“I don’t need rescuing.”
Unexpectedly, Mrs. Reeve smiled. “I noticed.” She rapped her walking stick on the floor.
“Do you still think he needs rescuing from me?”
Mrs. Reeve looked out the window at the busy port. “You know, when you marry a man, you marry his family. Jed has met your father and uncle, but you had no personal sense of his background, of the family you’re joining. That’s the other reason I journeyed out here.”
“Jed’s parents wrote me lovely, welcoming letters and he’s told me about you all, shown me photographs.”
“But it’s different meeting me, speaking with me,” Mrs. Reeve said.
“Yes,” Esme said in heartfelt agreement. She strove to lighten her tone to something more polite. “You haven’t put me off the idea of marrying Jed.”
“Tcha. I know that, girl. Your heart’s in your eyes when you look at him.”
“Oh.”
“And I can see he loves you. So no, I don’t think he needs rescuing from you.” Mrs. Reeve inhaled deeply. “Those women at the Tea Shoppe were nasty-minded fools, but there was one truth in their nattering. You are missing a mother to advise you.”
Esme stiffened. She didn’t want criticism masquerading as advice.
“I know I said that when you marry a man you marry his family, but the Good Book also says that marriage is about forsaking all others. A lot of fools think that just means no adultery. It’s more than that. The Good Lord knows marriage is about forging new loyalties. Both of you leave your families to form a new one. Your first loyalty should be to one another.”
“It will be.”
“But old loyalties remain.” Mrs. Reeve pinned her with a severe gaze. “Your father is taking your marriage hard.”
Esme sighed. “He’s being so enthusiastic about it. Extravagant. I think he wants to distract me from dwelling on the fact I’ll be leaving him alone in this house.”
“With only Captain Fellowes and a dozen servants for company,” Mrs. Reeve said drily. “Yes, child, I know what you mean. It’s a strain for Jed, too.”
“Pardon?”
“Consider it from the boy’s look out. Your father would give you the world. Jed has to match that.” Mrs. Reeve was serious. “The distance doesn’t help. Your family, here. Jed’s in California.”
“I’ll make my life with Jed, wherever that is.”
“Maybe you will, child. But it won’t be easy.”
Chapter Twelve
Jed leaned back in an oxblood leather chair after a solid lunch at his men’s club. He smiled wryly. Esme would be disappointed in him. Like generations of men before him, he’d sought sanctuary from women’s mysterious battles in stodgy masculine food and company. On the other hand, he suspected she and Grandma would reach a détente faster if left to themselves.
Besides, his pride didn’t want anyone thinking he was hiding behind their skirts. He’d come to the club to see how many people believed the scandal and how it altered their treatment of him.
“Care to share the joke?” Dr. Palmer asked.
Jed stood. The older middle aged man had been one of his earliest friends in the Swan River Colony and remained one of Esme’s sharpest political allies. It was a relief to see the man wasn’t sending him to Coventry. He shook hands, heartily. “How are you, sir?”
“Can’t complain.” Dr. Palmer hitched up the knees of his trousers and sat down. “Met your grandmother just now in the High Street. Fine woman.”
Apprehension spiked. “Was Esme with her?”
“Yes.” The doctor’s grey eyebrows met in a questioning frown. “Shouldn’t she be?”
Even to a friend, he wasn’t about to admit the tension between his fiancée and grandmother. “Esme and Grandma are a formidable combination. The shopkeepers are probably reeling.”
Dr. Palmer chuckled. “More like rubbing their hands with glee. Aaron is spending freely on Esme’s wedding. She’s his only child, so I can’t blame him. He wants the best for her. We all do.” The warning in his tone was oblique reference to the scandal.
Jed met his gaze levelly. “As do I, sir. I intend to make Esme the best of husbands.”
The doctor nodded once, sharply, before his attention was distracted by the stir of a newcomer’s entrance. A heavy scowl descended on his face even as he stood. “I can’t stand the fellow. Damn financier. I’ll see you around.” He left the reading room by a second door to avoid the group in the main doorway.
Jed recognized the financier, Mr. William Pond. He looked like something that had crawled out of a pond. Although expensively dressed, his fat face was jowly, the white skin mottled with liver spots.
Confirmation of the doctor’s opinion of Mr. Pond came from the quality of the men greeting him. Three weak-chinned fops, their perpetually sneering mouths framed by narrow moustaches, hailed Mr. Pond for information on his man, Alfred Brixton’s, death—and more sensationally, for news on what the newspapers trumpeted as “The Curse of the Gypsy Oracle”. Sly glances slid in Jed’s direction.
He picked up the scientific journal he’d abandoned at the doctor’s appearance. Nonetheless, the group around Mr. Pond deliberately spoke loud enough that everyone in the room could hear them.
It was immediately obvious that Mr. Pond, like his questioners, felt little sympathy for his man’s death, but he seemed truly disturbed by the notion of “a machine that can foretell death”.
“They do say the machine is the sole relic of an ancient science, lost to mankind,” one of the fops said and stroked his skinny moustache. “I’d like to see it.”
“I’d like to see the gypsy woman,” his red-waist-coated friend said. “Perhaps Reeve could arrange a private show.”
Jed’s fists itched.
“An expedition.” Mr. Pond clapped his hands. “The very thing.” He looked beyond the three idiots to the wider collection of men seated in the reading room. “Who is with us? A trip to view the Gypsy Queen and her wondrous machine.” He smirked. “Mr. Reeve, will you join us?”
“Thanks. I’ve seen the performance.”
The three fops elbowed each other and sniggered.
Over the top of the journal he observed the edge of anticipation and unhealthy excitement in the small group. Four others had joined the “expedition”. Fools, all of them.
Jed closed the journal and smacked it lightly against his knee. Some men who had both money and social status could turn nasty if their expectations weren’t met. They had a sense of privilege and entitlement that made them unpredictable.
Much as he wished Miss Lee ill, it would be the act of a cur to leave her at the mercy of these coyotes.
Mentally, he waved good-bye to an afternoon working on the Jumping Jack. “Darn idiots.” He slapped his hat on his head and tipped the hovering steward—some habits were hard to break. In Swan River it wasn’t the custom to tip for good service, but Jed found it paid. He could afford it, and it tended to improve the service even further on a return visit.
He ambled down the front steps of the club in the wake of the superstitious idiots. They set a much slower, less fit pace than he was accustomed to. They also claimed the full width of the pavement, forcing others onto the road or into shop doorways.
“Afternoon, Mr. Reeve.”
He returned Mr. Amberley’s greeting, then raised his hat to Miss Olsen as she emerged from the bakery. She stared back in a hunted fashion, then nodded hastily.
Jed sighed. Clearly the scandal would make even the simplest courtesy fraught with social strain. He shifted his attention to the bakery window to release Miss Olsen from the need to acknowledge him further. The window held cake trays showing the depredations of hungry luncheoners. Only two lamingtons remained. Jed contemplated them a moment. He liked this cake unique to Australia—sponge cake, light and fluffy, cut into individual serving-sized squares and dipped in chocolate syrup icing and then in dried coconut.
After Miss Olsen had passed, he walked on, skirting a pa
inter’s ladder.
The town was spring cleaning, busy with painting, repairs and renovations. Scaffolding covered the beauty salon next door as it stretched up to add a second floor. The telegraph office at the corner displayed a flush of new “rooms to let” cards in its window. Beside it, early tomatoes added vibrant red to the green grocer’s display.
Down a short side street and they reached the Esplanade. Raucous seagulls squawked and flapped their wings at one another on the green grass between benches, demanding their share of late lunchers’ hot chips. A toddler ran up and scattered them with shouts of glee. They rose up and landed behind him, unfussed.
Jed swung up on the waiting tram just before it set up. The group from the men’s club had pushed the good-natured crowd of fairgoers to squeeze up. As it was, he only just fitted on the steps and had to pass his fare over shoulders to the ticket collector.
It was different walking into the fair on the fringes of this group of supercilious men rather than with Esme. The ticket seller offered a small polite smile rather than yesterday’s friendly beam. There was no relaxed banter from the barkers. Indeed, one of those gentleman drew a laugh from the crowd by commenting on the upper class nature of his product, “why just look at the interest of the toffs”. His product was a laxative.
Jed grinned.
The tent flaps of the Gypsy Oracle’s stall were folded back in welcome, but it was a bored youngster rather than Miss Lee who guarded the machine.
“No touching, if you please, sir.”
Jed checked his watch. There was still five minutes to go before the performance time listed on the paper pinned to the side of the tent. He watched the group of men push themselves forward. As the crowd parted, he caught a glimpse of a familiar profile.
“Zeus’s thunderbolt.” He pushed forward himself, coming up against Esme where she stood beside a chair on which—he should have known—Grandma sat, bright eye with anticipation. “Esme, what are you doing here?”
Chapter Thirteen
“Mrs. Reeve insisted on visiting the Gypsy Oracle,” Esme defended herself. “We’ve been worried about the scandal, but most people are talking about the so-called curse. Jed, it’s growing unpleasant.”
“People will talk,” Grandma said.
People were already talking, whispering behind their hands as they saw him with Esme and his grandmother.
She was in fine form, jabbing the ground with her walking stick. “I want to know if there’s any truth in this gypsy curse.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve started believing in psychic goings-on in your old age,” he said disrespectfully.
“Jed,” Esme scolded.
Grandma snorted. “I still have my wits about me, and let me tell you, boy, I’ve more experience of life than you. Where there’s smoke there generally is fire, though maybe not the fire you think you’re going to find.”
“That sounds almost as cryptic as a gypsy fortune.” Jed eyed the crowd in the tent, then planted himself more firmly to prevent anyone jostling the two women.
He was just in time. The crowd surged forward a step as Miss Lee entered through a back flap in and stepped up to the table on which the Oracle machine rested. The youngster watching it pocketed a coin and slipped away, intent on other business. For him, as for all carnival workers, time meant money and he wasn’t about to waste any of it watching a performance.
Miss Lee wore a new costume, a gaudily defiant clash of orange, purple and sky blue. Brass bangles rattled on her wrists. Her khol rimmed eyes were remote and watchful. She scanned the crowd, her gaze hitching a moment.
Jed frowned. It was the group of men from his club that had caught her attention.
So she thought they meant trouble, too.
The younger men stared, leered really, at the woman, but Mr. Pond’s avid focus was the Oracle machine. He looked as if he truly believed and feared it might tell his future.
Miss Lee tore her gaze from the group of men. Her eyes widened as she saw Esme and Jed. She fumbled with the Oracle machine, hit a button, and a bell chimed.
The crowd silenced by degrees from a roar of speculation and gossip to a murmur of anticipation.
“Hey, gypsy tart, show us your wares,” a drunken voice shouted from the rear of the crowd.
“Shut up, you moron.” The drunk was sent stumbling and cursing on his way.
The bell chimed again.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” Miss Lee launched into her spiel.
“Tell us about the vulture curse,” a young man called. His interruption opened the floodgates.
“Can your machine tell when someone’s going to die?”
“I want to know if I’m going to marry.”
“Will I have a long life?”
“Do you curse people? Can you make a man’s leg drop off?”
“Please.” Miss Lee held up her hands. The bangles rattled down toward her elbows. “The Gypsy Oracle is an ancient and good teller of fortunes. It does not curse. Nor do I. What we bring you is a chance to peep into the future. We do not shape the future. We can only celebrate and warn.”
She smiled at a boy who nervously presented her with a penny. “Please, miss, I’d like to know my future.”
The crowd inhaled in delightful apprehension as he thrust his hand into the Gypsy Oracle’s mouth. He withdrew it and Miss Lee held the back of his hand for everyone to see.
“A bowl. A promise of plenty in your future. A very good omen for you, my lad.”
“I’ll never go hungry.” The boy contributed his mite to the reading before returning to the crowd to have his hand studied by the curious.
“Who will match the lad’s courage?” Miss Lee asked.
There was a rush forward. Beetles, bulrushes and a dog were stamped onto hands and interpreted.
All the time though, the gypsy woman’s gaze returned to the group of gentlemen scoffing and unpleasant in a corner. She seemed both eager and hesitant, definitely disturbed by their presence.
The red waist-coated fop stepped forward. “A shilling to tell my fate.” He plunked the coin on the table.
The deep breath she took was obvious and her chin jerked up as if meeting a challenge. Then her gaze slid sideways, guilty and apprehensive, to see Esme and Jed watching closely.
“Something to hide.” Grandma thumped her walking stick on the ground for emphasis.
Miss Lee flinched, but she carried on with the performance. Indeed, she added a brilliant, come-hither smile. The fop blushed under the force of it and hastily shoved his hand into the Oracle’s mouth. A moment later he held it out to Miss Lee for inspection.
“An eagle.” She looked beyond the man to his wealthy cronies. “You are very, very lucky. This is a sign that you shall soar high. All you dream of, you will achieve.”
The man studied the stamp on the back of his hand in awe. His friends stampeded forward, elbowing aside two teenage boys and a young woman in their eagerness to pay their money and learn their fates. Only Mr. Pond held back. His eyes, sunken in his puffy face, darted between the gypsy and her willing believers.
“A turtle…steady achievement,” her voice dropped to a croon as she read each man’s fortune. “A crocodile…fierce success.” Her gaze went beyond them as if to compel Mr. Pond. “Do you not wish your fortune read, fine sir? Have you not your friends’ courage to dare the Gypsy Oracle?”
He shook his head.
Her mouth thinned.
He took a step forward and she seemed to catch her breath. But he said only, “Later.” And slipped out of the tent.
For an instant an ugly, thwarted expression crossed her face. Then she turned her attention to Jed. “Mr. Reeve, how delightful to see you, here.” The gold hoops in her ears gleamed with subdued light.
The fops forgot their fortunes and sniggered in happy expectation. The crowd leaned forward like a single creature.
“So brave and strong as you are,” her voice insinuated personal, sensual knowledge. “Will you not dare th
e Gypsy Oracle…again?”
The deliberate pause enraged Esme and she started forward.
Grandma clamped her arm. “Stay.”
“That tramp is deliberately inferring intimacy between her and Jed. I’ll teach her to start a scandal.”
“Not here you won’t,” Grandma said obdurately. She raised her voice. “Young woman, don’t infer lies. My grandson would no more touch you than he’d kiss a toad—and he knows a toad would only give him warts.”
The crowd broke into chuckles, the tension of the gypsy’s challenge broken.
She stared defiantly at Grandma even as she reached behind her a pressed a button on the Oracle machine. It chimed its closing bell.
“Aw, give us another fortune,” a boy called.
Miss Lee frowned at the corner of the tent where the fops stood. “Not now. There will be a performance at seven o’clock this evening and after that,” she took a deep breath and her bosom inflated in a manner that had the men paying close attention. “After that, I will give private readings. Be sure to tell your friends.”
“Shameless hussy,” an elderly woman muttered. Her glare shifted to encompass Jed.
He raised his hat politely.
She sniffed and turned away.
As the crowd swirled and eddied, trying to depart, Jed slipped through it and stood a moment in front of the Gypsy Oracle. Esme followed close behind.
Miss Lee regarded them with suspicion, but the fops had closed around her along with a number of other men, all trying to book private sessions.
“That machine bothers me.” Jed frowned at it. “I’ve seen something designed in that style before. Every inventor has his idiosyncrasies.”
“Or hers.” But Esme’s suffragette correction was automatic.
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