Her Rags-to-Riches Christmas

by Laura Martin

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said, stepping away and crossing to his desk. There was a little parcel in the top drawer, something he’d been saving for this occasion. He’d bought it when they’d gone to Sydney, slipping away for a few minutes after it had caught his eye in a shop window.

  He passed her the package, watching as her fingers deftly untied the ribbon.

  ‘You shouldn’t buy me gifts,’ she said, something catching in her voice.

  ‘Why not?’

  She shook her head and he glimpsed the scared, undervalued young woman she had once been. He cursed the man who had done this to her, who had taken her goodness and vibrancy and worn her down so she expected to be treated so poorly. George wondered when the last time was she’d received a present. He would wager it wasn’t for a good few years.

  Alice’s face lit up as she opened the box and her eyes fell on the dainty necklace. It had a silver chain, thin and snaking, with a tear-shaped pendant on the end. The pendant was made out of amber, the stone a smoky orange colour, perfect in its imperfection.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, running her fingers over the smooth stone.

  George reached in and took the necklace from the box, motioning for Alice to turn around so he could loop the chain around her neck. Once the pendant was securely fastened he moved around to face her, giving his nod of approval.

  ‘See if you like it.’

  She moved to the mirror, a smile on her lips as she admired the necklace. It sat perfectly at the base of her throat, glinting in the sunlight that poured through the windows.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said, biting her lips again, ‘but I can’t accept it.’

  Raising her hands to the clasp at the back of her neck, she began to run the chain through her fingers as if trying to take it off. George placed his hand over hers, stopping the movement.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, coming in close so his voice was barely more than a whisper.

  ‘I...’ she said, hesitating as she tried to put into words why she felt quite so unworthy. ‘It wouldn’t be right. I don’t deserve it. You shouldn’t buy me gifts.’

  Gently he spun her to face him, kicking the door to his bedroom shut at the same time. This conversation needed privacy.

  ‘Alice, do you doubt I’m a level-headed man, a man who knows his own mind?’

  She shook her head, her breathing quickening as he stepped closer.

  ‘Do you doubt my ability to make my own decisions?’

  Again she shook her head.

  ‘I choose to give you this gift. I believe you do deserve it, and I want you to have it.’

  ‘But...’

  He smiled then, loving how she still managed to protest even in the face of the strongest argument.

  ‘Alice, if you don’t stop protesting I’m going to have to kiss you to shut you up.’

  ‘But...’

  He grinned, swooping down and kissing her, feeling his body respond to the velvet softness of her lips. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to him, desire mixing with happiness, and she sighed and sank into him.

  ‘We should go,’ he said reluctantly as he pulled away. Taking a step back, he put some distance between them—another minute and he would have tumbled Alice on to the bed. He wanted nothing more than to lie down on the bed with her and spend the entire night getting to know her intimately, but he knew it was too soon. Perhaps one day...but not today, however much he wanted it.

  * * *

  Alice felt the tension seep back into her body as they neared the Robertsons’ farm. Although she had met Mr Robertson and Mr Crawford, as well as Mrs Crawford when they had taken the trip into Sydney, she hadn’t yet met Mrs Robertson. Although George reassured her that Mrs Robertson was friendly and kind Alice knew the woman had been the daughter of an earl and while living in London had been known by the title Lady Georgina. She seemed so far above Alice’s station it was daunting, even if George said she was not what you would expect from a daughter of the nobility.

  ‘Horsey,’ was the shout from a young boy as he came speeding from the house, his little legs carrying him much faster than Alice would have believed possible.

  ‘James,’ Mr Robertson bellowed as he came running out of the front door at speed, too. The little boy took no notice of his father, too intent on reaching the horse he’d spied.

  George reined in Kareela, who had good naturedly allowed himself to be harnessed to the cart despite normally being reserved for riding.

  ‘Horsey,’ James repeated, coming to a stop by Kareela’s hooves.

  Mr Robertson caught up with him, scooping the young boy into his arms.

  ‘Never known a child move so fast,’ he said, breathing heavily as he shook his head. ‘You’d think he would be fed up of horses.’

  Alice knew Mr Robertson owned the largest stud in Australia and was almost single-handedly responsible for providing the settlers and military alike with their mounts.

  ‘He’s like you,’ George said, leaping down from the cart. ‘I can’t imagine you ever getting fed up of horses.’

  ‘True,’ Mr Robertson murmured, stroking Kareela’s nose, allowing his son to reach out and mimic his actions.

  ‘He can’t be your son,’ George said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Far too handsome.’

  ‘Thankfully the boy takes after his mother,’ Robertson said with a grin, although Alice could see the resemblance between father and son.

  ‘Good evening Miss Alice, welcome to Low Wealden Farm.’

  Alice hitched up her skirts and hopped down from the cart, smiling uncertainly. From behind him a beautiful young woman emerged with a sunny smile on her face. She was heavily pregnant, her gait elegant still, but Alice could see the effort it must have taken for Mrs Robertson to cross the short distance towards them.

  ‘Mr Fitzgerald,’ she said warmly, taking his hand. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’ve come home.’ Her eyes sparkled as she spoke and Alice could see the warmth in her expression. Her voice was soft and refined, exactly how Alice had always imagined a lady would sound. ‘Sam talks of you so much I feel as though I know every part of your life.’

  ‘May I introduce Miss Alice Fillips,’ he said, taking Alice’s arm and guiding her forward.

  ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Fillips,’ Mrs Robertson said, linking her arm through Alice’s just as Mrs Crawford had a few days earlier during their walk through the streets of Sydney. ‘Come inside out of this heat, I’ve got some lovely cool lemonade to take away the taste of the dusty road.

  The Robertsons’ house was wood-clad and pretty. It was a fair bit smaller than the Mountain View farmhouse, but the rooms were well proportioned and beautifully decorated. Everywhere there were little reminders of the Robertsons’ son James: abandoned toys, a little jacket hanging over the banister, a framed portrait on the wall. There was no doubt that he played a central role in family life.

  ‘You have a very beautiful home,’ Alice said as she looked around her.

  ‘Thank you. You wouldn’t believe the state of the place when I first arrived here a couple of years ago.’ She looked teasingly at her husband. ‘There wasn’t a single picture on the wall, there was only one usable chair and the windows were so thick with grime you could barely see out.’

  ‘I didn’t spend any time indoors,’ Mr Robertson said with a shrug.

  ‘I half-expected to see a horse strolling out of a bathroom,’ she said in an exaggerated whisper.

  ‘It was never that bad,’ Mr Robertson protested.

  Mrs Robertson arched an eyebrow and for the first time Alice could picture her commanding the attention of every eligible bachelor in a crowded ballroom.

  ‘It was that bad,’ Mrs Robertson murmured to Alice.

  They made their way through to a pretty drawing room, the late-evenin
g sunlight reflecting off the bright wallpaper and giving the room a warm glow. On a low table there were three abandoned oranges and a pile of cloves, bright ribbon waiting to be tied around the pomanders when they were finished. This must have been what young James had been doing before he’d been distracted by the arrival of the horse. The scent of the cloves took Alice back to Christmas at home, sitting at the kitchen table with her sisters meticulously decorating their own oranges.

  As Alice perched on the edge of a comfortable sofa she felt a warm contentment settle inside her. Despite all her worries and misgivings these were good people. People she could be comfortable around.

  As soon as she’d had the thought she stiffened. It wouldn’t do for her to get too comfortable here. She needed to remember her place. These were George’s friends, his equals, and when she shattered the trust he’d placed in her by revealing she might still be married they would gather round him and shut her out.

  Misreading the expression on her face, George gave her hand a surreptitious squeeze while the Robertsons were distracted by their son barrelling into the room. Alice felt the tears pricking in her eyes, wishing she’d had the courage to tell him earlier, wishing that Bill wasn’t still such a dark shadow in her life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  George leaned back in his chair and grinned. It was the perfect evening. He was surrounded by the people he loved the most, the food was fantastic and the wine was flowing. The years he’d spent in England and voyaging home without his friends had been wonderful, but he’d missed their joking and their camaraderie. And he was pleased that his two closest friends hadn’t changed despite getting married and starting families in the time he’d been away.

  ‘Has he told you of the time he fell down the well near Rabbit’s Corner?’ Robertson asked, addressing his question to Alice. His two friends were having a great time retelling all their youthful exploits to a new pair of ears.

  ‘No,’ Alice said leaning forward. ‘Although he did fall down a well a couple of weeks ago on my first day on the farm.’

  Robertson and Crawford turned to him, their eyes shining at this piece of information.

  ‘I told you, he hasn’t changed since he was fifteen years old. Most people become more careful...’ Crawford said, shaking his head. ‘Tell us exactly what happened.’

  ‘Was he trying to rescue something?’ Robertson asked, ‘He’s normally trying to rescue something.’

  ‘Not that time,’ Alice said. ‘Although he did get stuck in a muddy pond later the same day rescuing a koala.’

  Crawford and Robertson looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  ‘Tell us about the well,’ Robertson prompted.

  ‘We were riding out to check on the farm and Mr Fitzgerald was worried the wells were dry. He looked down it, leaning on the stone wall around it, but wasn’t satisfied by simply looking.’

  ‘I wanted to make sure it was actually dry and not just appearing so by something covering the bottom,’ George murmured good-naturedly.

  ‘I begged him not to lean too far, told him he’d fall in, but he just seemed to lean out further.’

  ‘Showing off,’ Crawford murmured with a shake of his head.

  ‘He was holding on to the wooden strut above the well and suddenly it cracked. I thought he would plummet to his death, but he managed to grab hold of the wall, after flipping himself over.’

  George shrugged. ‘What can I say, I’m a natural acrobat.’

  ‘It would have been easier to heed Miss Alice’s advice and not put yourself in that situation in the first place,’ Crawford said.

  ‘Don’t pretend you’re the epitome of sensibility,’ Francesca challenged him with raised eyebrow. She turned to the rest of the table, ‘Only last week I found him balancing an almighty bundle of tools on his back as he climbed up the ladder to the hayloft. A sensible man would have made three trips, but you risked slicing your arm off for the sake of a few minutes.’

  ‘Extra minutes I got to spend with you, my sweet.’ Crawford winked at his wife, making her cheeks blush a deep pink. ‘The time he fell down the well at Rabbit’s Corner was even more impressive,’ Crawford said, steering the conversation back to George.

  ‘We were about sixteen years old, sent out by Fitzgerald’s father to check on the wells around the property, see if any of the covers needed repairs, if the stone walls were in good condition,’ Robertson said, swinging back on his chair only to be abruptly pulled back down to the floor by his wife. ‘When we got to the well at Rabbit’s Corner he peered down and was convinced there was something stuck down there.’

  ‘It looked like an animal had fallen in,’ George said, remembering the day as if it were yesterday.

  ‘Before we knew what he was doing he took a length of rope, looped it around his waist and instructed us to lower him down.’ Robertson grinned, shaking his head as Crawford took up the story.

  ‘What he hadn’t done was check the rope was in good condition.’

  ‘It was damn unlucky a mouse had chosen that particular rope to chew through,’ George murmured.

  ‘He hopped over the edge of the well, began his descent and as we braced ourselves to hold him the rope gave way,’ Crawford said with a shake of his head.

  ‘He should have died,’ Robertson said quietly, ‘but this man has the luck of the devil and on his way to the bottom of the well managed to grab hold of a tree root that was sticking out of the wall of the well.’

  ‘We looked down, expecting him to be lying at the bottom with a broken neck, but instead we saw his face grinning up at us about eight feet down.’

  It had been a hair-raising few seconds. By rights he should have died that day, but someone had looked kindly on him and somehow he’d caught hold of the only protruding tree root in the whole well shaft.

  ‘How did you get out?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Crawford and Robertson tied together the horses’ reins and made a rope long enough to reach me, then they pulled and I climbed.’ He could still remember the burning of his muscles, the creeping fear that he was going to slip and the relief when his friends’ hands had reached over the lip of the well and pulled him to safety.

  ‘Tell her the best part,’ Robertson said with a wry smile.

  ‘I couldn’t just leave whatever it was stuck at the bottom of the well...’ he said as Alice groaned.

  ‘You didn’t go back down there?’

  ‘We rode back and fetched a decent rope and half an hour later we tried again.’

  ‘Tell her what was at the bottom. What we made all that effort for.’

  George grinned, remembering descending into the darkness for a second time, unable to walk away even though the well had almost claimed his life.

  ‘It was a bundle of old clothes,’ he said. They’d never worked out how the bundle had made its way to the bottom of the well, but George had just been relieved it wasn’t an injured animal. He had climbed back up brandishing the clothes and spent the journey home listening to his friends’ jokes with a smile on his face.

  He glanced at Alice as she laughed at the story, noting the flush of her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye. She’d been nervous about coming tonight, her whole body held tense on the way over here. If he was honest, he’d felt nervous, too. Every day that passed he felt as though he were drawn closer to Alice and he knew that somehow their futures would be intertwined. It was important for him that she like his friends and that they liked her. All the important occasions were spent with the two men he’d grown up with, it would be horrible if Alice felt awkward around them. Catching her eye, he smiled at her, watching as she popped the last of the spiced gingerbread dessert into her mouth while she listened to the flow of the conversation.

  He knew he had nothing to worry about. Robertson and Crawford and their wives had worked to put Alice at her ease. As the conversation had swelled he’d
seen her relaxing until she was actually enjoying herself. Now she was laughing as freely as the rest of them and he hoped that for this evening at least she would forget her label of convict and see herself just as a normal young woman surrounded by friends.

  ‘How about the time Fitzgerald almost got trampled by a stampede of cattle?’ Robertson asked, pouring more wine into all the glasses. ‘Has he told you about that?’

  ‘I can’t work out if you’re just really unlucky or if you throw yourself into dangerous situations,’ Alice said. As she spoke their eyes met and George felt the spark of desire he always did when he looked at Alice, but something more passed between them as well. Something deeper, something warmer, something that made George want to gather her in his arms and make her promise she would be his for ever.

  ‘Both,’ Crawford and Robertson said together.

  ‘I’m sure everyone has had one or two brushes with death,’ George said, trying to tot up how many near-death experiences he’d had over the years.

  ‘One or two,’ Robertson agreed, ‘but yours must number in the dozens.’

  ‘The venomous snake, the well at Rabbit’s Corner, the stampede of cattle, the time you fell off the roof of the barn, the crocodile at Turber’s pond, the wild dogs on old man Hunter’s farm, the angry mob in that tavern in Sydney,’ Crawford reeled them off.

  ‘Stop—’ George laughed ‘—you make me sound like the most careless man in Australia.’

  ‘Not careless,’ Crawford said a little more seriously.

  ‘Never careless,’ Robertson agreed. ‘I think if anything you care too much. You go rushing in to do the right thing, to save the wounded animal, to ensure someone else doesn’t get hurt, but you don’t always think of yourself.’