Her Rags-To-Riches Christmas
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‘Botany,’ he said, forcing his eyes back up to her face. ‘Are you interested in it?’
She shrugged and he fancied he saw her blush a little, just a hint of colour on her cheeks.
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she admitted, ‘but when I flicked through it looked interesting.’
‘That book there is focused mainly on plants of England, or at least western Europe. There are no comprehensive guides to the flora of Australia yet.’ He thought of the hundreds of samples of plants he’d collected over the years, some dried and pressed and kept meticulously in his study, some planted from seed and nurtured in the private garden around the side of the house. One day there would be a book on the flora of Australia and he meant to contribute to it.
Mrs Peterson bustled out from the kitchen and stopped for a moment, looking between them before smiling.
‘Are you off out, Mr Fitzgerald?’ she asked, reaching for his jacket from the hook on the wall and passing it over to him.
‘Just off to inspect some of the fields, take a look at the cattle,’ he said. ‘Mr Williams is due later today to hand things back over to me. If he arrives before I return, will you make him comfortable?’
‘Of course, sir. I’ve got a lovely batch of biscuits about to pop in the oven. I’m sure I can distract him with a cool drink and a biscuit or two if you’re late.’
Mr Williams was the very capable man he’d left in charge of his farms for the duration of his trip to England. George had been away almost three years and a lot could change in that time and he was eager to start getting control of everything again. He was sure there had been no major disasters—for the past two years Robertson and Crawford had been back home and they would have kept an eye on everything for him. They hadn’t mentioned anything going wrong so he was confident Mr Williams wouldn’t have any terrible news for him.
‘Thank you, Mrs Peterson.’ He took a step towards the door and hesitated. Knowing he would regret the offer, he still couldn’t stop himself. ‘Would you like to come and see some of the farm?’ he asked Alice.
She blinked in surprise and George found himself smiling. He liked how she wasn’t able to hide when something shocked her, her eyes reacted before she had time to take hold of herself.
‘This is to be your home for the next couple of years if you decide to stay with us,’ he reminded her gently. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see a little of where you’ll be living.’
‘That’s very kind, Mr Fitzgerald,’ Alice said, ‘but I wouldn’t want to hamper your progress.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. She would hamper his progress, of course she would. He doubted a woman of her background would know how to ride, at least not proficiently, but he realised he didn’t regret the offer all the same.
‘I would like to see a little more of the countryside,’ she said, looking at him as if she couldn’t quite believe she was saying the words. He knew she still distrusted him, so for her to agree to ride out alone with him was certainly a step in the right direction.
‘Wonderful.’ He looked at her appraisingly. The dress did much for her figure, but he doubted it would be the most suitable thing for a trip into the countryside. ‘Can you ride, Alice?’ he asked.
She laughed, the first proper laugh he’d heard pass her lips. ‘Of course.’ Seeing his look of surprise, she continued. ‘My family had a horse up in Whitby. We lived a little out of the way so it was necessary for getting into town.’ Alice looked down at herself and shrugged, ‘I can’t ride in that fancy way, though.’
‘Side saddle?’
She shook her head, ‘We only had a normal saddle, so that’s all I can do.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem.’ He leaned in closer and lowered his voice, ‘One of the best things about Australia is how you can ride for a good couple of hours and not see another soul. No one is going to be judging you.’
They stepped outside, George trying to ignore the disapproving look from Mrs Peterson. She’d been with the family for years, having been transported well over two decades previously for some long-forgotten crime, and she was very protective of him. She was also quite old fashioned in her ways, thinking the servants should stick to below stairs, metaphorically, of course, and the masters above. This sort of mixing was out of the question.
‘Wait,’ Alice said, stopping so abruptly his body almost collided with hers. She turned and rushed back inside, leaving him staring after her. It gave him a moment to get control of himself, to regain his equilibrium and promise himself he would not look at Alice with anything other than mild, friendly interest.
She came back out, brandishing a bonnet.
‘I found it in my room.’ She grimaced ‘I may as well try to protect my skin from any further damage in this sun.’
From her colouring he could tell she should have naturally pale skin, but exposure to the strong Australian summer sun had pinkened her nose and cheeks and there was a smattering of freckles dotted about as well. The ladies of London he’d spent the last couple of years socialising with would be aghast at such colouring, but it wasn’t uncommon among the women here. The summers were hotter and everyone spent more time outdoors, it was no surprise both the men and women of Australia had more of a tan on their faces.
Outside Mr Peterson had saddled a horse and left it tied to a fencepost ready for him and it was the work of a couple of minutes to get another horse ready for Alice. She watched him as he tightened the strap to secure the saddle, before looping over the bridle.
‘Mrs Peterson tells me you’re English nobility,’ Alice said, her eyes following his every movement. ‘I’ve never known an English lord to saddle his own horse.’
‘I’m no lord,’ George said, shaking his head. ‘My father was the younger son of a baron, a destitute baron. He inherited no title and no money. We have ties to the nobility, but I view myself as a farmer, a landowner, nothing more.’
His identity was important to him and he certainly did not feel as though he’d fitted in with the lords and ladies of London society during his recent stint in England. Their customs had seemed too rigid and old fashioned and he’d returned to Australia knowing even more than ever that this was where he wanted to be.
Holding out a hand, he wondered if she would take it. Alice had thawed in her attitude towards him since their initial interactions, but she still seemed skittish and he wasn’t sure if she would allow him to help her up on to the horse.
Stepping forward, she hesitated for a long moment before grasping hold of the saddle and placing her foot in his hand, allowing him to boost her up and then steady her while she found her seat. In the process of mounting her skirt had hitched up and caught around her thighs, exposing one of her calves. Trying not to look, George tugged at the material, covering her up again, his fingers accidentally brushing against her soft skin as he did so. Alice stiffened beneath his touch, brushing him away.
Without another word he turned and led her horse out of the stables to where his was waiting.
‘Good morning, Kareela,’ he said, stopping to stroke the horse’s nose. Three years he’d been gone and there was still recognition in the animal’s eyes. Quickly he mounted, feeling the satisfying pull of muscles he hadn’t used for a long time. The voyage home had taken him an entire year with lengthy stops in various countries and in that time he’d only ridden twice. It felt good to be back on horseback and he urged Kareela forward with a gentle nudge of his heels.
They took the track out that they’d arrived on, George choosing a sedate pace to let Alice get used to riding again after so long.
‘Just over a week ago I was stuck in the laundry all day long,’ Alice murmured, ‘and now I’m here.’
The laundry would be a grim place to work, although not the worst convict job in Sydney by far.
‘Via the whipping post.’
She nodded, flinching at the memory. ‘They were determined to get me somehow,’ she murmured.
George frowned, not understanding the comment.
Alice shook her head and smiled as if determined to put something out of her mind.
‘Did they set you up?’ he asked. Robertson and Crawford had both been convicts and before they’d landed jobs on his father’s farm they’d spent a couple of years doing the backbreaking work of road building in Sydney under cruel and malicious guards. Their stories did not make you feel confident in the humanity of the men sent to guard the convicts and inflict the punishments if someone stepped out of line. George could well believe a particularly nasty guard would set someone up for a whipping for their own amusement.
‘Not exactly.’ She shook her head. ‘I stole the bread I was whipped for.’ He thought she wasn’t going to elaborate for a moment, but then she sighed. ‘Just not for myself. For one of the other women’s sons. He’s only six and has a terrible chest. All skin and bones and his mother was struggling to feed him. So I took a little extra bread to try to feed him up.’
‘And they whipped you for that?’
‘It’s all about control, isn’t it?’ she said with a hint of anger in her voice. ‘They stop seeing us as living, breathing humans with a heart and a history and see us as criminals who shouldn’t have any rights and just need to be controlled.’
‘I think transportation is one of the harshest punishments, aside from hanging, of course,’ George said quietly. ‘They take your freedom, but they take so much more than that. They take your future, or at least the future you’d envisaged. They rip you away from everyone and everything you’ve ever known and ship you to a strange country where even the smallest misdemeanour is seen as a rebellion against the authorities.’
‘But perhaps we deserve it,’ Alice said quietly.
George looked at her, but she’d turned her face away, staring off into the distance. He couldn’t imagine this young woman doing anything so reprehensible that she deserved to be transported for her crimes.
You don’t know her, he reminded himself. He didn’t know anything about her, not other than what she had chosen to tell him. It was a timely warning. She might seem sweet and kind, she might look like an angel from heaven, but something had led her to being convicted and sentenced to transportation and although he knew there were many miscarriages of justice, she’d never protested that this was the case for her.
Chapter Six
Alice watched as Mr Fitzgerald leaned over the well, supporting himself on his forearms and leaning out far more than could be safe or sensible.
‘Are you sure that’s safe?’ she called, not wanting to distract him at a crucial moment, but equally not wanting him to fall down the old stone well.
‘It’s dried up,’ was the reply, distant and echoey as he spoke into the well. Instead of standing back up, Mr Fitzgerald proceeded to lean out even further, gripping the wooden strut above his head that had a hook to attach a bucket and rope to.
‘If it has dried up, stand up,’ Alice muttered, feeling the unwelcome clamouring of her pulse around her body. She felt nervous of confined spaces and even just imagining the man in front of her plummeting into the narrow well made her feel on edge and out of control.
‘This well hasn’t been dry for twenty years,’ he said, leaning so far his feet were almost off the ground.
‘For the love of—’ Alice said, her words cut off by the loud crack as the wooden strut Mr Fitzgerald was holding on to splintered. She leaped forward, not knowing what she was planning to do. It wasn’t as though she would be able to hold Mr Fitzgerald’s weight and pull him out of the well, but she dashed to him all the same.
He’d toppled over, the momentum of his body after the wooden strut had given away flipping him over completely, but as Alice nervously peered into the well she saw his face grinning up at her.
‘You should be dead,’ she muttered, eyeing first the snapped wooden strut and then the plummeting depths of the well below him.
‘You almost look concerned for me, Alice,’ he said as he started to pull himself up.
She had been concerned. Although she’d lost some of her humanity during the past couple of years, it would seem her compassion was still burning away under all the fear and desire for self-preservation.
‘Do you need a hand?’ she asked. Her heart was still hammering away in her chest even though Mr Fitzgerald seemed unconcerned. And he was the one dangling out over the fifteen-foot drop.
He flashed her another smile and with an almighty heave pulled himself up over the lip of the well and rolled forward on to solid ground.
‘There’s no need to show off,’ Alice said, trying to hide her profound relief that he was out of the well and no longer in danger of falling into its confined space.
‘I thank you for your concern,’ he said, standing and brushing himself off. Although he’d saved himself quite spectacularly she was amazed to see he wasn’t more shaken up by the incident. He might have pulled himself from the well easily, but when the wood had splintered and snapped he’d been in real danger of falling all the way to the bottom and ending up a mass of broken bones.
‘That was foolish,’ Alice said, knowing she shouldn’t speak to her employer in that way, but unable to help herself.
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps a little, but I needed to make sure the well itself has actually dried up rather than something falling down and covering the water.’
‘And has it?’
Mr Fitzgerald grimaced. ‘Yes.’
Alice knew next to nothing about farming. Her father had been a clerk and although they’d lived out in the countryside they had only owned a horse and a couple of pigs. As soon as she’d been old enough Alice had left the rural way of life behind, fleeing to the big city for what she’d hoped was a life of excitement and opportunity. Even since arriving in Australia she’d stayed in Sydney, never venturing into the countryside until Mr Fitzgerald had scooped her up just over a week ago. She didn’t know how serious it was that the well had dried up—if it was a minor inconvenience or a major disaster—but from the look on Mr Fitzgerald’s face it wasn’t something to be taken lightly.
‘Surely it’s dry because we haven’t had much rain,’ Alice said quietly. Mr Fitzgerald was staring off into the distance with a troubled expression on his face.
It was November and back home it would be one of the wettest and coldest months of the year. Alice had always hated November with its grey skies and short, dull days, but now she was stuck in Australia she often found herself daydreaming about the dreariness of the English weather. At least if she was under an overcast November sky it would mean she was back home.
They both looked up at the cloudless sky. Thinking about it, Alice realised it hadn’t rained for weeks—no wonder everywhere was so dry and dusty.
‘Probably,’ he said. ‘Although these are old wells, they tap into the aquifers...’ He paused, noting her expression. ‘It means that they don’t rely on the rainwater to fill up.’
‘But surely some of the water comes from the rain?’
‘It depends if the wells are covered or not. The groundwater, the water you get in the wells, is cleaner, purer, than the water that falls as rain or flows in the rivers. It’s been filtered by the rocks over years and years.’
‘I don’t understand why the well would run dry, then,’ Alice said, frowning.
There was a long pause as Mr Fitzgerald looked out into the horizon. ‘Neither do I,’ he said, ‘but I know someone who might.’
George swung himself back up on to his horse, pulling the hat that had fallen back across his shoulders back on to his head. The sun was ferocious this time of year and he knew that his skin had lost some of its natural protection, some of the deep tan, in the time he’d been away from Australia. The last thing he wanted was to get burnt.
Glancing across at Alice, he saw her pink cheeks and nose and couldn’t help but smile. Now they were shielded under the large bonnet she’d brought with her, but no doubt her skin was still adjusting to the strength of the sun here.
In profile, with her blue eyes staring out over the dusty fields, she looked beautiful. Unlike the ladies of London he’d been socialising with these past couple of years she wore her hair loose, the gold-red strands curling around her shoulders in natural waves. In the sunlight it glimmered like a precious metal and George had the urge to reach out and check it was real.
‘Would you like me to take you home first?’ he asked. The ride would be long and the sun was especially hot. It was a lot to ask of someone to be out in the heat for such a time.
Immediately she shook her head, then seemed to consider a moment.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
He had to hide a smile. Alice was suspicious and untrusting, but for a moment she’d put her welfare in his hands out of choice rather than necessity. It might have only lasted a moment, but it was a start.
‘To see a man who knows more about this land than anyone I’ve ever met.’
She frowned for a moment, as if considering her options.
‘You mean an aboriginal man, don’t you?’ she asked eventually.
He nodded. ‘Djalu is one of the wisest men I know.’
‘Is he dangerous?’
George smiled, thinking of the wizened old man who didn’t know how old he was, but told everyone he must be over a hundred.
‘No, not dangerous. Not dangerous at all.’
‘And he can speak English?’
George nodded. It had amazed him, too, the first time he’d met Djalu, to hear clear and fluent English coming out of a mouth that had such a different native language.
Alice seemed to consider for a moment, as if weighing up her options, then nodded. ‘I would like to come.’
He felt inordinately pleased and had to school his face into a neutral expression to stop the pleasure showing on it. Perhaps it was the loneliness that had sneaked up on him during the long voyage home or perhaps it was the knowledge that his two closest friends had moved on somewhat with their lives, but he found he was enjoying Alice’s company more than he should. He needed to remind himself she was a convict worker, nothing more. A convict worker who already thought the worst of everyone. He needed to keep his distance.
They rode over the dusty fields, sticking to the perimeters of those that were used for crops, only riding through the centre of the large open spaces George had cultivated for his thousands of cattle. As they rode in the distance they saw some farm workers, toiling away in the beating sun, but no one close enough to greet.
It took an hour and a half to reach Djalu’s house, a neat wooden hut with a fresh coat of paint on the door. The old man himself was sitting in a comfortable-looking chair just outside the door in the shade of a eucalyptus tree.
‘Australia’s prodigal son returns,’ Djalu said in greeting, a wide smile stretched across his face. ‘I was worried you might have found something to keep you away. Especially when those two convicts came back two years ago.’
Although he, Robertson and Crawford had all set sail together for England, circumstances out of their control had meant both George’s friends had cut their trips short and boarded ships for Australia long before George had been ready to come home.
‘Mudga dhurdi,’ George said in greeting, causing the old man to open his mouth wide and begin guffawing with laughter.
‘Your pronunciation hasn’t improved in your absence,’ Djalu said with a shake of his head. George saw the old man turn his gaze on Alice and waited as he looked her up and down, smiling genially all the time. ‘Your wife is far too pretty for you,’ he said after a few moments.’ He turned to Alice. ‘You’re far too pretty for a rugged old man like him.’
‘She’s not my wife,’ George said at the same instant that Alice spoke up.
‘I’m not his wife.’
Djalu looked at them both for a long moment, then shrugged. ‘It is a shame. Fitzgerald is always alone.’ He turned his attention back to George. ‘It is not good to be alone in this world, my friend.’
It would not do to point out the old man was alone. Over the years George had found out a little of his history. It wasn’t pleasant or comfortable. Djalu had always lived in the area, travelling and living off the land as the native people of Australia had been doing for centuries. His stories told of how he’d been there when the first fleet had arrived, been dazzled and awed by the arrival of a shipload of Englishmen. Then in the smallpox outbreak that followed he’d lost his wife. Disease after disease, new to his tribe, had ripped everyone he had ever loved from him within ten years of the English landing at Botany Bay.
‘Would you care for some bark tea?’ Djalu motioned for George and Alice to sit, pointing at the only other available seat, a roughly hewn wooden bench that would only just fit both of them.
Alice hesitated for a moment, glancing at George, then perched herself on the very edge of the bench. George sat down next to her, doing everything he could not to touch her, but his legs brushing against her anyway. It was warm even in the shade of the tree and George shrugged off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves and running a hand around the back of his neck to try to cool himself. Next to him he could feel the heat coming off Alice’s body and he wondered how uncomfortable she must be in the tight constraints of her dress. An unbidden image of her loosening the ties at her back and letting the dress drop down to her hips popped into George’s mind. In it she was looking over her shoulder at him enticingly.
George almost laughed—he couldn’t imagine Alice ever looking at him like that. He glanced across at her, hoping she couldn’t sense the subtle change in his demeanour. He needed to stop having these inappropriate thoughts, otherwise he was just as bad as she’d imagined him to be. Just as lecherous as all the other men who’d tried to take advantage of her. Just as bad as his father.
‘Mr Fitzgerald won’t bite you,’ Djalu said, frowning at the stiff way Alice was leaning away from George. ‘He’s a good man, not like those brutes on the ships.’
George was always amazed at how perceptive the old man was. In just a few short minutes he’d analysed Alice’s behaviour and come to the correct conclusion.
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