by Darry Fraser
Dane was about to protest when the clerk heaved a large package onto the counter. It was addressed to Georgina.
‘Mr MacHenry—senior, that is—often rides down here, yes, yes, perhaps once a month or more on some occasions. I’m surprised we haven’t seen him lately.’
Dane lost interest in the conversation as he eyed the package. It had come from England.
He signed for it, and picked it off the counter.
‘He usually takes the packages from England over to Mary at the Pastoral Hotel,’ the clerk said, jerking his head a little in the direction of the pub.
Dane met his stare. ‘And that is your business, somehow, is it?’
‘Small town.’ The clerk shrugged. ‘Thought you might want to do the same with it.’
‘I mind my own business.’
He left the post office and at the hitching rail, eyed the parcel again. He glanced up at Georgina. ‘This is for you.’
Her eyes grew wide. ‘For me?’ She studied the postmark. ‘From England,’ she cried and hurriedly tore the package open. She took the half-opened bundle to the veranda and deposited herself on a bench with it. She rummaged through the thick paper and hauled out a dress, rich burgundy with lace at the collar and cuffs. ‘Oh,’ was all she could say before she delved into the package again. She withdrew another gown of some pale copper colour and it rustled softly as she held it, like a breeze high in the trees.
She exclaimed again with delight.
There was yet another garment—a fine piece which appeared to him to be night attire, flimsy and looking cool to the touch. She attempted to hide it from his gaze and set about packing them all away again.
In her haste, she missed a letter that had fluttered to the ground as she pulled the clothes from the brown paper parcel.
Dane picked up the letter, skimmed the lines quickly then folded it. He lifted his eyes to the brilliant sky and rubbed a hand over his mouth. He handed it to her. ‘I’m sorry—I’ve read a little … it fell out as you were otherwise—’
She snatched it from his hand. ‘From Papa Rupert.’ As she read, hungry for news from her father, joy swiftly fell from her features and bewilderment slowly took its place. She looked at Dane. ‘Did you say you read a little?’ She held the pages at arm’s length. ‘What does it mean?’
Dane scuffed the dirt at his feet. His temper had risen. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What does it mean?’ she repeated. Her voice trembled.
He untied the horses’ reins. ‘Come with me. We must put our heads together on it.’
She gathered up the dresses in the wrapping paper, the letter still clutched in her hand, and tottered after him.
She waited mutely, clutching the untidy bundle, as he paid for two rooms at the Pastoral Hotel, one pair of saddlebags slung over his shoulder. He signed them in as sister and brother. He requested care for the horses, paid extra for the stabling, and then he took her elbow, room keys in hand. He marched up the stairs, Georgina on his heels. She didn’t protest as he deposited her in a room with a door adjoining his room and told her not to move. He needed time to think. He needed time to absorb Rupert’s letter and what it meant.
He ran downstairs to the desk, asking for directions to the stable. He needed to get the other pair of saddlebags for his own security. Directed out the back, he found a lad unsaddling Douglas. Dane strode to where MacNamara waited in the next stall.
He went to take the whole pack up to the room with him, then he thought better of it. He grabbed the letter for the solicitor, and was packing Georgina’s discarded boys’ breeches back into the bag when he realised the lad was talking to him.
‘ … so just beware,’ the stablehand said, hands on his hips and his mouth pursed as if waiting for an answer.
‘What?’ Dane glanced distractedly at the boy.
‘I said, I heard tell Hayes Baldwin is out there again. That’s what I said.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘He’s only the most wanted man since Captain Moonlight.’
‘Bushranger?’
‘Bushranger and more. Wanted for stagecoach robberies and he’s done some cattle duffin’ as well. They reckon he’s got a hideout here somewhere.’ The boy was rocking backwards and forward on his heels, arms crossed over his chest. ‘Talk is he comes to town quite regular, but as nobody knows who he really is, no one can shop him to the troopers.’
‘Good luck to him,’ Dane muttered to end the conversation. He patted his horse’s neck and left the stable, the envelope in his hand.
When he returned to the room, he knocked first on her door, then opened it after he heard her assent and walked in. He flipped the correspondence for the solicitor onto a small dresser that had a little mirror and a washbowl on it. Georgina still sat on the end of the bed, clutching the bundle her uncle had sent tightly against her chest. Dane slumped into the only chair available.
He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I’m shocked,’ was all he finally said.
‘I am very confused.’ Her face was white, her mouth pinched in an emotion he could only guess at. A few remaining red splotches from ant bites stood out on her neck. Her beautiful face was hollow with the shock of what she’d seen in Rupert’s letter. He wanted to hold her, to smooth the problem from her brow.
His heart lurched, and a stone lodged in his throat. What has my father been doing all these years?
She twisted around on the bed and carefully laid out the dresses and the nightgown, caressing the fabric of the coppery coloured gown. She looked over at him, distractedly, before her glance returned to her hands. ‘He says in his letter that—that he hopes I have liked his previous choices in dresses and gowns, and asks if the sizes have all been correct.’
Dane nodded. She hadn’t really begun on the letter and its contents yet. He remembered the postal clerk had mentioned Tom taking the packages over to someone here, in this hotel. He steepled his fingers in front of his face, musing. What had his father been doing?
‘He says that—’ she swallowed painfully and Dane realised she was fighting back tears, ‘—that he is considering enlarging my allowance and wants to organise some finishing for me.’
Dane closed his eyes.
She read from the letter.
‘Would you write back to me, my darling girl. You have been so lax with letters lately, I haven’t received a one in two years. Tell me that I have chosen well for you. Don’t let me hear it from Jemimah … though I haven’t heard from her in such a long time either. It must be those hot Australian summers …‘
Her voice faded to silence.
She looked up at Dane again. ‘I write every month,’ she cried suddenly. ‘Even though this is the first letter I have received in nearly two years, I have written every month. Uncle Tom takes them to the post—Oh.’ She stared into the distance. ‘I have told Rupert things hoping he would have me taken away from Jacaranda. Here he writes as if he’s nary received a one. And of the “previous choices”, of the other dresses—I have never seen even one. Not one. And an allowance? I haven’t seen that much in more than two years.’ She looked back at the letter again. ‘I thought he had abandoned me, and left me to wither just like my poor Aunt Jem.’
Dane baulked. ‘What do you mean?’
Georgina sniffed. ‘You mother has been very kind to me. She is a kind person. Your father … ’ She waved a hand and let it drop back to her stepfather’s letter.
Dane pressed fingers to his temples. ‘How long has my father been drinking?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sighed. ‘Three or four years, getting progressively worse, I suppose. Your mother begs him time and time again to stop, asks him where the money comes from, asks him when the new grain stock will arrive, where are the stores she ordered, why does Elspeth need to wear second-hand clothes, when would they visit—Oh, I could go on.’ She stared at the letter. ‘All this time he was taking my money, wasn’t he? All this time he was squandering my allowance and blaming Rupert for his decl
ine.’ She shook her head. ‘And what of my letters to Rupert? Was he not even sending them?’
Dane had sat forward in his chair, studying his hands. He was sick to his stomach. His father had lied to him. And there was the pressing problem of the bank’s foreclosure on Jacaranda to consider. What lies were behind that story, he wondered.
He reached over to the dresser for the wad of paperwork he was to have taken to the solicitors in Melbourne. Why would his father send him on a wild goose chase—this business with Jacaranda must be the truth. As he broke the seal, he looked at Georgina. She glanced away so he skimmed over the papers. There was nothing in them to hint at any impropriety.
‘How much was your allowance to begin with?’
‘I can’t remember … if I ever knew.’ Her face was downcast, and her hands twisted in the folds of her skirt. Her frown had deepened, her mouth was pressed into a thin line. Her chin puckered and relaxed, puckered and relaxed.
He didn’t like to see it. He felt sad for her, and guilty about his rough treatment of her. His heartstrings tugged once more. But there was no friendship between them yet, and he didn’t want to jeopardise what little progress he’d made … progress he thought he’d made.
‘I would give the letters I’d written to Uncle Tom to post when he would go on his travels—’
Dane looked up. ‘Travels?’
‘—and he would promise me he’d sent each one. I thought my Papa Rupert had forsaken me and I was doomed to stay at Jacaranda.’
An enormous weight settled upon him as he watched her.
Doomed … at Jacaranda. His father had stolen her allowance, had sold her dresses—of that he was sure—and had lied and cheated and drunk his way into large amounts of debt at her and his family’s expense.
A rock sat in his gut, heavy, cumbersome.
Dane reached across and pressed her hands. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what to make of this. Of any of it.’ She bent her head lower, her shoulders shaking. He had an overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and soothe away the hurt.
He sat back. He needed a solution.
His father was coercing him into his debt-ridden life, intending to burden Dane with huge notes to pay out. When he got to Melbourne, he would seek advice of his own, but he had to save Jacaranda—at any cost. What else did his mother and his sister have? And what to do about his father?
What the hell had happened?
Fury ate him up, sudden and terrible. And as swiftly, a sadness descended, the anger and frustration whipped away as if on a gust of wind. His family had inflicted a terrible hurt on this girl, who had had the gumption to fight then flee. He needed to protect her. He needed it like he needed to quench his thirst with a jug of cool water after a day in the saddle. He would make things right—the most important thing to do. Yet how?
Dane sat beside her and leaned in a little, but she stiffened.
His guts churned.
He stood up and held his hands in the air as if in surrender. He paced the room, then came back to her and bent down to meet her gaze. ‘You need sleep. I’ll come back for you at tea time. Is that all right?’
She nodded mutely then turned, curled up on the bed and closed her eyes, her stepfather’s letter tucked under her chin.
Dane closed the door gently behind him. He turned the key in the lock, as much as a safeguard against the unknown types staying in the tavern as for his peace of mind. And because Georgina could take flight at any time; he hoped to at least delay that.
Downstairs, he returned to the reception.
A sun-wizened man of indeterminate age met him there, drawing a heavy curtain behind him, hiding the bar from view. ‘What can I do fer yer?’
Dane leaned an elbow on the bench. ‘I’m looking for a woman. Mary. I believe she works here.’
The man’s eyes hooded. ‘Yah, there’s a Mary here. Appointment only.’ He turned away to tidy loose papers from one side of the counter to another.
Dane frowned. His father had stooped to lower levels than he’d previous considered. A curl of heat turned in his gut. ‘I don’t want her services, man,’ Dane snapped. ‘I want to talk to her.’
‘Don’t make much difference to me what you want to do with her, she gets paid by the hour.’ The man turned his mouth down. ‘And she’s available right now—if the matter is urgent. Sir,’ he added.
Dane thrust a hand into his pocket to retrieve the soft wallet. ‘How much?’
He was directed back up the stairs and to a door down the hallway not far from his own room. He knocked, and heard a languid, ‘Come in.’ He entered and closed the door behind him. Cloying perfume drifted around him. His nostrils twitched. A spice, perhaps, or a pungent herb.
‘Hello.’ The woman was dressed in the finest gown, a deep blue fabric with a raised design, and overlays of silk. He knew as much because Rebecca often paraded for him, extolling the virtues of this fabric or that. She looked older than he, but not, he thought, any older than his mother.
She smiled at Dane and held out her hand. ‘I was not expecting a guest.’
Dane took the proffered hand. ‘I’m sorry I am unexpected, madam, but my business is not your usual kind.’
‘Is that so?’ A pencilled brow rose. Her face was not unpleasant but the layers of paint did nothing to enhance it.
He side-stepped to a seat by the large bed that dominated the room. ‘Would you kindly sit, madam?’ He indicated a chair opposite and she settled back graciously, clasping her hands in her lap.
He sized her up against Georgina. This woman could not have worn the clothes if she had purchased them from his father.
She still smiled at him. ‘Why don’t you tell me your name first, before we get down to your “not usual kind of business”?’
‘I am Dane MacHenry.’ He noticed a flicker in her eyes. ‘I believe you know my father, Tom McHenry.’
The smile never left her face. ‘Yes, I do know Tom MacHenry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know he had such a strapping lad for a son. Tom and I have been—business partners of sorts for many years. He has not fallen into some trouble, I hope?’
‘Not of a physical nature, madam.’
‘Mary,’ she corrected. ‘How can I help you? I doubt Tom would have sent his son to me for a night’s relaxation.’ Her brows rose again.
I don’t know what my father would send me to do. ‘I believe he sells you items of clothing when he is here in Echuca.’
‘He does, indeed. Young ladies’ dresses.’ She did not elaborate.
‘May I ask, for how long this … arrangement has been in hand?’
She frowned slightly, but the pleasant smile never left her face. ‘May I ask why you need to know?’ Her flawless grace irked him. She seemed most unsuited for her business.
‘’Tis of a personal nature.’
She inclined her head. ‘Perhaps for three or four years, now,’ she answered evenly. ‘I have a daughter in Ballarat and the clothes are sent on to her. I pay a good price, he is not cheated.’ The smile was gentle. ‘Does that satisfy your curiosity?’
Dane flinched. ‘A daughter?’
Mary held up both hands in protest. ‘Mr MacHenry. She’s my daughter, not your father’s daughter,’ and the laughter that followed mocked him. ‘This business is between your father and me. And it is only the business of the dresses, nothing else.’ The smile still didn’t waver but her gaze was direct and steely.
Dane thought better of delving any deeper. He stood up.
She stood with him. ‘You still have a good deal of time on your credit, Mr MacHenry.’ Her hands were barely inches from his chest as if she would stop him leaving the room.
He shook his head. ‘Thank you, no. I … find my time is indeed far too short.’
She smiled. ‘Polite.’ She tucked her arm through his and walked him to the door. Stepping into the hallway, she leaned against the doorjamb, appraising him. ‘You must take after your mother’s side of the family, Dane. I wouldn’t have thought To
m to have a son such as you. Your dark hair, your features. You are a much bigger man …‘ She reached out and laid her palm on his chest.
He lifted it away from him. ‘His own daughter has the look of him, madam,’ he said. He bent a little over her hand and let it drop.
‘His own daughter?’ She looked surprised to hear of a sibling. ‘Oh, I see. I understand your concern about the dresses. Yes, I do see. I am sorry. I was not aware he also had a daughter.’ She shook her head a little. ‘I wonder why he would sell—’
‘No matter. It’s not your concern.’ A door opened somewhere down the hall, and it reminded him Georgina was waiting inside a locked room. He gave Mary another slight bow, ready to depart.
She tiptoed up to him and pressed her cheek to his. ‘Goodbye, then.’
The door slammed with a thunderous crash.
He turned abruptly and strode down the hall, his hand passing over his cheek to wipe off her touch.
By the time he’d taken the stairs two at a time back to the ground floor, he needed a drink and the noisy bar would do him well. He’d gained a little information from the confident, perfumed business woman in the room upstairs and needed to think on it.
His father had stooped low, there was no question about that. It wasn’t just the matter of a few dresses, but the total lack of regard for Jemimah and Elspeth.
And Georgina.
This wouldn’t be—couldn’t be—something Dane would ever confide to his mother. It was one thing to whore around and carouse with single men and pub workers, wharfies and the like. Quite another when a man was married and supposed to be providing for a family.
He shook his head. Since when had he become judge and jury? He was no saint, either. Then again, he wasn’t a married man.
He ordered a rum, and paid the exorbitant asking price for what was, by its taste, well watered down. He swallowed it in two gulps, winced, then rested the empty glass on the counter. He looked around.
The room was starkly furnished and thick with tobacco smoke and wood smoke from a fire somewhere out the back; mostly full of card-playing, drunken revellers spending their coin on the cheap liquor and the cheap women, and losing whatever they’d worked for.