The Secret Rose (44 page)

His eyes opened as he heard the jingle of a bridle. “A horse?”

“We’ve Jack’s horse,” Aisleen answered.

Thomas sighed and closed his eyes again. Jack was dead, had died saving his life. Perhaps Jack believed, as he had told Aisleen, that they were even at last. He would not have had the debt repaid in this way.

“Tom, we must leave here,” Aisleen said when she thought he was falling asleep again. “Firing the gun as I did, I think it might have alerted someone to our presence.”

Thomas regarded her in wonder. He, too, had thought of that but did not know how to broach the subject without frightening her more than she already was. He need not have worried. His wife had the makings of a bushwoman equal to any colonial-born miss.

“At dawn,” he muttered.

“Yes, my thought,” she replied in relief “Can you ride?”

Thomas merely nodded. The thought of straddling a horse was best not contemplated just yet.

When he opened his eyes again it was to suggest that she put out the fire. He turned his head slowly to the left and smiled when he saw that the fire was out. She was a smart lass. He turned his head back to the right and leaned his head against hers. She was curled tightly against him under the cover of the cloak of opossum skins she had traded for their tea.

He had been alone in the world for so long he had forgotten the wonderful, heady feeling that came with loving and being loved. He would begin again. When they were out of danger they would build an empire to equal any. They would have children, lots of them, and grandchildren, and maybe, just maybe, he’d live to see great-grands. They would populate New South Wales.

He squeezed the hand she had slipped into his. First they had to reach safety.

*

Aisleen tried to quell her impatience as their horse picked a listless path under the high canopy of the bush. It had taken almost all Thomas’s strength to hoist himself into the saddle. The horse had been skittish and well aware that it had been mistreated by these strangers. Feckless and contemptuous of their clumsiness, the animal had made a difficult task even harder by its uncooperative antics.

In the distance, the craggy red peaks of the Three Sisters tantalized them. The Great Western Road passed directly by the formation, yet she and Thomas had not been able to find a method to cross to them. Thomas’s remark that it had taken the colonialists nearly thirty years to find the first path through the mountains was not comforting.

As they came out of the trees along a narrow mountain
ridge they were confronted once more by a physical barrier. A steep precipice fell sharply away before them, dropping hundreds of feet to the bottom of a deep gorge. Immense rocks had tumbled down from the cliffs behind them and lay strewn at random all about.

Thomas sighed and Aisleen was quick to answer it with, “Are you in much pain?”

Thomas shook his head. He ached in so many places there was no sense in cataloging them. “We’ll try up there,” he said when he could speak without groaning.

For hours, they followed the mountain ridge northward. Despite the discomfort and her constant concern for Thomas, Aisleen could not help admiring the wild beauty of the country through which they rode. Orchids and wild flowers unlike any she had ever seen dotted every shady hollow.

And birds. She did not believe that any other place on earth produced birds of such variety and splendid plumage. She discovered parrots more gorgeous than the red-rumped ones who had visited her the first night alone in the bush. Like a flower garden taken flight, they would swoop down across their path and then arch away. Jewel tones of ruby, sapphire, and emerald, gemstones of topaz and jade, sky pinks, mauves, and blues—all the colors of the spectrum had wings in the Australian bush.

When the sun had crossed its zenith and begun its slide westward, she could no longer support Thomas in the saddle. He had dozed off or fainted; it was impossible to tell. Her arms felt as though they would tear from their sockets. Searing pain raced up their length each time the horse misstepped.

The sound of running water was slow to penetrate her beleaguered mind; yet when she recognized it, she knew the horse had been drawn to it long before she heard it. Somewhere deep in the forest a small mountain stream ran. They would camp nearby for the night.

The sound of hoofbeats coming up quickly behind them brought her up sharply. “Tom!” she hissed close to his ear.

Thomas opened his eyes and at once knew why she had awakened him. He turned his head, but the overhanging bushes obscured his view.

“It could be help,” Aisleen ventured softly.

“Maybe,” he answered and took the reins from her hands. There was no need to elaborate further.

He turned the horse off the path into a dense portion of the forest. Less than a minute later hoofbeats came even with the place on the path where they had been. Suddenly the horse was reined in. The hair lifted on his neck as he quickly reined in his own mount. They were being followed. Only two people would have reason to track them: Jack or Sean.

He caught Aisleen by the arm and whispered quickly, “Slide off!”

Aisleen did as he directed. “Hide!” he ordered, motioning her toward a wall of ferns. Only then did she realize what he intended to do. “You can’t! You’re not fit to ride! Let me!”

But Thomas urged the horse up the path.

Aisleen pulled the pistol from her waistband and waved it after him, hissing, “The gun!”

He turned, winced, and waved her a cocky salute before kicking his horse into a gallop that took them quickly out of sight.

The muffled thudding of a horse’s hooves sounded from the thick bush behind her, and Aisleen swung round. Above the top of a fern tree she saw a cabbage hat. Jack did not wear one. This was a stranger. Walking backward, her eyes on the hat
moving in time to the horse’s walk, she slipped behind the wall of waist-high ferns and crouched down.

She saw his face as he rode clear of the trees and paused. It was the bushranger named Sean. Anger and fear collided in her stomach as she stood and lifted the pistol. This was
the man who had beaten Thomas nearly to death. He and his friends had murdered Jack. A single shot was all it would take to kill him. He was armed, dangerous. Thomas was hurt too much to withstand a struggle. A squeeze of the trigger, that was all it would take.

“G’day, miss.” He turned toward her, his hideous face stretched in a smile. “Well now, is that any way to greet an Irishman, I’m asking ye?”

“Get out of here!” Aisleen shouted, her knees buckling in fear even though it was she who held the gun.

“Faith! And me about to offer ye me protection to see ye safely back to civilization.” He looked about, smiling. “Or maybe ye already have a protector?”

“I’m alone,” she said quickly.

His smile deepened. “Where’s yer horse, then, lass?”

“I—I hid it.” It was a poor lie. She swallowed. “I heard someone trailing me. I sent it ahead so that I could see who it was.” She managed a weak smile. “You weren’t as clever as you thought.”

“Nor are ye, to be letting go yer horse in the bush.” He rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “So, will ye be coming along quietly, or will ye make me chase ye?”

Aisleen steadied the gun, sighting along the barrel as Jack had showed her.

“Oh, now, ye will nae be doing that! Ye’re too clever and good a lass to kill a man outright. Think of yer soul. What would ye be telling Saint Peter about the murdering of an innocent unarmed man?”

It was not his taunting that stopped her. She could not have shot him in any case. Thomas was away. It was the thought uppermost in her mind. The longer she detained Sean, the farther away Thomas got. “Stand down!”

Sean looked taken aback. “Ye’ve a thing or two to learn about a bushman if ye believe he’ll be giving up his horse, even to as fair a
colleen
as ye, darling.”

“If you do not stand down, I will shoot the horse,” Aisleen replied and wondered if she’d have any more courage to do that. She thought fleetingly of the dog Thomas had shot and why. Yes, perhaps she would, for Thomas’s sake. She took aim at the horse’s head.

Sean threw a leg over his saddle and dismounted, still smiling. “I heard him running away. That’d be just like our Tommy, leaving a lass to face the crime he’s committed. I’m in nae hurry. I’ll be finding him again, never ye fear. He knows now how I’ll be wanting him to die, and so he’ll have that to think on between now and then.”

As he talked he advanced on her. “Still, he should nae have left so pretty a thing behind him. Did he give ye that bruise?
Och!
Our Tommy’s that careless a lad.”

“Stop! Stop right there!” Aisleen demanded. She felt liquid with terror. Her arms ached from holding Thomas. The weight of the gun dragged them downward.

“I can see that ye’re afraid of me,” Sean said confidently. “There’s nae need for it. Me quarrel’s not with ye. Ye’ve only to show Sean O’Leary yer prettiest smile and he’ll be as gentle as a lamb. I’d never bruise yer face, nae like I done to Tommy Fitzgerald.”

“Fitzgerald?”

Sean’s brows lifted. “Did he lie to ye about that, too? He’s no Gibson, lass, though well I don’t wonder he changed his name. He’d have known one of us would be coming after him. Hell could nae have held me back!”

“Thomas’s name is Fitzgerald?” Aisleen persisted.

“Aye, Tom Fitzgerald of County Cork. Wrong side of the blanket, I’m told, but a bastard’s a bastard though he be
gentry.”

Aisleen saw his hand move to his waistband. “Don’t! I don’t want to shoot you, but I will! I swear it!”

“And ruin his fine handsome face!” came a reply in Gaelic.

The voice so startled her, Aisleen looked away from Sean.

He stood in the shadow of a distant tree.

“Tommy, lad, will that be ye?” Sean cried triumphantly and whipped his pistol from his trousers.

“Top of the morning to you, Sean!” he said.

“Bheirim don diabhal sibh!”
Sean cursed and fired.

“No!” Aisleen’s finger tightened on the trigger, and the gun in her hands recoiled from the explosion. She heard a man’s cry and then she was running, running toward the spot where Thomas had stood.

She heard Sean cursing and his running footsteps, and knew that she had missed. “Tom, look out!”

Sean caught her from behind, by the ragged edge of her shredded skirts and whipped her about. “Ye bloodthirsty bitch!” he cried and struck her full across the face.

She staggered and tripped, the gun flying from her hand as she sprawled. She was up on her knees in a moment, groping for the lost weapon, but his boot caught her in the stomach and flipped her over.

“No, ye don’t!” Sean cried. “And I’ll not even waste a bullet on ye!”

Gasping for breath, Aisleen watched helplessly as he beat the bush until he found what he wanted. “A good head bashing will do for the likes of ye!” he muttered as he bent and picked up a fallen branch and lifted it over his head.

Aisleen stared up at him as he neared, waiting for the blow to descend, when suddenly Sean’s expression altered. Surprise replaced murdering rage. He turned and looked at his arm. It was crawling with large, blue-green ants. He tossed the branch away and began to howl like a demented creature.

Aisleen rolled away, more frightened by his actions than by her own death. He was dancing in place, screaming and tearing at his arms with his fingernails. And then he was
tearing at the rest of his clothing. When he tore open his
shirt she saw that he was half-covered with ants. She looked down and saw them swarming across the ground toward him…and her.

She turned and ran, Sean’s screams resounding in her ears.

“Aisleen!”

She stumbled blindly toward the cry until, suddenly, Thomas was before her on horseback.

“Ants! Terrible stings! They’re killing him!” she cried as he bent an arm toward her. But she did not need his help. She hurled herself upward with a boost from the stirrup. “Hurry, please! Take me away!”

Thomas took one backward look. Sean was on the ground, his body twitching as he was covered by a black sea of insects. There was nothing to be done.

*

“I’ll never sleep in the bush again!” Aisleen protested for the hundredth time as she stirred the peas boiling in the billy. It was late evening and they had made camp in the open, away from treacherous underbrush that concealed more than beasts.

Thomas lay quietly. “I’m sorry, lass, that ye had to witness it. “’Twas almost like a plague sent straight from heaven, now wasn’t it?”

Aisleen gagged but swallowed back her bile. She had been sick enough for one afternoon. “You never saw him?” she questioned softly.

“How could I, when I was hiding a hundred yards away? ’
Twas his shot that brought me back, with me heart in me
throat, I can tell ye!” He turned to look at her. “As God is me witness, I never thought Sean would see ye, not when he had me on horseback to follow!”

Aisleen moved back from the campfire and bent to kiss
him. “I know that, Tom. It was me who stopped him. You didn’t have a weapon. He’d have shot you in the back, given the chance. I couldn’t allow him to do that.”