The Postmistress

by Alison Stuart

  ‘So why are you marrying him?’

  ‘It was my chance to put everything right. Give Danny the life he deserves, the life he should have been born into but that—’ she pointed at the paper on the table, ‘—that changes everything.’

  Caleb stood and held out his hand, pulling her up. ‘One thing it doesn’t change, Adelaide. He is Danny’s father.’

  She nodded.

  ‘You don’t have to marry him, Adelaide. If that letter is real then you and Danny can have that comfortable life without tying yourself to a man you don’t love.’ He grasped her arms, forcing her to look up at him. ‘And you don’t love him, do you?

  ‘I don’t know. I did once, but it was a young girl’s love and I have thought him dead for all these years. When I saw him get off that coach I just wanted to turn and run. What am I to do, Caleb?’ She willed him to fold her in his arms again and kiss her, tell her it would be all right.

  Instead, he released her and took a step back, his eyes dark, unreadable pools in the soft light. ‘This is between you and Barnwell, and only you can decide what to do with the information.’

  ‘I think you should leave, Caleb,’ she said. She wouldn’t beg or plead or make a scene. She would let him walk out of her life. She deserved nothing else.

  At the door, without looking back at her, he said, ‘Thank you, Adelaide. I appreciate your confidence and you have my word as a gentleman that it will go no further.’

  So cold, so formal. Even as he said the words, the hand around Adelaide’s heart clenched tighter. After her revelations, she could hardly blame him for his reserve. Surely, to Caleb Hunt, she would now forever be a fallen woman, whose life had been built on a lie and a veneer of respectability to which she had no right.

  Whatever thread of friendship and attraction had drawn them together had snapped.

  As the door shut behind him, she sank into the chair at the table, staring at the note that changed everything.

  Thirty

  14 February 1872

  Adelaide ensured Netty and Daniel were not at home when Richard arrived on Tuesday evening for the evening meal. She opened the door to him, her heart hammering beneath her stays. This would not be an easy conversation but she had to know the truth.

  She did not invite him to sit down so they stood facing each other.

  He spun his hat in his hands as he looked around the quiet room. ‘Just us, Addy?’

  ‘Just us. There is an important matter we need to discuss, Richard.’ Adelaide took a breath, steadying herself with a hand on the edge of the table. ‘I would like you to answer a question.’

  ‘Of course. Anything.’ Richard’s eagerness was palpable, almost too eager.

  ‘I’ve asked this before but I will ask again. What are the terms of my father’s will?’

  The hat stilled in his hands and his gaze fixed on a point above her right shoulder. ‘I told you, I’m unaware of the details. As things stood between you and your father, I can only assume the estate has gone to your cousin.’

  ‘I think it is important that I know,’ Adelaide persisted, watching Richard’s face, seeing the lies in it.

  ‘Why? As far as you were concerned, your father considered you dead.’ He tossed his hat on the day bed and took a step towards her. ‘You know I would take you just as you are, Addy. Money is not important. I have sufficient to keep you and the boy. You need never concern yourself with the question of money again.’

  This time he met her gaze and she stared into his blue eyes. The eyes of a liar, and a bad liar at that. She saw him now as she had never seen him before. A chill ran down her spine.

  ‘If I were to find that my father had, in fact, made provision for Danny and I, that in no way would affect your feelings for me?’ she said, choosing each word with deliberate care.

  He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. ‘Of course not, Addy. I have loved you since you were seventeen.’

  She snatched her hand away and pulled the paper with the copy of the solicitor’s incriminating note from the book on the table where she had concealed it. She handed it to him and watched as he read it, the colour draining from his face.

  ‘What’s this nonsense?’ The colour in his face rose again, turning his cheeks scarlet with anger.

  ‘It appears to be a copy of a letter from my father’s lawyer, addressed to me, explaining very clearly that, under the terms of my father’s estate, he has left everything to Danny and me. However, our inheritance is subject to trusts, which puts you, as my future husband, in a position of considerable financial advantage over me.’

  Richard gave a humourless laugh and dropped the paper on the table. He waved a hand over it, as if he could magic it away. ‘Where did you get this—this piece of fantasy?’

  ‘I am not the fool you take me for, Richard.’ Adelaide’s voice rose with the red mist of anger in her chest. ‘I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the contents of that note. You came to Maiden’s Creek in the full knowledge that if I were to marry you, you would gain effective control of my father’s fortune.’

  He ran both hands through his hair. ‘What credibility can you give to a note that looks like it was written by a child?’

  ‘I am assured it is a true copy of the original, which I believe you have in your possession. Please give it to me now.’

  Richard hefted a heavy breath and leaned his hands on the table. When he raised his face, he looked so wretched that for a fleeting moment Adelaide almost felt sorry for him.

  ‘Adelaide, I was not lying when I said I love you, have loved you all these years. I grieved without comfort when I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I would like to believe you, Richard.’

  ‘That much is true but as for the rest, your father repented his hard heart on his deathbed. He told me to seek out the lawyer who had a letter for you and to come and look for you.’

  ‘And you thought that gave you the right to open a letter clearly addressed to me? Not only open it but conceal its contents from me?’

  ‘I just didn’t want to trouble you with what is no business for a woman.’

  Adelaide crossed her arms, her anger abating as she reached a decision that had, if she were honest, always been at the back of her mind. ‘I’m not the fool you take me for. Right from the beginning your actions have been driven by the very basest motives and I see you now for what you are: a shallow, lying, manipulative man. No, worse than that, you are a seducer who preyed on a young girl with no other thought than for the fortune that would be coming to her future husband.’

  He opened his mouth to speak but she held up her hand. ‘I will not marry you.’

  She set the ring he had given her on the table.

  He looked down at the ring for a long moment before snatching it up and placing it in his pocket. When he met her eyes, she saw only scorn and anger. His lip curled as he said, ‘I’m sorry that you should feel that way, Adelaide—or should I say Mrs Greaves—but who is the greater liar?’

  Her hand tightened on the table. ‘I have sent a telegram today to the solicitor in London, confirming receipt of his letter. As for you, Richard, your business with me is now concluded and I suggest you leave Maiden’s Creek on tomorrow’s coach.’

  Colour flooded back into Richard’s pale cheeks. ‘Leave? You can’t make me leave, not without my son. The boy needs his father. He can’t go on being mollycoddled by women. He is an English gentleman and he needs to be brought up as such.’

  ‘English gentleman? Like you?’ She snatched up Danny’s notebook, which lay on one of the chairs, and thrust it at Richard. ‘That’s the man Danny believes his father to be, not an opportunist, a seducer, like you.’

  Richard flicked through the pages of the imaginary exploits of Danny’s father. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You have encouraged this nonsense?’

  ‘The child is a dreamer, Richard. I will not have his dreams shattered by reality.’

  Richard’s lip drew back in an unlovely sneer and she
wondered how she could have even contemplated marriage to this man.

  ‘Let us view this from a different angle, Adelaide. What proof is there that Daniel is my son? You spread your legs fast enough for me. For all I know, you were sharing your favours with the first footman and the stableboy who looked your way. Gossip travels fast in a town like this. Do you want to be painted as a whore? Worse than that, a whore by night who plays the respectable widow by day? Who have you taken to your bed in this town? That oaf of a coachman or maybe the American?’

  Her face must have betrayed her.

  His eyes widened and he nodded. ‘It is the American.’ The triumph in his voice was palapable.

  She tensed, waiting for the next blow in this vicious, verbal joust.

  He caught her arm. ‘I’m not heartless, Addy. Despite everything, I think you and I could still have a life together, a very comfortable life.’

  She tried to shake him free but his fingers tightened with a bruising force.

  She met his eyes. ‘Get out of my house, Richard.’

  For reply, he brought his mouth down on hers. It was not the kiss of a lover, but the kiss of a possessor: a hard, bruising kiss, his teeth grinding against hers, catching her lip. She broke away, wiping blood from her mouth with a shaking hand, appalled.

  ‘Get out,’ she said in a low voice to the man she thought she had once loved. ‘Get out before I send for the police.’

  He gave a thin-lipped smile of triumph. ‘This isn’t over, Adelaide. You have your father’s pride.’ He wiped a smear of blood from her chin. ‘You need to practice a little humility.’

  The door closed behind him but Adelaide hardly heard it. She leaned on the back of one of the dining chairs, fighting tears of rage and humiliation.

  Thirty-One

  Caleb had downed twice his ration of bourbon in Lil’s bar by the time Richard Barnwell stormed in. Barnwell, too, had been drowning his sorrows. His necktie was askew and his sandy hair stood up in a disordered cockscomb.

  ‘Where’s that little bitch?’ he demanded.

  Lil came out from behind the bar and stood in front of the enraged man, her hands on her considerable hips. ‘You’re banned, get out,’ she said.

  A few of her regulars moved forward but Barnwell had seen Caleb. He pushed past Lil and stood in front of Caleb, his fingers clenching and unclenching.

  ‘You bastard. You bloody Yankee swine. You’re behind this. What did you say to her?’

  Caleb pushed his glass to one side and stood up. Barnwell was not a tall man and Caleb topped him by half a head.

  ‘I think, my friend, you have had a surfeit of liquor tonight. Go back to your room and sleep it off.’

  Barnwell thrust a belligerent finger into Caleb’s chest. ‘I know you were behind her change of mind. What have you got to offer her that’s so bloody marvellous? Or are you after her fortune?’

  Caleb grasped the stabbing finger and bent it back, not enough to break it but enough to bring tears to Barnwell’s eyes.

  ‘Sir, I do not like your attitude,’ Caleb said. ‘I don’t rightly know what passed between you and Mrs Greaves, but I have no doubt in my mind that she was justified in whatever answer she gave you.’

  The man sagged at the knees and Caleb released him. Barnwell took a step back, nursing his hand. Caleb braced expecting the man to come for him but a gurgle of female laughter from the stairwell distracted him. Barnwell’s head snapped around as Sissy, clad in a loose robe of red silk, stepped into the bar with Penrose behind her, adjusting his tie as he descended the stairs.

  Before Caleb could prevent him, Barnwell lunged at the girl. ‘I might have known you for a thieving whore!’ he screamed.

  Sissy shrieked with fright as he descended on her striking her across the face with a heavy back-handed blow that sent her spinning against Penrose, who caught her and thrust her behind him into the stairwell. Penrose hurled himself at Barnwell with a roar. But Barnwell’s fist caught him in the stomach, sending him to the floor, gasping for breath.

  Caleb grabbed Barnwell’s shoulder and whirled the man around to face him. Without a second’s hesitation, he slammed his fist into his face, taking satisfaction from the crack as the man’s nose exploded in a fountain of blood. Barnwell went down.

  Strong hands pulled Caleb back before he could close in and cause the man further damage.

  His fury dissipated as fast as it had come and Caleb shook his right hand, feeling the sting of grazed knuckles and jarred bones.

  ‘Do you like hitting women?’ Caleb seethed between gritted teeth. ‘Is that what Adelaide had to look forward to?’

  Penrose had regained his feet, still wheezing. He lunged at Barnwell but two burly miners managed to restrain him. ‘Let me at him,’ he shouted. ‘No one hits a lady.’

  ‘She’s not a lady. She’s a bloody, thieving whore.’ Barnwell slurred his words.

  Lil pushed past them. Taller and stronger than the Englishman, she hauled him up by the shirt collar. ‘I thought I told you to stay out. If the doc ’ere ’adn’t given you a blood nose, I’d’ve done worse. I’ve a mind to report you to the police for your night’s work. If you’ve any sense, you’ll leave Maiden’s Creek in the morning.’ She thrust him towards the door. The other men parted before her, one even going to the trouble of opening the door to allow her to throw Barnwell out onto the street. She slammed the door and turned to face her regulars, her hands on her ample hips. ‘Is someone going to explain to me what that was about?’ she demanded.

  The two miners holding Penrose released him and he knelt in front of Sissy, who huddled on the stairs with Jess and Nell crouched protectively over her.

  He looked up at Caleb. ‘Yes, I’d like to know what’s going on?’ he said. ‘Was it Barnwell who hurt you before, Sis?’

  Sissy’s head drooped and she nodded, but her hand clutched Penrose’s sleeve, preventing him from rising.

  Caleb looked from Penrose to Lil. ‘How about I see to Sissy first,’ he said.

  He gently pulled her hand away from her face. The reddening mark on her cheekbone where Barnwell had struck her would soon darken into bruising, matching the yellowing bruises he had given her a few nights earlier.

  ‘You told Adelaide didn’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sissy. I had to.’

  She batted away his hand. ‘Don’t fuss, Caleb,’ she said. ‘I’m glad she knows.’

  ‘Told Adelaide what?’ Penrose demanded.

  Caleb and Sissy looked at each other. ‘You tell him,’ Sissy said and began to cry.

  Throwing Caleb a look of mingled confusion and anger, Penrose gathered Sissy in his arms and carried her upstairs, returning ten minutes later.

  ‘The girls threw me out,’ he said. ‘Now are you going to give me an explanation, Hunt?’

  Lil set glasses of whiskey down in front of the two men. She poured herself a glass and pulled up a stool that creaked ominously under her weight. ‘By rights I should throw you two out after that bastard for brawling in me bar, but I’ve a soft spot for both of you, so ’ow about you tell me what’s going on with Sissy and that bastard, Barnwell?’

  Caleb took a thoughtful draught and furnished Lil and Penrose with a precis of the letter and Barnwell’s intentions towards Adelaide, omitting any reference to Danny’s parentage.

  Penrose let out a low whistle. ‘So now Adelaide knows he’s a lying bastard, do you think he’ll just go quietly?’

  Caleb glanced at the door through which Lil had thrown the man. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s angry and humiliated and he’s out to hurt everyone he thinks has wronged him. That’s Adelaide, Sissy and me, and now possibly you.’

  Lil snorted. ‘I know ’is sort. I knew ’e was trouble the minute ’e walked through the door.’ She stood up. ‘’Ave another whiskey and be on your way, the both of you. Sissy will be fine. I’ll make sure ’e goes nowhere near ’er again.’

  The warm night air, heavy now with the pungent smell of the distant bushfire,
doused Caleb in reality as he lurched into the street.

  Penrose glanced up at Sissy’s window, where a light still glowed.

  ‘If I find Barnwell—’ Penrose muttered.

  ‘You’ll do nothing,’ Caleb said. ‘You just watch out for Sissy.’

  ‘But Adelaide is a friend too. He may just be angry enough to go back there.’

  Caleb stared at his friend, the realisation that an angry and humiliated Barnwell was quite capable of taking his frustrations out on Adelaide, dousing him like a bucket of cold water.

  Penrose grabbed his shirt sleeve and pushed him hard enough for Caleb to stagger a couple of steps. ‘I think you should go to her. She needs you.’

  The dark mass of the hills rose above him and the waxing moon and stars lit up the night sky over the slumbering town. A hot, dry wind had picked up, sending grass and leaves dancing around Caleb’s ankles as he ran towards the post office.

  Adelaide’s light still burned and he almost fell against the door in his anxiety.

  To his relief, she answered his knock. She was fully dressed, the lace collar gone, her sleeves rolled up and the top buttons of her bodice undone. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders in dark waves.

  ‘Caleb! Is something wrong?’

  Yes, something is very wrong, he thought. ‘I—I had to see that you were safe. Barnwell—he’s in a dangerous mood, Adelaide. Has he been here?’

  She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Not since earlier this evening. I confronted him with that note. You were right, Caleb.’

  ‘Did he hurt you in any way?’

  She turned her head to the light and touched the the dark, swollen cut on her lip.

  Caleb’s knees turned to water. ‘Adelaide … I’m sorry.’

  She stood aside. ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for but I could use a friend right now.’

  He stepped over the threshold and she closed the door behind him. She did not ask him to sit so they stood facing each other. She had been crying, her eyes reddened and puffy and her face blotchy.