Hearts in the Land of Ferns

by Jude Knight

  Rose was nearly as surprised as her uncle to hear the words coming from her mouth.

  She packed her few bits and pieces while Aunt Agnes watched to make sure she took nothing that wasn’t hers. In silence, her aunt by marriage escorted her down the stairs and out the front door.

  When Rose was out on the public walk, Aunt Agnes looked over her shoulder, a quick, furtive glance back into the house. “Wait there, girl. Just for a moment.” She disappeared back into the house and was back in moments.

  “You have been a good girl, Laura, on the whole. I will miss you. Here.” She pressed something into Rose’s hand: a purse, with a few shifting lumps that must be coins. “Thomas is a good boy, for all he is a Papist. He has written to you. Campbell made me read the letters and burn them. He will make an honest woman of you.” A quick, awkward hug, and a brush of papery lips on Rose’s cheek, and she was gone, the front door closed between them.

  Rose raised her empty hand to her cheek in wonder. Who knew Aunt Agnes had a heart? She had never shown any signs of it before.

  The front door flew open again, and Rose was just in time to hide the purse in the folds of her skirt, before her uncle was screaming in her face.

  “Go then, if you are going. Don’t litter my doorstep, you foul tramp!” He caught her a buffet that knocked her into the road.

  Perhaps he would have hit her again, but a man passing in the street stopped to ask, “Are you all right, Miss?”

  “Thank you. I am just leaving.” Rose picked up her bag and walked away without a backward look, her heart rising with every step. Thomas had written. Thomas still wanted her. Even if he didn’t, surely she could find work, respectable work with a wage and roof over her head?

  Right this minute, she knew exactly what to do. At the O’Bryan warehouse, she asked for directions to Mrs Moffat’s house. She only hoped the woman had not yet left for the gold fields.

  Thomas stood in the door of his store, admiring the bustle as the crowds passed. This late in the day, many of the area’s hopeful, would-be millionaires were coming into town to while away their evening, but they were mostly a cheerful lot. Some would drink every grain of gold dust they’d found, and there would be fights and loud singing, but the New Zealand gold fields enforced a strong ban on guns, so most injuries would be minor.

  Soon, Mrs Moffat would arrive, and then, after another week to make sure his new manager could keep the store as well as Thomas did, he could return to Dunedin for Rose. The bonnet trim he had purchased the day after that December shopping expedition sat on the table in his bedchamber, a constant reminder of all the gifts with which he wanted to shower her.

  He had wondered, even as he proposed, if her charm would fade with separation. Instead, he wanted her more every day, dreamed of seeing her bright smile over breakfast, imagined her reaction every time he heard a funny conversation or an interesting fact, fantasised about holding her again in his arms, and feeling her burrow trustingly close.

  Perhaps, though, she had changed her mind? She had not replied to his letters, sent faithfully on every mail coach. But the Campbells, that poisonous old pair, would not let her reply, he supposed. He held on to that belief, and would, in any case, test it by calling on her. Soon. He could leave soon.

  A burst of noise and movement at the other end of the street caught his attention. A wagon train coming into town, full of eager miners and, he hoped, his new shop manager.

  There she was, a child on either side, driving a cart laden high with what he assumed were the goods he’d ordered up from the wharves. The others must be walking and, sure enough, at least three children flanked the cart, including one hand in hand with… he caught his breath. Surely, it couldn’t be Rose?

  But he would know her anywhere, and his legs had not waited for his brain to catch up, but were already carrying him down the street at a stride, and then at a run.

  Rose, his Rose, dropped the child’s hand and pushed her towards one of the older girls with a quick word, then started towards Thomas, her dear face shining with welcome.

  In a moment, he had her in his arms, oblivious to the laughing, cheering crowd of bystanders.

  “You came,” he said.

  “Thomas.”

  A swollen, ugly, fading bruise disfigured one eye, but she was still the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. He brushed it tenderly with the back of his fingers, before cupping her cheek.

  “Marry me, Rose,” he asked again.

  Her smile answered him before her shy words. “Yes, please, Thomas.”

  * * *

  THE END

  Part II

  Forged in Fire

  Forged in fire, their love will create them anew.

  Forged in Fire is set in geothermal country just outside of Rotorua in 1886, and was first published in the Bluestocking Belles’ collection Never Too Late.

  Burned in their youth, neither Tad nor Lottie expected to feel the fires of love. The years have soothed the pain, and each has built a comfortable, if not fully satisfying, life, on paths that intersect and then diverge again.

  But then the inferno of a volcanic eruption sears away the lies of the past and frees them to forge a future together.

  1

  Ohinemutu, Rotorua,

  New Zealand

  9 June 1886

  Mrs Bletherow was castigating her poor companion again, oblivious to her audience.

  Every group was different, and most groups had someone who was troublesome. Tad Berry had been escorting tour groups from Auckland for years. He could cheerfully handle the drunkards, the would-be Casanovas, the know-it-alls. But he hated bullies. His muscles burned with the effort it took to keep from rescuing the Bletherow hag's drab shadow. Not his place. She was a free, adult woman, and if she chose to stay with an employer who treated her so poorly, it was nothing to do with him.

  His partner, Atame, nudged him. "She don't run out of steam, that one, eh?"

  Tad clenched his fists. "Miss Thompson should tell her to go soak her head. Old crow."

  Tad and Atame had met this particular group in Auckland two days ago, eight tourists seeking to view what the locals billed as the eighth wonder of the world. Tomorrow, they'd sample the delights of the Rotorua bath houses, and later in the day, they'd make their way to Te Wairoa. The day after, the locals would convey them across Rotomohana to the Pink and White Terraces, dimpled with hot pools and cascading down their respective hillsides to a peaceful lake.

  All through the boat trip to Tauranga and the coach journey to this Ohinemutu guest house, Mrs Bletherow had found fault with everything Miss Thompson did or failed to do. She had brought her employer the wrong book, failed to block out the sun, been too slow in the queue for food, put too much milk in Mrs Bletherow's tea. Tad wouldn't have blamed Miss Thompson for adding arsenic.

  Mrs Bletherow’s withered, wiry maid was as sour as her mistress and attracted none of the old harridan's contempt. She stood now at Mrs Bletherow's elbow, nodding along with the woman's complaints. "You knew we would be dining properly this evening. You deliberately packed the green gown in the large trunk. You must go and find it this instant; do you hear me?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Miss Thompson said.

  "See that you are quick. Parrish shall attend me in my room, and I want my gown by the time I am washed." Mrs Bletherow sailed up the stairs, Parrish scurrying along in her wake.

  Tad unfolded himself from the wall as Miss Thompson approached, her rather fine hazel eyes downcast. She began apologising while she was still several paces away. "I am very sorry for the inconvenience, Mr Berry, but I need to ask you to offload another of Mrs Bletherow's trunks."

  "Of course, Miss Thompson. If you tell me which one, I shall bring it up to her room."

  She looked up at that, her brows drawing slightly together. "I am not sure, Mr Berry. I know which one it should be in, but Parrish finished the packing. May I come with you?"

  He nodded, though the stables were no place for a lady. And Mi
ss Thompson was a lady, and of better birth than the Bletherow woman, unless he missed his guess. Which, come to think of it, might be part of the reason for her ill-treatment. Not that a bully needed a reason, beyond opportunity and a suitable victim.

  He and Atame unloaded half the luggage before uncovering the trunk Miss Thompson wanted, and then it proved to be the wrong one.

  Tad brushed off Miss Thompson's apologies. "No matter. We shall just try the others." But the gown was not in the smaller trunk, any of the leather bags, or even the hat boxes. They offloaded all Mrs Bletherow's baggage and even the single trunk holding Miss Thompson's spare wardrobe and a second belonging to Parish, and Miss Thompson unlocked and hunted through them all.

  Several of Atame's cousins from the nearby Māori village found them, and Atame wandered out into the stable yard for a rapid conversation in Māori, leaving Tad to finish the reloading once Miss Thompson finished. "If this is everything," he told her, "I fear the garment has been left behind at a previous stop."

  "Do you, Mr Berry?" Tad's hands on the straps he was rebuckling stilled at the bitter undertones in the lady's voice, and he looked up. They were working by lamplight, but he could see well enough. Blazing eyes, thinned lips, skin drained white but for two hectic spots of colour high on her cheeks. Miss Thompson was quietly furious. "Perhaps you are right. I apologise for putting you to all this trouble."

  "You don't think it has been left behind?"

  "Given we are returning to the same hotel in Auckland, it is possible. It would be a new variation on an old theme. In Milan, Cairo and in Singapore, I found what she sent me for, though not where she told me to look. In Madras, I turned out the luggage then demanded the train station and all the trains be searched for a necklace, which turned up in the pocket of the coat she was wearing for the tour she took while I was hunting. In Sydney, it was her favourite shawl, which she was wearing when I returned to the hotel dining room."

  "And you still stay with her? Are you mad?" Had he said that out loud? He didn't need the echo of his own voice to know he had. Her sharp look, the hurt she quickly masked as she once again donned her accustomed calm, witnessed against him. "I beg your pardon, Miss Thompson. It is none of my business what choices you make."

  How foolish to let Mr Berry's thoughtless words rub her raw. It was Lottie's own fault. She had rattled out the sorry tale of the more embarrassing of Cousin Myrtle's humiliations, though by no means the most embarrassing. She could feel the heat rise in her face and interrupted Mr Berry's stiff apology.

  "How long have we been out here? Will they have started dinner?"

  His elegant brows lifted fractionally, a trick she had noticed before when one of the tour party surprised or annoyed him. Behind the handsome exterior, the usually impeccable courtesy, the agreeable manner, Mr Thaddeus Berry lived an interior life he did not share with his guests. "Perhaps half an hour? I imagine they will be sitting down to dinner shortly. May I escort you inside?"

  Bother. Botheration. Not for the first time since Cousin Myrtle had offered her a refuge from her disgrace, Lottie wished she had dared a few of the choice epithets she'd heard her brother use long ago, muttering them under his breath for fear of offending the delicate sensibilities ladies were presumed to have. At the time, she had been shocked, as her upbringing demanded, but oh how she wished he were still alive to shock her again.

  She tucked her guilt and her grief back where they belonged, deep below the surface. This evening would be trial enough. Mr Berry was waiting for an answer, his eyes fixed on hers.

  "Thank you, but I suspect that will just make things worse. Mr Berry, I should warn you that my cousin is very likely at this moment impugning your reputation to the other guests. I am very sorry. I should not have come, or at least, I should have asked for a maid to accompany me."

  The brows dived inwards as he frowned. He really was remarkably good looking; the contrast between his workman's muscular build and sun-darkened skin, and his gentleman's speech and good manners, only adding to his appeal. "My reputation? And yours? But we have not been alone, Miss Thompson." He waved to the group of natives who were chatting just outside the door, Mr Berry's partner, Mr Te Paora, among them. A magnificent young woman with a tattooed chin waved back.

  "I did not realise the old harridan was your cousin," Mr Berry continued. "My commiserations. Why would she spread malicious gossip about her own relative?"

  To keep Lottie under her thumb, of course. Myrtle had been a bully from the first, but when Lottie recovered enough from her grief to rebel, she found herself trapped. Without any money of her own, she needed a paid position or a husband, and in the circumstances of her disgrace, Myrtle had the perfect weapon to keep her from either. It was old news now, more than a decade gone. But Myrtle had added to it over the years with supposition and outright lies. And circumstances like this, which were not what they seemed.

  The flattering interest shown by Mr Farthingale, a single gentleman and another of the tour party, was reason enough for Myrtle's attack. Lottie was not to be allowed to escape into marriage or even a less reputable position.

  Myrtle would discount the witness of Mr Te Paora's friends, and Mr Berry would be caught in the cross-fire. He deserved an answer to his question. "If I had a reputation, sir, I would be able to barter it to find work with another employer. One who paid me." There. Anything more would expose truths she shared with no one.

  He proved her opinion of him as a smart man. "Ah. I beg your pardon again for my thoughtless words."

  Mr Te Paora called, "Are you coming with us, Tad?" The native was another tall, powerful man, the spirals on his dark face adding a barbaric splendour to his undoubted good looks.

  "I'll just see Miss Thompson into the house," Mr Berry said, offering her an elbow.

  Could she just go up to her room and avoid the silences that awaited her in the dining room until tomorrow? No. She put her hand onto Mr Berry's offered arm, drawing a deep breath at the illusion that the strength she could feel under her fingers could protect her from what was to come.

  But her escort paused and turned back to his partner and friends. "If any of the guests ask, will you tell them you were all with us in the stables?"

  "Why? What have..." Mr Te Paora slid a glance at Lottie and stopped whatever teasing remark had been on his tongue.

  Mr Berry cut in to introduce the other Māori and to explain briefly they'd been overlong hunting for a dress that was not there.

  "Of course, we've been here all along," the woman called Wikitoria said, smiling at Lottie. "And Kora and I shall come in with you, Miss Thompson, to put out the gossips' fire. Tad, you stay here."

  Lottie rather enjoyed entering the dining hall arm in arm with the two Māori girls, drawing every eye and stopping Myrtle's gossip in its tracks. She had been making mischief, sure enough. The Philpotts would not meet her eyes, and Mr Farthinghurst leered.

  Lottie ignored them, for once going on the attack. "Why, Cousin Myrtle, you found the dress after all! Could you not have sent word to let me know?" She smiled at her escorts. "Thank you so much for helping me with all that unloading and loading again. I am so sorry it proved to be unnecessary."

  There. Myrtle would undoubtedly pay her back, but for the moment, she had the high ground.

  2

  The following morning, Miss Thompson went off with Atame and the rest of the party to the bathing sheds arranged around hot springs further along the shores of the lake. Tad had the morning to catch up on his correspondence and run a few messages, ending up at the post office where the clerk took the letters he'd written and handed him those he'd been sent.

  He turned from the counter, his eyes on the bundle as he leafed through them. One from his property manager in Wellington, another from the newspaper who took the advertising for his tourism venture—probably a bill. The last envelope brought a smile. Dear Auntie Em. His mother's sister had been a faithful correspondent in the twenty years since he'd fled England.

 
A shadow warned him and he looked up just before slamming into a man whose height and breadth matched his own.

  "Quintus?"

  The voice proclaiming the long disused name was unfamiliar, but the man wasn't. Whenever he shaved, Tad saw those light green eyes, the long narrow nose, even the honey gold hair bleached by the sun. "Sextus?"

  Tad was wrapped in an impulsive hug before his brother drew back, putting a little distance between them and flushing slightly. "I was afraid I would not recognise you. But look at you! We could be twins!"

  They weren't, but a bare eleven months separated them, compared to the five years between Tad and Quartus, and the six between Sextus and Septimus, the baby of the family. They had been the best of friends once. Before Evangeline.

  Lottie was pleased to be on the road again. The morning had been a trial, with Myrtle determined to exact vengeance for Lottie's avoidance of her trap. She might calm down a bit now they were once more with the rest of the party, since Mr Farthingale was avoiding Lottie's gaze and speaking to her as seldom as politeness allowed, though a gleam in Mr Farthingale's eye suggested she should be careful not to let him catch her alone.

  The Pritchard family normally took one carriage, while Mr Farthingale joined Myrtle's party in the other. How could Lottie avoid the horrid man? Fortunately, her interests and Myrtle's aligned, and when Myrtle suggested that the two Misses Pritchard might like to join her carriage to discuss London fashions 'to while away another boring bush trip', Lottie eagerly seconded her, but lowered her lids to veil her eyes when Mr Berry climbed up to take the seat opposite. If Myrtle caught a hint of how Mr Berry affected her, Lottie would never hear the end of it.

  The road wound around the shores of the lake, and then struck up into the hills. They would spend two nights at Te Wairoa, since the trip to the famed terraces of Rotomohana would consume the day between.