Ghost Gum Valley (47 page)

Marmaduke tried to sound off-handed. ‘Isabel was an orphan. She's always lived under sufferance in other people's houses. I want to surprise her. Involve her in the planning of the first real home of her own.'

Edwin nodded sagely, saying nothing.

Marmaduke felt uneasy. ‘What's that funny wise-owl look in aid of? Don't think I've fallen in love or any of that romantic rot.'

‘Of course not, I can see that,' Edwin said carefully. ‘But it sounds as if your year-and-a-day contract might well be extended indefinitely, eh?'

Marmaduke back-pedalled quickly. ‘That's up to Isabel. I miss the freedom of bachelor life but the poor girl
needs
me now more than ever.'

Maeve stood smiling radiantly in the doorway. Marmaduke rose to his feet and drew her into a brotherly hug.

‘I've never seen you look happier. Edwin must be doing something right.'

Maeve's laugh was one part reassuring, one part wicked. Edwin looked pleased but embarrassed.

‘Everything would be perfect except that Mother is performing her own three-act melodrama of guilt and recriminations. As you know she is a rigid Anglican and Maeve is a Catholic. Mother throws a fit at the thought of her only son, a Quaker, being married by the Papacy.'

‘To a fallen woman,' Maeve supplied cheerfully. ‘Mrs B won't have a bar of me in an Anglican wedding ceremony either.'

Edwin gave a weary sigh. ‘The drama continues night and day, week in week out. She claims our marriage would be the death of her – and she
is
bedridden and nigh on eighty...'

Marmaduke decided it was time to take charge.

Edwin's a tiger in the courtroom but he's been emotionally blackmailed by his mother all his life. He's trying to keep both women happy and making himself miserable in the process.

‘There's a way out of a stalemate like this. Two sets of banns and two weddings on the same day. And as far as any future plans, the English have a neat, equitable solution – raise the boys in their father's religion, the girls in their mother's. When a babe pops out just plonk it in Mrs B's arms and she'll fall in love with it.'Owzat?'

‘Fine with me, dear,' Maeve said hesitantly to Edwin but was startled when Edwin raced out of the room without a word.

Marmaduke sat with her in the ensuing silence that grew increasingly uneasy.
Jesus, surely he hasn't rushed upstairs to tell his mother!

Edwin returned armed with a bottle of wine and three glasses.

‘You,' he said pointing at Marmaduke, ‘are booked for best man at both ceremonies.'

They downed the champagne. Marmaduke saw the pair exchange glances awash with tenderness. They seemed to be encased in a private cocoon. Someone had to wrap things up.

‘Right, so now that's settled. If you have trouble organising it here, our chapel at Bloodwood is used by every religion in the locality. Garnet's an atheist but he says it keeps our assigned men quiet on Sundays if they're allowed to bow and scrape whichever way they want. What's your next problem?'

‘You're an angel!' cried Maeve.

Enveloped in her tearful hug and with his back thumped by a grateful Edwin, Marmaduke felt content.

Shining with happiness Maeve rushed off into the kitchen to bake an Australian cake of her own invention, a mixture of passionfruit, bush apples and berries.

Marmaduke was not sure how to broach the next subject.

‘Isabel understands I won't risk fathering kids, but I reckon she needs a child to mother. I've reason to believe there's a child called Rose Alba, about four years old. Maybe in the care of a relative. Born on the wrong side of the blanket. The de Rolland family doesn't know she exists. So your lawyer mate in England needs to be dead careful making enquiries. I'd be glad to bring the kid out to New South Wales to live with us. A surprise for Isabel, understand?'

Edwin eyed him intently. ‘Consider it done. My London colleague is the soul of discretion.'

Marmaduke was itching to put his plans into action. ‘I'd better be off, mate. Until we meet again in your chambers. I need to make a Will leaving Isabel well provided for in case I come to some sticky end. You never know what's lurking round the corner in this Colony.'

He tried to sound light of heart. ‘I haven't the slightest doubt Silas de Rolland is going to lob on our shores. I've only got a short time to turn my whole life around. From being an idle wastrel and womaniser to being a respectable landholder, a man of substance.'

Marmaduke turned at the front door with a self-deprecating smile. ‘I know it sounds crazy, mate, even impossible. But I want to see myself reflected in Isabel's eyes as the man who came to her rescue. Don't laugh. I want to be Isabel's
hero.
'

Before Edwin had time to answer Marmaduke bolted out the door, leapt into the saddle and rode off headlong into the face of the wind.

Book Two
The Mask

Love is always a stranger in the house of avarice
– Andreas Capellanus, late twelfth century

Chapter 33

Darkness at Bloodwood Hall had a deeper, darker dimension than Isabel had ever experienced, even in her nightmares. It wasn't the darkness of the night sky, that vast, midnight blue cocoon around the bush in which a myriad of alien stars fought for space – God's creation of darkness.

This other darkness was human and malevolent. Without Marmaduke's presence to protect her, Isabel fought to keep a rein on her imagination, yet was drawn by an invisible undertow into a whirlpool of psychic blackness that seemed to permeate every room of Garnet's mansion. No amount of lighting – oil lamps, candelabra or firelight – could dispel her feeling that unspeakable things had occurred here in the past and more were to come.

The lingering sense of evil was not confined solely to the stone walls of the house. Walking in the bush with Elise in the direction of Ghost Gum Valley, Isabel left Elise to rest her feet for a few minutes while she went on ahead down a track leading to a secluded water-hole. The sun was shining brightly, yet she became uneasy, feeling sure she was being observed.

It was then she saw them. A small group of tribal men stood watching her in silence some twenty feet away on the far side of the waterhole. Their half naked bodies were glistening with sweat and they carried hunting spears, but judging from their stance they did not appear threatening. She glanced over her shoulder in the hope that Elise had caught up with her. She was nowhere in sight. Isabel knew she must handle this encounter alone. Marmaduke had told her Aborigines considered it good manners for strangers to exchange names. And not to look directly into a person's face.

She dropped a curtsey. ‘Good morning. My name is Isabel Gamble. You are most welcome.'

She tried to avoid direct eye contact but was aware that the oldest of the warriors was observing her. His deep-set eyes challenged her.
He knelt on one knee and scooped up a handful of water to drink, but his eyes never left her face.

Isabel felt unnerved. At the sound of Elise calling her name she turned to answer her, ‘I'm here.'

She spun around, suddenly chilled to the bone. She was completely alone. There was no one else here – nothing except a lingering sense of death that made her flesh creep.

Elise drew level, fanning herself with a switch of gum leaves. ‘What's the matter, Isabel, you're as pale as a ghost?'

‘Elise! Something terrible happened here – can't you feel it?'

Elise gave her an odd look. ‘Nothing important. It was years before Garnet gained title to the land. His convict shepherds ran flocks of his sheep here. Naturally they forbade wandering blacks to hunt kangaroos on Garnet's land. So the blacks speared a sheep for their tucker. Shepherds were punished for losing sheep by having their Government rations cut. So they poisoned the waterhole. Killed off a whole tribe of the poachers.'

Poachers? But it was their tribal land.

Isabel found her voice. ‘Did Garnet know of it?'

Elise shrugged. ‘Don't look so shocked. It's not like the blacks are human like us.'

Isabel picked up her skirts and turned back to the house, too angry to trust herself to speak. She remembered Marmaduke's warning. All the evil that had occurred here had indeed left its mark.

That night Isabel lay curled up in bed in Marmaduke's old nursery isolated from the rest of the household, reading by candlelight the loved books of his youth in an attempt to form a closer bond with him. Her first impressions of Marmaduke had passed through many stages from arrogant, hated adversary to comrade-at-arms, teacher, friend, protector – to the haunting image of the strangely shy, tender Adam. And he was also the hero who had saved her life.

As the shadows danced with the candlelight she held at bay her fears of the creaking sounds magnified by the darkness she had heard for several nights. Now in the absence of Marmaduke's reassuring sleeping presence in the little dressing-room, Isabel gave in to a childlike impulse. She retrieved his pillow from his cot bed and took it
back to her own. Cradling his pillow in her arms she smelt the lingering trace of the sandalwood soap he used to wash his hair. She blew out the last candle and fell asleep, her face on his pillow, knowing that if she woke, the smell of sandalwood would give her a comforting sense of his protection.

In the dark of night she awoke sweating with fear from a vivid dream of that moment in her childhood, the strange expression on Silas's face when she confessed to him she had prayed to the Devil to save her from drowning. She heard his words echo in her mind. ‘You are now dead in the eyes of God,
ma petite cousine.
You have no one else to protect you. Pray only to
me.
'

Unable to define any outline in the pitch blackness, Isabel froze when she heard the familiar feathery sounds of footsteps muffled by the carpet runner in the corridor. The footsteps paused outside her door. She clutched the sandalwood pillow to her breast like a shield.

The Other! My God! Did I remember to turn the key in the lock?

She held her breath and waited. Then, just as those other nights, there was a sharp clicking sound before the footsteps faded away down the corridor. Was this the ghost that Queenie and the Irish servants had heard? Isabel was sure of only one thing.

Martha's ghost would never frighten me. And I'd know if Silas was dead.

Isabel trembled at the indelible memory of his blasphemous words, ‘Pray only to
me.
'

She buried her face in the sandalwood pillow to draw strength from it.

I'm no longer a child. Silas has no power over me. I will pray to God if I want to. Maybe He hasn't forsaken me. Please God bless everyone I love. Aunt Elisabeth, my little Rose Alba. And protect Marmaduke from all that is evil, especially bushrangers.

At last the sandalwood perfume worked its magic. Isabel fell into a deep sleep.

There were no letters from Marmaduke all that week. The motive behind his continued absence remained a mystery. Each passing day had brought no further word since the hasty note he'd penned on arrival in
Sydney Town, telling her that Edwin and Maeve were to be married. Isabel felt pleased for them but strangely abandoned, as if she were shipwrecked on an island called Bloodwood, cut off from the world by an ocean of bushland.

This isolation was not entirely friendless. Queenie never came to the house except on request but passing Isabel in the rose garden the old nanny had gently touched her arm. ‘You know where to find me if you need me, girl.'

Isabel was lavished with attention by her flamboyant father-in-law, a situation Marmaduke warned she must play with care. Isabel prided herself that she had found the perfect solution. How to spend time alone with him, yet hold him at bay. Chess!

Their daily games were played out in the dappled light of the bougainvillea-shaded terrace. She took care to give Garnet the illusion he was teaching her the intricacies of the game that, unknown to him, she had mastered as a little girl alone in Uncle Godfrey's library where she played both sides – the White Rose of York versus the Red Rose of Lancaster.