He couldn’t build a new relationship with Becky on the basis of a lie—even a lie of omission.
“I received a telegram from Patrick Murphy,” he said.
“The lawyer?”
“We were at school together. He thought I’d want to know that you’re suspected of selling confidential commercial information. Secrets.”
“No. I don’t tell anyone’s secrets to anyone. That would be…unethical.” She looked shocked, as dazed like a fighter taking a hit in the ring.
“Someone is making a killing on the London Stock Exchange because they know things they shouldn’t.”
“Not me.”
“No, but I need to find the real culprit to remove suspicion from you.”
“You believe me?” She stared at him.
“Of course.”
Her mouth curved in a wry, beautiful smile. “Of course? I do know a whole lot of secrets.”
“And you keep them. You wouldn’t sell out your friends for money. Gold isn’t your god.”
She took a hand off the steering wheel and touched his knee. “Thank you, Nathan.”
The imprint of her hand continued to burn long after the quick touch.
She stared straight ahead, her colour slightly heightened. “Though you couldn’t really call it espionage. It’s more like claim-jumping if they trade in miners’ secrets. How did you get permission to abandon Crown affairs to deal with a personal matter? You’re always so busy.”
“Unfortunately, this is a Crown affair. The people making a killing on the London Stock Exchange are a group of German capitalists. Some of the British mining companies that made particularly spectacular losses convinced the powers-that-be that their losses represent an assault on British authority.”
“So you’re being used to insure profits for a bunch of investors?” She demanded, outraged. “Who are they?”
“The Moriarty Mining Company is baying the loudest.” He was amused at her indignation. A lot of his work for the Crown boiled down to protecting the financial interests of its wealthiest, most influential citizens.
“Moriaty’s.” She snorted her contempt. “You should see the conditions their miners work under.”
“Hmm. Still the Board of Moriarty Mining is clever enough. They picked up where the hysterical point is in Whitehall. People are watching and worrying about the Kaiser with his dirigibles and dreadnoughts. Mentioning German involvement pulled the levers for Crown action. They’ve started a witch-hunt.”
“And I’m the witch?”
“Your name came up. It probably didn’t help that you refused to assist the police to pursue that bushranger.”
“I wouldn’t help Sergeant Poole if my life depended on it.” Rebecca’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Her heart had jumped all around her chest this morning. Light with hope. Stuttering with shock. Clenching in fear. And now, heating in rage.
Sergeant Poole was a hypocritical, hateful wretch.
How dare he accuse her of espionage? How dare Nathan suggest she should have pandered to the policeman’s ego and bullying?
She recalled Annie, dying. The memory was splashed blood red. Justice demanded the girl be avenged, and even more importantly, that future Annies be saved.
It wouldn’t be easy. She had tried to tell her dad, but he wouldn’t believe her word. He just wouldn’t believe the violent, painful story Annie had whispered to Rebecca as she died.
Sam Tanner had shaken his grey head, firm and regretful. “It wouldn’t have been Sergeant Poole, Rebecca. He’s a good man. Active in the church, supports the cricket and football teams. No. The girls were simply trying to make trouble.” He’d held up a large hand. “I’m accepting that they were hurt, but they’re the type who can’t help but lie. They try to pull good men down into the dirt.”
The testimony of “fallen women” couldn’t compete with Sergeant Poole’s reputation as a good fellow.
She had to destroy that reputation once and for all. She needed indisputable evidence. Then she’d take it to the papers. It was the sort of scandal they’d eat up.
For Annie’s sake. For every woman who had no one to fight for them.
“Personal feelings shouldn’t influence good sense,” Nathan said. “You’re a woman alone on the Goldfields. You need the police on your side.”
“To ride to my rescue?” She nearly choked on her bitter anger. Words of hot accusation against Sergeant Poole rushed up, and were stopped by the caution Nathan implied she lacked.
If her dad, who loved her, wouldn’t accept her word, how could she expect Nathan to even consider believing her about Sergeant Poole. The attraction between them wasn’t a proven thing, something tested and to be relied upon. He said he’d forgiven and forgotten her dishonest trick as a child, but she couldn’t forget. For too many years, she’d thought he despised her and so she’d kept him at a distance. She didn’t know him well enough to risk trusting him, now. This wasn’t about her—it was much more important.
“I rescue myself.” She angled the Blue Wren toward the square of yellow canvas appearing in the distance. “We’ll stop at Harry Dempsey’s claim. He’s one of the older miners and he appreciates a friendly visit.”
Harry the Hypochondriac would more than appreciate a visit. His medical encyclopaedia, worn thin from study, would have armed him with a new disease to regale her with. He’d once convinced a visiting doctor that he had bubonic plague. That had been a memorable effort.
They landed near Harry’s shack. The mineshaft was nearby. A rope stretching from his one room shack to a mulga tree functioned as a washing line with shirts and long johns flapping on it. A dog sat in the shade of the tree, watching them with pricked ears and a wagging tail.
“Good girl, Bluey.” The dog was a red cloud kelpie, the same dusty red as the dirt.
Nathan smiled. “Only Australians would call a redhead, Blue.”
Don’t smile at me, she thought desperately. It made her want to surrender and trust him—but Annie was only one of the many women on the Goldfields who’d learned the hard way the dangers of trusting men. Rebecca couldn’t let the warmth of knowing Nathan was here for her muddle her thinking.
He might be here to protect her, but the suspicion of espionage could be dealt with after she’d ruined Sergeant Poole.
As for her confused feelings for Nathan, she stuffed them into a metaphorical fuel bin and slammed the lid. Later there would be time to panic at the raw energy of her emotions.
The dog rushed over to greet Nathan as Rebecca crossed to the mine shaft and jerked the rope that would pull a bell underground, alerting Harry that he had visitors.
A few minutes later, the old man emerged. His unshaven face cracked a smile when he saw them, then immediately fell into lines of suffering. His spine bent and his feet shuffled. A deep, wracking cough sounded like tuberculosis.
Her own smile caught her by surprise and she turned away hurriedly. Harry was in form for a fine performance, and he wasn’t going to strain credibility by claiming something like leprosy.
She brought the spirit kettle out from the Blue Wren, along with a tin of fruitcake to be left behind for Harry and a second tin of biscuits for them all to share. Bluey got two.
The bush chairs they sat in were comfortable. Harry had made them from canvas sacks and relatively straight branches fastened together in imitation of deck chairs.
Despite his fine clothes, Nathan looked at home. Then again, he always looked in command of any situation. It was what made her doubt he could ever believe Annie’s accusations against Sergeant Poole. Nathan had never been helpless as Annie had been—as Rebecca could have been.
She could remember the early years of her life in London. Her mum had run a small tea shop. It hadn’t just served tea. It had catered to single working men boarding in the lodging houses aroundabout. The shop had opened early for breakfast and closed late after dinner, and Rebecca couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been expected to help with the work. Her
mum had been too tired to love her, worn out with surviving. The flu had taken her one fog-shrouded winter, and Rebecca had been gathered up, tiny, confused and scared, and sent as an orphan half-way around the world to Western Australia.
She knew all about being helpless. Out of sight of the men, her hand fisted. Never again.
Nathan chatted with Harry about the price of gold and how life on the Goldfields had changed.
“Too many townies, nowadays.” Harry coughed. “Everywhere. Cause trouble because they don’t know how to look after themselves.”
“You don’t sound so good, Harry,” she said after his third coughing bout.
“Can’t complain. One of them native women gave me a herb tea. That helped a bit. Course it’s all gone now.” He looked at them from under his grey, shaggy eyebrows. “And it never is as powerful as the stuff from a good chemist.”
“Do you need me to get you a tonic from town?” Rebecca felt as stilted as a child in a school play. She didn’t dare look at Nathan to see how he was taking this exchange. With or without the excuse of Harry’s cough, their next stop would be in town.
“Aye, that would be champion, girl. And if you were there, I wouldn’t mind some of that medicated snuff and a jar of menthol chest rub. Keep your sinuses clear and—” He broke off to cough artfully. “A man has to look after himself.”
“So does a woman,” Rebecca said, sadly.
Chapter Five
Nathan watched Becky adjust the Blue Wren’s direction yet again. He suspected it was all unnecessary fidgeting, an excuse to avoid meeting his gaze. He wanted to grab her shoulders and wrench her around to face him.
And that was why he hadn’t wanted an emotional discussion in mid-air. Despite the cramped quarters of the cabin, she had too many ways to evade him.
Frustration ate at him and he wanted the flight over. “We could have flown directly to Kalgoorlie,” he said, naming the boom town that had grown on the back of the gold rush. “You didn’t need the excuse of Harry’s tonic.” And it had been a transparent excuse, one she’d fished for.
“You said you didn’t want to fly into town.”
“I said I wouldn’t be left there. Big difference.”
Her shoulders twitched. “Fine. I think that if you want to see how the gold rush has changed things, you need to start with the town. That’s where you’ll find people trading secrets.”
It wasn’t fine with him. Not at all. But he reined in his impatience.
He had to go cautiously.
The news that she didn’t dislike him, had thrown him. All that stood between them was her hangover of guilt from childhood (which he’d demolished) and her habit of standing alone. He’d never been closer to her, until his anger at her withdrawal had lead him into unwise, direct challenge.
So he retreated. As a hunter, he knew better than to spook his quarry.
He leaned back in the chair, his gaze on her profile. “I’ll need a tour guide to show me around town.”
“It’s not that big.”
But he needed to keep her close—to woo her, to protect her and to discover why she’d reverted to wanting him gone. He could feel her shutting him out.
Not this time!
All his instincts told him she planned to leave him in town. Well, she wouldn’t be the first person to try to lose him. As an agent to the Crown, he’d gotten plenty of practice sticking to the trail. With Becky, it would be a genuine pleasure to stay close.
He smiled, and saw her sideways glance of suspicion.
“I suppose I could show you around. After I’ve collected Harry’s tonic.”
“Thank you,” he said meekly. “I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Hmm.”
He didn’t even try to decipher that sound. Instead he looked out at the view. They were approaching the town. The clear air allowed great visibility. The blob on the distant horizon gradually grew in size and distinctness. The cluster of buildings had a line of telegraph poles stretching from west to east. From the west, the road was wide and busy, running all the way to the city of Perth and the coast. To the east, the telegraph lines stretched out to the desert. Next stop would be the Nullarbor Plain and endless miles of nothingness.
Despite Kalgoorlie’s remoteness, the thin strands of the telegraph linked it all the way to the London Stock Exchange. Rumours on the Goldfields could shake the financial world half the globe away.
And did, Nathan thought grimly. He had to find out who was stealing secrets and making a killing on the Exchange. It wasn’t Becky—but a single woman made an easy scapegoat.
She was hunched over the controls, piloting the airship over the telegraph wires, and bringing it round in a tight circle to land in a clear space in the town’s busy northern airfield.
The noise came as a shock after the Blue Wren’s discreet rumble and the contemplative quiet of the bush.
Engines roared and men shouted. Whistles tooted. People scurried between the airships; arriving, departing, collecting parcels. A wallaby had gotten confused and leapt madly among the chaos. Two men waved their hats at it, shooing it back, out of danger. Not all airship pilots could be relied on to avoid collision with a panicked animal.
Dirigibles were by far the favoured method of travel to the Goldfields—for those who could afford them. In winter and spring, the tracks over the Darling Ranges could be morasses of mud. Even the main road, originally laid by convicts, was apt to break cart wheels. It hadn’t been designed to withstand the discovery of gold and the rush of men.
Nonetheless, the dirigibles faithfully followed the telegraph line, that in turn followed the first road. It was the most direct path from the coast to Kalgoorlie, but more than that, by staying along the telegraph lines, the dirigibles weren’t shot at by prospectors protecting their claims against nosey parkers and claim jumpers.
The Blue Wren had the rare—and envied—distinction of being able to travel anywhere. Becky had established herself as a lifeline for miners isolated by distance and always at risk of ill luck. She brought supplies—nothing bulky, but a few treats like boiled sweets, medical supplies and reading material. She also wrote and read letters for those who were illiterate. Finally, she could be relied on to respond to a distress message, be it spelled out in rocks on the ground or by waving flags. She had saved more than one man’s life by flying him into town, to the nearest doctor.
The Tanners were enormously proud of her. He knew how they had worried that Becky—so starved of love as a child, so mechanically gifted and socially impatient—would navigate the adult world. Here, she had found a place where she was valued.
But she would be valued anywhere.
He had to fold his arms to keep from reaching out to her. He valued her above all else. Above his life, above his honour.
How did you woo a woman who wouldn’t look at you?
It couldn’t be that the kiss he hadn’t been able to resist stealing had scared her. Perhaps she’d been more scared than she’d shown at the charge of espionage.
His training reared its head.
Perhaps she even suspected who was selling secrets. If Becky felt a loyalty to them, she’d try to protect them from him. His mouth tightened. The only person he wanted to protect was her. Everyone else would have to take their chances.
She stripped off her goggles and hung them on a hook. “If you want to see the town, let’s go. After you.”
He let himself be hustled off the Blue Wren, aware that she had a security system to activate.
She locked the cabin, descended the ladder and pressed a button. The ladder folded up, tucking itself behind a square of tin that had a blunt warning painted on: “Trespassers hurt”.
That was the extent he was willing to disregard conventions, though. He took her hand and tucked it into his elbow. It was an intimate, possessive gesture.
She looked at him, startled, but after a long moment, she left her hand on his arm. He pressed it close to his side and matched his stride to hers. They wove b
etween the dirigibles and the boys running with barrows of fuel and goods.
More than one conversation between men in the uniform of pilots or the dungarees of engineers, halted at the sight of him with Becky.
She nodded to a couple of them, but made no effort to introduce him.
He thought of how quickly she’d straightened Sue out as to their relationship. “My foster brother”. Was she re-thinking their relationship, or did she lack friends to introduce him to in this raw new town, a town of men and the ruthless pursuit of wealth?
The airfield ended. They ducked under the rope fence that enclosed it and trod the worn path to town. About halfway, Becky veered off the track and led the way to a narrower back street. The route lead past a laundry.
Not the best place for it, he’d have thought. The dirigibles would stir up clouds of dust in the dry months. The “clean” laundry would all be orange tinted, the colour of the dirt. Steam gusted out, along with the chatter of Cantonese.
The end of the street opened onto High Street. Two pubs faced each other. This was a town of pubs and brothels. It was a busy place. Horsemen trotted past. Cyclists wobbled over ruts in the road. A number of carts were loaded high with supplies, pulled by teams of horses and even…He blinked. “Camels?”
“They suit the land,” Becky said. She’d swapped her leather cap for a shallow-brimmed straw hat. Now she put a hand up to hold it in place as a stray gust of wind swept up the alley behind them.
One of the horses shied as a piece of washing tore loose and whirled into the street.
“And camels are steadier,” she added. “They can be bad tempered, but they don’t buck.”
The horse’s luckless rider lay on his back in the middle of the road. He scrambled up cursing, and ran after his mount to a chorus of comment and laughter.
“The town is a lot bigger than when I was last here.” The nature of the town was changing, too. The ramshackle buildings built of corrugated tin were being replaced with wooden buildings or even brick ones. Side streets still showed makeshift arrangements of canvas stretched over precarious frameworks, but High Street was prosperous, aggressively so.
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