by Lena Dowling
Samuel would take a rest. If this gang of convicts was so damned smart they could bring in the rest of the hay themselves. After what had happened between him and Colleen he needed to think — to sort matters in his head to rights.
His wife’s virtue? He snorted out loud at the thought of it. That was long gone.
The devil only knew how many other men she had serviced before him.
What in the Lord’s name had he been thinking?
He got up and walked over to the offending clump of grass and with one almighty wrench pulled the scythe from the ground.
No. He was making too much of this. Of course the woman had called up his prick and had it dancing to a merry tune. That was her job.
He’d had a moment of weakness that was all. He would put a stop to this right here and now. He wouldn’t be drawn in again.
When Mr Biggs returned to the cabin for his dinner that evening he took his place at the table without a word, looking everywhere but at her.
It wasn’t as if Colleen had expected him to pick her up and twirl her around the cabin. She wasn’t a starry eyed twit. It’s not like they were in love with each other, but since it was the first time she had seen him since the night before, she might have expected a smile, a friendly glance a touch even, but Mr Biggs was doing his best impression of a big surly oaf.
‘Did you have a problem out in the fields?’
No answer.
‘Some trouble with Tom maybe?’
‘No.’
And that was all she got. After a few more minutes of silence, and judging that Mr Biggs was not likely to say any more Colleen tried to strike something up with the gossip she’d had caught the tail end of.
‘I heard there was a bit of a to-do among the convicts.’
Mr Biggs grunted. ‘It was nothing you need to concern yourself with.’
‘I saw Mr Hunter walking one of them back to Parramatta almost faster than the poor fellow could follow, so he must have done something terrible. Mr Hunter is a good man, he wouldn’t — ’
‘And what would you know about whether he was good man or not?’
Mr Biggs dropped his knife and fork and looked up at her his normally affable round face screwed up something fierce.
‘I w-w-wouldn’t really, Mr Biggs.’
Colleen’s stomach whipped into a knot.
Oh God what did he know?
After the silent agreement they had made at dinner she had managed to convince herself that James could be trusted and that Liza would be too concerned with which side of her bread she had the butter to go blabbing, but one of them must have said something.
Her hand flew to her chest.
Surely James hadn’t been the one to open his mouth. Maybe it was Liza? She couldn’t believe that little fool would be stupid enough to risk her own freedom. But if she’d been riled up enough to take leave of her senses?
It was as if Colleen’s lungs had shrivelled up tight, and she was unable to draw a breath.
But Samuel said nothing more, dipping his head, viciously attacking his mutton and boiled cabbage dinner, avoiding any look in her direction.
‘Call me Samuel. Mr Biggs is what Mrs Biggs always called me,’ he said. Then after swallowing several more mouthfuls, but without looking up, he added grudgingly, ‘The other Mrs Biggs, I mean.’
Colleen’s lungs opened up and she gulped in a breath.
So that was why Samuel was so tetchy with her.
What had happened between them had reminded him of his first wife and made him feel guilty. He wasn’t over his grief for her like he pretended after all.
She lowered her voice, testing his reaction to each word before she carried on with the next.
‘I’m not trying to take your first wife’s place, if that’s what you think. I know I never could do that, but last night I thought I made you happy and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in that between a man and his wife.’
‘I’m not saying we did anything wrong, exactly,’ he said looking up long enough to cast a sheepish look in her direction. ‘But it’s not what we agreed.’
As Colleen remembered it, there had been no agreement — just Samuel laying out how it was going to be between them, but that’s not how it was anymore. Everything had changed.
‘But you miss her. It’s only natural and right — ’
‘Right? What would the likes of you know about what’s right?’ he bit back.
Shocked, Colleen looked down at the table, wishing one of the cracks that had opened up in it from the harsh dry weather would swallow her up.
‘Why don’t we go over to the pond later,’ she said in a whisper now, thinking the cooling water might soothe him.
‘And why would we want to do that?’
‘I just thought bathing in the water might be calming, you seem out of sorts,’ she said wishing now that she had never mentioned it.
He pushed back his chair the legs squealing as they ground across the floorboards. ‘Out of sorts? And why wouldn’t I be? What Lady Hunter does is up to her husband, but in my opinion it’s a vulgar recreation for a woman, only befitting a whore.’
A whore.
It hadn’t mattered to him that she had come to The Factory from O’Shane’s before, but obviously that’s what this was really all about. It wasn’t so much that he missed his first wife, it was that he was ashamed to have wed a lowly convict prostitute.
He had seemed so mild mannered. So kind. Now it looked like she had gotten him all wrong, but she wasn’t having it. Not from her own husband, not when she would have gone for anyone else who tried to call her that.
She knew what she was and what she wasn’t and she had always held her head up no matter what.
‘You knew what I was when you married me, so don’t be throwin’ that back in me face now. And me past didn’t seem to be worrying you much last night.’ Colleen said, slamming her cutlery down on the table and throwing back her own chair. Leaping up she clasped her hands to her hips.
Samuel held up his hands as if to stave her off.
‘Colleen, I never asked for…you just — ’
‘No, and you never refused neither — ’
‘That may be so, but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. That was not part of our arrangement and it certainly won’t be happening again.’
‘We agree on something then.’
‘I think I’ll finish this on the porch.’ And with that Samuel stood up as well, taking his meal and cutlery striding outside.
Colleen slumped back down into the chair and shoved her plate away, clearing a space so she could jam her chin into the heels of her hands.
She shouldn’t have given two hoots what Samuel thought of her, let alone getting all riled up about it. She had gotten what she needed for her baby and now she should have been working to keep things sweet between them, for the baby’s sake, shaking off his slight like it was only a bit of water and she was beaked and feathered.
Samuel sat on the stoop where he had intended to finish the remains of his meal but now that he had peace and quiet, he was no longer hungry. He set his plate down, stood up and headed for the barn. It would be best for both of them if he retreated to the straw.
Chapter 12
Samuel walked up the steps to the cabin, flicked off a strand of hay that had attached itself to his sleeve in the barn, and sneezed. He had spent a few nights out there now, but the heap of straw he was sleeping on wasn’t getting any more comfortable nor was he becoming used to waking up to the stench of steaming horseshit. But if sleeping out in the barn was a source of discomfort the thought of returning to sleep in the cabin with Colleen was even more so. It was bad enough that he had suffer through his evening meal with her, but it was either do that or have the servants endlessly twittering about something that was none of their affair.
Colleen regarded his distance as a cruelty. He could see that. He felt it as acutely as the hurt he had seen in her eyes every evening since.
And in the last few days he had become increasingly worried for her health. Not only was her blistered palm obviously still painful, obliging her to switch hands to carry out simple tasks, but she often had her arm across her stomach as if it pained her, which made him worried she might be sickening for something. Not that he could ask her about it. She prickled at the most innocuous of conversation starters. Nevertheless, he had resolved to try again tonight. Anything to restore things to an even keel so that their relationship could go back to the way it should have been between them in the first place.
A simple arrangement.
But when Colleen returned from the cookhouse with two plates of chicken and vegetables she was wearing her good dress, the one she had worn for the wedding, and she had done something new with her hair. It was pinned up in a fancy style similar to how Lady Hunter sometimes wore hers. It looked very comely on her, the way the little plaits that dipped down in curves at each temple drew attention to her warm tawny eyes.
‘You’ve done something different with your hair,’ he said tentatively, conscious he was wavering into dangerous ground, wanting to find something nice to say to her that might smooth things over, and yet needing to avoid any subject that might convey too much intimacy.
She cut his prevarication short, jerking her chin upwards to reveal an expression that he judged would all but cut him dead if he went on.
‘It looks different. That’s all I’m saying,’ he said quickly, looking away.
‘Thea wanted to teach me some proper lady styles, that’s all.’
Once they had finished eating Samuel pushed his plate away and Colleen gathered up their dishes. But as she reached out for his knife, she winced, dropping the implement, picking it up again with her fingertips, careful not to let it touch her palm.
He circuited the table and grabbed her hand but her fingers were curled over where he had seen the blisters.
‘Show me.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, snatching her hand away.
‘I said, show me.’
No reaction.
He grasped her arm and pried open her hand.
Just as he thought, the blisters he had first observed at The Factory had festered and were oozing pus.
‘Come with me,’ he said taking her arm again.
‘Where?’ she said. Her eyes darting fearfully.
‘To the bedroom.’
She pulled away, backing up, putting the table between them again.
‘Oh no you don’t. Not after what you said. You can forget that. You’ve well and truly cooked your goose.’
‘Come to the bedroom and bring the salt.’ He pointed to the saltcellar on the dresser. ‘And we’ll see to that hand of yours.’
‘You wouldn’t. You evil bastard.’
Anticipating that he planned to propel her there in any case, Colleen gripped the tabletop with both hands, releasing the injured one just as quickly again to shake it up and down while she swore at him.
Samuel circuited the table and picked up the salt himself; then grasping Colleen by the shoulder, pushed her towards the alcove that held the cabin’s only really comfortable thing to sit on.
He pushed her back towards the bed.
‘Sit.’
He took the jug from the washstand and poured some into the bowl. Then he took a handful of salt and sprinkled it in the water, gently frothing the water with his fingers until the crystals dissolved.
‘Come here and put your hand in.’
Colleen stuck the troublesome hand up under her armpit.
‘I’m not puttin’ me hand in there. It’ll sting like the blazes.’
‘No it won’t.’
Samuel agitated the water some more just to make sure all of the crystals had disappeared.
‘What do you think I’ve got between me ears? You rub salt in a wound. It hurts. Everybody says so.’
‘At worst it will only sting a little bit and then it will be fine. It’s not like rubbing in the raw crystals. This is different.’
She shook her head.
‘Come over here and put your hand in or I’ll be forced to lay you over my knee.’
Why had he said that? He had never laid a hand on Amelia. He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to do it, but a man had to follow through.
She shook her head again.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up.
‘Your hand in there. Or my hand on your bare arse. Your choice.’
Bare arse.
He tried to dismiss the image of her spectacular creamy white rump from his mind.
Damn it.
He had thought he had married an unassuming woman who would keep a good house without threatening his desire for a quiet life, but instead he had taken on a woman who had the ability to make him lose all power to reason.
Amelia was good and sweet. Whenever he was with her as a husband it was as if she was somehow bewildered by what was happening between them and then afterwards it was as if nothing had occurred at all and she was the same untouched woman he had married.
But with Colleen it was different. She might as well have cast a spell over him. Before it was enough to keep his desires in check if she was modestly dressed check but not now, not now that he had seen her.
Been with her.
Now every time he looked at her he saw her naked. She could have draped herself in rags and would have made no difference, but that was just a cross he was going to have to bear.
She pursed her lips together and clenched her fists and he thought she might fly at him but then she seemed to have a change of mind, shrugging him off and flouncing over to the bowl dipping her hand in.
‘How does it feel?’
Colleen waved her hand through the water like the fin on a fish. She lost the frown she had been wearing most of the evening and the creases that had been pinched into her cheeks smoothed out.
‘Fine.’
‘Just fine?’
It was something he had noticed at sea. Festering cuts drenched when the seas were high healed faster than scrapes he had gotten when it was calm.
She pulled her hand out of the bowl to study it then replaced it back in the water.
‘Alright, it’s quite soothing after the first shock of it, but I don’t know what good you think it will do.’
‘Do that a couple of times a day for a few days and it will heal up alright.’
‘I’ll try it.’
She looked up at him, the intensity in her eyes flashing a question he couldn’t answer. Not without hurting her even more. So instead he turned to walk out of the cabin, and pausing to glance back over his shoulder said, ‘Well, ensure that you do.’
Colleen gathered up the plates and cutlery and headed back to the cookhouse. Her hand felt cooler, and not so much as if it was on fire as it was before Samuel had made her put it in the brine, but nevertheless everywhere else she was seething, burning hot with fury.
For a moment, when he was seeing to her hand, she thought she saw the old Samuel, the kind one who didn’t go around accusing a person of being a whore, who could have a joke with her, who played with children, and who cared if she was hurt, but she had it all wrong. It turned out all that mattered to him after all was having a domestic servant who could do the job.
The only nice things he’d had to say to her lately were how cleanly she had swept the cabin and what a neat job she had made in stitching up the new curtains Thea had given her the material for.
She didn’t know why she had bothered asking Thea to help fix her hair and put on her good dress to look extra nice or why she had worried for him sleeping out in the draughty barn with vermin scurrying about through the straw. For all she cared a snake could up and bite him on t
he toe.
As long as his wife fulfilled her duties as an unpaid charwoman and otherwise kept out of his way, he obviously wasn’t the least bit bothered who he was married to.
He was using her just like all the other men she had ever known, except the services Samuel wanted didn’t require her to lie on her back, making pretend noises like she enjoyed it.
But what stuck in her craw more than anything was that Samuel had never asked about her background before she got transported or bothered to ask what she was convicted for. He had never even thought to enquire if she was guilty or innocent, or whether she had so much as set foot in a brothel back home in Ireland.
What he had done was to go leaping to the conclusion that she was a willing whore. She’d had a belly full of being branded something she wasn’t, and she certainly didn’t need it from her own husband.
She scraped the plates of the remains of their dinner into the pig pail that stood in the corner of the cookhouse.
‘Are you scraping that plate or fixing to engrave it?’ Cook called, her arms elbows deep in a tub full of hot soapy water, the evening’s dishes piled up around her.
‘Just makin’ sure of a proper job.’
The first time Colleen presented the cook with plates with scraps attached, the old woman everyone simply called ‘Cook’ had threatened to brain her with a meat dish. Now she was extra careful that they were free of any dregs before she returned them.
‘Give them here then,’ she said, pulling a hand out of the water to point towards the dishes. ‘I don’t know why you’ve pushed poor Mr Biggs out into the barn, not when both of you have got faces on you as long as your arm.’
Colleen added the plates to the collection of dirty ones on the table.
So the servant’s jaws had been flapping about Samuel sleeping out in the barn.
No doubt everyone and his dog had heard by now that she and Samuel had had a falling out. She should have known it wouldn’t stay secret for long. The only wonder was that Liza hadn’t found some excuse to visit the cabin and rub it in.
‘It’ll blow over. Just a few teething troubles that’s all,’ Colleen said, turning to escape back to the cabin before the cook started prying for information about what their tiff was about.
