The Secret Rose

by Laura Parker

  Thomas looked up, surprised to find her still gazing intently at him. “Can’t a man finish his meal first?”

  Sally flushed a deep shade of pink that made her pretty face even more attractive. “I wasn’t waitin’ on account o’ that.” She glanced back toward the noisy room before whispering, “There was a bloke name of O’Leary in ’ere asking questions a couple of months back. Looked every bit a bushranger, let me tell ye! ’E was seeking an ex-convict by the name of Gibson from County Cork.”

  “Gibson’s a common enough name,” Thomas murmured

  The mild reply did not surprise Sally. Tom was not the sort of man who showed his feelings. “Just thought ye should know,” she mumbled and turned away.

  Thomas watched appreciatively as she moved away, but she was immediately forgotten when he glanced back down at his plate. For a man who made his living among sheep, beef stew was a far more tempting item than even ripe and eager barmaids. Potatoes and carrots were even rarer delights, and he cleaned his plate.

  Afterward he contented himself with a slow but steady succession of tankards of ale. Only then did he ponder Sally’s news. Strange, he had not thought of Sean O’Leary and the others in years. For thirteen years, Australia had been his home. Thirteen years was a long time. During that time, he had changed more than his convict status. He had become first a shearer and now a squatter with vast holdings. There was nothing to be gained by dredging up the past. He would not seek out the man. He wanted only to forget the past.

  He had come to Sydney against his better judgment, yet he could not stay away. So here he would remain until he found the source of the whim that had impelled him to come to the port city. He had lived by his hunches too long to deny them now. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. When the moment came, he would know the reason why he was here. If it was that he must face part of his past, then so be it. He would not shy from it, but he would not seek it out.

  More than an hour later Thomas opened his eyes to find Sally standing over him, her apron tucked under her arm.

  “Ye were sleepin,’” she said unnecessarily.

  “Resting up for me shave,” he shot back with a grin. Then his face sobered. “What’re ye charging, Sally? A man must be certain he can afford his pleasure.”

  Sally caught her lower lip between her teeth as her face flooded with color. “I’d never charge ye, Tom,” she whispered, her eyes averted from his face.

  The bashful whisper surprised Thomas. After all, she must have been with many men. “Come, lass, ye’ll never earn enough to keep ye in silks and tucker if ye give so generously of yer favors.”

  Sally pinkened to the tips of her ears, but she was afraid to contradict him. If he guessed her secret too soon he might change his mind. “Whatever ye say, then, Tom.”

  *

  Thomas turned away from Sally and sat up on the narrow cot to pull on his trousers. After a moment Sally’s soft weeping made him turn back, acutely aware of his part in her distress. “There, there, lass,” he said gently, awkwardly patting her trembling shoulder

  Sally lifted her tear-smeared face from tile bed “Why, Thomas? I—I don’t…Am I not pleasin’ to ye?”

  The sheet shifted as Sally twisted toward him, revealing her breasts with the crimson nipples which he had held between his lips moments earlier.

  “Cover yerself!” he ordered and stood up. He moved to the window and braced himself with an arm above the casement.

  Almost at once he was sorry that he had been sharp with her. It wasn’t her fault he was frustrated. Dear Lord! She had eagerly offered him the ultimate prize of her womanhood. The realization that a barmaid was a virgin had startled him; and then cold, hard reason had had a chance to make him think of what he was about to do.

  “’Tis sorry I am, lass. But it’s better so.” They were friends. He couldn’t simply bed her, then forget her, and that is exactly what he would do. He had come to Sydney to set in motion events he did not fully understand. When they were over, he would leave. “’Tis better so,” he repeated. His voice carried slowly and with tender pity across the short expanse. “Ye want to marry, ye’ve told me so before. ’Tis yer husband who should have the gift ye offer me.”

  Sally sat up, looking more childlike as the tumble of honey-blond hair framed her naked shoulders. “Don’t ye see, Tom? ’Tis ye I want.”

  Thomas shook his head firmly, his gaze focused on the field of ships’ masts visible above the rooftops of the shops across the way. “I’m nae the one for ye, Sally, lass.”

  “A body should know when a man’s the one for ’er.” Sally slipped off the edge of the bed, dragging the coarse linen sheet with her. “Look at me, Tom. Ye wanted me, I could feel it. Ye were grand and hard against me belly. I felt ye with me own hand. Ye did want me!”

  When she came up behind him and leaned her naked breasts against Thomas’s bare back, his body’s momentary reluctance vanished, and once more he could feel himself filling with urgent desire.

  “Ye’re a wee bold thing, Sally,” he said breathlessly. “Were I to accept the soft cradle of yer thighs for a night, when the morning came I’d be just another satisfied man. And ye, Sally, ye’d be just another whore.”

  He heard her gasp as she pulled back from him. For a long moment, there was only his own harsh breathing as he held himself firm against turning to her and committing the very act he tried to talk her out of.

  “It—it don’t matter what they call me in the morning, Tom,” she said, wrapping her arms about his waist and hugging his back once more. “If marriage ain’t in ye, I won’t ask it. But I want ye to show me the woman in me. I want it to be ye.”

  Thomas groaned. Why hadn’t be bought the favors of a practiced harlot and left the seducing of Sally to another man? Marriage was on her mind, while marriage was the last thing…

  The breeze rose suddenly, the window curtains dancing in its wake. The scent of the sea surrounded him, and with it the poignant memory of a red-haired lass with solemn golden eyes flickered in his mind’s eye.

  “I’m getting married, Sally. That’s what come over me!” The outrageous words left him in one long breath.

  Sally was as astonished as he. She yanked her arms away. “Ye’re what? I don’t believe ye!”

  Thomas turned slowly, his mind fastening with absolute conviction on a truth he had not recognized until this moment. “I’ve come to Sydney to marry.” In the dim moonlight, he saw skepticism lift Sally’s brows. “I’ve picked her out this morning, sort of.”

  “Ye’re a lyin’ bastard, Tom Gibson!” she spat.

  “Nae,” he countered softly and smiled. He had come to Sydney to find a bride. That was the urge that had sent him to the docks to watch the arriving ships.

  “Her name’s Fitzgerald.” His smile deepened as he recalled the name by which the redcoat had addressed her. “She came on the Black Opal from Cork. Eyes like gold dust from a miner’s purse, she has, and hair as red as a cypress forest ablaze.”

  Sally’s mouth fell open at this unexpected eloquence. There really must be such a woman, she thought, as painful reality swept through her. “Ye’re lyin’!” There was a dangerous wobble in her voice that threatened new tears.

  “Nae, lass. She’s a bit fine for the likes of me, but I’II do her proud. A lady deserves that.”

  At the word lady, Sally’s humbling self-pity shriveled under a flare of rage. “A lady, is it? And what o’ me? Am I an unskilled tart that ye may spurn?”

  Screaming invectives, she flailed him with fists and feet until Thomas lifted her off the floor and dumped her on the bed. “Mind yer tongue, lass. Ye’ve the mouth of a gutter wench when it suits ye.”

  Sally fell back against the bed, her rage broken, and cried the broken sobs of a child.

  “Ah, Sally.” Thomas’s sigh held a world of regret as he reached for his shirt. He was doing the right thing, even if he hurt her now.

  The image of the red-haired young woman flickered again in his mi
nd’s eye. His bride. She was not a great beauty, but there was a fine brave spirit in her. She had not backed down from the larrikin who had snatched her purse. That was the kind of wife he needed, one who looked every inch a lady and yet had the spirit to stand up to the brood of hoodlums he would no doubt sire on her.

  A new thought struck him, and his features hardened momentarily. He hoped she was not related to the redcoat who had come to her aid. He could not see an English soldier without the old hatred simmering within him. That was the reason he had turned into a nearby doorway when the major appeared. Yet he had been fascinated enough by her to remain close until they left the alley. If only he knew where to find her.

  She had come in on the Black Opal from Cork. There must be some swab on the waterfront who would remember her, this Fitzgerald from County Cork. The irony of it was not lost on him.

  Thomas’s laughter startled Sally, but she was too numb with misery and the collapse of her own thwarted passion to question its cause. When the door shut quietly behind him, she turned her face to the wall and sobbed herself to sleep.

  Come near, come near, come near—Ah, leave me still

  A little space for the rose-breath to fill!

  —To the Rose upon the Rood of Time

  W. B. Yeats

  Chapter Five

  Aisleen opened her eyes to the night. She had heard laughter, masculine laughter, and then the closing of a door. She sat up in bed, staring at the door at the end of the barracks room where she had been assigned a bed for the night. She saw nothing. It was too dark. Straining her ears, she finally heard voices, both feminine. They came from the bed across the aisle. From where had the man’s laughter come? Were some of her roommates entertaining a man in their quarters?

  The Hyde Park Barracks consisted of twelve government-run dormitories for young women immigrants who had not yet found work and shelter. From what she had observed in a single day, most of these young women were from the lower classes come to serve as servants, cooks, and laundress in the better homes of the colony. Much to her consternation and disapproval, many of them had spent the entire evening meal talking about men and marriage, winking and nudging one another when the conversation turned bawdy. The matron had quite rightly put an end to it.

  Footsteps sounded on the walkway outside the window that flanked her bed, a light tread but nothing secret in it. Did those footsteps belong to the man whose laughter she had heard? Indignation overcame modesty, and Aisleen drew back her sheet and slipped from her bed to the door without reaching for a wrapper. If there were a Peeping Tom about, she did not care if he viewed her nightgown or glimpsed a bare ankle if it meant he was apprehended. The door opened with a loud crack that halted the night walker.

  “Are you all right, then, miss?”

  A young woman stood on the flagstones outside, a candle in hand. Aisleen recognized her as one of the matron’s assistants who had shared her table at dinner. “Yes, I’m fine, Miss—?”

  “Warren, Ophelia Warren.”

  “Good evening, Miss Warren,” Aisleen said politely. “I thought I heard…well, I would have sworn I heard voices just now, and laughter.”

  “That may be, miss. Some of the girls are regular owls, up until all hours. Matron does her best to keep them quiet, but they do not always listen.”

  Aisleen shook her head slightly. “I do not refer to women. I heard masculine laughter.”

  “A man?” Ophelia voiced in surprise. “That couldn’t be, miss. We do not allow gentlemen callers after dark. There’s a guard and the gates are locked. Perhaps you were dreaming.”

  “Perhaps,” Aisleen conceded. “I do not sleep well in strange places.”

  “You’ll come round quickly, miss. All our girls do. Good night, then.”

  As Aisleen retraced her steps past the rows of beds, she wondered at herself. She was not given to fanciful thoughts. As a rule, she never dreamed. Yet, as she slipped back beneath her sheet, she was shaken by the realization that she had been dreaming just before she heard the laughter, and the dream had been quite shocking.

  She dreamed of a man. She could not see his face; neither could she describe him in detail. It was dark and he had been standing with his back to her.

  Aisleen closed her eyes and pulled the sheet up higher. No, she had not “seen” him; she had felt him like warmth radiated in the image of a man. Her impressions of him and of the night had been sensed as subtle pressures and eddies of breath and breeze upon her skin. The man himself had been so close her nostrils had quivered in response to his odor.

  Aisleen began to tingle in a manner quite unique in her experience. The tingling deepened with every remembered image of the masculine shadow which strode the edge of her consciousness. He had been naked, though the darkness hid his exact form. She had had the tantalizing urge to touch his warm, flushed skin and…

  She sat up with a gasp as blood rushed warmly into her cheeks. What she remembered, what she thought of as a dream, was sinful. No wonder she had dreamed the laughter. It was a fitting end to so wicked a reverie.

  “A nightmare,” she whispered to herself and lay back. Not since childhood had she had so vivid a dream.

  Bouchal. Once he had seemed more real than anything else in her life. She still thought of him occasionally and marveled at the power of a child’s imagination. Now, of course, she realized how the family legend of magical ancestors had led a very lonely and unhappy young girl to half-believe that she had willed into being a companion for her very own. But that’s all it was, imagining.

  In years since, whenever she was tempted to yearn for something beyond her reach, she called to mind her father’s whiskey-sodden ravings about magic as an antidote against the longings of her own heart. There was no magic, only the realities of life. Those who believed in anything more were doomed to disappointment and despair.

  Aisleen turned onto her side, smoothing the wrinkles from the bottom sheet as a matter of habit. A long day in a strange place. No wonder she had allowed nonsense to capture her for a moment. Now that she knew its cause, she certainly would not allow it to happen again. She closed her eyes, determined to sleep.

  *

  “I do not understand,” Aisleen began in annoyance as she produced the letter from her purse. “I have in my possession a reply from Mrs. Sarah Britten herself accepting me as a teacher in her school. Here it is.”

  Mrs. Freeman nodded her head, not taking the proffered letter. “I do not doubt it, Miss Fitzgerald. After all, you are here, aren’t you? But you must hear reason in the matter. The post has been filled.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Mrs. Freeman pursed her lips as she regarded the young woman who sat across from her. She, too, was vexed with Mrs. Britten’s sudden change of plans, but it would not help matters to indulge this young woman’s indignation. “There is very limited colonial demand for ladies of refinement. As a rule we discourage the immigration of ladies such as you unless they are moneyed or have friends in the colony to support them.”

  “I do not see what your colonial difficulties have to do with me,” Aisleen answered more sharply than she meant to. She had had a miserable night. She had slept fitfully after the shameful dream and had awakened with a dull pounding at her temples. “I did not come as an immigrant but to fill a position for which I have been hired. Where may I find Mrs. Britten? I shall apply to her in person.”

  A pleasant woman by nature, Mrs. Freeman found herself growing quite annoyed. “It won’t do you a bit of good. Mrs. Britten has hired a local lady of a prominent Sydney family.”

  “I have a contract,” Aisleen insisted.

  “Might as well be a lamb’s tail for all the good it’ll do you!” Mrs. Freeman answered roundly, her plump cheeks trembling. For nearly four years, she had assisted young women immigrants. Most of those who came through Hyde Park Barracks were farm girls culled from the rural areas of Britain and Ireland—clean, respectable girls accustomed to the hard labor required in a frontie
r outpost. Often they worked only a short time before succumbing to marriage with some sheep herder or shopkeeper. For that reason, there was always a need for female labor.

  Only once before had she had to deal with a lady, and it had ended badly. Impoverished gentlewomen were, as a rule, both haughty and disobliging, expecting to be housed separately from the domestic servant girls who lived in the barracks. To her credit, Miss Fitzgerald had not yet mentioned her quarters. “My advice to you is to return whence you came. There’s little Sydney has to offer you.”

  “Return? To Ireland?” The enormity of the suggestion stunned Aisleen. “Surely there are other schools, other cities in Australia which might find my services useful.”

  “There’s Melbourne and Brisbane,” Mrs. Freeman conceded.

  “Either of those would do nicely,” Aisleen answered. “How do I make arrangements to go there?”

  Mrs. Freeman’s irritation came to the fore. “Melbourne is more than four hundred miles south. As for Brisbane, it lies more than six hundred miles to the north. I would not advise the trains, for they require frequent changes and the schedules are most irregular. As for a coach, without a male companion you will find yourself confronted with the worst caliber of ruffians and rogues. Then there is the fare to consider, which is considerable.”

  Aisleen felt her purposefulness deflate. “I do not possess the money for travel of that distance at present,” she said slowly, hoping that her words did not sound like a plea for funds. “Therefore I must remain in Sydney and look for employment.”

  Mrs. Freeman nodded, warming to the young woman. Nothing pleased her more than a girl who was not afraid of work. “We’ve jobs aplenty, but I warn you they are not the sort to which you’re accustomed.” Then, because she was not at heart a cold woman, she added, “My dear Miss Fitzgerald, if you would remain in the colony might I suggest that you look for a patroness who will introduce you into society? Marriage is preferable to drudgery.”

  Marriage. Why did that word keep cropping up when one mentioned life in Australia? Aisleen wondered in annoyance. “I have no wish for nor need of a husband,” she answered curtly. “I came to find employment. I am a teacher.”