An Honest Heart (33 page)

Edith wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Not even a month after her presentation, and Dorcas was engaged.

“Also, you should know that Oliver Carmichael has asked Lady Cranston to marry him and she accepted.” Dorcas looked up at Radclyffe, then down at the gravel path. “I thought you had feelings for him, though now I am not so certain.”

Edith was not so certain herself anymore.

“Miss Buchanan, you are getting soaked.” Radclyffe shrugged out of his overcoat and placed it around Edith’s shoulders, drawing her under the umbrella and stepping out into the rain himself. “We should see you to your father’s townhouse. I am certain you have a good reason for being here against your father’s wishes. If you explain to him why you returned to London, perhaps he will understand and forgive you.” Radclyffe gave Dorcas a sickeningly sweet smile. “I believe he is in a forgiving mood of late.”

Edith looked between the two. Oliver was lost to her. Lord Thynne was too. All she had left to her was the comfort and support of her family. And with Dorcas now the golden child, maybe Edith could use her sister’s favor with their father to reenter his good graces.

“I do want to go see Papa. But . . . do you think we can stay, just to watch the opening ceremony?” She raised her brows in an innocent expression. She might yet see Oliver and change his mind.

Dorcas’s pious face finally broke into a smile. “Yes, let’s. I would not want to miss it for the world.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
F
IVE

C
addy kept wiping the back of her hand against her mouth, unable to get the feeling of Oliver Carmichael’s lips to go away. At least his father had the excuse of drunkenness when he’d attacked her at the servants’ ball. Oliver hadn’t smelled or tasted like he had been drinking when he accosted her in the garden.

He’d approached her as if he’d known she would be here. Upon questioning how he had found her amongst the throngs of people crowding into Hyde Park, he confessed that he’d had someone watching Madame Renard’s shop and home. Oliver had followed her from the shop to Hyde Park, then pretended he’d happened upon her.

And to think that she had started to like the man.

With thousands of others, Caddy pressed toward the center of the enormous hall. Not only did she need to get to the middle, she had to get past it. According to the map in the commemorative booklet she’d purchased while standing in line to get through the doors, the Canadian exhibit was on the far side of the central transept. With the queen scheduled to give her speech to open the Exhibition at noon, it seemed everyone in London, and half the rest of the world’s population, crowded into the Crystal Palace to partake of the momentous occasion.

She never should have worn a dress with such a full skirt. She pardoned and excused herself numerous times as she squeezed through the tightest spaces in the crowd. Though no one was rude to her, the closer she got to the transept, the less amiable people were about moving so she could pass.

Her heart raced. It had to be near eleven thirty already, and she was only halfway to the transept.

She paused and lifted the broach watch pinned to her bodice. Ten more minutes until she was supposed to meet Neal—and it must have taken near half an hour to get this far.

Panic began to build in her chest. While trying to be as polite as possible, Caddy pushed her way through the crowd in earnest.

“Excuse me, please. I beg your pardon. I need to get through. It is urgent, I promise. I apologize. I have no desire to take your spot. I must get through to the other side. Someone is waiting for me.” On and on through the seemingly endless sea of people.

She finally caught sight of the crystal fountain, the centerpiece of the transept. She looked at her watch again. Eleven thirty-five.

She had to keep going. Neal could see the crowd. He should know how hard it would be for her to get through.

Please, Lord, let him wait for me. Don’t let him lose hope.

Near the stage, under the giant canopy hanging from the transept roof, a band started playing. The crowd around Caddy pressed forward, nearly sweeping her from her feet. She struggled for balance, then kept pushing against the tide of onlookers, not caring what was happening near the stage, only wanting to find the Canadian timber display.

Ten minutes later, Caddy looked up at the C
ANADA
sign and took a trembling breath.
Please let him still be here.

She pushed out of the crowd and into the display of wood, both rough and prepared lumber, from Britain’s North American colony. Here, out of the main avenue of the Crystal Palace, the crowd thinned.

Behind the Canadian space, another sign indicated she’d entered a display from the West Indies. Surely this was not where he’d meant for her to meet him.

She kept walking, her hope draining and trickling away just like the beads of sweat down her spine.

Beyond the West Indies, she saw a sign that brought her up short. N
EW
S
OUTH
W
ALES
.

Against the exterior wall of the building, below the windows letting in the uncertain gray light from outside, the display from the Australian territory was small and rustic. Wool and grains, copper ore and tools, and fur pelts along with drawings of the animals they’d come from. Caddy reached out to touch the red fur that had come from a kangaroo.

“Beautiful.”

Her heart leapt into her throat, but she didn’t turn at the familiar voice. “How big do they get?”

“The largest I’ve seen was almost five feet tall, fully extended.”

“You—you’ve seen one for yourself?”

“More than one. When I was a boy, I helped the drovers keep them out of the sheep and cattle paddocks, or else there wouldn’t be enough grass for the livestock.”

“You visited Australia when you were young?” Caddy continued to run her hand along the grain of the short, smooth red fur.

“No. I lived there.”

Warm hands settled on Caddy’s shoulders, and she allowed him to turn her to face him. Her heart pounded violently at the sight of him, and it took all her strength of will to keep from wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. But other people wandered around in the nearby displays, and she did not want to embarrass him.

“Caddy, I was born in Australia. My father went there as a surveyor with the Royal Society for Industry in 1820. My mother’s family were also going—her father was the head of the expedition—and they fell in love and married on the ship on the way there.” He let one of the ringlets draped over her shoulder curl around his finger. “I was born two years later, after they settled in Bathurst. When I was four years old, my father discovered gold in the process of sinking a copper mine. The government made him keep quiet about it. So he extracted as much of it as he could and told no one. When I was eleven, my mother died. She had wanted a different life for me than the hardscrabble one she’d seen in New South Wales. So my father sent me back to England to live with my grandmother and attend school.”

Caddy waited for the rest of his confession. “And?”

“And what?”

“That’s your big secret? That you were born in Australia and lived there until you were twelve?”

He squinted and cocked his head. “And my family is now among the wealthiest in the land?”

Laughter, full of joy and relief, bubbled up through Caddy’s chest, and she let it out, finally allowing herself to throw her arms around him in a hug. “You’re certain that is all? You aren’t keeping any other secrets from me?”

Neal took hold of her upper arms and pulled her away from him. Consternated, she frowned at him.

“Do you not understand what I’m telling you? I am one of those people you cannot abide. One of those criminals, one of those wild Australians who are nothing more than thieves and cutthroats.”

She reached up and caressed his cheek, reveling in the rough stubble she could feel just below the smooth surface. “I do not know what you are talking about. Australia may have some convict settlements, and convicts are used to augment the labor force. But so many good, hardworking people have settled there that it has become a lovely, hospitable place.”

Neal stared at her in awe and wonder. To hear his own flattering description of his homeland coming from Caddy . . . if he could have measured his heart, he was certain it would have been twice its normal size.

“So it does not bother you that I hail from a land best known as a penal colony?”

“Was not North America filled with penal colonies at one time?” She waved toward the Canadian display several yards away. “Look at how respectable they are now.” She settled her hands on his lapels. “Besides. After being corrected on my assumptions about Australia, I have educated myself and read about it. I have never before relied solely on rumor and innuendo as fact, and I knew I could not do so in this case either. The circulating library in Oxford had several volumes of essays from visitors and emigrants alike. And they all described it much the same way you did.”

“I cannot believe I put you—put both of us—through unnecessary anxiety over so simple a matter as my birthplace. But after my grandmother’s death, when her will was read and it became common knowledge, I lost all of my patients and I was shunned from taking part in any of the village’s social events. They assumed—wrongly—that my mother had been a convict. They made up all kinds of stories, one worse than the next. I had to leave before I hurt someone in anger.”

Caddy smoothed her hands down his lapels, and his skin tingled. “I cannot believe you would ever do anyone physical harm on purpose.”

“I wouldn’t . . . except when it came to the possibility of needing to defend my mother’s honor.” He waggled his brows at her.

A gong drew their attention, and everyone around them moved toward the main avenue.

“It is time for the queen’s speech.” Neal traced the scar on Caddy’s forehead, disappointed that she’d gotten someone else to remove her stitches.

“We should go listen.”

She did not move.

He didn’t want to either. “We seem to have been left quite alone for the moment.” He leaned down just as she raised up on her toes to meet him. An electric charge bolted through him at the touch of her lips. No matter how much he wanted to do otherwise, he kept the kiss short and sweet, then wrapped his arm around her waist and led her into the fringe of the crowd.

Even with as quiet as so many thousands of people could be, he could not hear the queen’s words clearly. Neal kept Caddy with the crowd until the ceremony ended with a rousing rendition of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” He then pulled her back toward the New South Wales exhibit.

Shortly, Macquarie, Birchip, and the remainder of the committee joined them, ready to greet visitors and answer questions.

Macquarie and Birchip greeted Caddy warmly, apologizing for not revealing the reason they’d sought Neal when they met her at the shop. “The states did not have time to get up a committee to send from Australia, so they left it up to those of us who live here in England already. I’d heard of a doctor in Hampshire who was Australian by birth and thought we should recruit him.” Macquarie cuffed Neal’s shoulder. “But by the time we caught up with him, he had already been run out of his home and practice. Is it any wonder he did not want anyone else to know where he was born?”

“And were you born there, too, Mr. Macquarie?” Caddy dragged her eyes away from the bolt of tweed wool fabric Birchip had just pulled to show a group of women.

“Yes, and proudly so. My great-grandfather was sent there nigh on a hundred years ago, after being convicted of stealing bread to feed his family. His wife managed to arrange passage for herself and their seven children. My great-grandfather escaped the convict colony—Van Diemen’s Land—and they made their way inland from Sydney and homesteaded. When my great-grandfather discovered both copper and coal on his land, he became a very wealthy man. Of course, his name wasn’t originally Macquarie, and he never told anyone what it was so that he couldn’t be caught and sent back to serve the remainder of his sentence.”

Neal almost laughed at the shocked expression on Caddy’s face.

Macquarie leaned close. “Of course, he could have made the whole story up.”

Caddy laughed, and Neal’s chest almost burst with his love for her.

Once Caddy had a chance to see everything on display, Macquarie told Neal to take her around the rest of the Exhibition or he’d do it himself. Happy to oblige, Neal offered Caddy his arm, and they moved out into the wide, main avenue. They consulted Caddy’s guidebook, and Neal insisted they start upstairs, where the largest displays of silks, woolens, lace, and other fabrics were.

Caddy pointed out several plaids and brocades she thought would make beautiful waistcoats for Neal. He, in turn, draped a silk as light as angel feathers—and just as white—across Caddy’s shoulders and a lace shawl over her bonnet.

“You will make a beautiful bride,” he whispered, leaning close.

“Only if someone asks me to be his wife.” She pinned him with a challenging look.