‘It was dreadful when they took him away from me,’ she whispered. ‘That was the worst part of all, harder even than giving birth to him and I won’t even begin to describe the pain of that.’ Her lower lip trembled. ‘I try not to think of it. I’ve tried to forget him–but I can’t.’
‘Why should you?’ he remarked grimly, rising to his feet and pulling her into his arms. He held her close for a long moment, his lips against her hair. ‘Oh, Louise, I’m so sorry. When I think of what you’ve suffered–and there I was, feeling sorry for myself, calling you every filthy name I could think of. I wish there was something I could do to make up for it, but I guess I did all the damage long ago.’
He felt her shake her head, with the soft, warm skin of her face against his throat. ‘Don’t blame yourself.’
But he did blame himself. Perhaps they’d been equally guilty of the original sin, but he’d indulged in that sin before without fathering a child. He’d known what to do. With Louise he hadn’t done it, and not from any conscious decision. Possibly it was because the intensity of their union had taken him beyond his usual control; and possibly his desire to marry her and see her bearing his children had done away with his usual caution.
He drew her down to sit beside him on the bed. ‘The poor little bloke, I suppose he’ll grow up thinking he’s a Pom. He’ll even talk like one.’
She smiled. ‘Is that so bad? The Joneses are pretending his mother was their niece, but I wonder if he’ll learn the truth one day. Quite possibly, thanks to the investigations of a certain Mr Richard Langley.’
‘He’ll know he’s a bastard, the poor little beggar.’
‘Perhaps, but I think the local people will accept him regardless. They’re a close-knit community and I can’t see them ostracising the Jones’s adopted son.’
‘What about your family?’ His voice sharpened as he remembered how Charles had taunted him. ‘How will they treat him?’
Louise shrugged. ‘I imagine they’ll ignore his existence as much as possible. But they won’t ill-treat him, Lloyd. Whatever his faults Papa has the sense to value his servants. Oh, he rants and raves, but they are used to that. If Matthew likes horses he’ll have a good life and it’s in his blood, after all. He will have to work hard, but,’ she smiled up at him, ‘no harder than his father does.’
He put his hand on her stomach, tentatively, tracing through her clothing the soft swell of it where once it had been firm and flat. He tried to imagine her big with child, his child. Even now he found it difficult to accept that she’d given birth to his son on the other side of the world while he remained oblivious to her need of him.
He tried to picture a little boy with Louise’s dark hair and his features, imagining him tottering on chubby bow legs. He would be eighteen months old now. Just thinking about him hurt, reminding him of Gertie, who had died. He remembered holding Gertie on his shoulder one day while her grubby hands clutched at his hair and the knowledge that he would never hold his own son made his heart clench.
Louise distracted him from his thoughts with questions about his own life in the last two years and about the Jamiesons. ‘Mrs Jamieson...’ she hesitated. ‘Did she die in childbirth?’
Lloyd looked down at the floor, finding the subject difficult even after all this time. ‘She died a few days later. Of infection, they said. She had the baby in Banana with a midwife. She refused to come back here like Jock wanted her to, after the business with the diphtheria and losing Gertie. The sad part of it is, perhaps if she’d come to Rockhampton she might still be alive. Jock says a doctor might have saved her.’
‘And the baby? You mentioned it was a girl.’
He nodded, his sorrow fading as he pictured the child who’d helped heal the grieving Jamiesons. ‘Isabella. She’s a fat, happy little thing. I don’t think she misses not having a mother. The girls all make so much of her. And she’s the apple of Jock’s eye.’
‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ she murmured softly. ‘What of Maurice? How is he?’
‘He’s pretty good, but he’ll never be quite what he used to be. He tires easily.’ His arms tightened and he kissed her cheek and then her mouth. ‘Louise, let me stay, please?’ He pressed her back on the bed and moved his hips against her, whispering huskily against her ear. ‘It’s been so long and this is starting to drive me crazy.’
‘No, Lloyd.’ She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away, though her own breathing had quickened. ‘We’d be thrown out of the hotel if they realized you were in here. Besides, I would feel dreadful standing up before the priest afterwards.’
‘I’m sure he thinks it’s a rush job, anyway. If only he knew it’s two years too late for that.’ Lloyd’s disappointment was a nagging ache inside him, but he sat up, trying to stifle his need. He envisaged the gloomy, overwhelming atmosphere of the little church and the all-seeing, tolerant eyes of the priest–eyes that had seen much of human frailty. ‘But you’re right. I can wait until tomorrow night. Then you won’t be getting rid of me so easily.’
~*~
In the morning they booked out of the hotel. Lloyd carried their cases to the railway station and visited a barber’s shop to have his hair and whiskers trimmed while Louise looked in shop windows. Then they visited a tea shop and drank tea until it was time to go to the church.
Louise had dressed for the occasion in a fashionable dark blue gown with a high bustle and buttoned cuirasse bodice that had come from England, her dark hair neatly arranged in coiled plaits under a tiny, matching hat tilted over one eye. Lloyd was unusually formal in a coat, waistcoat and bow-tie. With his hair and side whiskers newly barbered he looked more like a middle-class grazier than the stockman she’d first met at Bauhinia Downs.
It was all over very quickly. Lloyd had enlisted two businessmen of his acquaintance to act as witnesses and once the register was signed they were man and wife.
As they walked out into the street arm in arm, Lloyd looked down at her and grinned. ‘Well, Mrs Kavanagh, how about that?’
She laughed. ‘It’s hard to believe. I kept expecting Charles to burst in at any moment and put a stop to the proceedings.’
‘He won’t be able to come between us now. How does that bit from the Bible go?’
‘”What God hath joined together let no man put asunder”?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. He’d better remember it.’
Their next visit was to a photographer to record their wedding day. The photographer tactfully didn’t mention the bruise on Lloyd’s cheek, which was beginning to fade and turn yellow at the edges. He posed them with Louise sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap, while Lloyd stood behind her grasping the back of the chair with his face slightly averted to hide the bruise.
They purchased sandwiches and bottles of lemonade and took a horse-drawn cab to the new Botanic Gardens. Sitting close together on one of the garden seats, they ate their lunch before wandering down the pathways arm in arm.
Later, after arranging the transport of their furniture, they strolled down Quay Street, looking at the ships anchored in the broad, muddy Fitzroy River. One of them was being unloaded at the dock and they watched the cargo in barrels and tea-chests being transferred to a horse-drawn wagon, its destination a nearby warehouse. When this began to bore them, they moved to a park bench and shared a newspaper, saying little. Lloyd was restless and impatient, barely absorbing what he read, his senses full of his new wife beside him, the clean smell of her hair, the light scent of lavender. The night couldn’t come soon enough for him.
~*~
It was already dark when they left the train at Westwood. The best hotel in the town was full, forcing them to seek accommodation at a shabby establishment with flimsy walls and peeling paintwork. The shifty-eyed attendant at the desk wore a shiny waistcoat over a shirt that had long since ceased to be white and his languid manner implied indifference as to whether he found them a room or not. But he helped them carry their luggage up th
e stairs and directed them to the dining area for their dinner.
After a meal of the ubiquitous corned beef, potatoes, cabbage and onions in white sauce, they retired upstairs. Lloyd looked ruefully at the dismal little room. ‘I’m sorry. I never meant to bring you to a place like this for our wedding night.’
The bed was sagging and lumpy, the only furniture a washstand and a chipped chest of drawers. Lloyd drew down the bedcovers and tested the mattress under his hand. The springs creaked alarmingly.
Louise’s heart sank. She knew what was coming next and how the regular protestations of rusty springs would advertise their activity to anyone within earshot. From one of the adjoining rooms they could hear male voices in murmured conversation and in the other a man was rambling in a drunken monologue, punctuated by occasional outbursts of off-key singing. The interior walls were obviously every bit as thin as the outer ones appeared.
‘Lloyd, we can’t–they’ll hear us.’
He muttered something under his breath and directed her towards the corner. ‘If you think I’m waiting any longer...stand over there.’
She obeyed him, wondering what he was about. He picked up the mattress, bedclothes and all and dumped it on the floor, where there was just enough space between the bedstead and the wall to accommodate it. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘that won’t creak and it doesn’t sag, either.’
Louise shook her head at him, torn between embarrassment and excitement. But there was something about his single-minded determination that was curiously moving and the intent look in his eyes made her body tremble with anticipation. She began to pull the pins from her hair and when it lay loose over her shoulders he came to her and kissed her, unbuttoning her bodice with hard, calloused fingers. She undressed him in her turn, helping him shrug out of his coat and waistcoat, unfastening his shirt and running her hands over his bare skin. By this time they were both breathing hard. As Lloyd dispensed with the rest of his clothes and hers, they sank together onto the bed on the floor.
~*~
Later, Louise lay in her new husband’s embrace, her face pillowed on the firm muscle of his shoulder, the weight of his arm heavy across her breasts. She’d wondered if it was possible to recapture the joy and emotion of their earlier relationship, but her doubts had been put to rest. For the first time in two years she knew close to perfect happiness, except for that sad little place inside of her that still ached, like a rotten tooth.
She would never be free of her memories of Matthew, the son she might not see again. Already she’d missed hearing his first words, seeing him take his first step. His life in England would shape him differently and his foster parents would raise him to their standards and ideals, not her own. Growing in that cool, damp climate, his cheeks would be rosy, his skin unblemished. Hopefully he had inherited his parents’ love of horses and would enjoy working in the stables at Fenham Manor as he grew older. It was not a bad life and Jones would be a good mentor.
James Barclay had advised her to put the past behind her and she knew she must do just that. Matthew was in safe hands and she would only compromise his happiness and their own future if she tried to take him back now. With Lloyd alienated from the Jamiesons, they had few enough friends.
So she gave voice to the need that had been eating away at her ever since Matthew’s birth. She held her husband to her and whispered, ‘I hope we have another baby soon, Lloyd. I want one so much.’
A deep sigh shuddered through his body as he stroked her hair away from her face. ‘So do I. I love you, Louise.’
It was the first time he’d spoken the words, this time around, and they were all the sweeter to Louise for knowing they weren’t lightly uttered. ‘And I love you, too. I realized just how much after we were parted.’
It was a long time before they slept. At last Lloyd slumbered while Louise lay curled into him, lulled by the sound of his regular breathing. There was comfort in his lean, hard body and a sense of security that had been lacking in her life for a long time now.
Tomorrow they would take the coach to Banana and the following day they’d travel to Myvanwy. She remembered the night she’d once spent in his little shack with its chinks in the walls, all the sounds of the bush close at hand. She tried to picture the new house, envisaging a rambling structure with wide verandas and raw, unweathered slab walls. It would be up to her to transform the empty shell of it into a home.
But the prospect did not daunt her.
She turned her face into the pillow and slept.
Heather Garside grew up on a cattle property in Central Queensland and now lives with her husband on a beef and grain farm in the same area. She has two adult children.
She has previously published four historical and rural romances and has helped to write and produce several compilations of short stories and local histories. The Cornstalk was a finalist in the 2008 Booksellers’ Best Award, Long Historical category, for romance books published in the USA. Breakaway Creek was a finalist in the QWC/Hachette Manuscript Development Program and was released by Clan Destine Press in 2013. It is a rural romance with a dual timeline.
Heather works at home on the farm and helps produce a local monthly newsletter, amongst other voluntary activities. She enjoys patchwork and sewing and regularly attends a local craft group.
For more information about her books, please visit her website at www.heathergarside.com
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About the Author
Heather grew up on a cattle property in Central Queensland and now lives with her husband on a beef and grain farm in the same area. She has two adult children.
She has previously published three historical romances and has helped to write and produce several compilations of short stories and local histories. The Cornstalk was a finalist in the 2008 Booksellers’ Best Award, Long Historical category, for romance books published in the USA. Breakaway Creek was a finalist in the QWC/Hachette Manuscript Development Program and was released by Clan Destine Press in 2013. It is a rural romance with a dual timeline. Her recent release is Tracks of the Heart, a collection of three short stories.
Heather works at home on the farm and helps produce a local monthly newsletter, amongst other voluntary activities.
Read more at Heather Garside’s site.
Colonial Daughter Page 29
