The Secret Rose (38 page)

He looked at her skeptically. “If matters are as you say, you will not mind waiting for him.”

Aisleen went to the window and crossed her arms as she stared out. “Not at all!”

She did not have long to wait before she recognized two of the men on the street. Thomas and Jack came up the lane on the opposite side. She backed away from the window when they paused before the hotel. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Russell’s interest in her action and knew what he must be thinking. Why would she behave in a furtive manner unless she had something to hide? Anxiety raced along her nerves as she held her ground. A quick movement might draw Thomas’s attention.

To her consternation, she saw two women approach the men and engage them in conversation. Further to her dislike, one of the women threaded her arm through Thomas’s. The sound of his laughter filled the street as she bent and whispered in his ear. Aisleen’s fingers flexed on her elbows and her mouth tightened. Thomas was flirting on a public street. How dare he!

The shop bell jangled as the door opened, but Aisleen was too agitated to give the customer notice. Suddenly Thomas looked up sharply and directly into her face. She knew she was hidden in the shadow of the shop, but she felt as if he had reached across the busy street and touched her.

For the space of several seconds she was pierced and pinned like a butterfly by that too-blue gaze. Her heart contracted as a hard tremor shook her. She loved him. She loved him so much the emotion shattered her heart, her pride, her will to resist. It wasn’t right! He would ruin her, bring her to pathetic misery, and never even once feel the battering gale winds of love and tenderness and desire that buffeted her each and every time he looked at her.

Why was love not possible?

“Ye bitch.”

Aisleen spun about.

“Is this the man?” Mr. Russell prompted.

At first, she did not recognize the grizzled old man in a plaid suit. But as his lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace of rage, she knew who it was. He held her green-and-red wool tartan gown in one hand, the hand with the missing thumb. “Cook! You thief!”

“Bloody pommie bitch!”

Aisleen never saw the fist that came flying toward her. She felt only the sickening connection of fist to jaw, the levering pain that jerked her head away from her body, and then the stunning wild darkness that engulfed her.

*

“Aisleen! Aisleen, me darling!”

Thomas knew that she was not seriously injured. The ugly blue-red bruise darkening her chin would heal. Yet he could not stop the churning in his middle as he held her limp body in his arms. Her stubborn little chin was not meant to withstand the brutal strength of a man’s fist. “Aisleen, lass, please open yer eyes!”

Aisleen moaned. Her head felt too big, her lids too heavy to open. “Go away!” she murmured. “I don’t believe in you. I won’t!”

“What’s that gibberish she’s mumbling?” Mr. Russell asked as he bent over Thomas’s shoulder.

“’Tis the mother tongue of Ireland,” Thomas answered shortly. “Give her some air!” He bent low to whisper in her ear in Gaelic, “I don’t care if ye believe in me, lass, only come back and fight me if ye must!”

The words in the taunting lilt made Aisleen’s eyes fly wide open. “Who said that?” she questioned in English.

“Ah, well, so ye’ve decided to come round, have ye?” Thomas questioned with a smile. “Have ye nothing better to do than to lie about on a shop floor?”

“Cook! He stole my gowns!” She tried to sit up; but pain struck her a stunning blow between the eyes, and with a gasp she sagged weakly between the cradle of Thomas’s thighs.

“Easy, darling.” He brushed back a lock of bright hair from her face. “I’ll be taking care of the cook before the day’s done, of that ye can be certain.”

“She looks all crooked,” offered the clerk, which brought a glare from Thomas.

“I’ll be thanking ye to keep away from his wife,” Jack said with a weighty hand on the young man’s shoulder.

The clerk backed away as if he had once been a victim of Jack’s temper and hurried to put the width of the counter between him and the huge man. Jack bent down and stared at Aisleen’s pale face.

Aisleen caught her lower lip to keep it from trembling. Jack had made her feel completely useless and foolish.

“Shouldn’t give ye bother,” he said at last to Thomas and stood. “I’ll see to the cook.”

“No.” Thomas spoke the word quietly, but it stopped the gigantic man in midtread. “I be thanking ye to leave that pleasure to me. If ye’d take me wife back to the Mahoneys, I’d be that obliged.”

He scooped Aisleen up in his arms and rose to his feet. “She’s nae a sack of meal,” he cautioned Jack as he handed her over. “She’ll have a sore head some little time without ye frightening her to death. Keep her still until I get back.”

Jack nodded once.

To her astonishment, Thomas left her without a word. Contrarily tears rose in her eyes, because she wasn’t sad, she was furious!

“No tears!” Jack’s basso voice boomed over her head, snapping Aisleen’s head up. Pain skyrocketed up the column of her neck to explode in a shower of stars behind her eyes as she heard him say, “Can’t swim!”

She shouldn’t have been able to laugh—it hurt too much even to blink her eyes—but laughter bubbled out of her. So there was something that the great and mighty Jack feared, and that was a woman’s tears. Had she known, she’d have cried a bucket of them on the journey over the mountains.

Mr. Russell offered Jack the carpetbag of clothing that the thief had left behind. “I am to suppose that I have lost the money I paid in good faith for these articles?”

Jack’s silver gaze narrowed.

“Yes, of course. Foolish of me to inquire.” Mr. Russell signaled for the lavender gown and matching bonnet, which his clerk reluctantly brought. “That is everything, I believe.” He moved to open his shop door. “Good day to you both.”

She knew they turned every head—Jack alone would have been enough to do that. Aisleen did not care. She had had a miserable night and a miserable morning. The sight of the coach from Bathurst rattling past was the last straw. The tears she had promised herself she would not shed broke free of the thicket of her golden lashes and streamed unchecked down her face. And so the main street of Hill End was subjected to the astonishing sight of a red-haired giant with a small, weeping, red-haired lady in his arms trailing a costly lavender silk and white lace gown.

*

“You’re so very brave to have accosted the thief yourself.”

“She’s a damned fool!”

“Now, Matt, what sort of talk is that?” Sarah scolded. “I think’ she is quite brave.” She smiled. “If a bit foolish.”

Aisleen sat up in bed, her head supported in her hands. “I think I am a damned fool! Ouch! My head.”

“Jack went to fetch something,” Sarah said with a lift of her brows at her husband.

“Oh, aye, I’ll see what’s become of him,” Matt offered belatedly and left the room.

Sarah studied the young woman before her. With her hair falling about her shoulders and her chin darkly bruised and her eyes shining with the lees of tears, she was prettier than ever before. It was easy to see why Thomas loved her to distraction. “Where were you going this morning, before you nabbed the thief?”

Aisleen looked up guiltily. “Nowhere—that is, not precisely anywhere.”

“How odd,” Sarah remarked calmly. “I thought it must be something very important for you to climb out of the window.”

Aisleen felt her cheeks warm with blood. “Did you tell Thomas?”

“Of course not!” Sarah leaned forward. “If you are so foolish as to throw over a man as fine as Tom, then you don’t deserve him!”

Her gaze fell before Sarah’s accusing one. “I wasn’t throwing him over, exactly. I needed time to think. He wasn’t honest with me.”

“Did you ask him to be?” Sarah asked quickly.

Aisleen shrugged, a deplorable habit that would never have been tolerated at Miss Burke’s Academy. “There has been no time.”

“I see.” Sarah pursed her lips. “I’ve kept my opinions to
myself because they have not been asked for. I am not so
presumptuous as to assume that you would find advice of
mine worthwhile. As you know, I live a shameful existence
in which I find inestimable joy.”

Aisleen raised her head. “I do apologize, Sarah. I can’t think why I behaved the way I did.”

“I can,” Sarah’s expression thawed. “You behaved as I
would have had our situations been reserved. It was ill-timed of me to think that you could share with me things that you have not yet shared with Tom.”

“What things?” Aisleen asked in genuine puzzlement.

“My dear, everything! What you hide behind that golden gaze could fill volumes. Don’t think because I am a woman I am the only one who can see the shadows. They are driving Tom half-mad with curiosity and fear. Yes, fear. Do you think he brought you here by coincidence? He hoped you would confide in me, another woman who left her old life behind only to face the uncertainty and perplexities of a new one, what you could not confide in him.”

“Did he tell you this?” Aisleen asked in amazement.

Sarah smiled sadly. “You are so ignorant of men! Tom himself does not know why he is here. It was plainly written on your faces that you’ve yet to master the most basic conventions of marriage.”

Aisleen shook her head. “You are wrong. I quite understand what I need to know of men. Thomas married me because I fit quite nicely his idea of a wife. I married him because I was desperate. Yet neither of us has gotten what we bargained for.”

Sarah nodded. “I know. You’ve both gotten more, and you’re frightened of it. Foolish child, don’t you see that you’ve fallen in love?”

Aisleen shook her head and winced as pain radiated through her skull. “I don’t love him. I couldn’t. I don’t know what love is.”

Sarah opened her mouth, but Jack burst through the door at that moment with a tin cup in his hand and thrust it at
Aisleen. “Drink!”

The command impelled her to take a large swallow. For an instant, there was only the cool feeling of liquid. The next instant the cool caught fire and flames traveled quickly down her throat into her stomach and back. She gasped but could
not seem to draw breath. Tears started in her eyes. She choked and then expelled a fiery breath in racking coughs as the inferno raged.

“Rum,” Matt offered from the doorway with a quick, apologetic look at his wife.

“Tom said to keep her quiet,” Jack mumbled. “Rum’ll do the trick.”

“I don’t—drink spirits!” Aisleen gasped. She tried to hand the cup to Sarah, but Jack’s huge hand blocked the path. “Drink,” he ordered.

Aisleen gulped, blinking back the tears of pain and anger that she doubted would move him to sympathy even if he did abhor them. “I won’t,” she said softly but quickly brought the
cup to her lips as he made a move toward her. She took another swallow, igniting new flames in her throat, and she sputtered.

Sarah grabbed her wrist to temper her sipping. “Slowly. You’ll make yourself sick.” She looked up at Jack. “I’ll see personally that she finishes every drop. If you hurry, you might find Tom before he finds the thief.”

A look passed between Matt and Jack, and they left without a word.

When they were gone, Sarah turned back to Aisleen. “Where were we? Oh, yes, you’re a fool and a prude and a snob, Aisleen Gibson. And if you don’t cease being all three immediately, you will soon learn what it is to live with regret for the rest of your life!”

*

Aisleen awakened to the sounds of a carousal. No, she had not been asleep, simply watching a spider spin its web in a ceiling corner. Her head felt woolly, yet lighter than air. If not tethered by the stem of her neck, she knew it would
simply float away to bob gently in the corner near the spider. She giggled. Such a silly notion.

The contours of the room faded, stealing softly away until she was under the canopy of high-ceilinged bush. Below in the distance, the tents of hundreds of diggers lay in the skimpy shade of a few trees. But the noise did not come from the camp. It did not signal the joy of a strike. She turned her head slowly, aware of what was happening before she saw it.

He stood with his feet apart, his shirt hanging in shreds from his shoulders. One eye was swollen nearly shut, but the grin on his face was confident. At his feet lay the battered cook, bleeding from a dozen lacerations inflicted by a pair of fists. The cheers of the crowd urged the cook to try again, but he was sprawled unconscious. His vanquisher accepted the victory with a simple bow and then came toward her. The rest dissolved like images muddled by a stick thrown in a calm pond.

Aisleen found she could not move. The bed was at her back, but how was that possible? He came toward her slowly, limping badly, and she knew that his was not an easy victory. All the same, she felt no pity for him, only elation. Her first words to him surprised even her. “You’re quite proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

Aye
,
came his grinning reply.

“And so you should be,” she answered cockily, “knocking the five senses out of a man half your size and twice your years!”