A World Apart (22 page)

‘Now, sir.' He watched her lips form a pout. ‘We have important matters to resolve. Matters of timing.' She gripped his wrist with her gloved hand. ‘You understand, do you not, that my father becomes increasingly impatient, nay, righteously angry, with your tardy behaviour?'

Harry understood too well. During the sleepless hours of the night just gone, he had wrestled again and again with the prospect of marrying Agatha, then finally resigned himself. Over the years, he might learn to tolerate life with the plain, short-tempered woman who must soon become his wife. After a brace of brandies taken before retiring, he might find himself able to do his husbandly duty. In the night all cats are grey, his Oxford companions had often joked when they returned from a night upstairs at the inn with a less-than-pretty local trollop. Soon, he hoped, his wife would get with child, and he could take a rest from the loathsome task of stud bull that fate had delivered him. Now, as he sat beside her, looking down at her bony hands, the permanent scowl on her lips, he felt revolt stirring in his blood.

If it hadn't been for the recollections of his loving hours with Eliza, he might have accepted his fate with a measure of equanimity. But now he'd all but tasted perfection, it would be impossible to settle for mediocrity. He had heard of men who made happy marriages. They lived in joy and contentment, raising families they loved. Then, when the children left the nest, the couple lived out the rest of their lives in loving companionship.

On the other hand, marriages of duty often locked the parties into life sentences of endless pain. It was well known that many an unhappily married man kept a mistress or two, hoping to salvage at least a little fleshly pleasure. It was not a life Harry could accept. His own father had been party to such a marriage. It was a mercy that his wife had died after giving birth to his half-sister Hepzibah. Then the sad repetition of his own mother, a young noblewoman of the county who had been a mere nineteen when she died giving birth to her son. The viscount had never taken pains to conceal his views on the matter. His wives, his life with them, were but means to an end; business matters utterly devoid of love.

Harry had liked Eliza since the moment they'd met — had grown to believe that they might be the best of friends all their lives. At an early age, he'd been told that a man of noble birth could not marry a woman from peasant stock. In his innocence, he'd imagined there would be a way round the problem. Then they'd exchanged the first kisses of youthful passion. Those balmy afternoons beside the lake had swept away his sense of duty. He knew again that he was deeply in love with Eliza. That he could never love another woman.

‘Harry. You are not attending to our discussion.' Agatha thrust herself back into his attention. ‘Why must you torture me with this delay?'

‘Delay? My apologies, Agatha. Kindly explain what you mean.'

‘Mr Harry! You cannot mean…? No. Now I understand. At last. You seek to tease me. To make a poor girl suffer more than she has already.'

‘My dear lady. If you will be so good as to explain?'

The set to Agatha's jaw told Harry that her mind was made up. In a moment, his head would be pressed hard against the metaphorical brick wall he'd visualised so many times. Now there could be no escape.

‘Why, sir. You must…we must…marry. And soon.' She leaned back in her chair. ‘There. I've said it. As if you didn't know. The ball, especially arranged for us to become betrothed. The ball at which you disgraced yourself in drunken disarray. The talk between our fathers. My
father buying your father's estate on condition that you marry me. That I become a lady.' Harry looked down, studied his folded hands, turning them slowly this way, then that. ‘And in return, sir, our children will inherit your title and your estate. I mean
my
estate. That I will inherit from my father. Now do you understand?'

‘Indeed yes, Miss Thurber.'

‘Well then, sir. When?'

‘My dear lady. Marriage may be all very well, but why do you wish to rush into it so soon? Manacle yourself? Be tied to a clutch of needy small children who will demand your attention day and night, year in, year out?'

‘If you must know, sir, I am now four-and-twenty years old.'

‘I know for a fact that women can have babies until they reach a great age,' he volunteered. ‘Why, the Marchioness of Hansford had a son when she was forty.'

‘Fiddlesticks! I want children now. Not when I have one foot in the grave. My father too. It will hardly please him if he dies before his first heir is born.' She looked up, smiled. ‘For many a long year, his greatest wish has been to have a titled grandson.'

When the deeds were signed, Harry would be landless. His connection with Morton-Somersby would be but a few words on a worthless piece of paper. He would have to marry to survive; to have a roof over his head. Agatha would provide that roof. God forbid. There must be another way.

‘I…er...' He could not bring himself to mouth the words which would sentence him to a life of painful servitude.

‘Spare me, Mr Harry. A moment ago we were talking of setting a date for our betrothal, our wedding. Then suddenly you forget?'

‘My apologies. What date would my lady prefer for me to ask for her pretty hand?'

He watched as Agatha reeled. He admitted to himself that for the past hour, he'd been impossible. Now, in a moment, he'd magically transformed into the attentive suitor. She was not slow to exploit the change.

‘Let us say one month from today,' she said hopefully. ‘September the thirteenth? A Saturday.'

‘Er, not a propitious date, the thirteenth. Bad luck. The Devil's influence. All that folk wisdom. I'm sure you know of it.' Harry found himself still wriggling to escape the jaws that closed relentlessly round him.

‘Suggest another date then. Sir.'

‘I'll consult my…stars. And my father. He will have a view, I'm sure.'

‘And when will you tell me of that day?'

‘Soon. As soon as my father tells me of a date. A date to suit the family history. You will know he holds the history of the De Havillands in high regard.'

‘Oh, Harry!' For the first time in his recollection, Agatha's pout changed to a smile. She reached up to him, put her hands round his neck, kissed him full on the lips. He shrank back, then put a brave face on it and held still. ‘I must make haste to tell my mother,' she squealed. ‘We must prepare.'

‘Indeed. And if you will forgive me. I must away.'

‘But…tea. I'll have my maid bring tea. We must celebrate.'

‘Perhaps another day. Any day soon. I have business which — '

‘Oh. Very well then.' Agatha had won game, set and match. He hoped she would let him feel he still possessed a token mite of freedom.

Before the heat of the day surged over the land, Eliza and Susannah, with baby Ann strapped to her back, set off across the lightly forested plain. Neither spoke of their fear at venturing into the unknown. Each had weighed the risk of being eaten by the savages against the likelihood of their starving or dying of thirst. And they had agreed to leave the place which had become their home in the lonely if friendly wilderness. Eliza carried their pitiful supply of goods — a pair of wooden cups she had carved with the knife found in the dead sailor's pockets, a precious bottle washed up on the beach after a storm, likely from the wreck of the
Swan
, a few clothes and other flotsam that had survived the shipwreck.

Visualising a map of the region, Eliza concluded that walking due west would likely be their best option. They might intersect tracks linking villages that could have sprung up along the coast, either north or south of Sydney Town. That place was indeed the hub of this vast unknown land, several times the size of Europe. White men would choose to settle near the sea, making their way inland as they sought the best land for crops and the raising of sheep and cattle, progeny of the animals brought with the First Fleet back in 1788.

Walking through the stands of weedy bracken was not difficult. The rocky soil was evidently too poor, too shallow, to nourish lush vegetation. In valleys carved into the hard sandstone they saw clusters of trees. As they crossed these depressions which cut into the rocky plain, they were sometimes able to fill their bottle with water. As darkness fell, the two women and baby Ann found a place to rest, a bed of sand under a projecting sandstone ledge. They fell quickly into healing sleep. Once again, Eliza marvelled that Ann had been since her birth what the village mothers called a contented baby — slow to cry, and given to long sleeps. When morning came they resumed their westward march. It was around noon that Eliza called out to Susannah, who, bearing the weight of her baby on her back, trailed her less burdened sister.

‘A track!' Susannah hurried to the spot where Eliza stood, pointing. There, running at right angles to the direction Eliza had navigated by reference to the always shining sun, was a path, well trodden, a yard or so wide.

‘Well then, dearie.' Susannah had always been quick to assess situations, then act. ‘Which way do we take? North or south?'

‘Mmm.' Eliza bent to study the stony soil laid bare by the traffic of human feet. ‘If we head north…' She slipped into contemplative silence. ‘North it is.' Nothing more than an instinct, an instinct finely honed by several weeks of day-to-day survival in an unknown land guided her. As they walked northward, they encountered more encouraging signs — the widening track, small bridges built over streams, patches cleared of vegetation.

Night fell. They found a place to sleep under a large tree. Eliza lit a fire, despite the possibility it might signal their presence to savages who lived nearby. Again, her instincts told her the risk was slight. The path they followed bore signs of having been made by English hands — axe marks on trees, nails holding planks to bridges. Next morning each of them told the other that their intuitions had hinted that they would reach a village that day.

‘When we meet the English at this village, Eliza, what story should we tell?' Susannah's tone implied she sought her friend's advice on what shoes to wear to afternoon tea.

‘Mmm.' For all her intellectualising over past weeks, Eliza had not been able to forge an answer to that looming question. Now she addressed the matter squarely. ‘It must be believable. We must look, act, like the women we claim to be.'

‘Never fear, lass. Susannah knows how to act.'

‘But who shall those women be?'

‘We must be survivors of a shipwreck. A shipwreck our new friends will not know of.'

‘Perhaps it will have embarked from a port our friends do not know well.'

‘Very well. Which port?'

Eliza put a hand to her forehead. ‘Port Elizabeth,' she suggested.

‘Port Elizabeth? Where's that, pray?'

‘Why, South Africa. Do you not recall that the
Swan
docked at Cape Town? A town close to Port Elizabeth. We took on supplies at Cape Town. You may remember the sailors buying cheap rum?' She hesitated to add that Susannah might have drunk a fair measure of the said rum.

‘Of course.' Susannah smiled. ‘I remember that very well. Too well. So we are wealthy ladies from Port Elizabeth. Why should we wish to visit Botany Bay?'

‘We were en route to New Zealand, not Botany Bay.'

‘New Zealand? Where in God's name is New Zealand?

Eliza pointed to the east. ‘A few days sail from here.'

‘And why would two Englishwomen wish to visit New Zealand?'

Eliza hesitated, recalling material she had read in purloined newspapers as the prisoners waited in London for their ship's departure.

‘Let us say that our husbands set sail for South Africa in search of gold, bringing us with them to start a new life far from corrupt, crowded England. They found gold in quantity, but decided not to settle there on account of the dangers infesting that country — savages, wild animals, threats of war between Dutch and English. Then they learned that something of a land rush was beginning in New Zealand. Far-sighted men of business were buying land, thousands of acres, for a few pence an acre. So, carrying their stores of gold, they took passage on the good ship
Esmeralda
for that safe, friendly country, planning to buy land, and become landed gentry.'

‘I see.' Susannah smiled, enjoying the tale. ‘But the ship was wrecked near Botany Bay?'

‘Indeed. Fearsome storms for weeks. The ship's master losing his way. All aboard drowned, including our poor husbands, God rest their souls. So now we are widows, Eliza.'

‘Well…yes.' Eliza hesitated. The thought of becoming a widow was uncomfortable. Should she not rather be the daughter of one of the seekers of South African gold? Or servant to a now-wealthy widow? A wealthy widow named Susannah?

Child. You will fare better as a widow.'

‘But…' Eliza fell silent. Why did some part of her resist the notion of identifying as a widow? One second later, she knew. If, if, her beloved Harry should ever sail to Botany Bay to search for her, and if,
if
, she learned of his arrival, some part of her would be demeaned, lost, if she had become known throughout the country as a widow. She must save herself, body and soul, for the one true love of her life.

‘What ails thee, child?' Susannah had read her friend's disappointment.

‘Er, nothing.' Eliza would not reveal to a seasoned woman of the world her childish reaction to the thought of being seen by society as a widow.

‘Very well, child.' Susannah continued to read Eliza's mind. ‘Be my companion then.' From her times with Agatha Thurber, Eliza knew well enough that wealthy women of society, both married and unmarried, often employed genteel but poor young ladies for their company. Eliza, with her experience, her vast store of book knowledge, her ability to behave in ways much approved by society matrons, would appear to be the perfect companion for a wealthy woman of the world — a woman called Susannah. Indeed, Eliza would be helpful in smoothing the rough edges of Susannah's diction, deportment, and manners.