by Laura Parker
Aisleen raised her eyes until she stared over his head. “I don’t suppose you will apologize. No court of law would demand it of you. After all, we are legally and morally wed, until death do us part.”
Thomas winced as she pronounced the last words, and unaccountably the cocked pistol came to mind; but he rejected the half-formed thought. “I did no more than any man would on his wedding night.”
“That is no recommendation to me.” Aisleen raised a hand to forestall his speech. Why, oh why must they discuss it at all?
He sat up straight. “Now, lass, a husband is entitled to certain rights.”
“I did not understand that to include violence.” The quiver in her voice betrayed the strong emotions she held in check.
Thomas looked down into his cup of tepid tea. Violence? Had he done her injury? Surely not. He remembered her cries as moans of joy. He had been drunk and he knew it. Suspicion trickled in slowly. Perhaps he had been too enthusiastic. He looked up sheepishly. “Did I hurt ye, lass?”
Aisleen lifted her torn gown from her lap and waved it like a captured banner. “Do you not remember? But, of course, you were drunk. So I will tell you. You ripped the gown from my back and treated me as callously as a whore!”
“Did I now?” Thomas whispered, his manner subdued at last. Harsher memories warred with pleasure in his jumbled thoughts. Yes, now that he thought of it, she had resisted him, had struck him with her fists and hurled abuse at him. She had fought and he had bested her. Yet he had thought her pleasured by his mastery. He had heard her pleasure, felt her passion. Or had he?
“Was there no pleasure for ye in me loving?”
“Certainly not!” She tossed the gown aside and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. “When I agreed to marry you, I hoped our arrangement would spare me the sort of degradation to which you have subjected me. I know men to be brutes. My own mother—”
Aisleen glanced up, horrified that she had mentioned her mother. Her chin trembled slightly as she said, “I had hoped that you were different.”
Her golden eyes blazed as she stared at him. “But as I am wrong and the events of the night before make it impossible for us to change our arrangement, we must alter our contract since we cannot nullify it.”
The torrent of words left Thomas staring at her with a furrowed brow. Doubtful of his own memory, he could say nothing in his own defense. “I meant no dishonor of ye, lass.”
“No, of course not,” she answered. “You did not consider my feelings at all. I propose a period of separation that will give each of us a chance to think through the matter.”
This last gave Thomas something to say. “No, lass, I’ll not leave Sydney without ye. I cannot say with any truth what I did or did not do. When a man’s traded whiskey for blood in his veins, he’s not always as gentle as he might be.” His face was hard and set as he looked at her. “I’m that sorry I frightened and hurt ye, but ye’re my wife and ye will come home with me.”
Aisleen stared angrily at him. He had every right to insist that she accompany him, and no authority would take her side against him. Yet there was something else pushing her to agree, something she could not yet face.
“Because I have sworn before God and man to be a helpmate and companion to you, I will agree to this. But I will not submit myself to further abuse from you.”
Thomas held her gaze for a long moment. Only the day before he had thought her eyes were the rich, warm color of whiskey. Now they were as dull as stone. There was something more, something he had not seen there even on the morning she had chased the beggar child who had stolen her purse. It banked her expression. She feared him.
“Aye, that will do for now,” be said at last and rose from his chair.
The rapping of a fist on the door broke the tense moment as Thomas moved to open it. “Sally!” he declared in frank surprise.
“I must ’ave a word with ye, Tom,” Sally said softly. Her gaze went unerringly to where Aisleen sat. “In private.”
Aisleen stared at the pretty blond standing in the entrance, taking in at once her youth, low-cut gown, and most of all, her hostility. The conviction came swiftly and undoubted. This was her husband’s mistress!
Jealousy overrode anger as she rose to her feet. The bald arrogance of the pair! “Come in, Miss—?”
“Sally,” the girl offered, tucking her shawl more protectively about her as she edged inside the door. “G’day, ma’am. I come to speak to Tom.”
“So I heard,” Aisleen answered icily as her hard gaze moved to her husband.
“Sally, this is me bride, Miss—Mrs. Gibson. Sally’s an old friend,” Thomas offered as he closed the door.
“But not a forgotten one?” Aisleen suggested in knife-edged politeness. “Do come in and sit down, Sally.”
“No, ma’am. Thank ye.” Sally glanced repeatedly from Aisleen to Tom, unable to believe that he was wed to this poker-stiff woman in the frilled housecap.
“What did ye want, Sally, lass?” Thomas encouraged, aware of the instant enmity between the two women but at a loss to defuse it.
“I come to tell Tom that the bloke that was looking for him a while ago is back in town, on account ’e ’eard ye was to wed,” Sally said, her gaze never moving from Aisleen. “Thought ’e’d best know.”
Thomas nodded. “Thank ye, Sally, for coming with the news. Not to worry. We’re leaving today. Will ye be readying yerself for that?” he added with a look at Aisleen.
Aisleen nodded stiffly.
Thomas smiled in relief. “Well then, I’ll just be accompanying Sally below to the street.” He reached with one hand for Sally’s elbow as his other grasped the door latch and lifted it. “Come along, lass.”
“G’by, ma’am.” Sally gave Aisleen one last measuring look before succumbing to Thomas’s tugs on her arm.
When they were gone, Aisleen sighed as if all the breath would come out of her, and her shoulders drooped in defeat. Had they stayed a moment longer, she might have shamed herself with tears.
Thomas had brought his mistress into her presence almost on their wedding day, and yet he expected her to do his bidding as a dutiful wife. She should be shocked, and yet she was not. She was angry and hurt and disappointed.
Aisleen dropped inelegantly into her chair. The interview had not gone at all as she had hoped. She had been afraid of so much: that he would not listen to her, that he would not agree to her wishes, and most of all, that he would throw in her face her shameless and wanton behavior. He had not. When she hurled her accusations at him, he had looked, well, ashamed. Hope for a compromise had blossomed…until the knock on the door.
Aisleen shook her head. She had read too much into the moment. He was a man, after all, and fully capable of parading his mistress before her eyes. His tenderness had worked to his advantage, for she had agreed to go with him.
“Fool!” she whispered to herself. Miss Burke was right. If she forgot herself, hoped for too much, then she would be lost. She must not lower her guard because of a kind look. For, more than him, she feared herself.
After the first rage of the morning had worn off, she had begun to realize the real source of her distress. Her husband had acted as any man might. That had not frightened her nearly as much as the truth she had gained about herself in the darkest hours of the night. She had wanted his interest, his desire. She wanted to be desired.
As he had sat across from her she had been taken by the strangest urges. Her body had ached with unnamable sensations—guilty sweet pangs that made her want to run away.
“I am no better than a whore!” she murmured. Even now, made palsied by rage from the emotional backwash of her confrontation with his pretty little mistress, she felt the urge to run downstairs after them and shout that Thomas was her husband and that she had better keep away from him.
Was this the emotion of which her mother had hinted? Was this every man’s hold on the woman who desired him?
“I…can’t…desire…him,”
Aisleen ground out, pounding her fists slowly on the table top. As a child, she had watched her father’s interest in her mother turn to indifference. The last years of his life he had lived openly in Dublin with his whore while her mother lived in shame and poverty in the famine-ravaged countryside.
She would not allow that to happen to her. Her only protection against desire was anger. He must never be allowed to persuade her through false charm and calculated kindness to care for him. She was too ripe for it, too needy, too fragile to withstand the daily assault of his embrace. In one short night, he had stripped from her the veneer of respectability that she had worked more than a dozen years to cultivate. Gone was her self-respect, her peace of mind, her protection against a harsh and unfeeling world.
Never again, Aisleen vowed to herself. Never again would she allow him to touch her, for in his caress lay a trap and her ultimate defeat. She would be no man’s slave.
* * *
“That’s the lot!” Thomas announced as he heaved the last bag into the back of the wagon.
Aisleen gazed with misgiving at the numerous sacks. The implication of so many provisions was not at all to her liking. “Is it necessary to carry so much with us? Surely we will return often to Sydney.”
Thomas shaded his eyes with a hand as he looked up at Aisleen. “We’ll not come to Sydney again for some time.”
“Why not?” she murmured in dismay.
“’Tis too far a journey to make more than once a year. My station’s well over four hundred miles from here.”
“Four…hundred…” Her throat closed over the statement. “Dear God!” she whispered.
Thomas watched her with sympathy. “Aye, ’tis a fair long way. But we’ll accomplish it, right enough.”
The thought of the journey did not daunt Aisleen as much as the realization that she would be so far away from Sydney. How odd, she reflected fleetingly, that this strange city in a strange land suddenly seemed a refuge compared with what lay before her. “I hadn’t thought we’d be so far away,” she said slowly. “I have left some of my belongings with the landlord pending my return.”
Thomas did not miss the reference to “her” return and did not like the fact that she was thinking of leaving him even before they had set out. He would give her no ready excuse. “There’s no room here. I’ll be sending another to collect them,” he answered evenly.
Aisleen stood a moment in indecision, debating whether or not simply to ask him to leave her behind, bags and all. She moistened her lips, but the words would not come.
“It could nae be that the lass who’s sailed a world away to Sydney is afraid of a wee journey through the bush?” he asked.
She unconsciously squared her shoulders. “Of course not.”
“Good!” he answered and withdrew a pouch from his shirt and tossed it to her. “Here’s the first month’s expense.”
Aisleen caught the purse and heard the clink of coins. Her first month’s wages. He would not allow her to back out gracefully. Well then, she would not back out in a cowardly fashion. “I’m ready,” she said and bent to pick up her portmanteau, aware of his victorious smile.
“I’ll be taking that,” he said and reached for the bag. The weight of the case surprised him and he staggered in exaggeration. “Musha! What’d this be?”
“Books. I came to Sydney prepared to assume the post of a teacher. If one is to teach, one must be properly equipped.”
“I see,” Thomas replied, but he did not. What he understood was that a few extra pounds of unnecessary weight was being added to his provisions. It did not matter now, but once they traded horses for bullocks and the flat bush turned into hills and rain-swollen streams of the north river and every pound would add to the difficulty of their journey. Still he lashed it in with the rest and then wiped the sweat from his brow with his coat sleeve before offering his wife a hand. “We’re ready then, lass.”
“I can manage on my own,” she replied and turned away from the frown that contracted his brow. Catching her skirts together in one hand, she slipped one booted foot into a spoke of the wheel and grabbed the edge of the wagon seat with her free hand to hoist herself up.
Unoffended, Thomas watched patiently. As she bent forward to lever herself up, her skirts pulled taut, revealing the curves of her hips, and he was once again aware that his wife was younger and more vulnerable than she often appeared. He allowed her to struggle until her foot slipped. With a quick and handy grace, he caught her with a hand under her buttocks.
In quick succession, Aisleen registered the strength of his hand under her bottom, the firm wall of his chest buttressing her lower hips, and most discomforting of all, the narrow-bladed pressure of his nose in the small of her back. The unwilling memory of the feel of his hands upon her naked skin flashed through her mind.
Immediately she began to struggle, but her muscles were melted by mortification. With relief she heard him say, “Up ye go, lass,” as he pushed her from behind.
Her cheeks flaming, Aisleen was thrust up into the wagon. When she regained her balance, she slid quickly to the far side of the seat. She had made a spectacle of herself on a public street.
Interest in the public vanished as Thomas hoisted himself up onto the seat beside her. She pulled her elbows in against her body and pressed her right hip hard against the seat ledge until it hurt, but she could not completely remove herself from his touch. As he reached for the reins, his arm brushed hers. When he turned to her, his face was so close that she drew in a quick breath.
“Are ye ready, then, wife?”
“Yes,” she answered and lowered her gaze from those blue eyes, only to meet yet another uneasy sight. Beneath the white lace glove on her left hand was a gold band spanning the third finger. Because of momentary weakness of character, a selfish fear of poverty, she was now bound for eternity to this man whom she feared and distrusted.
Mrs. Thomas Finnian Butler Gibson.
Aisleen tucked her hand into the folds of her gown to hide the taunting golden reminder of her impetuousness. What had she done?
As he snapped the reins to start the horses, Thomas glanced at her from under the brim of his hat, squinting as he strained to read her expression. She sat so still and stiff, as if she were made of marble or as if she were still afraid of him.
The thought did not please him The more he thought about what he had done, coming in drunk to bed his bride, the more certain he was that his memory of her pleasure had been nothing more than the hazy recollection of his own passion. She was a lady. What did he know of ladies? Nothing. Perhaps she was right to accuse him of treating her as he would a whore, for they had been his tutors.
He shook his head. He wanted to talk with her; a dozen questions trembled on his tongue, but he dared not disturb her.
Ye shy from the truth, Thomas, he chided himself. He was now a little wary of her. It had never occurred to him that they would not suit. Of course, they were different, but he had thought that would not matter once they were married. Perhaps he had been too hasty. After all, he knew nearly nothing about her, nor she about him.
There were many things he had not yet told her. Most important of all, he had not told her that he was an ex-convict, an emancipist. What would she say if she knew? Would she twitch her skirts aside as the proper ladies of Van Diemen’s Land had done years before when he passed them wearing the canvas jacket and trousers of a convict laborer? Would her delicate features contort with revulsion and loathing when she learned that her husband had once been a convict?
For four years, he had endured the blank stares of the gentlewomen of Hobart Town, the indifference or pretense that he did not occupy the same lane as they. Sometimes the urge to do something outrageous had seized him. He had wanted to stop one of them, to thrust his face in hers and make her acknowledge his existence. He had imagined clasping the delicate body of one of them against his filthy uniform and grinding his lips against hers until she sighed in pleasure or fainted at the outrage.
Why did he brood over old hurts? He had gained his freedom and more. He was respected by the men with whom he dealt. His future was assured.
He was lucky. His grandma had predicted that he would be. Luck had been with him when his sentence had been shortened from seven to four years because he discovered a talent for shearing sheep. When he had turned his hand to gold-digging, hadn’t he found a strike worth a squatter’s station in trade? He hadn’t been like many others, made mad by a strike. He had bought what the gold-struck squatter had abandoned and earned respectability. Now he had gained the hand of a lady as good as any who had passed him with a scented handkerchief pressed to her nose. He was not about to lose her.
Sally’s warning had come at an inopportune time. After the discussion of the morning, he had nearly been persuaded to remain a few more days in Sydney, where Aisleen could come to know him gradually, in civilized surroundings rather than the unfamiliar wilds of bush. Then he might have been able to tell her things about himself, things that might have answered many questions for both of them. But he dared not remain, not with the news he carried.
He glanced at Aisleen once more, but this time her features were hidden by the brim of her bonnet. All prim and proper, she was proof that he was as good as any colonialist. Yet to keep her, he must find a way to make her happy. What could he do? Sooner or later, he would tell her his history, but not until they were at ease with each other, if they were ever at ease with each other again.
Pity, an aching head, Gnashing of teeth, despair; And all because of some one Perverse creature of chance…
—On Woman
W. B. Yeats
Chapter Nine
