Dream Time (historical): Book I

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Amaris felt the same way on those days. Well, not nervous, but she was certainly aware of the woman’s obvious antagonism toward her. As for herself, she felt only a mild contempt for the materialistic woman.

  Yet Amaris had to admit she was enjoying the fruits of this woman’s labor: French and dancing lessons, family celebrations, outings to the new racetrack, the theater, and Hyde Park—all at Celeste’s insistence that Amaris share her life and, of course, abetted by Celeste’s father.

  Regardless of the constraint between Nan Livingston and Amaris, the friendship between the two girls had only deepened over the last four years. It was impossible not to love Celeste, with her outpouring of love, but Amaris was also jealous at times.

  At sixteen, she could justify the jealousy intellectually. After all, Celeste had everything—wealth, beauty, a doting family, friends, and the most enviable gift of all, her ability to see the best in everyone. Try though Amaris did, she couldn’t explain away the dark torment inside herself.

  The only real disagreement she and Celeste ever had was over Sinclair Tremayne, the Irish convict who had been working for the Livingstons for the past four years. Only the week before, Celeste had confessed to being infatuated with the convict from the first time she had seen him.

  “I call him Sin, because there is something dangerously intriguing about him, don’t you think?"

  Amaris had stared at the precocious girl. “Dangerous maybe, but intriguing, no."

  Her reply had been offhanded, when in fact she was disturbed by the convict. He was polite enough whenever their paths crossed, but his somber power threatened her where it reassured Celeste. “Besides, the convict is too old for you, Celeste.”

  “Not at all,” she said in her grown-up tone. “Only twelve years. Papa is almost nine years older than Mama. Age doesn’t make a difference.”

  At that moment, the new dancing master, turf hat in hand, entered the salon. As obsequious as the French tutor was pompous, Mr. Whitaker’s claim to excelling in the art of dance was based solely on his mother’s career as a dancer with the French opera.

  “We begin early today, eh? In that case, shall we learn the steps to the quadrille?”

  Celeste jumped to her feet. A smile of joy wreathed her mouth. “Then we will need a fourth!” With that, she darted from the room before the startled dancing master could gainsay her.

  “Whatever can she be about?” he muttered. In distraction, the short, pudgy man fingered the brim of his hat, the shape of an inverted flowerpot.

  “Most likely another homeless person or animal. She collects them and finds places for them.” Amaris realized that Celeste had found a place for her, installing her as practically a member of the family.

  Yawning, she rose and ambled over to the window. She drew back the curtains and let the sunlight nudge away the room’s shadows. Open curtains annoyed Nan Livingston. The days she attended the girls’ lessons, she would invariably cross the room and draw the curtains closed.

  In the garden below, Amaris sighted Celeste with a reluctant Sin in tow. His large brown hand in hers, she tugged him toward the house. From his other hand dangled a hammer. He had been building a gazebo. “It appears our fourth will be Sinclair Tremayne,” Amaris told the dancing master.

  “Oh, my word, her mother will not like this.”

  “I think you are right.” It suddenly occurred to Amaris that Celeste adored the convict because—like herself—he was so contrary to Celeste’s sunny nature.

  She burst into the salon, and even the sunlight seemed to pale beside her. “Now, we can practice properly!”

  Behind her towered Sin. He wore homespun brown breeches and a coarsely woven kerseymere tunic. Little about the convict resembled the emaciated wretch Celeste had rescued from the chain gang on the wharf.

  At twenty-three, his shoulders had broadened. Nourishing food had added pounds to his skeletal frame. Laboring in the sun had restored a healthy color to his flesh and a reddish sheen to his overly long, dark brown hair, clubbed with a leather thong at his nape.

  The inner power of the man was still evident in a face that might have been termed homely. The cheekbones were flat, the nose too prominent and obviously broken sometime in the past, the thick brows sharply angled, the mouth long and the upper lip asymmetrical.

  But, oh, the eyes. Fires burned there. The blue irises burned as hot as the blue center of winter fires. Burning wild and powerful and threatening . . . and warming.

  Celeste drew him forward. “We have partners now, Mr. Whitaker. Can we learn the quadrille steps, please?” Mr. Whitaker bobbed his head. “Yes, of course, Miss Livingston.”

  “Sin, put the hammer down,” the little girl told the convict.

  Amusement curled one end of his mouth, but he laid the hammer on a secretary.

  “If you will arrange yourselves opposite me and Miss Wilmot, we’ll begin.”

  Amaris went to stand opposite her friend and the convict. Beside her, Mr. Whitaker was noticeably sweating. “Uh, if you’ll place your hand in mine, Miss Wilmot, and if you’ll take Miss Livingston’s hand, uh, Mr. uh . . .” He clearly did not know how to address Sin.

  His lips twitched derisively. “Tremayne. Mr. Sinclair Tremayne.”

  “Mr. Tremayne, yes. Well, on the count of four we step forward, forming an arch with our upraised hands. Think of it as a rose arbor, Miss Livingston.” Amaris stood opposite Sin. He was close enough for her to smell the odor of healthy sweat mixed with sunlight and fresh air. Without knowing why, she felt the urge to touch his neck, where the sunburnt skin was molded by muscled columns. His flesh would be warm, the pulse in his throat beating strongly with life. His mouth curled even higher at the one end. His thickly lashed eyes held a knowing look.

  She swallowed hard. Her fingers fidgeted with the strings of her calico waist. Like Pulykara, he had some intuitive ability to read people’s souls. Amaris resented his subtle divining of her less reputable thoughts. With a dismissive shrug, she turned her face away to focus her attention on whatever it was the dance master was instructing them to do.

  “. . . second count of eight, you will release your partner’s hand, taking that of the person opposite you and march down the length of the room.”

  Reluctantly, she laid her hand in Sin’s. His palm was rough with calluses. He was so big boned that, as tall as she was, she felt small for once. His maleness both tantalized and threatened her, and she was disgusted by both of her reactions. Her mouth flattened, her nose tilted, and she kept her distance—as far away as his grip would allow.

  “Does me lack of eau de cologne bother you, mistress?” His voice was low and sardonic.

  “Your lack of a bath does.”

  He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Auk, a shame to subject a lady to such a distasteful and distressing situation. But then you are no lady. Not even a colleen. Only a coward.”

  She whirled on him, forgetting where she was. “A coward? You are an impertinent oaf who had best mind his manners!”

  “Sin! Amaris!” Celeste pushed between them. Concern blighted her usually joyful smile. “Please don’t fight. You two are my dearest friends.”

  The challenging mockery of his expression evaporated instantly to be replaced by gentle contrition. He bowed low before Celeste. “Me apologies for spoiling your day, little one.”

  Amaris could have exploded. The convict treated her with ill-mannered indifference and behaved toward Celeste as if the girl were a Mauri princess.

  When he once again took Amaris’s hand in his, a flush of fury heated her skin. She wanted to dig her nails into his broad palm, but her nails were too short and his palms too hard for her to render any pain. “Paddy!" she whispered, disgust lending the word the quality of an epithet.

  In courtly steps that belied his rustic appearance, he returned her to the room’s other end, where Nan stood watching from the doorway.

  “I think that is enough practice for today,” she said, her expression sealed as
tightly as an Egyptian sarcophagus.

  “But, Mama,” Celeste said in bewilderment, “we’re just getting started.”

  “Sinclair has the gazebo to finish building.”

  Sin inclined his head at Nan and, releasing Amaris’s hand, strode from the room. He carried himself with the careless grace of an aristocrat, despite the mood of the savage that clung to him. The term Black Irish fit him well, Amaris thought.

  She shifted her gaze back to Nan. The woman was no more pleased with him than she was with Amaris. Amaris’s keen intuition perceived that for once Nan Livingston and she both had something in common. The Irish convict was a threat to both of them!

  Yet Amaris at the inexperienced age of sixteen could not identify what kind of threat Sinclair Tremayne presented to either her or Nan.

  “. . . for my twelfth birthday. Come look!”

  Amaris followed Celeste into the stables. Smelling of manure, they had been built by Sin that spring.

  Since her clash with the convict last fall, she had not encountered him at the Livingston mansion. This was unusual because he worked more there than at the shipyard, if Celeste’s random referral to the man was anything to judge by.

  “He is absolutely the most beautiful animal in all of New South Wales!”

  Amaris stared at the bare-chested man. He forked hay into a stall, and with each lift of the fork, his muscles rippled beneath the supple sun-toasted skin. Despite the white, puckered scars crisscrossing his back, he was a superb example of a magnificent animal. A mistreated animal.

  She forced her attention back to Celeste, who stood in adoration before her birthday present from her parents, a chestnut mare of excellent confirmation. “Don’t forget, Sin, you said you would teach me how to ride.”

  He paused in swinging the fork and looked over his shoulder. “I think your mother is intent on hiring a riding teacher, Celeste.”

  Celeste? So, the formal “Miss Celeste” had slipped now to the familiar “little one” and “Celeste.” Amaris was piqued that the girl had not asked her to teach her how to ride. Of course, Amaris had learned on a nag of a horse rescued from the meat factory for use to pull the church collection cart. Nevertheless, must Celeste always defer to Sin?

  “Can I take Misty for a walk?”

  He speared the fork in the sawdust-layered earth and propped his forearm on the handle. “You’ll have to ask your mother.”

  Overflowing with excitement, the girl sprinted out of the stables, forgetting both Amaris and Sin.

  Without shifting his stance, he fixed Amaris with his hard blue eyes. They skimmed over her thin muslin bodice, and she was at once conscious of and mortified by her small breasts.

  “I suppose your skill with horses comes from your days of horse thieving,” she snapped.

  His grin was slow in coming and as hard as his gaze. “I wasn’t transported for horse thieving, but I will concede to a certain skill in horsemanship inbred in all true Irishmen. We are born in the saddle, you know.” His voice possessed a deep quality and lyrical rhythm peculiar to street corner orators.

  “What were you transported for?”

  “Would it matter if I told you I was convicted of impersonating the king? Mad as a hatter, I am. No telling what I might do right now. It isn’t safe being alone with me, you know.”

  She grew bolder, her words clipped by her sleeping anger. “I’m curious about something else, too. Last fall, you accused me of being a coward. I want to know what makes you think that?”

  “You haven’t forgotten that, eh?”

  She stepped closer. Her hands clenched at her sides. The anger in her was fomenting. “What made you say that?”

  “Well now, me curious student, either you’re a female or a male. What’s it going to be?”

  She thumped her chest. “I am me.”

  “Which is?” he persisted.

  “Me . . . me inside this body.” With that realization, her confidence gained ground. “The outside trappings aren’t important . . . not to me, anyway.”

  “Well spoken. But when you’re as comfortable with the outside as you are the inside . . .” He paused, his eyes scanning her again. “When that happens, then you’ll be a woman. A formidable woman.”

  She duplicated his dry smile. “I might place value on your comment, except I am told that, as a convict, you forget what sex you are and turn into mollies.”

  His hand tightened on the pitchfork. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “You’d best return to the house before I try to recreate the feeling of taking a woman beneath me.”

  His countenance was enough to make her chilled even on that hot and sultry December day. She managed an indifferent shrug and sauntered off. Her back could feel the sting of that fiery blue gaze.

  Sinclair Tremayne had the Irish gift for nursing old wrongs. He had been a young Belfast law student whose ability as a speaker and a leader had led him to become involved with the United Irishmen. They fought for the same principles as the French revolutionaries had earlier.

  Sin believed that no Irish Catholic could expect justice from English laws. Under the Popery Laws, no Catholic could sit in Parliament, vote, teach, or hold an army commission. The Catholics were disabled in property law, which was rewritten to break up Catholic estates and consolidate Protestant ones. Protestant estates could be left intact to eldest sons, but Catholic ones had to be split among all children. Thus Catholic landowning families degenerated into sharecropping ones within a generation or two.

  Sin knew all about sharecropping. He was thirteen when his father had been forced to close their linen business because of the English overlords’ trade embargoes on Irish linen export to America.

  Sin’s family had turned to planting. He and his four younger sisters and brothers knew nothing about growing potatoes. They learned. They learned about the dirt encrusted beneath their fingernails and the permanent stains on their hands, the needlelike pain along their spines from bending over twelve hours a day.

  Potato rot Sin recognized instantly. The stench was something that to this day made his stomach muscles knot.

  By being more frugal than any Scotsman could ever dream of being, Sin’s parents managed to send him to college. By his second year, his family were no longer landowners. The bailiffs with their writs of eviction had installed new landlords in the ancestral home. Recalled to help the family sharecrop, Sin grew to hate the English landlords’ bullying ways with their dogs and shillelaghs.

  Those oaken cudgels struck him once too often. He rounded on the man, who was much larger and heavier. But Sin’s anger generated inhuman power, and he pummeled the man with his own cudgel. If Sin’s sister Lena hadn’t stopped him, he would have killed the man.

  As it was, Sin had to leave home and family. With another college student, he founded the Society of Irish Defenders. The Irish rebels made iron pikes on secret forges to attack English Tory soldiers and struck out at English informers by burning their homes.

  In the end, musket was bound to prevail against pike. Sin was arrested and charged with treason. He was to be transported without trial. From the dock, Sin’s mother and sister had wept as he was led aboard the transportation bark in chains. His public humiliation, his shame at leaving them defenseless, had burned his stomach raw.

  The situation got no better. His ship had not carried the prisoners’ records with it. So no one knew how long they had to serve in New South Wales or when they would be eligible for tickets-of-leave that were usually given after four years’ good conduct.

  He found his kind was unwelcome in the penal colony. The “specials,” or educated Irish convicts “might contaminate the yeomanry with their seditious ideas,” complained New South Wales’s governor. The governor was most pleased to separate the specials, dispersing them to various outlying farms and stations.

  Nearly flogged to death upon arrival in the penal colony for talking to Celeste and Amaris, Sin was sent to the mouth of the Hunter River, north of Sydney. There he’d hewn coal i
n a recently discovered seam. Guarded by starved, chained mastiffs, he subsisted on a diet scarcely above starvation itself.

  He was already a skeleton, with flesh stretched across his bones so tightly it resembled parchment, when Tom Livingston located him. The amiable man had spent weeks searching for him, solely at the behest of his daughter.

  If Sin could find it in his heart to love any English person, it would have to be that child. For him, Celeste Livingston was all that was good and kind in this world. She was radiant sunlight, an angel taking refuge in the spirit of a little girl.

  His days working in the shipyard had been numbered, as more and more of his time had been diverted to service at the Livingston mansion. So much so that he had made himself indispensable. By the end of his fourth year in the Livingstons’ service, he had actually been given a private cell of a room. It was wedged in the servants section of the house, that part that abutted the carriage house, Nan Livingston’s newest vanity.

  For this, he again had Celeste to thank. “It only makes sense,” she had told her parents in that logical way of hers. “Anyone can drive a nail, but Sin can do so much more. He can be our handyman.”

  In the recessed shadows of the carriage house, he smiled wryly. A handyman! He didn’t know a tinker’s damn about the carriage trade, and here he was on his back under a landau, trying to figure out the best way to replace its broken axle.

  “Mrs. Livingston wants you.”

  He slid out from beneath the carriage and sat up, his forearms propped on his knees, his grease-coated hands dangling between them. The Wilmot girl stood before him in the double doorway, as imperious as the Grand Dame Livingston herself. He hadn’t seen Amaris in months. If it was possible, she had grown still taller. And had grown cabbages, as his mother had obliquely referred to his sister’s breasts.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  His question caught her off guard. She flushed, her betraying skin a dusky rose in the morning’s early sunlight. She was almost pretty.