the only daytime relief from the relentless heat. Everything congregated here, including the dingoes and snakes, the chief predators.

  Becky altered the direction of the Blue Wren and slowed its speed. As they approached the trees he saw signs of a camp already in place: a cart, two horses, a tent, kids, dogs. An audience came out to watch them land. He counted five adults: three men and two women.

  A whirr announced the activation of the airship’s tripod legs.

  The Blue Wren’s design was unique. It relied on the pilot’s calmness and pinpoint accuracy. Becky had to hold the airship level in its descent.

  They landed without a bump. The whirring of the airship’s legs continued. They would be drilling into the ground to anchor the ship.

  She took off her goggles. “It’s a bit early to stop, but I thought we could camp here, tonight.”

  In company. He got the message. “Fine.”

  The kids started to climb the airship’s legs. The dogs barked hysterically.

  “Wait!” Becky scrambled out of her seat and let down the ladder.

  The kids let go of the legs, landed in the soft dirt and raced for the ladder.

  “You let them in here?” he asked beneath his breath.

  “Don’t be a bigot, Nathan.”

  “Damn you. I meant that excited kids break things. I don’t give a fig that they’re Nyungar.” He waited till the last of the kids had swarmed up the ladder, then climbed down. He left Becky handing out biscuits from the picnic basket.

  “Woohoo. Rebecca’s got herself a man.” A young woman grinned at him over the baby she held.

  “Sue, he’s my foster brother.” Becky shouted from the Blue Wren. “Nathan Burton.”

  The stocky man standing beside Sue unfolded his arms. “Scott Campbell. Sue’s my wife.”

  Nathan held out his hand.

  The other man’s grip was strong and calloused. Introductions continued. “My brother-in-law, Paul, my sister, Ida. Mack is my younger brother.”

  They’d landed in a family party, one Becky was evidently at home with. She descended the Blue Wren, hugged Ida, and took the baby to cuddle. Its plump hand patted her cheek and she nuzzled the tiny fingers.

  “Some brother.” Sue sidled near him.

  Caught staring, Nathan felt his skin heat in embarrassment. He didn’t usually wear his emotions so close to the surface. The image of Becky holding a baby had stunned him.

  “Nathan’s home for a bit.” Becky answered a question from Scott, missing Sue’s comment. “He thought he’d take a look at the Goldfields, see how things have changed.”

  “Lot of men out here now,” Paul contributed. “Like ants. Digging.”

  His wife went forward to pull a boiling billy off the fire. She poured the water into a waiting kettle. Tin mugs were set out. “Sugar?”

  “No, thanks.” Nathan sat on one of the logs rolled up to the fire. The makeshift seat was comfortable enough, especially with the setting. The waterhole shimmered in the afternoon light, and the children’s smiles were even brighter. Two came and sat near him, fascinated by a stranger.

  They talked idly of news from around the Goldfields and the town. The family travelled from farm to farm, picking up work where they could, cutting timber, shearing sheep, harvesting. Becky contributed the contents of the picnic basket to the evening meal. There was damper and a rabbit stew.

  Afterwards, Mack pulled out a violin. He didn’t seem to play for an audience, just played a tune now and then, or made the fiddle sob in sympathy with the night wind creeping over the land.

  “Nice people,” Nathan said as he walked Becky back to the airship. He’d get his valise from it. The valise held a swag he’d unroll and sleep in beneath the ship, while Becky slept safe in the cabin.

  “They’re a strong family. You should meet Scott’s mum. Auntie Mae is a wonder. She knows everyone, remembers everything, and she never has a bad word to say about anyone.”

  “Did you know they’d be camping here?”

  “No. But someone in their extended family is generally on the road. They travel a lot. Sue says it’s easier that way. When people get nasty, they move on.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry I called you a bigot. You’re not.”

  “And you base this on…?”

  “A bigot wouldn’t have handed over his new gun and let the men and boys practice shooting it.”

  He shrugged. “I had spare ammunition.”

  “Nor would a bigot have treated the women with good manners. Some men—”

  “I know what some men do,” he said grimly. Rape was a reality. The gold rush had brought scum into the country, and often they were racist scum, treating the land’s native people with brutality. “I hope you carry a gun.”

  “I’m well protected.”

  Despite the bright moonlight, the cabin was shadowed. He wished he could see her expression because there’d been an odd note in her voice.

  “Becky, if a man hurt you, you can tell me.” And I’ll kill him.

  “I can look after myself.”

  “Did anyone hurt you?” He caught her hand.

  “Not me.” Her fingers clasped his and tightened with tension. “I found a few girls, after the men had gone. One girl…I couldn’t get her to a doctor fast enough.”

  He put his arm around her. “I’m sorry.”

  “They buried her in a pauper’s grave. All we knew was her first name. Annie. We didn’t know when she was born or who would miss her. She only looked about sixteen. No one cared.”

  “You did.”

  “It could have been me,” she whispered. “Without Mum and Dad, I’d have been one of the lost ones.”

  He wrapped both arms around her.

  She stood stiffly for a moment, then she sighed and her arms slipped around him.

  His arms tightened as she rested against him. “If you ever need me, Becky, just call. I’ll never let you be lost. You’re mine.”

  “You said I’m not your sister.”

  He grimaced. With the blood thundering in his veins, he most definitely didn’t feel like her brother. He forced himself to release her. “There are other relationships a man wants with a woman.”

  He picked up his valise and got the hell off the Blue Wren.

  Chapter Three

  “Good-bye. See you soon.” Rebecca raised her voice above the noise of the Blue Wren’s ascent.

  On the ground, Scott kept a hand on his oldest son’s shoulder, restraining the boy from running after and seizing one of the airship’s retracting legs. He’d tried that trick two visits ago and nearly caused disaster.

  It wasn’t that Rebecca couldn’t protect the Blue Wren and herself from attack, it was that she’d been terrified of young John getting hurt.

  The white cockatoos in the trees around the waterhole rose in a shrieking cloud of protest and excitement to have humans flying in their air.

  Rebecca maintained a steady ascent speed. She was grateful, actually, for the confusion and the need to concentrate. All morning she had been conspicuously busy. Too busy to talk with Nathan. Now, he sat in the chair beside her; so relaxed that she resented his ease when she herself was as tense as a coiled spring.

  It was all his fault. Last night had left her uncertain. She had to have misheard him, or misunderstood his meaning.

  “There are other relationships a man wants with a woman.”

&nbs
p; But that implied he wanted her, desired her. The notion was incredible. Impossible.

  She looked sideways at him.

  His tailored blue coat emphasised the muscular breadth of his shoulders and chest. His trousers moulded to powerful thighs. He was lean but powerful. People often overlooked that, misled by his gentlemanly manner and good looks.

  He caught her staring and a smile curved his well-cut mouth.

  Hastily, she looked away. “It’s impossible, you know. You can’t have forgotten what I did to you.”

  Their ascent levelled off and she set a course east-sou-east, squinting a bit against the glare of the early morning sun.

  “What you did to me?” he repeatedly blankly. “What did you do to me?”

  “The letters. The Dean’s letters. His journal.”

  The silence stretched out, fretting her nerves. She risked a quick glance at him.

  He was no longer relaxed. He’d stripped off his goggles and sat bolt upright, half turned towards her. One hand gripped the frame of the cabin, as if he were controlling himself, but barely. “That was over ten years ago, Becky. You were a baby.”

  “Hardly. I was eleven.”

  “You can’t honestly think I held that against you.” He shook his head, bemused.

  “Of course you did. I lied and cheated and tried to destroy your reputation. Your honour.”

  He reached out and prised her right hand off the steering wheel, clasping it between his two warm ones. “Becky, you were a child and you were hurting and scared. I understood why you tried to drive me away. You needed the security of the Tanners’ love. I was competition you didn’t need.”

  The Blue Wren could fly itself in this smooth morning air. The only turbulence was in the emotions rocketing around the cabin.

  “There was no competition, Nathan. You won before it even started. You were a boy, older, well-spoken, well-bred, better educated, clever, good looking, athletic.”

  Her list of compliments only tightened his hold on her hand. “Did you resent me so much?” he asked roughly. “I know I never gave you enough time. I’d never had a sister and you…you weren’t young the way the other girls were. You worked and you watched with these wary blue eyes. Such blue eyes. Kingfisher eyes.” His thumb smoothed across her wrist.

  She shivered. She should have worn gloves.

  “You rebuffed the few attempts I made to be friendly.”

  She remembered his offers to help her with her homework, and how she’d resented what she’d seen as a demonstration of his superior cleverness. Then there was the swing he’d strung from a solid tree branch, hanging it so that the outermost point of the swing arced over the river. That overhang had been a daring touch she’d appreciated even as she refused to use it. The swing still hung there, the ground beneath it worn smooth. It had become her special place, after he left.

  “You must have thought I was the world’s worst brat.”

  “No. I remember the little girl in her best dress standing beside me at my father’s memorial service. The Tanners arranged the service after it became clear Father had left only debts. They wanted me to have some way of remembering him.” He took a deep breath. “I was fourteen years old. Terrified. Old enough some would have said to make my own way in the world. When the Tanners took me in and made arrangements for me to stay at school, I was so relieved. The emotion that choked me at the memorial service surprised me.”

  It had surprised her, too. He’d seemed so much older, so in control of himself and life. Mum had directed her into the front pew beside him for the service and she’d been wary of the boy who had such exquisite manners and a posh voice. And then, midway through the service, his breath had shuddered in that way that meant tears were close.

  “You slipped your hand in mine.” He turned her hand over and stroked the palm. “A hot little girl’s hand, but you clung tight. You gave me someone to hold onto when I was all alone.” He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I never thought of you as a brat.”

  “You must have when I stole the Dean’s letters from his study and hid them in your room. You certainly proclaimed your innocence loudly enough and set about finding the real culprit.”

  “My first investigation.” The wry humour failed to mask the thread of emotion in his voice. “I thought it was one of the other boys from the school, trying to set me up. I wasn’t popular with some of them. I was the scholarship boy, the orphan.”

  “You were better than all of them,” she said fiercely.

  “By the time I realised it was you who’d taken the letters, it was too late.”

  The Dean had been with Nathan, had been willing to give him a chance to clear his name. But what Rebecca remembered most of all was Sam’s disappointed, stricken expression. Confronted by the evidence of footprints, she’d confessed everything. Her skin prickled with shame as she recalled the hysterical way she’d cried. “You love him more than me. You don’t want me at all. He goes to a good school and I’m just being educated to be a maid. You shouldn’t have called me your daughter when you didn’t mean it.”

  The Dean had withdrawn, murmuring that he understood this was a family matter.

  “I disgusted you,” she said. “I disgusted myself. No, don’t deny it. That’s why you withdrew. We hardly saw you at home, and then, when you won the scholarship to Oxford you couldn’t wait to leave.”

  “I wanted the chance to study at Oxford, but you’re wrong about the rest. I tried to give you the space you needed. I wanted you to see it was you, not me, that the Tanners loved.”

  “They loved both of us.” She met his eyes steadily. “They still do. They’ve missed you.”

  He groaned and released her hand. “What a tangle. All these years I stayed away.”

  “Because of me,” she said sadly.

  He muttered under his breath.

  “Pardon?”

  “Because of you is right. But not for the reasons you’re thinking. And we’re not having this conversation miles in the air.”

  “Why not?” She looked around. The blue sky was as private as private could be.

  “Half your attention is on the damn dirigible.”

  “It ought to be.” Guiltily, she glanced at the control panel. All was well. She wondered if she’d have noticed even the boiler exploding. Nathan’s dismissal of her guilt had impacted her with the force of an explosion.

  He didn’t hate her or despise her. He liked her.

  Emotion welled up, like the fizz in a ginger beer bottle. It tingled through to her fingers and made her smile, then laugh. The Blue Wren danced through the sky, responding to her commands.

  Nathan braced his body against the dirigible’s movements and laughed with her. They dipped and flirted like a bird on its mating flight.

  When she steadied the Blue Wren, he leaned across and kissed her on the mouth. His lips were cool and firm. His eyes, so close to her own, blazed with passion and determination. She took one hand off the controls to touch his face. He covered her hand with his, holding it there.

  “This is why I wanted to continue this conversation on the ground.” He kissed her fingers and returned them to the steering wheel.

  Her hand felt clumsy. She tightened it on the wheel. “That wasn’t a brotherly kiss.”

  “No. It wasn’t a kiss between friends, either. I guess you could call it a kiss of intent,” he said musingly. A smile dared her to question him. He was all masculine arrogance, watching her like a lion eyeing a gazelle. “Now that we’ve cleared away the tangled past, we can concentrate on our future.”

  The lazy promise in his voice and her skin-tingling response to it sent her into a dizzying spiral of panic. She was accustomed to thinking of Nathan as the enemy, the man she’d wronged. To come face to face with a lover rattled her. She retreated. “I thought you were here on Crown business.”

  The relaxed line of his mouth firmed. He reached for his goggles and slipped them on.

  She recognised evasion when she saw
it. A shiver, one that held nothing of excited anticipation, slid down her spine. “What is it, Nathan? Tell me.”

  “Don’t, Becky. Don’t push it. I don’t want to lie to you.” He stared straight ahead.

  Her stomach churned. It had to be bad.

  “Trust me to deal with it,” he said.

  “It’s not a question of trust. I can’t let it go. You’re alarming me. I have friends here. If there’s trouble coming, I need to know.”

  “It’s not your friends you need to worry about.” He sighed and seemed to reach a decision. He faced her. “I’m here because of you. My Crown business concerns you.”

  “Me? But how? Why?”

  “You’re suspected of espionage.”

  Chapter Four

  “Espionage? Me?” Becky’s voice squeaked.

  Nathan took off his hat, stowed it on the low shelf beneath the control panel and ran a hand through his hair. He ruffled it up, then smoothed it down, trying to think.

  Becky didn’t hate him—and when he’d kissed her, there hadn’t been repulsion in her blue eyes. His every male instinct had prowled into life. But then she’d had to go and ask the one question he’d hoped to never have to answer. The question of why he was here.

  He could lie when he had to.

  Grim memories flitted through his mind. He’d had to lie in service to the Crown, but that wasn’t where he’d learned the trade of deceit. His on-the-job training had been with his father.

  Edward Burton had been the third son of a baron. Third sons traditionally went into the clergy. First sons inherited, second sons were bought a commission in the Army or Navy, and third sons served the Church. Edward served himself.

  He’d been charming. It was what the ladies said at every new town father and son visited. “Mr Burton is so charming and cultured, and so devoted to his son.” Hardly. Nathan had been useful to his father. Nothing said respectability like enrolling your son at the most exclusive school. The action had given Edward instant access to the towns’ elites. Then he’d conned the money from their wallets.

  The scenario would have played out in Western Australia, but a fever picked up in Ceylon had carried Edward off first. Nathan had been given the chance of a new life with the Tanners and he’d taken the opportunity with all the determination of a scarred adolescent. No one would ever have cause to question his honour.