Hester Waring's Marriage (25 page)

She knew now that he was not mocking her, that his admiration for her was real, not feigned. Hester shivered as his eyes caressed her.

‘How did you get in, past Miller and the guards outside?'

‘I didn't,' he grinned, charmed by his own cleverness. ‘I've been inside since mid-day. No one was looking for house-breakers then—and the house is large. I watched
that damned toady, Ramsey, arrive with his hangers-on, and I watched them go. Oh, I've been patient—and all in a good cause.'

‘Why do you want to kill Tom? He hurt you, I know, but you said such wicked things about us. You knew what he was like: you should have expected him to act as he did.'

‘Oh, my darling,' he said, his voice unsteady. ‘If he hadn't married you I might have let him live, even though he has humiliated me beyond belief and caused me to be broken—but not when he has you. I cannot bear to see such a low brute and know that you share his bed.'

‘You can't mean this, Captain Cameron. You always thought me a plain piece, and took care to let me know that you did.'

‘Oh, God, Hester, no! How could I have been so foolish as not to see what a pearl, what a treasure you were. You have haunted me since the ball. It has been gall and wormwood to watch you with him. And now, seeing you like this…helpless…and ill… He deserves to die for what he has done to you.'

‘You are mistaken, Captain Cameron. He has done nothing to me. I want my baby as much as he does. You might as well kill me, too, if you wish to kill Tom because of the child.'

His face twisted again. ‘Oh, Hester, I'll surely kill him, but I wouldn't hurt you for the world. He's corrupted you, I know, but that will pass. He ruined me, for I'm sure that it was he who informed on me to O'Connell. That fool O'Connell said that it wasn't him, but I know better. He caught Kaye at Paramatta and Kaye told.'

So—Jack Cameron had been the trouble all the time. She had been right about Paramatta as well. Oh, Tom, why
didn't you tell me? Why carry all the burden yourself? But her gaze on Jack remained steady and gave nothing away.

He was not so far gone that he did not register that what he had said had touched her. He shook his head as if to clear it.

‘They say he tells you everything. Quite a joke it is. Cunning Tom Dilhorne sharing everything with his lady wife. I can see that he didn't tell you about me.'

‘No,' Hester agreed, ‘he didn't. Are you quite sure that you want to add murder to your other crimes? It certainly won't help you.'

‘No, it won't, but I shall feel better when I've shot him, and freed you from him. If I can't have you, he shan't. Then I shall be able to sleep.'

Keep him talking, said her Mentor, suddenly coming to life again after its long absence and speaking in Tom's voice. Misdirection—remember—it always works. He doesn't know that you're a crack shot. He will think that you are frightened of pistols, not used to firing them.

Hester almost nodded as the voice continued, If you can get possession of his spare pistol, remember to aim for the chest and not the head if you wish to kill him.

Yes, she told herself firmly when the voice stopped, I
do
wish to kill him if I hope to save Tom.

But I have to get his pistol first.

It lay before her on the table. It was inaccessible for the moment while he had his eyes on it. It was plain that Jack was on the edge of insanity and might even shoot her if he thought that she was about to help Tom—or made a botched attempt on him.

Hester closed her eyes. Her life wouldn't be worth much if he killed Tom, and she had the baby to consider as well. If it weren't for the baby, she would have risked herself before now.

‘Thinking, Hester, my darling?'

‘Yes. I was wondering how you can have descended to this. It can't really be for my sake.'

‘Oh. Hester, you're wrong. I was blind, blind! If only I'd known what you were truly like, you would never have married him. I would have made you look at me, not at a felon.'

It was quite useless to try to reason with him, he was too far gone. His mad worship of her might have been amusing, remembering his original distaste for her, if it were not so dangerous. The Gods must be laughing at such a reversal—if they had not planned it for their own amusement.

Her silence made Jack angry.

‘Speak to me, Hester, for he cannot be long now. Plead for him, although nothing which you could say will save him.'

‘No,' she told him calmly. ‘I won't.' His obsession and his rage broke uselessly against the rock of her will.

‘No? Then fetch me a brandy, my darling, as you were fetching him one when I arrived. Waiting for him is thirsty work. If you were my wife, I wouldn't leave you alone at night.'

‘But I'm not your wife, am I, Captain Cameron? And I never would have been—and killing Tom won't make me your wife.'

He lifted his pistol to track her on her clumsy way across the room, and held it steady on her while she poured brandy into two glasses. A noise outside alerted him.

‘Do I hear the swine now?'

Hester's hands, pouring the brandy, were rock steady and the face she showed when she returned to the table was as calm and composed as though she were serving him at a tea party.

She made no reply other than to place the glasses on the table before him. She watched him drink the liquor in one desperate gulping swallow, reminding her painfully of her father.

‘Another?' she offered pushing her glass over to him, and deftly moving the pistol on the table nearer to herself after she had done so. Jack, intent on her face, missed the small manoeuvre.

‘No,
you
must drink it,' he said, pushing it back.

By now Tom's voice in the hall, dismissing Miller from his post to his room over the mews, told them that he had at last returned.

Hester sighed. She had hoped to make her move when Jack was distracted by Tom's arrival, but he was still watching her closely. Worse, her clumsy body prevented her from making any sudden move to snatch the pistol up. Her eyes were firmly on her enemy when the door opened and Tom entered.

He did not at once see Jack, for the room was only half-lit, and he and Hester were in the shadows.

‘Why, my love,' he began. ‘Still up, and in the dark? You should not have waited for me…'

Until, suddenly, all his worst fears confirmed, he saw Jack, his pistol now trained on Hester, grinning in his direction.

‘What are you doing here, Cameron?'

He advanced no further, remaining quite still.

‘Being entertained by your wife and waiting for you, Dilhorne.' He waved his pistol at Tom. ‘As you see, I have come to kill you.'

‘Not very wise, that, Jack. You'll swing for sure if you do. Broke parole, did you?'

Purposefully, his eyes never leaving Jack, Tom began
to move again, close to the wall, towards the settle on which Hester had rested earlier.

‘Stand still, damn you, Dilhorne. I want to see you plain before I do for you. You shouldn't have married Hester. I might have let you live if you hadn't done that.'

Tom could see quite clearly that Jack was over the dividing line which separates sanity from madness, whether temporarily, or permanently, he could not tell. He looked across at Hester who had her back to him, her eyes focused—although Tom did not know this—on the pistol in front of her, so near yet so far. She wished to do nothing which might cause Jack to shoot Tom out of hand. Give her but the one chance, though, and she would have him.

‘You aren't hurt, Hester?' asked Tom, ignoring the madman.

‘Not hurt, just frightened.'

Her voice was cool and unwavering.

‘She's brave, Dilhorne,' said Jack admiringly. ‘You don't deserve her.'

‘I know that,' returned Tom, keeping his voice conversational in order not to inflame Jack. ‘You won't hurt her, will you?'

‘Not I,' said Jack. ‘
I
wouldn't have let her fall into bushes…'

Tom began to edge slowly towards the settle again. Let him once get behind it… Both Dilhornes, indeed, were calculating the odds on thwarting Jack while trying to engage him in conversation and blunt his purpose.

Almost as though he had grasped what they were doing Jack ended his cat-and-mouse game. He lifted his pistol, pointed it full at Tom and fired. Tom, divining Cameron's purpose from his rising arm, threw himself behind the settle, the bullet striking him as he disappeared from sight.

Hester, meanwhile, seized her opportunity. Jack had
half-turned away from her and the pistol on the table, his attention fixed on firing at Tom. She reached for the spare pistol, only to hear the crack of Jack's weapon and the noise of Tom's fall behind her.

She gave a heart-rending scream of anguish and despair.

‘You've killed him, you've killed Tom.'

Jack dropped his extended arm, turned to her, grinning, and said, ‘My pleasure, Hester, my pleasure.'

He threw the smoking pistol on to the table.

Hester, both hands clutching its mate which she had snatched up at the sound of Tom's fall, rose, kicked her chair behind her, and almost before Jack understood what was happening, she fell back two paces, crouching as Tom had taught her and as she had done so many times in play.

Using both hands she lifted the pistol before her and pointed it at Jack's chest.

Jack, who had been filled with a savage delight on seeing Dilhorne fall, now suddenly realised that death was staring at him from the barrel of his own pistol—and at point-blank range.

Face ashen, eyes glittering, Hester faced him, fell intent written on her face.

‘You killed Tom, and now I'm going to kill you.'

Jack's hands flew up in an involuntary gesture. He took a long step towards her. It was plain that she meant what she said. Her crouching stance told him that she had the skill and the knowledge to fire.

‘No, please, no!' he cried hoarsely.

Hester's finger tightened on the trigger. She prepared to pull it. Tom, winged, not killed, rose from behind the settle to call to her, ‘No, Hester, no! Don't shoot.'

Hester pulled the trigger.

T
he echoes of the shot rang on and on. And then there was silence.

Jack Cameron dropped his hands on finding that he was neither maimed nor dead. At the very last moment, hearing Tom's voice, Hester had deloped, firing high above Jack's head into Tom's priceless cedar-wood panelling.

Still holding the pistol, smoke curling from its barrel, her face grey, she sank back into her chair, her gaze turned towards Tom, who came from behind the settle to where she sat. They only had eyes for one another. Jack Cameron was quite forgotten.

At the sight of them, together, the hate and desire for revenge on Dilhorne which had maddened Jack for so long drained away, and with it his obsession with Hester. Oh, he could admire her courage and her beauty, but it would no longer drive him to excesses of rage and folly. He felt merely a bitter regret at being alive, for he knew that only Dilhorne's command to Hester had deflected the ball from his chest and sent it into the ceiling.

The last, worst, thing was to owe his life to the mercy of a piece of Emancipist scum.

Leaning against the wall, spent and drained, he was
overwhelmed by a sudden terrible realisation: that there was no one in the whole wide world who cared enough for him to kill for him, either in protection, or in revenge, as husband and wife had just shown that they were prepared to do for one another.

Tom sank on to his knees beside Hester, careless of whether the blood from his wounded shoulder stained her gown. He held her to him by his good arm.

Hester began to cry; great gasping sobs in which all that could be heard was his name, continually repeated.

‘I thought that he had killed you,' she finally achieved.

‘There's my brave girl,' he murmured. ‘Hush, we're safe now.'

He began to rock her.

‘I would have killed him,' she said, ‘for you.'

Gradually her sobs lessened and she lay against him, exhausted.

Jack Cameron sank into the chair from which he had threatened Hester. His face, too, was ashen. His unloaded pistol lay before him, but he was incapable of reloading it, or, indeed, of performing any action.

He half-wondered what he was doing here, in this strange room on the edge of the world, watching a man and a woman who were unaware of his presence. He looked vacantly at Tom who, now that he was sure that Hester was calm again, took the pistol from her lax hand and placed it on the table beside Jack's.

‘Get out,' he said to Jack, his voice almost indifferent. ‘Take yourself off.'

‘No,' cried Hester, rearing up. ‘No, Tom! He tried to kill you. He has wounded you. You can't let him go.'

He tried to soothe her. ‘My dearest love, we must be sensible. Neither of us wishes to go to court to punish this scoundrel. He's been punished enough. He hasn't killed
me, and he owes me his life, for as sure as I speak, had you fired at him, and not the ceiling, he would be lying dead now.'

Hester was stubborn: the tigress at bay, defending her mate and her unborn cub.

‘He should hang. I
want
him to hang. He thought that he had killed you. He was pleased. He said so.'

Tom stroked her face. ‘Hush, my darling. It was my fault, too. I handled him badly. I went too far. My pride in my cleverness provoked him into action. I was trying to protect you and love made my judgement faulty. You must not do the same.'

He looked at Jack again, his face stern. ‘Go now, before I change my mind. I'll send you your IOUs in the morning and you may burn them. I want no more of you. Your career is ended and I pushed you further than a man should be pushed. My wounded shoulder is a fair exchange.'

Jack's legs were like jelly. He somehow managed to stand, clinging on to the table, and to answer Tom.

‘Am I to thank you for saving me?'

His sneer was weak, but there.

‘No thanks,' said Tom. ‘I want nothing from you, or your kind. Just go and leave me and mine alone in future. I'll say nothing of this to anyone. I want no revenge for what you have tried to do. Get back to quarters before they miss you.'

He thought that Jack was a broken man, and he was not far wrong. He turned his back on him and put his lips to Hester's hair. She was still shocked, suffering a strong reaction from what had passed.

The bitter regret which had earlier poured through Jack Cameron overwhelmed him again. His military career was over, his future was dark, and he had been spared by an
ex-felon who had somehow managed to earn the sort of love which most men only dreamed of.

What woman would ever kill for him?

Neither Tom nor Hester saw him leave. Hester began to shudder again.

‘It's over,' Tom said. ‘He's a broken man. He's even left his pistols behind. I'll see that they're returned to him without O'Connell discovering what he tried to do.'

Gradually she quieted under his soothing and stroking hand. Tom's heart was full of love for her, and strangely, in the circumstances, thanksgiving. Not merely for being saved from death, but from what Hester's actions had revealed of her feelings for him.

‘Tell me, my love, would you really have killed him? Do you care so much for me? There are times when I fear that all you feel for me is gratitude, that I deceive myself when I think that you can love me—such a brute as I am.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Hester, and there was no doubt of the sincerity in her voice. ‘I've loved you ever since you walked into the Board Room to interview me. You said that to me in our quarrel, and you were right. I didn't know it then, but I've thought about it since.

‘You see, I didn't know what loving someone meant—or being loved for that matter. It was only after we became husband and wife that I began to understand that I had wanted you from the first moment that I saw you in that beautiful waistcoat with the peonies. I thought at first that it was fear that I felt, and then I suddenly knew that it was love—that you had become my world.

‘Yes, I would have killed him.
For you, only for you
.'

Tom was silent. She was offering back to him the words which he had used in their quarrel. Head bowed, the words wrenched from him, he said to her what he had thought that he would never say to anyone.

‘I don't deserve you, or your love, Hester. I'm a bad man, devious, hard and cruel. Cameron rightly winged me. I shot poor Kaye in the shoulder when he stood helpless before me. I've done other things, even more dreadful.'

‘I know that,' she said, simply. ‘But it doesn't matter. I love you, and that is all I know and care about. The rest is nothing. I know that you were kind to me in the beginning because it amused you. That was at first. Later, I knew that you loved me, too—as I love you. You changed me, and then you changed as well.'

She stroked his head. ‘Why are we talking about this when there is your poor arm to care for? We must look after it at once.'

Tom rose to his feet reluctantly. Their moment out of time was over. His wound was not serious, but did need immediate care.

‘You're as practical as ever, my love,' he said, kissing her. ‘I'll tell you what to do for my shoulder, and then we'll send for Alan to look after it. He won't talk, or ask awkward questions.'

Hester fetched water and clean linen and cleaned and bound his wound. The ball had not lodged in his shoulder having, by good fortune, missed the bone. Afterwards he lay back in his great chair, drinking the brandy which she had brought him.

For once Tom was less than observant. Pain and shock working on him, disguised from him the fact that Hester, too, was in pain, and that the pain, instead of disappearing, was increasing. The effort of pushing back the heavy chair, and rising so suddenly to confront Jack with his pistol, had brought on a sharp and dreadful pain in her back. She had thought nothing of it at the time, attributing it solely to her violent movement and her ungainly bulk.

Later, when she had fetched a bowl of water to clean
up the blood on the floor and wall, the pain struck again, this time so severely that she had to lean on the big table for support. Had the pain not been in her back she would have known that the baby was beginning to come, but as it was she supposed that it was no more than one of the unpleasant symptoms of her difficult pregnancy.

Until, moving to Tom's side to check on his comfort, she experienced a pain so strong that she clutched at the arm of his chair and let out a strangled cry.

His eyes had closed, but they shot open again, and he caught at her wrist with his good hand.

‘Hester? There's something wrong?'

‘It's my back,' she told him in a stifled voice. ‘I keep getting this dreadful pain.'

Regardless of his shoulder, Tom sprang to his feet. ‘Quickly, my dear. When did these pains begin?'

She looked at him, puzzled. ‘I wrenched myself when I jumped up to take Jack's pistol, and pushed the chair back so suddenly. But it can't be the baby, Mr Dilhorne. The pain is in the wrong place, and the baby's not yet due—
oh
!'

The pain attacked her with such severity that she half fell against him.

‘Oh, but it is the baby, Hester. Quickly, we must get you into bed, and Alan must be sent for at once. If I weren't wounded we might have managed without him. I delivered more than one baby on the transport, and later, but this! Oh, God! We haven't even got a nurse!'

Hester had never seen Tom overwrought before. The pain of his wounded shoulder and his worry for her were taking their toll of him. Nevertheless, he even tried to lift her to carry her up the stairs, but she stopped him.

‘Oh, no. I can walk without your help. You mustn't try to do too much, Tom. Think of your poor arm.'

‘Damn my poor arm!'

He insisted on helping her up the stairs, holding her to him whenever the pain swept over her, which it did in ever-shortening intervals.

Even in her agony Hester could not help thinking what a comic pair they made: the wounded man and the heavily pregnant woman clumsily mounting the stairs together. Finally Tom manoeuvred her through the bronze doors and on to the bed.

‘Stay there,' he told her—as though she could do anything else! ‘I'll rouse Miller and send him for Alan. God grant he arrives in time.'

She heard him run downstairs, calling for Miller, Mrs Hackett and the little maid. Why not the cook? Hester thought giddily, and then all thought disappeared and she clutched at the sheet and stuffed it into her mouth.

I will not scream! I will not! The stoicism of her early years was back with her again.

When Tom returned he had put on his fine coat to conceal his bandaged shoulder and was carrying extra towels and sheets.

‘Mrs Hackett's boiling water. She seems to think it's the thing. Sit up, and we'll have your clothes off, my love. You said that you wanted me with you when the baby came, and you've got your wish.'

He eased her into her night rail, never mind that his face, like hers, was livid with pain from the efforts of undressing her. He tore up a sheet, dragged one of the great chairs over and tied the ends of the rope he had made from it around one of the arms. He gave her the other end.

‘Pull on that when the pains come, my darling. It will help you to bear them.'

Hester looked up at him, her eyes huge, and murmured
weakly before the pain tore at her again. ‘Is there anything you cannot do, Mr Dilhorne?'

He held her hand and kissed it. ‘I can't bear the pain for you, my love, or I would. It's your first child. Alan always said that they were slow so he should be here in time. Now, you're going to drink this down, Mrs Dilhorne. It'll help with the pain.'

He handed her a glass of unwatered brandy, which she drank obediently, remembering the brandy which they had drunk together on their first night of love.

Then the pain took her again and, between that and the effect of the brandy, past and present became confused so that sometimes she was alone in her room at Mrs Cooke's and sometimes she was with him in the long nights of their loving.

Time crawled by.

Tom stayed with her, wiping her sweating face, even though she scarcely knew that he was there. Once she stirred, caught at his hand and said weakly, ‘You'll never know how happy you have made me, Tom.'

There was something in her tone that made it sound as though she were bidding him farewell. He shuddered at the sound. No child was worth the loss of his dearest love and for the first time he contemplated the sterile wasteland of his life if he lost her.

He clutched her hand, and bent his suffering face over it. Mrs Hackett came in with the hot water. For once there was pity on her hard old face, for there was no doubt that he was feeling Hester's suffering keenly. Later she brought him dry towels and fresh candles, and told him to rest a little while she looked after Hester.

Her pains were now coming thick and fast, a sign that the child was ready to be born, but when he propped her up, and called on Mrs Hackett to help with the delivery,
nothing happened, even though Hester co-operated with him. He had seen this happen in childbirth before, and it was not a good sign. Just as he was beginning to give up hope he heard the sound of Alan's carriage on the gravel sweep before the house.

Dizzy, almost ready to lose consciousness himself, he ran down the stairs to greet Alan, who had Sarah by his side, for she often acted as his aide in childbirth.

‘By God, Alan,' he said before he took him up to the bedroom. ‘There's something wrong, if I'm not mistaken.'

‘All fathers think that,' was Alan's quiet reply. ‘Let me take a look.'

After examining Hester, though, his face was grave, and later, when the child still showed no signs of being born, he began to worry. He had soon seen that Tom was carrying an injury and, leaving Hester with Sarah, he examined his shoulder and told his friend to try to rest.

‘No, I can't leave her,' he had panted.