The Secret Rose (21 page)

She unconsciously squared her shoulders. “Of course not.”

“Good!” he answered and withdrew a pouch from his shirt and tossed it to her. “Here’s the first month’s expense.”

Aisleen caught the purse and heard the clink of coins. Her first month’s wages. He would not allow her to back out gracefully. Well then, she would not back out in a cowardly fashion. “I’m ready,” she said and bent to pick up her portmanteau, aware of his victorious smile.

“I’ll be taking that,” he said and reached for the bag. The weight of the case surprised him and he staggered in exaggeration. “
Musha!
What’d this be?”

“Books. I came to Sydney prepared to assume the post of a teacher. If one is to teach, one must be properly equipped.”

“I see,” Thomas replied, but he did not. What he understood was that a few extra pounds of unnecessary weight was being added to his provisions. It did not matter now, but once they traded horses for bullocks and the flat bush turned into hills and rain-swollen streams of the north river and every pound would add to the difficulty of their journey. Still he lashed it in with the rest and then wiped the sweat from his brow with his coat sleeve before offering his wife a hand. “We’re ready then, lass.”

“I can manage on my own,” she replied and turned away from the frown that contracted his brow. Catching her skirts together in one hand, she slipped one booted foot into a spoke of the wheel and grabbed the edge of the wagon seat with her free hand to hoist herself up.

Unoffended, Thomas watched patiently. As she bent forward to lever herself up, her skirts pulled taut, revealing the curves of her hips, and he was once again aware that his wife was younger and more vulnerable than she often appeared. He allowed her to struggle until her foot slipped. With a quick and handy grace, he caught her with a hand under her buttocks.

In quick succession, Aisleen registered the strength of his hand under her bottom, the firm wall of his chest buttressing
her lower hips, and most discomforting of all, the narrow-bladed pressure of his nose in the small of her back. The unwilling memory of the feel of his hands upon her naked skin flashed through her mind.

Immediately she began to struggle, but her muscles were melted by mortification. With relief she heard him say, “Up ye go, lass,” as he pushed her from behind.

Her cheeks flaming, Aisleen was thrust up into the wagon. When she regained her balance, she slid quickly to the far side of the seat. She had made a spectacle of herself on a public street.

Interest in the public vanished as Thomas hoisted himself up onto the seat beside her. She pulled her elbows in against her body and pressed her right hip hard against the seat ledge until it hurt, but she could not completely remove herself from his touch. As he reached for the reins, his arm brushed hers. When he turned to her, his face was so
close that she drew in a quick breath.

“Are ye ready, then, wife?”

“Yes,” she answered and lowered her gaze from those blue eyes, only to meet yet another uneasy sight. Beneath the white lace glove on her left hand was a gold band spanning the third finger. Because of momentary weakness of character, a selfish fear of poverty, she was now bound for eternity to this man whom she feared and distrusted.

Mrs. Thomas Finnian Butler Gibson.

Aisleen tucked her hand into the folds of her gown to hide the taunting golden reminder of her impetuousness. What had she done?

As he snapped the reins to start the horses, Thomas glanced at her from under the brim of his hat, squinting as he strained to read her expression. She sat so still and stiff, as if she were made of marble or as if she were still afraid of him.

The thought did not please him The more he thought
about what he had done, coming in drunk to bed his bride, the more certain he was that his memory of her pleasure had been nothing more than the hazy recollection of his own passion. She was a lady. What did he know of ladies? Nothing. Perhaps she was right to accuse him of treating her as he would a whore, for they had been his tutors.

He shook his head. He wanted to talk with her; a dozen questions trembled on his tongue, but he dared not disturb her.

Ye shy from the truth, Thomas
,
he chided himself. He was now a little wary of her. It had never occurred to him that they would not suit. Of course, they were different, but he had thought that would not matter once they were married. Perhaps he had been too hasty. After all, he knew nearly nothing about her, nor she about him.

There were many things he had not yet told her. Most important of all, he had not told her that he was an ex-convict, an emancipist. What would she say if she knew? Would she twitch her skirts aside as the proper ladies of Van Diemen’s Land had done years before when he passed them wearing the canvas jacket and trousers of a convict laborer? Would her delicate features contort with revulsion and loathing when she learned that her husband had once been a convict?

For four years, he had endured the blank stares of the gentlewomen of Hobart Town, the indifference or pretense that he did not occupy the same lane as they. Sometimes the urge to do something outrageous had seized him. He had wanted to stop one of them, to thrust his face in hers and make her acknowledge his existence. He had imagined clasping the delicate body of one of them against his filthy uniform and grinding his lips against hers until she sighed in pleasure or fainted at the outrage.

It would not have mattered to him what the lady’s reaction would have been, as long as she had admitted that
he was a man and not a stray cur to be gingerly bypassed. Only the fear of the lash had kept him from acting on the anger writhing within him. To have touched a lady would have meant death.

Why did he brood over old hurts? He had gained his freedom and more. He was respected by the men with whom he dealt. His future was assured.

He was lucky. His grandma had predicted that he would be. Luck had been with him when his sentence had been shortened from seven to four years because he discovered a talent for shearing sheep. When he had turned his hand to gold-digging, hadn’t he found a strike worth a squatter’s station in trade? He hadn’t been like many others, made mad by a strike. He had bought what the gold-struck squatter had abandoned and earned respectability. Now he had gained the hand of a lady as good as any who had passed him with a scented handkerchief pressed to her nose. He was not about to lose her.

Sally’s warning had come at an inopportune time. After the discussion of the morning, he had nearly been persuaded to remain a few more days in Sydney, where Aisleen could come to
know him gradually, in civilized surroundings rather than the unfamiliar wilds of bush. Then he might have been able to tell her things about himself, things that might have answered many questions for both of them. But he dared not remain, not with the news he carried.

He glanced at Aisleen once more, but this time her features were hidden by the brim of her bonnet. All prim and proper, she was proof that he was as good as any colonialist. Yet to keep her, he must find a way to make her happy. What could he do? Sooner or later, he would tell her his history, but not until they were at ease with each other, if they were ever at ease with each other again.

Pity, an aching head, Gnashing of teeth, despair; And all because of some one Perverse creature of chance…

—On Woman

W. B. Yeats

Chapter Nine

Afternoon became evening and then a short, brilliant dusk rapidly gave way to a blue-velvet night as they rode toward Parramatta.

In the beginning, Thomas had been talkative, but Aisleen would not answer his ramblings about places she had never been nor wished to see. After they left Sydney and entered a strange forest of tall, high-limbed, pale-trunked trees that flanked the road, he had lapsed into a thoughtful silence for which she was grateful.

Less gratefully, she had sat mile after mile while they paused for neither comfort nor refreshment. From the dark wall of the surrounding forest came the strange cries of unseen birds, their exotic chatter the only conversation on the lonely trail.

She glanced at him, wondering why he did not share her desire to have a drink of water, to stretch cramped muscles, or even to answer the call of nature. Though they shared a wagon seat it was too dark to
see anything more of him than the sharp silhouette of his features, the pale gleam of a single eye, and the relaxed sway of his body as he held the reins between his fingers.

She could not bring herself to speak to him. With hours of silence between them, to speak would seem to require a need of some magnitude. The need to relieve herself was much too personal and humbling an excuse. She would manage.

He suddenly sat forward on the bench, and she carefully let out the breath she had not realized she held. “We’re here,” he said in a cheery voice that gave no sign of the strain between them.

Then she saw them, too—lights on the road ahead.

A few minutes later, he drew the wagon to a halt at the edge of a clearing under the starry night sky. The clearing was filled with dozens of glowing tents. Laughter rippled across the night, rising and falling in counterpoint to
the steady hum of voices. The aromas of roasting mutton, burning wood, and tobacco smoke misted the night air. Aisleen’s stomach murmured in expectation. All the same, a makeshift camp was not what she expected to find at the end of a weary day’s journey. “Why are we stopping here?”

Thomas cocked a brow at her, annoyed that her first words were tinged with rebuke. “Where would ye be having us stop?”

“Sydney would have been my preference,” she answered ungratefully because her back ached and her stomach churned with hunger and he had not given a moment’s thought to her discomfort. “As I have not been consulted until now, I will merely suggest that we look for a sound roof under which to sleep.”

“Aye, we’ll have that.” He pointed at a tent which stood a little apart from the others “That’ll be our resting place
for the night. A bit grand, perhaps, for our needs, but after this we’ll be doing without the trappings of civilization.”

Resentment whipcorded through Aisleen. He was being deliberately rude. “You cannot mean to suggest that we shall be without even the shelter of a tent after this night?”

“
Musha
,
I did not suggest it, I said it.” He knotted the reins about the brake lever and climbed down from the wagon.

This time he did not offer her a hand in assistance, and so she gathered her skirts in one hand and negotiated the steep descent with as much dignity as she could.

Thomas watched her, ready to help if she needed it but too proud to face a second rebuff, for he was smarting from the punishment of her long silence. And though he might have guessed it would be so, her first words to him had been ones of discontent. He was tired and hungry. His head ached from the rare, lingering effects of rum, and his muscles were sore from the cramped quarters in which he had slept the night before. The narrow bunk at his station was even less suited for two. A bigger bed was one of the first things he would order when he returned home. Aye, a big brass bed with fancy trim and a genuine feather tick mattress.

The thought of bed lingered in his mind. Aisleen had shown him the fine edge of her anger that morning, but she could not have meant all the things she said. She was his wife. When she had had time to think things over she would welcome him back into her arms.

The distant bleating of sheep momentarily drew his attention. Some of them would be the new flock he had purchased to increase the stock on his station. He would have to speak with Jack about selling them, for his plans had changed. But first he must settle his wife.

“Come along, then, and meet the folk,” he said encouragingly.

Following the gentle prod of his hand in the small of her back, Aisleen crossed the yard, acutely aware of the road dirt which streaked her dark skirts. “You might have warned me that I would be meeting your friends.”

“Ye did nae ask,” Thomas countered in an even tone. “Ye did nae say much at all this day.”

She let the remark pass. He was right. She had deliberately kept silence as a punishment for his behavior. Now she realized that she had been much more miserable than he. He had had the knowledge of their destination to look forward to while she had sat fidgeting and stewing.

As they crossed the grassy ground, a man with a large Adam’s apple and two missing teeth stepped out of the tent they neared and paused long enough to cry, “G’evenin’, Tom!” He pulled his forelock at Aisleen, then hurried his partner, a rail-thin woman in a blue print gingham gown, past them.

Thomas took Aisleen’s elbow to steer her through the shantytown of tents. “Smile, Mrs. Gibson. They’ll nae bite ye. They’re all me friends.”

Aisleen nodded politely at the blur of passing faces, conscious that she was quickly becoming the center of attention for the people who strolled among the tents. Most of the glances were friendly, some merely interested; all were curious. Children paused to stare openly at her. They were neatly dressed, but most were barefoot.

Casting a look about, she noted that most of the women wore the simple cotton gowns of servants and the lower classes. Likewise, the men wore shirts open at the throat and cloth breeches. None of them wore a jacket and soft black tie of the kind Thomas wore. They were obviously herdsmen and laborers.