Mary Brock Jones (18 page)

Now, what was that all about? She waited impatiently for Philip’s arrival. He was fretting to be on his way. That she knew. And little could they afford the cost of her stay here. Nor was she about to accept charity.

John may think her ignorant of his schemes, but she had heard him speaking to Jacques the day she was carried here.

“So this is your Miss Nessa Ward? The one you have been so keen to keep safe. Now, I can see why,
mon fils.”

“And I will, but I need your help.”

The Frenchman was too astute. “Miss Ward does not agree yet it is your task to keep her safe?”

“Maybe,” John had grumbled, “but if anything happens to her, you will answer to me for it.”

“
Naturellement.
Who should Pat send the bill to?”

“Need you ask? Not a word, mind.”

“Of course, but your Mam’selle Ward does not strike me as stupid—or lacking in pride.”

After that, there was only a mumble from John as they had walked away. It had hardened her resolve. That, and the part of her that wanted so badly to surrender, to let John Reid take all her troubles from her shoulders and wrap her safe in his protection.

She had a promise to keep. Her brother had grown so much since they came here, was nearly ready to leave her care. … but not yet. Until he was, she could not yield to temptation.

Cannot, or afraid to
, jeered back her inner voice. She jerked away from it.

What could she fix, right now? That counted more.

The not so small matter of who was paying the bill now was first. It would not be Mr John Reid.

She threw back the bedcovers and glared at her offending foot, lying so smug there in its heavy bandage. Don’t you be thinking I’m going to let you keep me here any longer.

Stubbornly, she set her hands on the mattress and pushed herself over to the side of the bed. There was a roughly made crutch there that Philip had fashioned to enable her to use the necessary. She used it now to hobble across the room to where her gown hung and her small bag of possessions had been set. It took a great deal of effort and juggling, with some smothered curses of the kind her brother would be shocked to know she had learnt, but finally she was dressed. Her hair must look a sight. There was no mirror to check. She brushed it as best she could and twisted it into a simple knot at her neck, shoving the pins in ruthlessly, then sat back to catch her breath, feeling stupidly weak and furious. She would get out of here.

When she judged she was fit to move again, she levered herself up, using the crutch and whatever else was at hand to hop out of the room to freedom. She tried putting weight on the bruised foot, but quickly decided against that.

She had little memory of the boarding house when she was carried in, only a vague recollection of a narrow passageway running from front to back. This must be it. Lined in a mix of light framing, canvas and panelling cobbled from a hotchpotch of materials, doors led off each side and at the far end. She made her way slowly up the passage, pushing open the end door to find herself in a large room filled with a trellis table and rows of benches each side.

A few stragglers remained, finishing their breakfast, and a collection of used bowls told of others now headed off to the day’s work. The men turned and gawped at her. Then one rose with the kind of smile on his face that made her mentally check whether she had fastened all the buttons and laces on her dress. Maybe this had not been such a good idea after all. She drew herself up to the best of her meagre height and set her face in what she thought of as her spinster look.

Then a welcome figure came in carrying a bowl of grits. “Miss Ward, what you be a doing up? Here, you lot, clear off that bench and make way for the lady.” Pat matched the words with a clout to the nearest head and a shove to another too slow to move before turning back to Nessa with his usual worried gentleness back in place. “Jacques and Mr Reid told me to keep you quiet for another two days at least.”

“My apologies, Mr Pat. I have been confined in that room quite long enough.”

“Maybe, but this ain’t no place for the likes of you, Miss, and that’s a fact.”

“Then kindly find me a place I can sit, and find me something useful to do, Mr Pat, or I shall go mad.” She added a smile to the words, but left him in no doubt she meant every word. The dismay on his face should have made her feel guilty, but the thought of being stuck in that room, dependent on the beneficence of a certain gentleman one more minute was worse. Pat looked more anxious than ever.

“Jim, go fetch Jacques, pronto-like. And the rest of, just you remember Miss Ward here is a lady and mind your manners a spell.”

“Thank you, Mr Pat,” she said, settling herself to wait on the bench. The men hastily finished their breakfast and hurried out, whispering. She caught “John Reid’s chosen” and “under Jacques’s wing”. Her face was burning, but she knew she ought not to feel ungrateful—not when it kept her safe.

Pat came in again to see how she was doing, but stopped nervously when she began to study him intently. An idea was coming to her, one she should have thought of at the start. She looked him over, from the well-worn boots on his feet, up the roughly patched trousers, to the thick cotton shirt with a button missing and a tear on one sleeve.

“Pat, would you like me to mend that shirt for you?”

Pat stepped back. “It be fine, Miss. I can manage it. No need to bother you.”

“Not at all. It’s the least I can do after all you have done for me. Now, go bring my swag and any clothes you need fixed up.

“Not needed. Your board—it’s covered. No need.”

“I am well aware it has been covered, Pat, but not by me or my brother. I cannot change that yet, but at least let me make myself useful. And ask Jacques if he would be so good as to spare me some time today.”

“Yes, miss.” The sheer relief on Pat’s face at something he could do brought the first real smile of the day to Nessa’s face. He began to back out.

“And don’t forget that torn shirt and my swag, as soon as you can. I have sat idle quite long enough.”

The man barely nodded, his face red, as he hurried out of the room.

It took her half the morning to persuade Pat she meant what she said. Finally, he gave in—only to keep her still in one place, she guessed. The occasional packer drifting into the room saw her plying her needle and spread the word. It didn’t take long.

“If you please, Miss,” they would say, diffidently holding out a torn sock or worn shirt. By the time M’sieur Jacques could make time to see her, there was a sizeable pile of clothes in various states of disarray on one side of her and a growing pile of neatly folded and mended ones on the other side. A gleam of speculation lit his eyes.

“You have been busy, Miss Ward.”

She had not missed that gleam. “I seem to be running out of thread, however. Perhaps you could be of assistance, m’sieur?”

The look on his face was all she hoped for. “I think we can come to some arrangement, mam’selle,” he replied, and they settled down to haggle. After half an hour, he threw up his hands. “Enough. Is done?” She nodded ‘yes’ and put out a hand to shake on it. “You drive a hard bargain, mam’selle.”

She smiled, as pleased as he with the exchange. It was like being back in the markets of her youth.

“A drink to celebrate, I think. Pat,” he shouted, stopping only as the man bustled through the door. “Whiskey for me and … tea for the mam’selle?”

“Tea would be lovely.”

By the time Philip came back at midday, she was on the best of terms with the French trader and sipping tea in the rough tavern full of packers as if in the finest of drawing rooms, feeling thoroughly pleased with herself.

“For now you can be on your way over the hills to Campbell’s, and I will be perfectly fine here,” she finished after telling him all her arrangements.

Philip was not to be so easily swayed. It seemed he had finally realised how dangerous a goldfield was for a young, single woman, given that the only other young, single women around were the girls of the taverns, and that Nessa knew exactly how the girls earned their money. Why should not other men assume she would earn hers the same?

“She cannot stay here on her own, the only woman in town,” he said flatly to Jacques, Pat and the rest of the packers.

Nessa was about to argue back, but then saw the looks on the men’s faces. It was as if a silent, masculine signal had gone around the room—that foreign language the menfolk around her periodically dipped into, and the rules of which she had never fathomed. Whatever had passed between them, she now had a solid block against her. Including the Frenchman, the one man here she thought open to reason. Nevertheless, it was to him she directed her best, female look. One of absolute begging.

“It is a problem, mam’selle—one that cannot be ignored,” he replied, as if continuing a long argument.

“Don’t bother, Nessa,” said Philip as she opened her mouth to protest. “As soon as you are fit to travel, we
both
leave for Campbell’s. Until then, I stay here, and I don’t care how good you are with a gun and how many dangerous places we’ve lived in before.”

When had her brother acquired that stubborn streak? Or rather, when had he decided to use it for what he deemed to be her good? In the past, it had been only for his own. She glared at him then deliberately turned her back, speaking to Jacques in purest French as her only revenge. Philip had forgotten enough to have trouble following her.

“You’d better tell the men to get all the mending they need done in to me today. I will do what I can in the time I have left.”

He came right back at her with a phrase of classical Latin. It was one her father had used often. She never knew their actual meaning, but remembered well what her father had intended by them. “Mind your manners,” and “You are supposed to be a lady; act like one.” He would say them if he met her coming home from the market or haggling with traders or arguing with their landlord—any of the tasks needed to keep a roof over their head or food on the table. The mundane,
unladylike
work that someone must shoulder if her father and brother were to be free to spend their days lost in the work they loved.

She had hated it when her father had spoken the clipped words. Hearing them from her baby brother was insupportable. For the first time she could remember, Nessa completely lost her temper.

“How dare you.” They were the only words she said in English, but the meanings of the rest were unmistakeable. In every language she knew, she told her upstart brother exactly what she thought of him. She had walked the streets of small towns in every part of Europe and heard words that her brother could not have dreamed came within earshot of her. Some constraint in her broke, and she flung every single curse and obscenity she could think of right at him.

Philip glared back. She paused for breath, and he struck with Classical Greek, his nose up and his pose his father’s most pompous. The German of the street traders of Bonn was her reply. This time, Philip started listing the sayings of Socrates. It was the last straw. For the next quarter of an hour, she went through every tongue and foul word she could think of. Philip tried to break in, wounded pride on his face.

An admiring crowd gathered around them. In one corner, odds were being laid. It was a toss up as to which was paying the most: how many languages Nessa could use, or which of the pair would win the verbal stoush. The money was on Nessa.

Finally, the cheering was too loud to ignore. “That’s it lassie, you tell him.

“Bravo,
signorina
.”

“
Bon, c’est bon.”

Nessa came abruptly to reality. She looked in horror at the men surrounding them, all grinning as if at the best entertainment seen for many a day. Her cheeks felt to be bright scarlet. She did the only thing she could, turned and hobbled too slowly away.

There was nowhere to hide. The packers lived a hard, brutal life, and entertainment like this came their way rarely. Calls came at her from every direction, too many in words from the languages of her curses. Her cheeks were on fire. Behind her, Philip no doubt stood furious and gloating. Tears pricked at her lashes. Blindly she shoved her shoulder at the nearest body. It did not budge. She tried again, swallowing a gulping sob.

“Hush, sweetheart.”

“No!” She hadn’t thought it could get worse.

“Don’t worry. I’m here now,” John said softly, pulling her in. She hid her face in his chest.

Around her was silence.

“Out, all of you.” His tone was one she had never heard him use before. “That includes you, Ward. Your sister is safe with me till you cool down.”

It must have worked. A few minutes later, one strong finger tilted her chin up. She fought it, pulling away and refusing to look at him.

“You heard everything?”

There was a shake of his body. “I speak only English, with a bit of schoolboy French and Latin. I didn’t understand a word you said.”

“They were … such things.”

“So I gather,” he said dryly. “How long since you last lost your temper with your brother?”

She looked up at that, wondering if she had heard right. Then saw it confirmed—the amusement lurking in his eyes.

“Not since I was twelve,” she admitted. “Before Mama died.”

The smile in his eyes vanished, and the arm around her tightened. The words he muttered were also part of her repertoire, but she judged it best to keep silent. His opinion of her need not be lower than it already was.

He held her close for precious minutes and she drank in his support. When his hands came to her shoulders to set her away, she felt a hesitation in them, as if reluctant to let her go. He helped her to a nearby chair before pulling one up for himself. He straddled it, leaning on the back of it to face her.

“Now, what started all this ruckus?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing to do with me. Thank you, I’m well aware you think that. And no,” he put up a hand to stop her rising, “Philip can wait. Thinking about what he did won’t hurt him.”

Her head came up at that. “He meant it for the best.”