It was so reasonable, drat the man. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog of fear that held her in thrall. She must think clearly. Furiously, she marshalled her arguments, all the while keeping one hand held tightly to the stirrup of her rescuer’s saddle.
Could this be the end of her adventure? Was there really no choice but to go tamely home again? A grim frown flitted across her face as her eyes stared at the horizon, caught up in memories of past months. She ignored the quirky twist of interest in the eyes of the stranger.
What was there at home for her? A stepmother who resented and despised her; a home in exile with the widowed aunt from whom she had just escaped, a woman who viewed Geraldine as a holy mission in life and was intent on driving out the devil of rebelliousness she saw blackening Geraldine’s soul; and a father who loved her dearly, but had come to a point in his life where he sought peace first and his daughter’s happiness second.
No, that was unfair. Her father had loved her late mother deeply, but that did not mean he understood the spirit that drove her daughter. She was back to the same dreary dilemma that had driven her to the goldfields in the first place.
If she turned back now, she had two choices: the living death of her aunt’s house in Dunedin, or home to her father’s new run in Canterbury, to be forced to stand aside and watch as her stepmother drove her father to sell up everything he held dear, including the remote land of her earliest years. Only then could she truly make him settle into the narrow respectability of the Christchurch landed gentry his second wife craved so ardently.
Her eyes looked down the years ahead, and her head shook. The denial was automatic. She had tasted liberty too briefly and was not about to lose it. Not to Black Jack MacRae, and certainly not to this man who had ruined her hard-won escape. She looked up again, and a sudden gust of anger blew away the gloom. The man was laughing at her! “You said something about a drink,” she said curtly. “Water will do nicely, thank you.”
His shoulders shook harder, but he bowed, gently tugging her hand off the stirrup.
“The river is this way,” he said, and a decided ripple rang through his words.
Geraldine chose to ignore it. They had stopped by one of the rare, quiet beaches on the banks of the Molyneux, small slivers of peace giving respite from the ferocious, swirling waters of the mighty river of gold. Miners sought out such places, sifting the fine gravels for the gold deposits in them. The river was beginning to fall after the swollen floods of spring and more such places were becoming exposed. As yet, none of the thousands flocking to the fields had found this spot and they had it to themselves.
Carefully, she picked her way down the loose stones on the bank, stooping at the river’s edge to lift a handful of icy water to her mouth. Her thirst quenched, she stood by, watching first the man, then his horse copy her action, noisily slurping at the water.
She looked up from her idle survey of the horse, to find him studying her.
“You may be a lady, but you’re not drawing room bred.” he said.
“No.”
He waited.
“I was born in the colony,” was all she would add. He studied her further, but at her continued silence, he finally gave a quick flourish of a bow, the dratted grin back again.
“So I will not have to escort you back to Dunedin?”
She shook her head. “I made it here safely; I can manage fine.”
“An innocent woman on her own. I have been wondering how you achieved that.”
She blushed. “I was in disguise.”
He waited, with a look of supreme enjoyment.
“I dressed as a youth, if you must know.” She had a ridiculous urge to stamp her foot in frustration, even more so when he bent over with a great gust of laughter.
“Sweetheart, there is nothing boyish about you.” His hand lifted, gently grasped her chin and lifted her face to study, his fingers lightly stroking the curve of her cheek. “Absolutely nothing,” he said again, his voice husky. It touched something deep inside her, something she had never felt before, and she ducked her head away from that too-close scrutiny. She took a defensive step back.
“It was a very good disguise,” she protested. One she fully intended to embrace once this man left her alone. The thick jacket and baggy boys drill trousers had left her a shapeless mass, and the too-big wide awake hat had successfully enveloped the troublesome fall of hair. It had fooled those she met—whatever this man thought.
She would fool them again, too, but where to go? That was the problem—or was it?
It was her turn to study him now, seeing the strength in his fine bones and thinking of the inbred courtesy of his actions, regardless of what he might say. Could she trust him? Did she have any choice? A determined spur lit her heart and she reached for the reins.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he protested, grabbing for them as well.
“You owe me,” she shot back.
“For rescuing you from one of the most dangerous men on the Dunstan Field?”
“It’s your fault I came to his attention,” she pointed out. “I’m coming with you. It’s you who are in my debt, not the other way round, so you can fix this mess you landed me in. After that, my hope is never to see you again.”
Suddenly Geraldine lunged onto the horse, swinging herself quickly into the saddle. “I’m off. You coming?”
“Why, you little vixen,” and he grabbed at the bridle, pulling himself up to lodge firmly behind her. “All right, I give in—for now. As soon as I can manage it, you will be on that stage to Dunedin. You’re more danger to me than that whole pack of villains back there. One condition: we go where I say. Black Jack may want to have some fun with you, but he wants to kill me.”
Which was a very grudging admission of defeat, thought Geraldine, but who cared? Her adventure was not over. The grin on her face was almost a match for Bas Deverill’s.
Two hours later, she was not feeling so cocky. Yet again, he had surprised her, riding away from the well-worn track to the goldfields and plunging back into the hills. The sun was nearly down and they were still lost in the rugged hills behind Dunstan township. He was travelling inland, not down to the coast as she had first supposed. Nor could she challenge him. By her own words, she was committed to his choice of route. It did not make her feel any easier.
The horse’s hooves clipped tiredly along the dusty slopes, as it picked its way carefully around thorny clumps of matagouri bushes and treacherous, sliding shale. It lifted its head and Geraldine looked for the reason. They were riding down a barely discernable footpath and she now saw that what had appeared to be a rocky outcrop above the small creek below was in reality a small hut. Two-and-a-bit walls of stones set into the hillside, with shale slates for the roof and an iron sheet for a crude door. At one end, a chimney had been built and the floor and back wall, she knew, would be bare earth. It was a crude hut, typical of so many built by the miners in this treeless wilderness.
They pulled up outside. The strange young man who had plunged her so precipitately into adventure slid off the horse’s back and then offered his hand to aid her own descent. One eyebrow flew quizzically up above the glinting blue eyes.
“Tired, hungry and decidedly cross,” he pronounced, eyeing her in amusement.
“Not at all,” she lied.
She held her back straight and strode forward defiantly as Bas held the makeshift door. All that, and every kind of fool imaginable, was what she said to herself.
The interior was much as she had expected. In one corner, a large hearth was set into the makeshift chimney, and she was pleased to see a store of the local coal set by the wall. There was even a large round cauldron, of the type known commonly as a camp oven, hanging from a bar over the fireplace. In this place of few resources and a crowd of desperate miners, such luxury was unlooked for. Cooking utensils were worth their weight in gold! In the other corner, a large sack lay folded, waiting to be stuffed and made into a mattress.
She turned,
her face a question. This was a prepared place of refuge, not an abandoned lucky find. Bas correctly guessed her worry.
“I did a good turn for a man who made his stake and decided not to stay longer. He told me of this place and said it was mine if I needed it.”
“It looks like you expected that you might do so.”
“I’ve learnt that it always pays to have an escape route.”
She heard him in silence, opened her mouth, then shut it.
“Very wise,” he chuckled.
He left then and she could hear him outside, tending to his horse. She stood a second longer, fear batting her, then suddenly she remembered his grin and a gust of excitement washed over her. Who knew what the night would bring, but did that really matter yet? No, what was more important now was a fire, dinner and a place to sleep after whatever should come. She turned briskly and had soon set to work.
The local coal was not of particularly good quality, but in the treeless wastes of inland Otago, it was all there was available, and she eventually managed to get a fire going. It was not cold, but the hut looked far more cheerful in the flickering glow. Then she began to hunt. The place had the look of a stocked refuge and she soon found her instincts to be right. Behind a rock set into the back wall was a small hollow and there she found flour, salt, sugar, tea and an old packing tin that would do nicely for carrying water.
It took her three trips to the creek below the hut to get enough water, but soon she had some coming to the boil in the camp oven. Then she mixed flour, water and salt to make the crude bun known as damper on a clean slab of slate she recovered from the hill above, and set the dough to cook on the upturned lid of the camp oven.
Soon, the reassuring smell of cooking spread through the hut. She popped a handful of tea into the boiling water, and then began fossicking again. A piece of rock propped in one corner could be laid flat to form a crude table. She dug deeper still into the niche that served as pantry.
“Aha!” she crowed, hauling out her newfound treasure and standing to eye it in delight.
“You sound as though you’ve found the Crown Jewels,” said a voice behind her.
“Just about,” she replied, too pleased with her find to be annoyed at Bas Deverill and his quiet re-entry. She swung around, triumphantly holding up the prize – one very old, battered tin mug. “Tea and damper?”
“What, no cream or strawberries?”
“Too early in the year for strawberries,” she grinned back, then gestured him to take a seat as she carried the damper across to the makeshift table, using the edges of her skirt to carry the hot, camp oven lid. Dipping the mug into the hot tea, she broke off a piece of damper, sprinkled a small dash of sugar over the broken inner edge and passed both to him.
“You’ve done this before,” he commented, taking them from her with a short nod of his head and eying her warily.
“I told you, I was born in the colony.”
“Where?”
But that would lead to the complications of truth. “A bit north of here,” was all she said.
He wasn’t to be so easily satisfied. “I guess you to be about twenty years or so.” She nodded. “The only white people born in this part of the colony at that time were missionary brats and whalers by-blows.”
“I am neither of those,” she shot back, her head coming up sharply, her green eyes sparkling, only to see her strange companion double up with laughter. By the time he recovered sufficient to speak, the spark of anger inside her had become a blaze.
He choked once, then again. He must be able to see her rage, but showed no sign it perturbed him.
“Please tell me which of my guesses you found the most insulting – missionary brat or whaler’s by-blow,” he finally managed to get out.
“Oh! Why… by-blow, of course,” she stuttered back.
“Liar,” he said softly. “There’s none of the missionary in you, though I suspect someone has tried their hand at forcing you into that mold at some stage. They didn’t do a very good job. Next time, you should slap my face if I dare to mention such an indelicate subject as whalers’ misbegotten children.”
She flushed scarlet. Aunt Shonagh would have been horrified at her behaviour, but Geraldine had grown up with the whalers and their children. Her parents had begun life in the colony working for Johnny Jones, the earliest farmer in this part of the colony, and their only other neighbours had been from the nearby whaling settlement. The whaling families, the rough men and their self-proclaimed wives and children, made up the world of her childhood and were still the only people apart from her parents she had ever trusted. Not that she was going to tell this man that. No, silence was her safest defence, and the meal was finished in strained quiet. It did not stop him watching her.
By mutual consent, he left her to tidy up the remains while he set out to pull some tussock to stuff the mattress. Once the hut was tidied again to her satisfaction, she went to help, pulling at the tough grasses and stuffing them into the sack to form a bed she knew from experience to be remarkably comfortable.
Then all was set for the night, and he stood watching her eye the sole mattress in worried speculation. His lips twitched in amusement, seeing the blush she could not hide.
“Calm down, my wee Irish colleen.”
“It’s Scots, actually,” she shot back, nervous and on edge.
“Not with those eyes of green.”
“My mother was Irish,” she conceded. “I have them from her.”
“And the hair?”
“From my father. My mother’s was black. Black as the sheen of a moon-shrouded lake, my father would say. I think he was right. She died when I was thirteen.”
Her head ducked, letting the living strands of amber cloak the trouble in her face. She felt a brush of air as his hand reached towards her, then pulled suddenly back.
“Your father married again,” he guessed, too accurately for comfort.
“Yes. A fine Scotswoman, from Edinburgh.” She clasped her hands tightly at the memory of the woman who had changed everything in her idyllic young life. Her stepmother, that good, law-abiding woman, had never tried to come to terms with the wild, Highland heritage of her husband—or her stepdaughter. As soon as Geraldine was old enough, she found herself bundled off to Dunedin, to stay with Aunt Shonagh and acquire some town polish, her father had told her. To find a husband and be off my hands, was the unspoken wish of her stepmother, read too clearly in the woman’s falsely smiling farewell.
She shook herself. What was there in this man that laid her soul bare? She looked up, fearful of the scorn she expected. His face was still, the warm humour banished. The room seemed suddenly too small and she stepped back unconsciously, wishing the heavy quiet gone. She had told him too much. Suddenly, she was again conscious of the dark outside and the remote loneliness of this small hut. He watched her face so closely.
“I’ll take first watch. You have the bed for now,” he said finally, turning to open the door. Then stopped. “I may not know your parents, but I do recognise the manners of one reared gently. Many things have been said of me, but never yet that I forced any woman to share my bed.” There was a fleeting shadow of bitterness in the words, as suddenly banished as he flung a grin on his face, dispelling the gloom, and added carelessly, “If you do care to offer, though, do not expect me to decline. You are very beautiful.” And he had the gall to laugh as she flicked a last switch of tussock at him.
Chapter 2
A hand was shaking her by the shoulder.
“Go away.”
“Sorry, Sleeping Beauty, much as I like to oblige a lady. It’s late and if we are to continue unscathed tomorrow, I need some sleep now. Up you get, my little colonial Miss.” Geraldine felt herself being rolled unceremoniously onto the hard rock floor. Rubbing her elbow, she sat up glaring, but said nothing. She was the colonial he labelled her as, and knew well the truth of his words.
“Pass me the gun, then. I am well used to handling one,” she added, to
counter his reluctant grip on the barrel. “Don’t worry. You have not yet given me reason to suppose that I would be wiser to use it on you than on our friends out there.”
It took a while before he slowly released the weapon. She took it, her hand easily falling into the familiar way of it as she went through the usual checks, ensuring it was loaded and ready to fire. He watched her a moment then seemed to be satisfied, settling down deliberately on the mattress and pulling his coat collar up.
“Call me if anything happens,” he said, then turned over. Either he was a good actor or he really did trust her. Why she hoped it was the latter, she could not say. Be grateful, that was the best course. Wasn’t it?
She thrust the thought away and let herself slowly out the door, seeking the shadow of the adjacent rocky spur. From here, she could see the gully below but had to stand periodically to peer into the deep shadows of the hill behind them. It was all rough shale that way, the small hut being built right at the head of the small gully scoured out by the busy creek springing from snow melt and springs in the hills surrounding them. Any who came at them from the rear might well be hidden from sight, but the sliding of gravel and rocks set off by their feet would soon betray them. No, intruders were more likely to approach by the narrow path over the hill below, as had she and Bas Deverill, or to use the boulders sprinkled along the creek bed to hide their approach. She couldn’t see the hill on the other side of the hut, but the sheer bluff at the top would stop any coming that way.
Swift Runs The Heart Page 2
