by Sarah Lark
“Miss Warden…Mrs. Warden…please, forgive me!”
Unlike the night before, Reginald Beasley was sober now, and the look on Fleurette’s distraught young face and her mother’s eyes glowing with rage told him he had no chance.
“I…I couldn’t have known that it would be such a…ahem, an imposition for you, to accept my proposal. You see, I am no longer young but I am not all that old, and I…I would cherish you…”
Gwyneira glared icily at him. “Mr. Beasley, my daughter does not want to be cherished. She wants first to grow up. And then she will probably want a man her own age—or at least a man who makes his own proposal instead of sending some other old goat to force her into his bed. Have I made myself clear?”
She had wanted to remain polite, but the look on Gerald’s face as he loomed over Fleurette in the chair had shaken her to the core. First, she had to get rid of this geriatric suitor. But that shouldn’t be difficult. Then she would have to think of what to do about Gerald. She had not even realized herself that she was living on a powder keg. But she would do whatever she must to protect Fleur.
“Mrs. Warden, I…as I said, Miss Warden, I’m sorry. Under these circumstances, I would be entirely prepared to break off the engagement.”
“I’m not engaged to you!” Fleur said with a quaking voice. “I can’t even, I…”
Gwyneira pulled the girl away. “Your decision pleases me and honors you,” she informed Reginald Beasley with a forced smile. “Perhaps you would be so good as to share this decision with my father-in-law so that we might forget this painful incident ever happened. I have always held you in high regard and would hate to lose you as a friend of this house.”
She strode regally past Reginald Beasley. Fleurette stumbled behind her. She seemed to want to say something more, but Gwyneira would not let her.
“Don’t you dare tell him anything about Ruben; otherwise, you’ll wound his pride,” she hissed to her daughter. “Now stay in your room—preferably until he’s gone. And for the love of God, don’t come out of your room while your grandfather is still drunk!”
Trembling, Gwyneira shut the door behind her daughter. For the time being, disaster had been averted. Gerald would drink with Reginald that evening; there was no need to fear further outbursts. And tomorrow he would be dreadfully ashamed of his attack today. But what would come next? How long would Gerald’s self-recriminations keep him away from his granddaughter? And would the safety of a door be enough to prevent him when he was drunk and had perhaps convinced himself that he needed to “break the girl in” for her future husband?
Gwyneira had made up her mind. She had to send her daughter away.
4
Putting this plan into action proved difficult. Gwyneira could find neither an excuse to send the girl away nor a suitable family to take her in. Gwyneira had been thinking she might be able to take up residence in a household with children—there was a lack of governesses in Christchurch at the moment, and an au pair as attractive and educated as Fleur should have been a welcome addition to any young family. In practice, though, only the Barringtons and Greenwoods were possibilities—and Antonia Barrington, a rather nondescript young woman, rejected the idea right away when Gwyneira carefully sounded her out. Gwyneira could not hold it against her. The young lord’s first sight of Fleurette convinced her that her daughter would be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Elizabeth Greenwood would have loved to take Fleur in. George Greenwood’s loyalty and affection for her were above reproach. Fleur saw him as an “uncle,” and moreover in his house she would learn about bookkeeping and business management. Unfortunately, the Greenwoods were about to embark on a visit to England. George’s parents wanted to finally see their grandchildren, and Elizabeth was so excited she could hardly contain herself.
“I just hope his mother doesn’t recognize me,” she confided to Gwyneira. “She has always thought I was from Sweden. If she were to realize that…”
Gwyneira shook her head, smiling. It was utterly impossible to see the bashful, half-starved orphan girl who had left London nearly twenty years earlier in the prim, lovely lady of today, whose impeccable manners had made her a pillar of Christchurch society.
“She’ll love you,” she assured the younger woman. “Don’t do anything foolish like trying to fake a Swedish accent. Just say you grew up in Christchurch, which is true anyway. And there you have it: that’s why you speak English.”
“But they will not be able to help hearing that I speak Cockney,” Elizabeth fretted.
Gwyneira laughed. “Elizabeth, compared to you, we all speak terrible English—aside from Helen, of course, from whom you get it anyway. So there’s no reason to worry.”
Elizabeth nodded, uncertain. “Well, George says I won’t need to speak all that much anyway. Apparently, his mother prefers to carry on conversations all by herself.”
Gwyneira laughed. Meeting with Elizabeth was always a breath of fresh air. She was more intelligent than the well mannered but somewhat dull Dorothy in Haldon or adorable little Rosemary, who had engaged herself to her foster father’s journeyman baker. She often wondered what had become of the other three girls who had traveled with them aboard the Dublin. Helen had received word from Westport from a Madame Jolanda, who had explained peevishly that Daphne, along with the twins—and a whole week’s earnings—had disappeared without a trace. The lady had had the nerve to demand the missing money from Helen, who had left her letter unanswered.
Gwyneira finally said a heartfelt good-bye to Elizabeth—after giving her the usual shopping list that every woman in New Zealand foisted on friends traveling back to the homeland. One could order practically anything for sale in London through George’s company, but there were a few intimate items that women did not like to entrust to messengers. Elizabeth promised to clean out the London merchants on Gwyneira’s behalf, and Gwyneira left in high spirits—however, still without a solution for Fleurette.
Over the course of the next few months, the situation on Kiward Station settled down. Gerald’s attack on Fleur had sobered him up considerably. He avoided his granddaughter—and Gwyneira made sure that Fleurette kept it that way. In the meantime, the old man redoubled his efforts to introduce Paul to the family business. The two of them often disappeared early in the morning out to the pastures somewhere and didn’t return until evening. After that, Gerald indulged in his evening whiskey, but he never reached the level of intoxication that he had before, during his all-day drinking binges. Following his grandfather’s advice, Paul had begun throwing his weight around, about which Kiri and Marama expressed concern. Gwyneira overheard a conversation between her son and Marama that quite troubled her.
“Wiramu is not a bad fellow, Paul! He’s hard working, a good hunter, and a good shepherd. It’s not right, you firing him!”
Marama was cleaning the silver in the garden. Unlike her mother, she enjoyed this particular task; she loved the gleaming metal. Sometimes she sang while she worked, but Gerald could not stand Maori music. Gwyneira felt similarly, but only because it reminded her of the drumming on that fateful night. She liked Marama’s ballads, sung in that sweet voice, and surprisingly, even Paul seemed to enjoy them. Today, however, he was eager to gloat about his excursion with Gerald the day before. The two of them had been checking on the pastures in the foothills when they had come upon the Maori boy, Wiramu. Wiramu was taking the prizes of a successful fishing trip back to his tribe on Kiward Station. That in itself was no reason to punish him, but the boy belonged to one of the shepherd patrols Gerald had recently instituted to put an end to James McKenzie’s activities. Hence, Wiramu was supposed to be in the highlands, not visiting his mother in the village. Gerald had thrown a fit and given the boy a dressing down. After that he had let Paul decide on the severity of his punishment. Paul had decided to let Wiramu go, effective immediately.
“Grandfather’s not paying him to fish,” Paul explained gravely. “He needs to stay at his post.�
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Marama shook her head. “But I think the patrols move around anyway. It doesn’t really matter where Wiramu is at any given moment. And all the men fish. They have to hunt and fish. Or are you supplying them with provisions now?”
“Certainly it matters!” Paul crowed. “McKenzie isn’t stealing our sheep here near the house; he’s doing it up in the highlands. That’s where the men need to patrol. And yes, they can hunt and fish for their own needs. But not for the whole village.” The boy was adamant that he was in the right.
“That’s not what they’re doing!” Marama was not ready to let it go. She made a desperate effort to make her people’s perspective clear to him; she could not comprehend why that should prove so difficult. After all, Paul had practically grown up with the Maori. So how was it possible that he had learned nothing except how to hunt and fish? “They just discovered the land around there. No one had ever fished there; their weirs were full. They couldn’t eat all that fish right away, nor could they dry it—after all, they were supposed to be patrolling. If someone had not run to the village, the fish would have gone to waste. And that would be a shame, Paul; you know that. You don’t let any food go to waste; the gods don’t like it!”
The primarily Maori patrol had asked Wiramu to take the fish to the village and tell the elders about the enormous wealth of fish in the newly discovered waters. The surrounding area too should be fertile and quite rich in prey to hunt. It was possible that the tribe would soon set out to spend some time fishing and hunting there. That would have been desirable for Kiward Station, as no one would steal livestock in the area around the camp if the Maori kept their eyes on it. However, neither Gerald nor his grandson had been able or willing to think that far ahead. Instead, they had angered the Maori. Wiramu’s people in the mountains would doubtless overlook any sheep thief, and the work of the patrols would slacken.
“Tonga’s father says he’s going to claim the new land for himself and his tribe,” Marama explained further. “Wiramu will lead him there. If Mr. Warden had been nice to him, he would have shown it to you instead, and you could have had it surveyed!”
“We’ll find it anyway,” Paul kept on. “We don’t need to be nice to this or that bastard.”
Marama shook her head but refrained from pointing out that Wiramu was not a bastard but rather the chief’s esteemed nephew. “Tonga says they’re registering possession of the land in Christchurch,” she continued. “He can read and write as well as you, and Reti will be helping him. It was dumb to let Wiramu go, Paul. It was just dumb!”
Paul stood up angrily, knocking over the tray holding the silver that Marama had already cleaned. He had clearly done it intentionally since he was not normally clumsy. “You’re just a girl and a Maori. How do you know what’s dumb?”
Marama laughed and picked the silver up serenely. She did not take offense easily. “You’ll see who gets the land,” she said calmly.
This conversation confirmed Gwyneira’s fears. Paul was making unnecessary enemies. He had confused strength with harshness—which was perhaps normal at his age—but Gerald should be admonishing him for it, not encouraging him. How could he let a boy who had just turned twelve decide whether to let a worker go or not?
Fleurette resumed her old life, even paying frequent visits to Helen on O’Keefe Station—only, of course, when Gerald and Paul were definitely elsewhere and she was certain that Howard wouldn’t make a sudden appearance. Gwyneira thought that was careless and, having sent Nepumuk back to Helen, preferred that the women meet in Haldon.
Fleurette continued to write long letters to Queenstown but received no answer. Nor had Helen, who also worried a great deal about Ruben.
“If only he had gone to Dunedin,” she sighed. A tearoom had recently opened in Haldon where respectable women could sit and exchange their news. “He could have taken on a job as an office assistant. But panning for gold…”
Gwyneira shrugged. “He wants to get rich. And maybe he’ll strike it lucky; the gold deposits there are supposed to be enormous.”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Gwyn, I love my son more than anything. But the gold would have to grow on trees and fall on his head for him to find it. He takes after my father, who was only happy when he could sit in his study and lose himself in his ancient Hebrew texts. I think he would make a good attorney or judge, possibly even a businessman. George said he got along well with the clients; he can be charming. But diverting streams to pan gold out of them or digging tunnels or whatever it is they do there, that’s not for him.”
“He’ll do it for me,” Fleur said with a wistful expression on her face. “He’ll do anything for me. At least he’ll try!”
For the time being, the talk in Haldon concerned itself less with Ruben O’Keefe’s quest for gold and more with James McKenzie’s increasingly audacious livestock thefts. At the moment, a major sheep breeder by the name of John Sideblossom was suffering a great deal from McKenzie’s forays.
John Sideblossom lived on the western shore of Lake Pukaki, high in the mountains. He rarely came to Haldon and practically never to Christchurch, but he held giant tracts of land in the foothills. He sold his livestock in Dunedin, so he was not among George Greenwood’s clients.
Gerald seemed to know him, however. In fact, he was giddy as a schoolboy when he received the news one day that Sideblossom wanted to meet with like-minded livestock breeders in Haldon to plan another punitive expedition into the mountains against James McKenzie.
“He is convinced McKenzie is hiding out in his area,” Gerald explained as he drank his obligatory whiskey before dinner. “Somewhere above the lakes there. He must have discovered new land. John writes that he must be disappearing through some pass we don’t know about. And he’s suggesting search actions that cover wide areas. We need to combine our manpower and smoke the fellow out once and for all.”
“Does this Sideblossom know what he’s talking about?” Gwyneira inquired, maintaining her poise. Over the last few years, almost all the livestock barons in the Canterbury Plains had been planning such battles from their firesides. They generally did not amount to anything, though, since not enough people gathered to comb their neighbors’ land. It would take a more charismatic personality than Reginald Beasley to unite the individually minded sheep breeders.
“You bet he does!” Gerald boomed. “Johnny Sideblossom is the wildest dog you can imagine! I’ve known him since my whaling days. He was a little runt back then, as old as Paul is now.”
Paul’s ears pricked up.
“Hired on as a half-deck boy with his dad. But the old man drank like a fish, and when it came time to man the harpoon one day and the whale was flailing around like mad, the whale knocked him out of the boat—better said, it knocked over the whole boat, and everyone jumped out. Only the boy stayed behind till the last second, firing the harpoon before the tub flipped. He took the whale down, Johnny Sideblossom did! At ten years old! The whale took his old man, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He became the most fearsome harpooner on the West Coast. He’d hardly heard about the gold finds near Westport before he was off. Up and down the Buller River, and always successful. Ended up buying land on Lake Pukaki. And the best livestock, some of them he even bought from me. If I remember correctly, that scoundrel McKenzie herded a flock there for me. Must be almost twenty years ago now.”
Seventeen, Gwyneira thought. She remembered that James had primarily agreed to the job to avoid her. Had he explored around there back then and found the land of his dreams?
“I’ll write and tell him we could hold the conference here. Yes, now there’s an idea! I’ll invite a few others too, and then we’ll finally drive this nail home! We’ll get the rat, no worries. When Johnny starts something, he means it!” Gerald would have liked to reach for pen and paper right then, but Kiri was serving dinner. Not to be deterred, he put his plan into action the very next day, and Gwyneira sighed at the thought of the feasting and drinking that would precede the great punitive ex
pedition. Still, she was excited to meet Johnny Sideblossom. If even half of the stories that Gerald entertained them with at dinner were true, he must be an intriguing character—and perhaps even a dangerous adversary for James McKenzie.
Nearly all of the livestock farmers in the area accepted Gerald’s invitation, and it sounded as though this time it would be more than just a vacation. James McKenzie had clearly taken things too far. And John Sideblossom really did appear to have the necessary strength of character to lead the men. He completely blew Gwyneira away. He rode a powerful black stallion—which was very fitting—but the horse was also well trained and easy to handle. He probably checked on his pastures and oversaw the herding with this horse. He towered over even the most powerful men by nearly a full head. His body was taut and muscular, his face angular and tan, his dark hair thick and curly. He wore it a bit long, which only emphasized his rugged appearance. And he had a dazzling, engaging personality. He immediately took charge of the men’s conversation, slapping old friends on the shoulder, laughing thunderously with Gerald, and seemingly able to consume whiskey like it was water without showing it. To Gwyneira and the few other women who had accompanied their husbands, he was particularly courteous. All that said, Gwyneira did not like him, though she wasn’t able to pinpoint why. From the very first she felt a certain distaste for the man. Did it have to do with the fact that his lips were thin and hard and displayed a smile that was not reflected in his eyes? Or was it the eyes themselves—so dark as to look almost black, cold as night and calculating? Gwyneira noticed that when he looked at her, his glances were unquestionably too appraising—focusing less on her face than on sizing up her still slender and feminine figure. As a young woman she would have blushed, but now she returned his looks with self-assurance. She was the mistress here; he was the visitor, and she was not interested in any association beyond that. She would likewise have liked to keep Fleurette far from Gerald’s old friend and drinking buddy, but naturally, that was impossible since the girl was expected at the banquet that evening. Yet Gwyneira dismissed the idea of warning her daughter. If she said anything, Fleur would make every effort to look unattractive—and in doing so reawaken Gerald’s anger. So Gwyneira merely eyed her strange visitor suspiciously when Fleur came down the stairs—as radiant and prettily dressed as Gwyneira on her first evening in Kiward Station. The girl wore a simple cream-colored dress that emphasized her light tan. It was appliquéd with gold-and brown-colored eyelet embroidery on the sleeves, neckline, and waist, which suited Fleurette’s unusual light brown, almost golden eye color. She had not put her hair up, instead braiding strands of hair on either side of her head and then binding the thin braids at the back of her head. It looked very pretty, but more importantly, served the practical purpose of keeping her hair out of her face. Fleurette always did her own hair, having rejected the housemaids’ help ever since she was a little girl.
