“Yes,” she said to the strange country, her mind churning. “Yes, I’ll go to town for you. I’ll get your rum.”
He sank heavily into the cot and the wood groaned. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Money’s in the pocket of my coat.”
He couldn’t afford to buy another sheep after the one he’d accidentally killed, but he could afford to drink himself to death.
As she took down the coat and swung it over her shoulders, her hands shook almost as badly as his. The coat smelled of wet animal and the coins with the holes jingled in the pocket.
“Follow the wagon tracks away from the farm until they fork. Then bear left. You should be there in a few hours. In Parramatta, go to Amherst’s.”
She slid the wide-brimmed hat onto her head and tucked her shortened hair underneath. A bag made of thick fabric also hung on the peg and she draped it across her body. Taking one last look back at the old man she’d come to care for, she said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Please eat something while I’m gone.”
He grinned. “I’ll try, wife.”
She left. Outside she could breathe better. She stepped to the edge of the porch and let the gum tree vapor soothe her soul and quiet what swirled inside her.
Magic. She had magic now.
The first few raindrops began to fall. She looked down to where they plopped in the yard and saw where she’d written her name in the dirt. Saw how she’d called forth the memory of her father’s letter and the history of the cuff.
Below her name, scratched in her own handwriting—though she had no memory of doing so—was another word.
William.
CHAPTER 8
Sera popped the collar of Viv’s oiled coat and pulled his hat as far down on her head as it would go, but cool rain still found its way past the brim and collar, and ran in sheets down her back. She was beginning to think she’d never be dry again. The rain had steadily increased over the past few hours. Lightning continued to flash in the west, the echo of thunder coming at quicker and quicker responses. If she didn’t find cover soon, she’d be caught out in the middle of nowhere in a lightning storm.
The wagon ruts she’d been following for miles and the whole afternoon and evening had long since filled in with water, but she didn’t panic because in the distance flickered squares of light. Parramatta.
An image of twenty-first century Las Vegas threw itself against her mind. Las Vegas. Yes. Mitchell Oliver’s letter had mentioned that city. And yes, she’d been born there. She knew it now the way she knew her own name. She’d been a true child of that place, “born from its sins,” a woman’s cigarette-scratchy voice had told her time and time again. And Sera had believed her for a very, very long while.
But those lights in the distance didn’t come from neon or TVs or car headlights. The stillness of the world here was beyond unsettling.
The lightning and thunder had pretty much matched up by the time she reached the edge of Parramatta. Her shins and ankles burned from walking so long in Viv’s flat, too-big boots, and her body fought a bone-deep exhaustion. The town wasn’t much more than a cluster of plain, squat buildings that hugged a burbling river running as black as oil under the storm. More water carved its own streams between shops and homes. The place was simple and tame, but Sera couldn’t help but feel terrified.
Fear wouldn’t help Viv. And fear would only keep her from finding out where Brown and the blond man lived.
Head lowered, hands stuffed in the front coat pockets, she trudged down the widest mud avenue. No streetlights or glowing storefront signs guided her way. No vehicles either, just dripping-wet horses tied to wagons or posts. They watched her pass with little interest. She could only hope the rest of Parramatta’s inhabitants would do the same.
Straight ahead rose a ghostly white chapel steeple, the tallest structure for miles around, perhaps in all of New South Wales. Across from its main doors was a line of one-story wooden buildings all bearing the same low porch and deep eaves as Viv’s shack. A candle danced in the window of one, throwing light on the sign hanging on the wall near the door: Simon Amherst, Chemist.
A loud, bright crack of lightning sent her scuttling toward the candle and door. She took a few deep breaths and stepped inside.
A long counter assembled from split logs lined the left side of the narrow shop. Wood shelves cradled rows of glass bottles and jars labeled with things like Headache and Cough. A layer of ruddy dust coated everything, making the room feel even darker. Water streamed off her coat and hat and made a wet circle at her feet.
A man stepped through a doorway in the back, but she only saw him from the shoulders down because her hat was still pulled low. He wasn’t overly tall, the pale striped shirt stretching tightly around his thick middle.
“Yes?” Suspicion trickled through his deep voice.
Viv wanted rum, but by the looks of this place, it provided medicine, too. What he wanted and needed were two different things.
“My husband is ill.” She lowered her voice, hoping the rain drumming on the roof would muffle her accent. Trying to imitate English speech would only make her more obvious. “I came for medicine.”
The chemist stood there for a moment, then walked behind the counter. She could only see his arms and thick fingers now as he splayed them out on the counter top.
“Money?” he grunted.
She pulled out two coins from the pocket and brandished them between index and middle finger, hoping to God it looked like she knew what she was doing. That the money would be enough.
The man bent down. “Show your face.”
No other choice, she lifted her chin and stared at Simon Amherst’s round, sparsely haired head and nonexistent neck.
His eyes narrowed. “Now show me your papers.”
Those papers again. Viv had said something about them the day he’d found her. Apparently they were some kind of temporary pardon letting convicts run around New South Wales.
“I told you,” she said. “I’m married.”
“I’ve never seen your face before. Who’s your man?” He started to reach for something under the counter.
“Viv,” she replied quickly. Please don’t ask for his last name.
Amherst’s red-gold eyebrows stretched for his hairline. “Didn’t know he took a wife.”
“I only just…got here.”
“Viv, eh?” Amherst chuckled, and Sera knew it was aimed at her, not the old man. It seemed Amherst felt sorry for her having to deal with the poor shepherd. “He doesn’t need medicine. He needs more rum.”
She licked her lips and prayed she wasn’t pressing her luck, since she’d gotten past the papers inquisition. “But what about his fever? And he can’t stop shaking.” She deliberately looked at a bottle labeled Fever in curly script, and slid the two coins across the wood in front of Amherst.
The chemist grunted at the money. “Not enough for that. But it is enough for rum.”
He swept the coins off the counter and dropped them into a box just below the ledge. Sera distinctly heard the sound of metal hitting a pile of more metal, and she wondered just how much money Amherst kept there.
“I’ll be right back.” He wandered into the back room.
The sound of the coins was still rattling through Sera’s ears. It reminded her of Vegas, how the slot machines had been changed over the years to make the coin-plinking sound but didn’t actually dispense money.
It also brought back a stark, awful memory of the kind of person she’d once been. Of what she could do.
Too easily she could slide behind the counter, open Amherst’s money box, and take just enough that he wouldn’t know it was missing. Too easily she could reach up to the medicine shelves and steal what Viv needed—just a pinch of powder, nothing noticeable. And the part of her brain that had been trained to do that kind of thing—trained by her own mother—wouldn’t even bat an eye.
Sera had been taught how to be silent, to observe, to take control of an opportunity.
To take advantage of the clueless and weak…or anyone, really. And once upon a time she’d been really good at it. So good she’d never gotten caught. Until the one day, years after her mother had died of an overdose, when she was almost seen and everything came crashing down.
That was the day she’d changed her life. Realized that she’d always hated what she’d been taught to do, that it had never meshed with her personality or her heart. That she felt guilt whenever she took what wasn’t hers, and it made her ill and disgusted with herself. So she’d left Las Vegas and started over, and never stole again.
But the urge never truly went away.
Amherst was banging around in the back, the clank of glass against glass telling Sera he was about to return. Her heart pounded. The lid of the money box was within reach, the medicine just a quick stretch away. Viv could use both so desperately. And she could probably use money if she had to take off in search of the blond man…but they would all come at the expense of Simon Amherst. Who was probably an honest man and right to be suspicious of a stranger in a colony full of criminals. Who’d done nothing against her and who was giving Viv exactly what he’d demanded.
So she touched nothing. Amherst came back into the shop, closing the rear door with an elbow because he was balancing four familiar bottles in his arms. He set the bottles on the counter with a clunk, and even though it pained her to give liquor and not healing to Viv, she carefully wrapped and then stacked the bottles in the bag slung over her shoulder. It would be a long, heavy walk home.
Amherst eyed her warily on her way out, but she didn’t return the stare.
Outside, a bolt of lightning, wide and forked, lacerated the clouds. The accompanying clap of thunder exploded like a bomb, the aftershock rumbling over the open land. Walking back to Viv’s under an ocean of electricity wasn’t the smartest idea. She’d have to find a place to hide in Parramatta until the storm cleared, which didn’t look like any time soon.
The town was quiet and closed-up in the midst of the storm, but standing there on the wide porch in front of Amherst’s shop, she’d never felt so exposed. Shrinking back into the shadows, away from the lit window, she considered her options.
Voices came from around the chapel, followed quickly by the sight of three men who slopped their way through the mud toward the building directly opposite the chemist’s. One of the men pulled open a door, and out of it spilled a shaft of dull light, the playful strains of a fiddle, and a woman’s joyful shriek. An unseen crowd cheered. The door yawned wider as the three men stepped within and shook out their hats.
Just inside, a man sat on a chair, inspecting the newcomers as he fondled the bare breast of the woman sitting on his lap. She smiled and laughed as the door swung shut, closing off the scene.
Sera shuddered as another ripple of memory claimed her. They were coming faster, the memories, the pieces of her real life. But now she wasn’t sure if she wanted to remember, because recalling her mother selling herself in front of her own daughter wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that inspired a desire to know more.
Maybe she should’ve been more careful about what she wished for.
A flash of lightning thankfully changed her train of thought as it showed her what she needed. The brothel’s severely sloped roof extended long over the typical New South Wales porch. Along the side, far back and away from the front door, a jungle of stacked barrels—rum, most likely—created tiny hidden spaces and shadows. Perfect.
In case Amherst was watching—and she had the distinct impression he was—she jumped off the porch and headed west out of town, as though she were walking back to Viv’s, then doubled back around a stable to approach the brothel from the rear.
She waited until a barrage of lightning strikes ended, then slipped onto the brothel’s porch under cover of rain and darkness. The barrels rocked as she squeezed between them, finding a larger, drier space in the middle. She pushed her way back to the wall and removed her hat. The bag of rum bottles sagged heavily against her hip, and the air inside her hiding place smelled of old alcohol rubbed into wood.
Hunger pinched her stomach. Cramps tightened her legs. Her past—all the ugly parts she now remembered—weighed on her soul. A wet chill settled inside her. Her skin was a shell, and fear and isolation clawed around inside.
And then suddenly it all melted away.
A slow warmth started in her heart. Just a speck at first, but it grew and grew, shoving away all the bad feelings as it swept through her body. It erased the fear and pain and confusion. She felt light and full of hope. Butterflies of impending excitement fluttered in her belly…which scared her even more.
What the hell was going on?
Underneath the gold cuff, her skin began to tingle. The tingle escalated to an itch. She pushed up her sleeve to stare at the knotted symbol. It hadn’t done that before.
The porch floorboard jiggled beneath her ass. She froze, eyes wide and peering into the darkness. The floorboards moved again.
Someone was on the porch. Coming toward her.
Everything went quiet. Even the sound of the rain dropped away.
One of the barrels that made up her dry secret cave was pushed aside and a man crawled into the open space. Right in front of her. Hands gripping the wood, knees out to either side, his crouch was tight, almost feline. Coarse pale stubble covered his cheeks and chin and neck, and wet tangles of blond hair plastered to the sides of his face. Lightning flashed again and she saw…
Him.
His eyes were small but intense orbs of deep blue. “You.”
His whisper echoed in every droplet of rain, coming back to her a thousand times a second.
A light brightened his eyes—a light other than what flashed in the sky. He smiled hesitantly, and something bloomed inside her. Something warm and welcome.
“I saw you,” he said, breathless, and his accent was rich and lovely, “out in the bush the day my ship arrived. Do you remember?”
Where was her voice? Inside she was joyous and relieved to have found this man, but the enormity of this coincidence rendered her speechless. She nodded.
His smile faltered. “You were lying in the back of that wagon. You looked scared. I thought…I thought you might be hurt. Were you?”
“No.”
He sighed. “Good. Good.” But then he looked a little confused, which she didn’t understand.
Water dripped heavily from his chin-length hair and ran down his tightly bunched forearms and scarred knuckles. Deep lines carved their way around his eyes, suggesting a hard life or an age older than hers. Or both. She couldn’t look away from him, not even if one of those bolts of lightning struck two feet away.
“Who are you?” He leaned a little closer, searching her face. “What’s your name?”
All the lessons her mother had given—about not showing your hand, and concealing your true identity, and not trusting anyone but yourself—washed away in the driving rain. Something deep, deep inside her was telling her to listen to this man.
“Sera,” she said.
“Sera. I’m—”
“William.” The letters she’d scratched into the dirt back at Viv’s floated across her vision.
His lips parted as he stared. “Yes.”
Why didn’t he look more shocked? She sure as hell was. “What are you doing here?”
“Your accent…” His eyes narrowed, assessing. “I can’t place it—”
“Did you bolt?” she pressed, because she didn’t want to answer questions about her origins. “There was a man with a gun in your wagon. You’re his, aren’t you?”
William lowered himself from the crouch, sitting on one hip, leg out to the side, the other knee propped up. He looked far too at ease, like he’d done this before. Like he’d been expecting it.
“Not any longer.”
The way he said “longer”—lon-gah—rolled through her ears and pricked at the strange something that burned in her heart.
“The old man who drove your w
agon,” William said, “who was he?”
“A shepherd. An emancipist. His name is Viv.”
William frowned. “Does he scare you? Does he hurt you?”
“No. Not at all.”
He cocked his head. “Then what are you doing here, hiding?”
Suddenly her throat was awfully dry. “He asked me to come to town. I didn’t want to walk back in the storm.”
“Hmm.” He drew a long, slow breath through his nose. “Or maybe you were looking for me.”
She gasped, air freezing in her chest. That was when she knew there was something else inside her. A presence. Something otherworldly and completely feminine. Because at William’s words, it purred with joy. With desire.
“But I wasn’t,” she lied. “I don’t know you.”
Amusement ticked up one corner of his mouth. “You knew my name. I think you know me, too.” His feathery voice draped over her, heightened by the deep of the shadows. He seemed to be everywhere. Around her. Inside her.
A frightening longing took to root in her heart. In the warm place between her legs.
She closed her eyes and tried to gather herself. Tried to parse out what she knew to be absolutely true from the mysterious things that couldn’t possibly be fact.
“You know me,” he rumbled, “because I know you. Sera, with the black hair and deep brown eyes.”
“You can’t see my eyes.”
“Yes, I can. They’re still in my mind.”
Her eyelids flipped open. Though he hadn’t moved an inch closer, it felt like he had.
This was too much for her already overloaded brain to process and accept. She pressed her hands to the floorboards and tried to scoot back, to give herself some air.
“No, wait. Don’t go.” A look of panic crossed his face and he reached out. His cool, damp fingers folded over her knee. The gentlest touch.
Images assaulted her vision.
The braided and robed woman, cradling the boy baby.
The hunter and his dog.
The knot.
And then a new one. The braided woman, naked and glistening, her face twisted in passion. A handsome, dark-haired, dusky-skinned man lay beneath her, and she was slowly riding him, his fingertips digging into her hips.
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