A Tattooed Heart (38 page)

‘Bloody positive,' Friday replied.

‘In a few weeks?'

‘I don't know, to tell the truth, but honestly, she did look like shite today. It can't be far away. She had a coughing fit and all this blood and stuff flew out.'

‘Well, I'll just have to wait, then, won't I?' Harrie said, giving a final sniff and popping her hanky into her sleeve. ‘But I'm warning you, if she's not dead in a month I'm going up to her house and putting a pillow over her face myself.'

Sarah and Friday looked at her, alarmed, and Aria grinned.

Harrie shrugged. ‘What? I'm just taking care of my family. And speaking of families, we're having a supper this Friday to celebrate Matthew and Lucy's betrothal. Will you all come?'

‘Hell, I'd forgotten all about Matthew getting married,' Friday said.

Aria suggested, ‘Perhaps you should spend less time in the linen cupboard.'

‘I haven't forgotten,' Sarah said. ‘We're making the rings.'

‘We haven't got them a gift.' Friday looked at Harrie, who knew about those sorts of things. ‘What should we get?'

‘Something for the house.'

Sarah said, ‘Three dozen sea sponges and a lemon tree.'

Friday frowned. ‘Eh?'

‘Lucy said once she doesn't want babies till she's older. That should do the trick.'

‘You can't give them that,' Harrie said, scandalised. ‘What about a nice tea set, or some linen? Sheets or a pretty comforter?'

Friday said, ‘I'm not shopping for a tea set. I wouldn't know where to start.'

‘God, you're such a peasant,' Sarah scoffed.

Aria said, ‘I am not a peasant. My mother has two very beautiful Worcester porcelain soup tureens we purchased here four years ago, though she does not put soup in them. We will go shopping tomorrow, Friday, after you have finished work, and choose something.'

‘What are you giving them?' Friday asked Sarah.

‘A hefty discount on Lucy's rings.'

‘That's romantic.'

‘It is, isn't it?'

‘When are they getting married? I've forgotten.'

‘January.'

Friday's eyebrows went up. ‘That's quick. Are you sure Lucy's not knapped already?'

Harrie said, ‘I knew you were going to say that.'

Friday giggled. ‘Poor Matthew, he must be absolutely bursting for a shag. I don't think he ever got one off Sally Minto.'

‘Well, I think it's really lovely,' Harrie said. ‘I think they make a lovely couple, don't you? I'm so pleased. It's about time he found someone.'

‘Yeah, good on him,' Friday agreed. ‘He's not a bad old stick, Matthew. And Lucy's a decent sort, though why the hell she wants to spend her days teaching bloody kids is beyond me.'

‘Why you want to spend
your
days flogging men's hairy, sweaty arses is beyond
me
,' Sarah said.

‘It's a job.'

‘I've got to go,' Harrie said, standing. ‘Daisy's got Charlotte but she and Elsa will be serving supper as soon as James gets home.'

Sarah rose as well. ‘Me, too. Adam's threatened to cook if I'm late. I don't fancy carbonised sausages.'

Friday got off the bed. ‘Come here, everyone.' She held out her arms and drew Aria, Sarah and Harrie into a hug. ‘Well, we finally did it, didn't we? We've beaten the bitch. We're free.'

Just as Friday and Aria were about to leave for Matthew and Lucy's party later that week, Ivy brought a letter upstairs.

‘Who delivered it?' Friday asked as she turned it over. She had a very bad feeling; the writing on the front was unpleasantly familiar and so was the colour of the sealing wax. Had Bella reneged already?

‘I didn't see. Al asked me to bring it up. Is something the matter?'

‘No, don't worry. Thanks, love.'

Her stomach churning and dreading another visit to Bella's house, Friday broke the triple seals and opened it.

‘What does it say?' Aria demanded.

Friday frowned. What it said was (the names all correct for a change):

26 October 1832

Friday Woolfe, Sarah Green, Harrie Downey,

I am not well. I am making amends. I wish to apologise for any pain, distress and financial inconvenience I have caused you.

I particularly, and genuinely, wish to apologise for my role in the demise of Rachel Winter. Had I not ‘introduced' her to Gabriel Keegan, I believe she would still be alive today. I will go to my grave with Rachel Winter's death resting heavily on my conscience.

BS

‘Bloody hell,' Friday breathed. ‘She must have taken a proper turn for the worse since I saw her.'

Aria said, ‘But surely she is mistaken? You said your friend did not die because of what the man Keegan did to her. You said she had an illness in her head.'

‘She did, but he made her pregnant, and that made her head worse when Charlotte was born. Anyway that's not the point. The point is she's said sorry.'

‘Saying sorry does not mean anything
now,'
Aria growled. ‘Anyone can bleat out an apology on their deathbed. Where is the life of your beloved friend? Where is the upoko tuhi of my kinsman? Where is all the money she took off you? These are the things that matter, not a hollow “sorry”.' She jabbed an angry finger at the letter. ‘Look! My name is not even in the note. She does not even care about the pain and tremendous loss of mana she has visited upon my family.'

That was true, but not exactly unexpected, Friday thought. In her experience professional criminals were a callous lot, and it'd be especially unlikely that a queen of the Liverpool underworld would give a toss about the sensibilities of a few New Zealand natives she'd robbed.

‘She doesn't understand.'

‘Do
not
defend her!' Aria roared.

‘I wasn't.'

Aria strode to the door, skirts rustling and boot heels ringing, and wrenched it open. ‘She is an evil woman who deserves to die a messy and painful death, and if she was not dying already, I would kill her myself.'

‘God, keep your hair on,' Friday said, alarmed at her vehemence.

‘I will not keep my hair on.' Aria glared at her. ‘It is you who should keep your hair on. You have gone very strange lately.'

‘I have not.'

‘Ever since you went to Bella's house and found out that she is not a woman. It is almost as though you have forgiven her for what she has done.'

‘I have not forgiven her!'

That wasn't it at all — she hadn't — but Friday felt her face heat up all the same, and the moment she did, she went even redder.

‘And I am sick of you drinking your gin,' Aria went on, in full flight now. ‘You said you would not but you do, all the time.'

‘Christ, not this again.'

‘Yes, this again. You promised.'

‘I said I'd cut down a
bit.'

‘No, there was no “cut down a bit”. You promised me you would stop. You promised Harrie and Sarah you would stop. Mrs Hislop told you to stop or she will fire you.'

‘Yes, and I
will.'
Nag, nag, nag.

‘When?'

Oh, shut the hell up. ‘When the time's right.'

‘The time is never right for you, Friday.'

‘I can't help it if shitty things keep happening, can I?'

‘What is wrong with now? The blackmail is over, Bella will be dead soon, everyone is happy.' Aria paused, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I will not tolerate you getting drunk any longer. You have become a person I very much do not like and I cannot be with you if it happens again.'

It wasn't her who'd gone strange, Friday thought, it was bloody Aria — ever since she'd shagged those soldiers in Newcastle, which she'd
had
to do to get them out of there. It had been unpleasant, and yes, she'd been punched in the head, but those men had been no worse than countless other cullies she'd had. They'd hardly talked about it since, but she knew it was bothering Aria. A lot. She didn't understand, though, how little it had really meant. In fact, Aria reckoned that was the trouble — that she, Friday, had no pride.

‘This isn't really about the gin, it's about Newcastle, isn't it?' she said.

‘Can you not see that it is the same thing?' Aria demanded.

‘My drinking and fucking those soldiers? Oh, it is not!'

‘It is. If you valued yourself, you would not abuse yourself with the gin, and you would not have allowed those men to treat you like a piece of meat.'

That
gave Friday a fright. Hadn't she said almost those very words to Bella? ‘I had to. How the fuck else were we going to get out?'

‘I could have killed them.'

‘Oh, not that again. Can't
you
see what shit we'd have been in if we'd been caught?'

‘If
. Why do you not trust me to take care of you?'

‘I do.'

‘You do not. You do not listen to me and you have to do everything your own way. And do you know something, Friday Woolfe? Your own way is very often wrong.'

‘Is it? Well, I'm twenty-two and I'm still here so it can't be that wrong.'

‘You are a convict and an inebriate and you whip men's arses for a living.'

That stung. ‘You said you didn't care about me being a convict, or the flogging.'

‘It is a lot better than the prostitution. Friday, I say these things because I love you.'

‘I
know
. I love you, too.'

Aria gazed at her, her beautiful dark eyes luminous. ‘It would break my heart to be without you, but I cannot tolerate your drinking. I cannot tolerate your willingness to submit yourself to indignity and dishonour. And you must trust me.'

Friday felt tears sting her own eyes, and she wondered why the hell she constantly risked losing the love of this gorgeous woman. ‘It'd break mine, too.'

As Friday and Aria made their way towards Harrie's house on Hunter Street, the paddlesteamer
Sophia Jane
churned her way into Sydney Cove. With the usual lack of fuss she berthed at King's Wharf, shortly thereafter disgorging her passengers, including Jonah Leary.

It had been five weeks since he'd kidnapped the child and over a month since those bloody women had taken her back, and he was
still
no closer to finding his accursed brother. He was, however,
damn near penniless as he'd had to lodge at the Crooked Billet due to Iris Kellogg locking him out of her house, and, worse, he strongly suspected she'd recently told those interfering bloody tommies from the King's Own that he'd left Sydney without permission, the bitter old slag. They'd come knocking a couple of days back, forcing him to jump out from a second-storey window and skulk about till he could get himself on the paddlesteamer. And now he'd have to keep his head down here, too, in case a message had been sent south and the police were keeping an eye out for him for violating the terms of his ticket.

But it didn't matter a pinch of shit whose sights he was in: he'd find Bennett if it was the last thing he did.

He'd have one last try at snatching the kid again and if that failed, there would be other ways to hunt down his brother.

To celebrate Matthew and Lucy's betrothal, Harrie had invited to supper Sarah and Adam, Friday and Aria, James's practice partner Dr Lawrence Chandler and his wife Eloise, Matthew's friend from work Robert Prior and his wife Patience, and, out of courtesy, Lucy's employer Gertrude Armitage and her husband Lloyd. Fourteen people, which meant that, to accommodate everyone, including the children, the extra leaves of the mahogany dining table had to be opened out, dusted then polished before being laid with the good flatware, silver and crystal.

When Daisy and Elsa had finished, Daisy having completed the setting with matching vases overflowing with sweetpeas and freesias from the garden, Sophie, Anna and Robbie stood staring, open-mouthed.

‘It looks like the king's supper table!' Anna breathed.

‘King table!' Charlotte crowed, stuck to Sophie like a limpet.

‘Well, not quite,' Harrie said, then realised with a painful squeeze of her heart that, to them, it probably did. It would have to her, once, too.

‘I happen to know that the king has his supper on a silk cushion balanced on his knee,' Daisy said, adjusting a spray of sweetpeas, ‘and that Queen Adelaide has to feed him bread soaked in milk because of his mouldy old false teeth.'

Sophie and Anna giggled.

‘Oh, who told you that?' Harrie asked.

‘I saw it in a broadsheet.'

‘Can we come and see when the supper's served?' Sophie asked.

Harrie shook her head.

Crestfallen, the girls stared at the floor.

‘You won't have to, you silly girls. You'll be sitting at the table. James and I wouldn't give a supper without our best girls and boy!'

Anna and Sophie grinned delightedly at each other, though Robbie looked less than thrilled. That was all right — Harrie hadn't expected him to be — but he could damn well put on some decent clothes and behave like a young gentleman for a couple of hours. It wouldn't kill him.

‘Me?' demanded Charlotte.

‘Yes, sweetie, and you.'

It was far from ideal, having Charlotte plonked in her highchair at a supper table set for adults, and well past her bedtime, but Daisy and Elsa would be run off their feet preparing and serving the food, and everyone else would be at the table. There simply would not be anyone free to mind her. She could
not
be left alone, not for a
second.

‘Can we wear our new dresses?' Anna asked.

‘Of course you can.'

‘I'm not getting dressed up,' Robbie said.

Harrie replied, ‘You are so. Elsa's already pressed and starched your new shirt. It's hanging in your room.'