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Land of Golden Wattle

Page 22

by J. H. Fletcher


  Jonathan was tucking into soup, with a rack of lamb waiting. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t leave it too long, will you?’ Her smile would have frightened a regiment of heroes. ‘It is impolite to keep a lady waiting too long.’

  Now we come to it, he thought. ‘I shall keep her waiting indefinitely, Grandma. Judith has no place in my plans.’

  Grandma’s lips tightened. ‘I wish you could see how unattractive it is to carry such resentment. I have told you, you must ignore Judith’s earlier behaviour. I don’t condone it but it means nothing, nothing! She will settle down when she has a ring on her finger.’

  A plate of lamb, pink and delicious, was put in front of him. He helped himself to carrots and potatoes.

  ‘Maybe she will,’ he said. ‘But it won’t be my ring.’

  Now Grandma’s smile was quite extinguished. ‘Surely you can see the advantages –’

  Jonathan chewed on the tender lamb and swallowed. ‘I shall not marry her. I don’t trust her. I am not even sure I like her.’

  Confrontation.

  ‘I should warn you,’ Grandma said. ‘If you are thinking of forming another attachment –’

  ‘I have already done so. Someone I am fond of. But I am over twenty-one, Grandma. My private life is my business, nobody else’s.’

  ‘It is not only your business where Derwent is concerned,’ Grandma said.

  A moment’s icy silence.

  ‘Who is the girl?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘Does this friend have a name?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘And what is it?’

  ‘You will be the first to know. When I am ready to tell you.’

  ‘This is not a game,’ Grandma said. ‘Derwent is your heritage.’

  ‘Nothing I am planning to do will have any impact on Derwent,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘But you refuse to tell me who she is?’

  ‘For the moment, yes.’

  ‘Then let me say this. You have rejected Judith Hargreaves. Very well. I regret it, I think it is a foolish and wrong-headed decision, but if you have made up your mind –’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Then I must accept it. But if you intend to become entangled with someone whose name you are ashamed to tell me –’

  ‘Shame has nothing to do with it.’

  Grandma’s voice overrode him. ‘– someone clearly unsuitable, I have to warn you there will be consequences.’

  ‘And who is to decide whether this person is unsuitable or not?’

  ‘I control the trust and its assets. I will decide what happens to them on my death.’

  ‘Are you saying that if I choose someone you disapprove of you will disinherit me?’

  ‘I have faith in your intelligence so do not believe it will come to that. But you have a clear choice. You can make an unsuitable alliance, Jonathan, or you can have Derwent. I will not permit you to have both.’

  Jonathan put down his knife and fork. Deliberately he wiped his mouth with his napkin. He stood. He said, ‘What sort of man do you think I am?’

  Shoulders squared, he left the room. He left behind his grandmother ready to hurl plates in her fury. She sat rock hard and unmoving in her chair. Later she heard the clatter of hooves as Jonathan rode out and down the hill.

  The blacksmith’s forge was built low to the ground, its walls strong and hunched, like the shoulders of its owner. Who emerged from the fiery interior, hearing the arrival of what might be business.

  Conan’s scowl deepened when he saw who the horseman was.

  ‘My daughter don’t live here no more.’

  ‘It was you I wanted to see.’

  Conan folded brawny arms across his chest. ‘Just so long as you know. What is it you’re wanting?’

  Truculence came with the territory where Conan Hampton was concerned.

  ‘I want your permission to marry her.’

  A derisive grin. ‘Marry my Bec? What’s your gran gunna say about that, eh?’

  ‘Never mind that. She’s only sixteen. I need your permission.’

  ‘You think I don’t know me own daughter’s age?’

  Jonathan waited. Conan’s glare darkened. ‘Do what you want. She walked out on me. I reckon that means I don’t have no say what she does. Nor want to, neither.’

  He went back into the gusting heat and slammed the door.

  Jonathan thought, At least I tried.

  He mounted and pointed the bay to Waldren’s Corner.

  When Mrs Painter saw her visitor she was turmoil on legs.

  ‘She’s out the back somewhere. Collecting eggs, I think. Come in. I’ll see if I can find her.’

  Jonathan waited and presently the constable arrived. He nodded, man to man, but had nothing to say and later, hair in a tangle, cheeks flushed, Bec Hampton came also.

  ‘Step outside with me,’ said Jonathan, his fingers touching hers. ‘I want to ask you something.’

  Starlight; bird song; the bright flames of dawn. Disbelief followed by joy filled Bec to the brim.

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘I would never say such a thing unless I meant it.’

  ‘But won’t your grandmother be angry?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What about Derwent?’

  ‘She’s already told me she’ll disinherit me if I don’t marry the woman she wants.’

  ‘But you can’t give up Derwent.’

  ‘She’s left me no choice. I’m not going to let her run my life.’

  ‘Is that why you asked me to marry you? To defy your grandmother?’

  ‘I asked you because I love you. Because I want you to be my wife. Because I am yours. Derwent has nothing to do with it.’

  Bec knew Derwent had everything to do with it. If he lost Derwent because of her he would end up hating her. She couldn’t let him do it. But it would break her heart to turn him down.

  ‘If you give me up to keep Derwent your grandma will have won,’ she said. ‘But if you give up Derwent for me won’t she still have won?’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘Because you should inherit it, Jonathan! She’s no right to stop you.’

  ‘Of course she has. It’s hers; she can do what she likes with it.’ ‘You told me she’s always saying how important the family is.

  You’re family. She’ll be punishing you for not letting her get her own way. That’s putting her first, not the family. What is she, your gaoler?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then we mustn’t let her do it.’

  Not you mustn’t. We.

  She remembered sitting in the shadow of Blackman’s Head, looking across the rolling land that was Derwent and thinking how her feelings for Jonathan gave her feelings also for the land that would one day be his.

  At the time that idea had been so huge that she had been unable to get her head around it. Now she could.

  Jonathan was hers. He had said so. Did that not mean Derwent was hers also?

  She would fight to make it so.

  The genius that had lain dormant in Bec Hampton stirred into life, filling every vein with heat. She took his hands in hers. Unrehearsed, the words flowed from her heart and her heart, suddenly, was larger than herself or Jonathan, larger even than Derwent itself.

  ‘You are so strong. I’ve known you and loved you all my life and I know you won’t let anyone beat you. Not me or my dad or your grandma. No one. Because that is the man you are.’

  She believed what she was saying absolutely and in that certainty discovered a power she never knew she had, making her conscious as never before of her strength and beauty.

  She tightened her hands on his. ‘Did you mean it? You really want to marry me?’

  ‘I did mean it and I do.’

  ‘Then I will tell you what you must do.’

  1851

  By July 1851 Richard was twenty-three and working as an overseer on one of the Derwent farms when his half-brother William arr
ived home from school for the winter holidays.

  As far as Alice was concerned William’s arrival was not good news. Even as a child they had not got on. William was smart but in a bad way. He had been up to every trick in the book yet somehow had always managed to pass the blame on to Richard. Or sometimes to her. On his last visit home, six months earlier, he had looked at her in a way that had left her feeling she had been smeared with dirt.

  This time she suspected he would come looking for her and the day after his arrival he did.

  ‘Come and walk with me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m too busy.’

  ‘Uncle Barnsley is getting a bit long in the tooth and I hear that new Dr Morgan’s been visiting. I suspect one of these days soon I’ll be inheriting this property,’ he said. ‘The rest too, I suppose.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Alice said.

  ‘I doubt you’ll be telling me you’re too busy then.’

  ‘Who can say?’ Alice said.

  ‘I can say. And if there’s any sense in that pretty head of yours you’ll agree with me.’

  He might have been ten years older than he was, the way he spoke to her. That was what being rich did to you, Alice thought.

  ‘You don’t inherit me with the rest of the estate,’ she said.

  ‘That’s true.’ His smile was pure malice. ‘And your mother?’

  She looked at him.

  ‘She’s getting on a bit too, isn’t she? Might find it hard, getting another job at her age.’

  He would do it; it was all over his face.

  ‘Come and walk with me,’ he said. ‘We can have a chat. Maybe see a few birds. Uncle says there are lots around here. Do you like birds?’

  Barnsley Tregellas always liked to boast that his property stood between wood and water, one side of the ten-acre block with its face to the Derwent River at the bottom of the hill, the other side bordering the woodland that extended up the slope to the mountain.

  It was towards the woodland that William led her now. Alice was in a quandary. What William had said was true; if her mother lost her job she would find it hard to get another one. That was the only reason she had agreed to go for a walk with him but she wasn’t a fool. She knew that walking was not all William had in mind but walking with him did not mean she was willing to let him do anything else. Even if she did – and she would not! – there was no guarantee that Mother would keep her job anyway.

  We can have a chat. Maybe see a few birds. Uncle says there are lots around here. Do you like birds?

  What a question! She doubted he would know one from the other.

  Yet still she walked at his side. Her mind was in turmoil but still she walked.

  The Tregellas property was separated from the woodland by a stone wall but there was a gate which William now opened.

  ‘Come,’ he said.

  The metal hinges creaked as he shut the gate behind them. Ahead of them the close-knit trees cast a green darkness.

  Into which they walked side by side.

  Aloysius Murphy, the main agent for the Derwent farms, had an office in a building near the stables at the rear of the big house. He was a great one for meetings and held one every week so his overseers could keep him up to date on the state of the properties under their control.

  Richard Dark had no problem with the meetings; it made sense that Murphy should want to know what was going on since he was answerable to Barnsley Tregellas and he, beginning to fail as age and sickness tightened their grip, was still a harsh taskmaster.

  Richard needed no one to remind him of that because Barnsley had never forgiven him for the loss of the money he claimed Richard’s father had stolen from him, a resentment that had become even more potent when two expeditions to the Whitsunday Islands had failed to find any gold.

  ‘Debts you’ve got, by rights you should work for nothing.’

  Barnsley was king of grudge-holders; if he’d said it once he’d said it fifty times. He would probably still be saying it on his deathbed and William, taking his cue from his uncle, apparently thought the same.

  Too bad; the benefit of being accused so unfairly and so often was that eventually you ceased to hear it at all. Richard had a job, he was good at it and resenting the past served no purpose.

  There was another reason he was happy about the meetings; they gave him the chance to visit the house and, if he was lucky, spend a few minutes alone with Alice McIntyre.

  His feelings for her had deepened since his return from the sea. Perhaps even before that; as children they had been close, then had come that catastrophic first voyage and its aftermath, when he had felt the world had turned against him, but since that bad time they had grown close once again.

  He had made up his mind he would marry Alice McIntyre when the time was right. He had never spoken to her about it but from everything that had passed between them over the years he took it for granted there would be no problem.

  The meeting was over. Richard had looked for Alice but missed her. He was riding down the drive towards the estate gates when he saw her walking with William near the stone wall on the far side of the grounds.

  He had never expected to see Alice McIntyre and William Tregellas walking together.

  He drew his horse to a stop and watched, the blood flushing into his brain as he saw them go through the side gate and disappear into the woodland.

  Not speaking of something he had thought inevitable was far distant from not caring. For the first time he realised that one of the reasons he had never spoken to her was his doubt that he possessed whatever quality was needed to hold a woman. He saw too that a woman was not a creature to be taken for granted, that it was his ignorance and stupidity that had created the present situation. It was as though he had pushed her into William’s arms.

  They would see about that.

  He put heels to his horse. Soon he was flying, hair loose, hat taut at the end of the string that held it to his throat. He entered the woods and quickly found a track he remembered. He rode more gently now, ears alert, hearing only silence. He dismounted and tethered the horse. He settled his hat on his head and walked deeper into the trees. His heart was pounding, he had a sickness in his throat, but somewhere not far away he would find her. That he knew. He would not think of what might happen then.

  There were ferns and silence broken only by the thin whisper of streams flowing from the mountain.

  Alice knew what William wanted, knew that he was never going to get it. Yet she sensed that William, years younger than she, was older and more experienced in certain areas into which they now entered.

  William was big but soft. She would not have expected that in a man of his age. Because he was a man, she saw that now, and his hands were knowing. First his right hand took her left. She would have pulled away but did not, looking at him in the deserted wood while her mind seethed with uncertainty. He ran his fingers lightly up her arm. She did not shiver but knew they were moving towards something and was unsure whether she had the ability to prevent happening what she knew was already happening. The guileful hand momentarily cupped her breast beneath her dress, moving away before she could protest. She did nothing but the blood was drumming in her head.

  ‘I like to come here,’ he said. ‘Alone with the birds and the trees.’

  His eyes were bright and knowledgeable as he looked down at her. As again he touched her breast, watching her, and this time did not move it away but caressed her thoughtfully. Her blood was raging now as he kissed her.

  His fingers touched the buttons of the dress.

  Alice might have yielded her heart as her flesh had already declared its willingness to yield but at the last instant she saw herself, teeth shameful against his teeth, and was revolted.

  She gathered herself to fight him but he was too strong, despite his softness, and things had gone too far. Nevertheless she fought anyway, would fight to the last. She was as angry with herself for her temporary weakness as with William, resisting, twisting as he tr
ied to subdue her.

  ‘Stop it!’ And when he showed no sign of doing so she screamed as loudly as she could. ‘I said stop it! Leave me alone!’

  He did not and she saw her unexpected resistance had made him as angry as she. She began to panic, flinging herself to and fro in the arms that continued to crush themselves about her.

  Suddenly all changed. She felt rather than saw it, a wind scything the air that dragged them apart, she stumbling, falling, opening her eyes to see William being smashed repeatedly, flung bleeding to the ground to be dragged limply to his feet and hit again, his face a mask of blood.

  Who? What? For an instant she could grasp nothing of what was happening then saw that it was Richard, a Richard she had never known, an avenging creature with muscles hardened by years of physical work, whose fury stained the air as red as William’s blood. So that Alice cried out again, in fear and protest.

  ‘Stop! You’re killing him!’

  He was deaf until she snatched at his arm, crying in terror now as she implored him over and over again, and at last saw the madness leave his face. He stopped, letting William drop, and stood with head thrown back, his contorted features imploring the sky that was hidden behind the breeze-shimmered leaves.

  Richard and Alice looked at each other. Now what do we do?

  ‘We must help him,’ Alice said.

  Together they eased William to his feet. He swayed but could stand. Just.

  ‘You’d better wash your face,’ Alice said.

  He nodded.

  Alice went to help him but he flinched away from her touch. With William moving like an old man, they made their way to a nearby rivulet. He crouched and gingerly washed his face. Slowly he stood.

  Richard’s frenzied rage had created an emptiness in the air which made speaking hard but there were things that had to be said and Alice knew she was the one to say them.

  ‘We went for a stroll in the woods,’ she told William. ‘That’s all: just a stroll. You decided to climb a tree and fell. You understand? Unfortunately you knocked yourself about a bit but luckily Richard and I were able to help you.’

  William stared at her, saying nothing.

  ‘I got bruises where you grabbed me. You know where. I shan’t say nothing about them unless I have to but if you make trouble for either of us I shall tell Mrs Hickmot the truth, that you tried to rape me and Richard saved me.’

 

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