Dark Torment (10 page)

“I think he’s proved that he is by his actions today.
Gallagher, do you feel that you could undertake to keep my wife and daughters
from coming to harm about the place?” Although Edward shot the question
at him like a bullet, Gallagher didn’t even blink.

“Yes, sir,” he said. Sarah sneaked a glance in his
direction, taking care that neither her father nor Percival saw. If Gallagher
himself did, he pretended not to.

“That’s settled, then. Sarah, you hear?” Sarah
had no choice. How could she protest now, without laying bare the whole of her
exchanges with Gallagher in explanation? And this she was loath to do.
Swallowing a sigh of resignation, she nodded.

“Mr. Markham . . .” Percival was still inclined to
argue.

“Say no more on the subject, John. My mind’s made up.
Even you yourself said that Gallagher was not yet up to doing the kind of work
we need him for. He may as well be watching the women as mucking out the
stable. Besides, there’s no one else we can spare. If we’re going
to save the rest of the flock, we need every able-bodied man out there digging
for water.”

This was true, so there was nothing Percival could say. Still
frowning, he turned to his horse and mounted without another word. Then,
gathering up the chestnut’s reins, he addressed Sarah.

“You’d best ride pillion behind me. My horse is a
trifle fresher than your father’s, I believe.”

Sarah lifted her chin as she stared at him with cold eyes.

“Thank you, but I prefer to ride with my father.”

Edward glanced from one to the other of them, clearly not liking
to see his daughter at loggerheads with the man he thought to acquire for a
son-in-law.

“John’s in the right of it, girl. We came after you so
fast that I damn near killed this plug I’m riding. Can’t think how
he came to be in our stable in the first place. Not the kind of horseflesh I
like. But Max was nowhere to be found, and this sorry bag of bones was the
first one to hand.”

“You could ride Max, and I could ride behind you. Gallagher
can ride your horse.”

“I’m not up to handling Max today, daughter.”
This was so patently a bid to force her to ride with Percival that Sarah almost
stamped her foot. Her father never admitted to illness under any circumstances;
despite his uncharacteristic lack of vigor, she seriously doubted that he was
ill or even feeling poorly. No, his words were nothing more than a shoddy
attempt at coercion, and she would not be coerced.

“I’ll ride behind Gallagher, then. After all, Max is
the freshest of the horses. I wouldn’t want to injure Mr.
Percival’s animal.” This last was said with a saccharine smile. If
Max were only wearing a sidesaddle, she would ride him herself and let
Gallagher walk home!

“My daughter doesn’t ride pillion with a
convict!” The words were said so sharply that Sarah’s eyes widened.
Her father suddenly looked angry; unable to help herself, Sarah glanced over at
Gallagher. He looked angry, too, although he was controlling it well. Probably
only someone who had seen that particular bitter twist to his lips before would
guess that he was furious at the slur.

Left with no choice, Sarah reluctantly allowed Percival to mount
her pillion behind him. The skirt of his saddle was deep and wide. Sarah clung
to that rather than to the man; she was determined not to touch him. By the
time they arrived back at Lowella, her fingers ached from holding on so
tightly. Since the horses were tired and her father refused to abuse good
horseflesh, they kept to a walk. Only this enabled Sarah to maintain her
balance without wrapping her arms around Percival’s waist. Percival tried
once or twice to initiate a conversation with her as they went along, but Sarah
affected deafness. As a result, the overseer was fuming; Sarah herself was
annoyed at having to put up with his possessiveness. Bringing up the rear of
the procession, Gallagher was glowering quite as fiercely as either herself or
Percival. Only Edward, riding as usual in the lead, reached the homestead in a
fairly sunny humor.

When at long last they drew to a halt in the stable yard,
Gallagher dismounted first. Max’s reins in hand, he forestalled Percival,
whose own dismount was hampered by Sarah’s presence behind him, and held
up his hands to Sarah. Glowering at him for his presumption, which she did not
dare refuse for fear of arousing her father’s and Percival’s
curiosity, she placed her hands on the hard width of his shoulders. She felt
the smooth contraction of his muscles through the damp cotton of his shirt as
he placed his hands on her waist and swung her to the ground. Her
fingers— the traitors!—ached to stroke that broad expanse, to
discover for themselves how such perfection of bone and muscle felt to the
touch. Instead, she jerked her hands away. He released her immediately,
stepping back. There was nothing in his action that even the closest observer
could take exception to. But Sarah felt threatened. She drew away from him
immediately, not even deigning to look at him. Her palms tingled from the
contact with his hard shoulders, but she ignored the sensation. Leaving the men
to see to the horses, she started for the house.

Liza was on the porch at the back of the house, waiting for her.
This was the first time she had been out of her room since contracting the
catarrh. Sarah felt mildly surprised at seeing her up and around. She could
only suppose that Liza had decided to recover, Sarah’s absence having
deprived Liza of her captive nurse; certainly Lydia, who was as self-centered
as her daughter, would not cater to Liza’s incessant demands for more
barley water to drink or for a cool cloth to place across her brow, and Mrs.
Abbott, as a former convict, was barely tolerated by both mother and daughter.
At any rate, the younger girl was clad in one of the loose white frocks she
wore only when there was no danger of being seen by anyone outside the family.
She was seated in a slat-backed rocker with a cushioned foot-rest positioned
conveniently near. A jug of lemonade rested on a table by her elbow. But
instead of reclining languidly, as Sarah would have expected—Liza could
usually be counted on to milk a convalescence for all it was worth—her
posture was surprisingly alert. Her eyes touched on her sister only briefly;
then they moved beyond her, widening and brightening. Nonplussed, Sarah looked
over her shoulder. And the reason for Liza’s uncharacteristic behavior
was immediately in view. Gallagher! He had had the infernal nerve to follow her
up to the house!

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded,
forgetting their audience as she whirled to face the man whom she was rapidly
coming to think of as her nemesis.

“Why, Miss Sarah!” It was not his voice so much as his
bright blue eyes that mocked her. “Surely you don’t think I’d
follow you up here without a reason? Mr. Markham decided that he didn’t
want to leave you ladies alone at the house until the man who attacked you is
caught. He thought that you could probably find some work for me to do around
the house when I’m not accompanying one of you somewhere. After all, as
he said, there’s no point in keeping a man idle. Is there now, Miss
Sarah?”

“Oh, you’re a convict.” This, uttered in tones
of deepest disappointment, came from Liza.

Sarah, mortified, saw a tiny muscle twitch once at the corner of
Gallagher’s mouth before his expression became impossible to read. She
turned to frown at her sister. “Where are your manners, Liza?”

The younger girl’s mouth drooped petulantly. She leaned back
in the rocker, her attitude evincing her disgust. “I’m
sorry.” The apology was grudging, given only because Sarah had silently
demanded it. Out and out rudeness, even to a convict, was something that Sarah
would not tolerate, as Liza—and Lydia—had discovered early on, when
they had attempted to set Mrs. Abbott in what they felt was her place.
Liza’s eyes moved broodingly over Gallagher, then brightened a little.
“You’re very good-looking, you know. Do you by any chance know how
to dance?”

“Liza!”

“Well, my ball is next Friday and I still don’t have
the steps of that new dance right. I have to practice with someone, and you
know Pa dances like a water buffalo!”

“Liza!”

“I’m afraid the kind of dances I’m used to
wouldn’t be at all suitable for a ball,” Gallagher said, and to
Sarah’s surprise he sounded amused, instead of angry. She glanced over
her shoulder at him. He was smiling beguilingly at Liza, looking so handsome
that Sarah felt a stab of what she immediately decided was alarm. It was
certainly not jealousy of her young sister and a convict! It was just that Liza
was young and impressionable. And very, very foolish. To Sarah’s certain
knowledge, Liza had never seen a man whose looks rivaled Gallagher’s; the
men and boys of both girls’ acquaintance tended toward the
salt-of-the-earth type—steady and dependable, but nothing to dazzle a
young lady with dreams of romance.

“Liza, behave yourself! Gallagher, if Pa truly sent you up
here to work, then you can wait in the office while I change and then
I’ll find you something to do. Come with me.” There was an edge to
her voice as she swept up the porch steps, Gallagher obediently following.

“Oh, Sarah, you’re such a stick! If you don’t
stop being so proper all the time, you’ll never find a husband!”

Liza’s voice, sulky with the embarrassment of being scolded
before a stranger—a very handsome, decidedly male stranger, even if he
was a convict—floated after Sarah as she entered the kitchen through the
back door. Sarah had to stifle an urge to turn around and throttle her.
Controlling it with what she considered true nobility, she battled a similar
longing with regard to Gallagher as she glanced at him over her shoulder and
saw that he was watching her with cool mockery. Before she could give in to
that impulse, or another, equally unworthy one, Mrs. Abbott bustled into the
room from the long corridor that separated the kitchen from the rest of the
house. Designed to spare the house proper from the heat of cooking food, the
corridor served that purpose admirably. It meant, however, that the family
frequently had to put up with food gone cold between stove and table.

“Why, Miss Sarah, whatever ’ave you done to
yourself?” Mrs. Abbott had not lost a syllable of her cockney accent in
the fifteen years she had been in Australia. Like most of the women sentenced
to transportation, her crime had been prostitution, a fact that had caused
Lydia and, following her mother’s example, Liza, when they had first come
to live at Lowella, to treat Mrs. Abbott as if she carried the plague. Only
Sarah’s staunch championship of the woman who had, whatever her past
transgressions, devotedly nursed her mother, coupled with Edward’s
slightly grudging recognition that they did indeed owe Mrs. Abbott a debt, had
kept her from being sent away as soon as Lydia had come home to Lowella as the
second Mrs. Markham. As broad as a barn door and as homely, dressed from neck
to toes in a long-sleeved black bombazine that she wore because, despite the
heat and Sarah’s pleading, she considered it proper attire for a
housekeeper, Bess Abbott had lost whatever degree of beauty she must once have
possessed. At least, Sarah had always assumed she must once have been at least
marginally attractive; wasn’t that a requirement for success in Mrs.
Abbott’s former line of endeavor?

“It’s a long story, Mrs. Abbott,” Sarah
answered, not feeling up to going into the details of what had happened.
Gesturing at the man who loomed behind her, she said, “This is Gallagher.
He’ll be working around the homestead for a while. Gallagher, this is
Mrs. Abbott, Lowella’s housekeeper and a very good cook. If you’re
hungry, I’m sure she has something about the kitchen that you could eat.
After you finish, you can wait for me in the office. Mrs. Abbott will show you
where it is.”

“Be that glad to,” Mrs. Abbott said, smiling at
Gallagher. “Well, sit, man. I’ve just cooked up some gingerbread,
and there’s that, with cream, if you like. Miss Sarah, it wouldn’t
’urt you to stop a minute and eat some too; you’re barely more than
skin and bones as it is.”

“I’m not hungry, Mrs. Abbott.” Conscious of
Gallagher’s broadening grin, knowing that he was deriving great amusement
from her discomfiture, first at Liza’s hands and now at Mrs.
Abbott’s, Sarah flashed him a darkling look before fleeing the kitchen.
He was already, at Mrs. Abbott’s urging, seating himself at the scrubbed
kitchen table. Sarah had no doubt that Mrs. Abbott would serve him an enormous
plate of gingerbread with cream before he could blink an eye. She was
positively beaming at him. Well, Sarah told herself with a sigh as she let the
kitchen door slam, at least I’m not the only one. He seemed to affect
every female with whom he came into contact like catnip affected cats.

On the way to her room, Sarah glanced in through the open door of
the large parlor at the front of the house and saw Mary and Tess, the two
aborigine maids (Lydia had insisted that their names be anglicized; she claimed
that she could never remember their native Australian names, which she thought
were heathen anyway), hard at work polishing the teakwood floor in preparation
for the dancing that would take place on it during Liza’s ball. The rugs
and furniture had already been removed and stored in a little-used room at the
rear of the house. But the walls still had to be scrubbed and the windows
washed, and the enormous chandelier that had traveled with Lydia from England
had to be taken down and every separate piece of crystal washed and polished
before it could be rehung. All the other rooms, both downstairs and up, had to
be brought to their shining best as well. Besides creating many hours of extra
work, and much bother for Sarah and the staff, the ball was costing Edward a
great deal of money that he could not at the moment afford. But Lydia had
insisted that her daughter come out in true English style, and, as usual,
Edward had bowed to his wife’s wishes.