Jack pitched Smith from him. ‘Oh, very well, Dilhorne. I’ll let your miserable serf start pushing his quill again.’
‘I think,’ remarked Tom, as smooth as silk, ‘that you have just added two per cent to the interest I shall require from you in payment of your debts. It shall go to Mr Smith to compensate him for being manhandled by a poor apology for a gentleman.’
‘Two per cent, is it?’ sneered Jack, watching Smith leave. ‘What the devil does that mean? And what’s this ordure you’ve written to me? I must say that I’m astounded that you can write at all.’
He tossed Tom’s letter on to his desk.
‘We have some business dealings to conclude,’ said Tom, ignoring Jack’s insolence, but having taken sardonic note that Jack was carefully avoiding coming to physical terms with him.
‘I wasn’t aware that I had any business dealings with you, Dilhorne. I’m always careful to avoid contact with felons whenever possible.’
‘Ex-felon is the correct term,’ was Tom’s only answer, ‘and if you imagine that you have no business dealings with me, you are as mistaken as when you chose to misname my wife.’
Jack’s anger at this was tempered by his wariness in dealing with the vulgar ruffian before him.
‘Captain Cameron to scum like you, Dilhorne.’
‘Certainly, Captain Cameron,’ agreed Tom in his most exasperating drawl. ‘Captain Cameron. Well, Captain Cameron, I take leave to tell Captain Cameron that I have bought up all his debts. They lie on the desk before you, Captain Cameron. And I shall require Captain Cameron to agree to three conditions if Captain Cameron will be good enough to listen to them.’
‘Damn you, stop repeating my name, you filth!’ roared Jack.
‘I was under the impression that you ordered me to use your name, Captain Cameron, but as you have asked me so politely not to, then I shall be only too happy to oblige you and cease.’
‘What conditions, Dilhorne? How dare you talk to me of conditions, you damned convict?’
‘I shall add another one per cent for vulgar abuse,’ said Tom equably, ‘and you will talk to me of conditions because, if you don’t, I shall set the bailiffs on to you for debt and inform Colonel O’Connell into the bargain.’
Jack was on the verge of gibbering. ‘Come to the point,’ he finally achieved in a hoarse whisper.
‘I fear you mistake again. There are three points for you to consider. Firstly, I have purchased all your debts and now hold all those which you have run up in Sydney. Secondly, I shall charge you a percentage on them to be paid each quarter day at an interest which I shall determine, and of which Smith will inform you in advance—and you will not assault him again, or I shall send all your papers straight to O’Connell. Thirdly, any form of default on your part, or interference with me and mine, and again, I shall send in the bailiffs.
‘Is that all perfectly clear to you, Captain Cameron…sir.’
The ‘sir’ came out with such studied insolence that it was an insult, not a respectful salutation.
Jack sank into an armchair opposite Tom’s desk and stared mutely into the bland, smiling face of the man opposite to him. Then, his voice thick with rage, he snarled, ‘By God, you damned felon, I’ll call you out, see if I don’t.’
‘Do so, by all means. Here and now, if you like. Shall I choose fisticuffs, on the spot or later? For be sure I shall never call you out, however tempted I might be to kill you, and thus, by your own ridiculous rules, the choice is mine, always mine.’
‘By God, Dilhorne,’ cried Jack despairingly, ‘I never thought that I’d find myself ruined in a hell-hole like Sydney by a ruffian such as you!’
‘Did you not? Then you should have ordered your affairs better. But you have not answered me.’
‘What answer can I give you other than yes? You have me by the throat. But I’ll do for you yet, Dilhorne, see if I don’t.’
Tom leaned back. The smile on his face was deadly. Hester would scarcely have known him.
‘I find you a dead bore, Cameron,’ he said at last. ‘Your vocabulary is limited. You have all the charm of a fifty-year-old whore and your reserves of courage disgrace the army which you profess to serve. You haven’t the stomach to call me out, however much I insult you. If it weren’t that I can make a useful profit from your inability to manage your affairs, I wouldn’t care to know you.’
‘By God, Dilhorne, I’ll make you pay for this.’
‘You mistake. It is you who will pay me. Now take yourself away, I have work to do.’
He sat down, picked up his quill and began to write in the ledger before him.
Jack stared at him, his face alternately white and red, his mouth working. He started to his feet and stamped out, closing the door behind him with a shattering bang.
‘Now I wonder if I overdid that,’ mused Tom. ‘But the fool is such an easy mark.’ He shrugged and rang for Smith.
Several nights later Tom and Hester engaged in what they did not know at the time was their last night of unalloyed bliss.
As usual it centred around a picnic. It had lately become unsafe to go far afield. A group of banditti—as Sydney had recently dubbed escaped convicts—had been preying on anyone who strayed near the bush at night.
Tom naturally thought of a variation of their usual excursions. He decided that the shrubbery in his own grounds was safe enough and he and Hester went down there with food and drink, rugs and pillows—and pistols.
Hester was wearing the boy’s clothing in which she went riding: a white silk open-necked shirt, black trousers and a black jockey cap. Tom was similarly dressed without the jockey cap. After they had eaten enough food to satisfy them they blazed away at targets in a competition which Tom had invented. The winner had to take two drinks and the loser one at the end of each round.
Tom had suggested that this might be a better way to indulge themselves rather than by simply drinking the wine with their food. He did not have to relax much in order to allow Hester to win a few rounds. Her marksmanship was now almost as good as his.
Their laughter rang out in the moonlit night and their aim became more and more erratic as the game went on, until Tom pointed out that to continue it might become more actively dangerous to them than to the target.
‘Besides, I doubt whether I want to make love to a boy,’ announced Tom, staring at Hester’s breeches when he pulled her on to the rug beneath the trees.
‘No, Mr Dilhorne, I can see that that might trouble you. Suppose I removed them, would that help?’
‘Do not strain yourself, Mrs Dilhorne, allow me.’
‘In that case I insist that I remove yours.’
They fell asleep in one another’s arms surrounded by the remains of the picnic whilst, unknown to Hester, Tom’s employees patrolled the far perimeter of the Villa Dilhorne to allow its master and mistress to take their pleasure in safety.
A wiser precaution perhaps than either of them knew, for Tom had acquired an enemy whose hatred was implacable. Jack Cameron’s detestation of Hester Dilhorne’s husband had become so bitter that it seemed like bile in the mouth.
He had been both publicly and privately humiliated by him, and had been brutally assaulted after a fashion which had caused laughter all over Sydney. The last humiliation of all was that he had been nicknamed Guinea Jack because of the coin which Tom had flung at him in Madame Phoebe’s—and the name had stuck.
Complaining to Pat Ramsey about this, that cool customer, who disliked Jack intensely because he thought that he demeaned the honour of the regiment, had stared at him, saying briefly, ‘You should be pleased that you’re not called worse.’
Jack began to splutter and to threaten so that Pat, before walking away from him, said coldly, ‘I’ll neither fight you, nor gamble with you, Jack, and that’s my last word.’
It was all that swine Dilhorne’s fault and the interview with him over his debts had been almost the last straw. Almost, because the real last straw had been Hester Dilhorne, and the
effect which she had had on him at the ball.
Tom had been right to think that he had overdone it a little in his interview with Jack, for the manner in which he had treated him, coupled with his obsession for Hester, had tipped him over into something resembling insanity. It was fortunate for him that Tom remained unaware of the passion for his wife which had suddenly afflicted a man already made unsteady by his other passions.
Before he had seen her at the Governor’s ball he had always boasted that all skirts were the same to Jack Cameron. ‘Nothing between them’, he had said confidentially to his fellow-officers who thought themselves in love, either with their wives or other women. ‘They’re all the same in the dark—as well one as another!’
He had mocked Frank Wright for doting on Lucy and here he was pining like a great mooncalf for a woman he couldn’t have, and to make matters worse that woman was Dilhorne’s wife.
Jack could not drive from his mind, try he ever so hard, the memory of her face as she had looked at him over her fan, the grace with which she had turned away from him and put her tiny hand on that hulking felon’s arm.
He tracked Tom around Sydney, burning for revenge, but he also tracked Hester, burning for he knew not what, she seemed so out of his reach. The idea of taking her to bed seemed like sacrilege, and the thought of her in the arms of that brute Dilhorne made him feel faint.
These emotions were so new to him that he scarcely knew how to act. Jealousy had always been a joke. Now he felt jealous of anyone who as much as spoke to her because they were doing what he could not. By chance, though, he had cornered her one day as she walked alone to her carriage after visiting friends in Sydney.
Jack had caught his breath at the sight of her. He moved into her path. No gentlemanly compunction could prevent him from accosting her. It might assuage the strange ache which he felt whenever he thought of her—which, to his offended surprise, he so often did.
He bowed low. ‘Mrs Dilhorne, I am at your service—ever and always.’
Hester stared at him. He had no business to speak to her, none at all.
‘Please, Captain Cameron, allow me to pass,’ was all that she could manage.
‘Not until I have offered you my most humble apologies.’
‘I believe that I told you once before that you address me at your peril.’
‘But I do so wish to take back all that I have ever said of you in the past. You are a nonpareil, Hester—if I may so call you—there are none like you.’
Was the man mad that he persisted so?
‘I do not ask you for your compliments, sir, and I do not thank you for them.’
Jack was desperate to touch her. He put out a hand. She drew back.
‘You shame yourself, sir, by trying to detain me. Again, pray allow me to pass.’
He would not desist. ‘I wish that I had looked closer at you before you married that felon.’
‘You did, Captain Cameron, but you did not like what you saw. If you do not allow me to pass, I must inform my husband of your ungentlemanly behaviour. You would not care for the consequences if I did.’
Jack’s face contorted. ‘Is there no way in which I can convince you of my regrets for my behaviour, and persuade you to speak kindly to me—if only for a moment?’
Hester regarded him steadily. ‘If you will allow me to continue on my way, then I will think more kindly of you than if you pester me with your unwanted attentions. You must be aware that even if I wished to speak to you—which I do not—my husband would not allow it, but would hunt you down to punish you.’
Nothing would do. Jack stood back. ‘I shall not detain you further, but believe me, my admiration for your looks and spirit knows no bounds.’
Hester closed her eyes, preferring not to see him. She could not imagine what Tom would say or do if he learned of this encounter. Jack watched her until she disappeared around the corner. When he had disposed of Dilhorne she would listen to him—he was sure of it.
One morning Hester, instead of rising to greet the new day with joy, awoke to find herself feeling ill, and when she finally rose from her bed she was overcome with nausea. At first she thought that this was a passing ailment, occasionally common to Sydney, but the condition persisted, affecting her only in the early morning, until at the end of the first week she found herself vomiting helplessly.
She said nothing to Tom who invariably rose before her, but on the day when she had been violently sick, he looked at her keenly, watched her eat very little, but said nothing. On the following morning, having risen and left her, he returned rapidly upstairs after a few minutes to discover her lying on the bed, her face damp, having suffered the worst bout of sickness yet.
He wetted a cloth, sat beside her and began to wipe her face gently.
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Every morning for over a week now. It seems to pass off during the day,’ said Hester faintly. ‘I kept hoping that it would go away and that you need not know.’
‘Have you any notion of what is wrong with you, Hester?’
‘A sickness of the stomach, I suppose.’
‘You might call it that.’
Unaccountably Tom was smiling. ‘But I suspect that you are increasing. Do you have any reason to suppose that it might be so?’
She sat up suddenly. ‘Oh, yes. My courses are late, but they have been late many times before, as you must know, and it wasn’t because of a baby then.’
‘Then you were recovering from near starvation, which always affects a woman’s courses, and you have never had morning sickness before. If this continues and you continue to miss your courses, we must take you to Alan to be examined. But I am bound to tell you that I have no doubt that you are expecting a baby.’
Hester looked at him anxiously. ‘Do you mind, Tom?’
He pulled her to him. ‘Oh, Hester, I have never told you, but it has been my dearest wish that we should make a baby. I hope that you feel the same, but remembering how you behaved with John Kerr and your schoolchildren, I need hardly ask.’
She smiled at him. ‘It is my dearest wish, too, and I do hope that you are right. How odd that you should know and that I should not.’
‘Well, in some respects your life has been very sheltered—although not in others. Whereas I…’ and he grimaced ‘…there is little that I do not know about men and women. Alan certainly added to my knowledge of them when I helped him on the transport.’
‘Is there anything I can take to cure my sickness?’
‘I remember that Alan used to prescribe gruel and a plain diet in the early morning before the patient rose, and from now on that is what we shall do. It seems to help.’
Alan Kerr duly confirmed that Hester was pregnant and Tom’s attitude to it was all that might have been expected. He was both protective and brisk. He bluntly told Hester that once her sickness had abated she must live a reasonably active life: she was not an invalid.
He was encouraged in this by Alan, who was as unorthodox in his treatment of pregnancy and childbirth as he was in his insistence on a healthy diet to avoid sickness and in his rational care of the health of the convicts who surrounded them.
Hester had only one demand to make of them both, and that was that when the baby was being born she wanted to know that Tom was somewhere near. ‘You will promise me that, won’t you, Mr Dilhorne? It’s your child as well as mine.’
‘I promise, Mrs Dilhorne, that I shall agree to whatever makes you happy—will that do?’
To his great relief, as her sickness diminished her energy returned and, far from causing her to lose her looks, pregnancy enhanced them, conferring on her a new radiance which more than one who met her privately remarked on.
Lying awake one night, for her pregnancy made sleep difficult, Hester could only marvel at Tom’s kindness and consideration for her. Oh, he was still the hard, devious man whom all Sydney knew, and she had no illusions about that. What mattered to her was the private Tom whom only she knew: a
complex, many-sided man who had manipulated her into marriage—for which she daily thanked him.
She was also coming to understand him more and more. Recently she was sure that something was troubling him and that—contrary to his usual practice—he was not telling her what it was. Now it was beginning to worry her.
At this point Tom stirred and rolled towards her, opening one eye. He pulled her down beside him. ‘Still awake, woman? You need your sleep. Is owt wrong?’
‘No,’ Hester said, not yet ready to question him about possible trouble. ‘It’s odd, when I first knew you, and then after I married you, I seemed to need to sleep so much—and now I don’t.’
‘Not odd at all,’ he mumbled, but he refused to amplify his answer further, simply putting a friendly arm around her so that she, too, drifted into sleep, since now, when it did come, it always came easily.
Jack Cameron moped around Sydney. He had done little to advance his revenge on that swine Dilhorne. Anger seethed in him, growing stronger by the day, fuelled by the knowledge that he was finding it increasingly difficult to pay him the interest on his debts.
After his abortive meeting with Hester, to watch Tom walk and drive around Sydney with her by his side, to hear of his business successes, to learn that one of his horses was winning races regularly and that he had made a killing in his deal with the Yankee whalers, all served to inflame him the further. The news that the Governor was about to make him a magistrate was enough to start him gibbering.
To cap everything, he had gone to Lucy Wright’s one afternoon and had heard something which finally destroyed his last hold on sanity. To go there at all showed how far he had fallen since young Wright, taking pity on the yellow-faced hangdog he had become, took him home for tea—an entertainment which the old Jack would have heartily despised. The new one accepted the offer lethargically.
A great deal of idle small talk went on about low persons whom Jack normally avoided. He was about to leave when Lucy, feeling sorry for him left stranded and alone, handed him a china cup full of boiling hot tea. He had scarcely taken it from her when a woman nearby said loudly to the company at large, ‘Have you heard the latest, my dears? Hester Dilhorne is increasing.’
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