The Landowner's Secret Read online

  ‘All the same, I think I’d better pay a visit to the magistrate,’ he told her, and she nodded vigorously.

  They came up to the house via the western façade, and let themselves in the back way.

  ‘Alice,’ he said to her before they parted in the hall. She stopped and watched him with wary eyes.

  ‘I’m not angry you didn’t tell me.’ He understood family loyalty, even if it was severely misplaced in her situation. ‘But if you discover anything else, please tell me.’

  She seemed agreeable to that, and Robert went to wash.

  God help her, but he feared for her safety around her own brother, let alone around whomever else was lurking out there in the bush.

  ***

  It was only once he was clean and changed that Robert discovered the book wasn’t the only thing that’d come addressed to him the day before.

  A letter with the direction written in a flamboyant hand gave him pause, and his stomach lurched as he saw its origin.

  South Australia. There was only one reason anyone would be contacting him from there.

  ‘You bastard, Tom,’ he muttered under his breath once he’d read the contents. The man had got his way manipulating and ordering Robert’s life, and suddenly correspondence had resumed, like some sort of reward.

  He could’ve done with an hour’s nap in a decent bed, but now had three visits to make before the day was out. One to the magistrate, one to John Stanford, and one to the office of Thomas Wright.

  Chapter 14

  Alice hadn’t a clue what was wrong with her.

  Weeks had passed since the wedding, and the many sudden, surprising changes that came with being Mrs Robert Farrer had settled to an extent Alice felt she was able to catch a breath. Waking in a man’s bed each morning was … warm, even if Robert left it before her as often as not. By necessity she had been early to rise her entire life, but some mornings Robert rose too early for even Alice to appreciate.

  Maybe that was the problem, though. It was hard to trust something that seemed too wonderful to be real.

  ‘I might go for a walk,’ she said to the dining room at large the afternoon both Farrers had returned, which earned her a gasp of surprise from Elizabeth, the only other person there. They’d still not left the table after lunch, but her new sister-in-law was already sketching. Robert had promised her vines to paint in the near future, but for now it was gum trees. There were always plenty of gum trees.

  Now, Elizabeth looked at Alice as though she’d lost her marbles. It was still raining steadily enough to drive sane people indoors.

  ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’

  She had a point. After a sunny start to the day, the storm had blown back over.

  The direction of the wind changed, and the rain seemed to come heavier than seconds before.

  ‘Maybe just a quick stroll.’

  What she was sure of was that she wanted to be outside. It wasn’t usual for rain to last so long in a part of New South Wales known mostly for sunshine and drought, and it was raising an urge in her to be out in it. Because surely the poor weather wouldn’t reach her inside this time, unlike at her old house, where a rainstorm always meant puddles inside and buckets on the floor. Endmoor wouldn’t dare do anything as undignified as leak.

  Alice excused herself before anybody might think to stop her.

  Common sense won her over in the end, and she put her coat on and resorted to shivering on the veranda instead of tramping about in the elements like that poor fellow out on the town road. She could barely see him as he passed, head down and limping.

  She leaned her hands on the railing, shivering a bit more at the cool water puddling along the wood. The sight of the wedding ring on her finger still astonished her every so often; she could still hardly believe her new situation. Lifting her face up to the sky, she decided the clouds looked angry right then, like they had a point to prove.

  Whatever that point was, Mother Nature sure was making it. Alice had never been one to fear storms. She’d not been one of those children who hid under the covers at the appearance of thunder and lightning. Now, though, the whole world was cloaked in a grey haze, making it difficult to make out anything clearly more than a few feet in front of her face. Puddles were forming indiscriminately, and far off the animals huddled under trees. Alice imagined she could smell the soggy sheep from where she stood, but it had to be her overactive imagination.

  It was the sort of wretched day she hadn’t seen many of recently. The rain came down so fast and heavy then that she could hardly see the trees at the other side of the carriage loop. Every so often the wind splattered big, fat drops across the veranda and her clothes with such power and noise.

  She wondered if her old house was flooded. She wondered if the small vegetable patch was surviving. And then she realised it hardly mattered.

  ‘There you are!’

  She was surprised into a laugh as Robert snagged the back of her coat and tugged her away from the railing. She turned at his urging and submitted herself to a thorough inspection.

  ‘The way Elizabeth put it, I thought I was going to have to go back out in that and dig you out of flood waters. You’re a tad soggy around the edges,’ he informed her gravely, brushing at a raindrop and catching it in a rivulet halfway down her cheek.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Why are you standing out in the rain?’

  ‘We don’t see the stuff very often.’

  Sometimes, just sometimes, she still felt shy with him. It wasn’t the social differences between them—not exactly. It was more that they’d gone from nothing to everything so fast she’d no bloody idea how to cope with it.

  She looked back out into the storm, trying to make out figures in the mist. ‘Robert, it might be nothin’ but there was a man limpin’ down the road a little while ago.’

  ‘Limping?’

  ‘Yes. He was headed in the direction of Captains Flat, which I guess isn’t that odd, but in this rain, and on foot …’

  ‘I’ll keep a lookout for him.’

  The rain went on, drumming on the corrugated iron above their heads.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ she asked eventually, because he’d made no move to go, and she could just about feel the tension in him.

  ‘No, oh no. It’s just that I thought I’d warn you we’ll have visitors tomorrow.’

  ‘In this rain?’ she asked to cover her immediate stab of apprehension. Visitors? Hadn’t she had enough of them at her wedding breakfast? Wasn’t that enough for the season?

  ‘Alice, you know as well as I the rain won’t last another day. Not in this part of New South Wales.’

  ‘Who’s comin’?’

  He smiled faintly. ‘Brace yourself: it’s your favourite person.’

  Alice groaned, and then groaned again for good measure.

  ‘Oh, Lord, Robert. The fellow won’t want me there anyway. I might … I might be deathly ill tomorrow mornin’.’

  ‘Well it’s a good thing then that they’re expected in the afternoon. I’m sure you’ll be fully recovered in time.’

  She elbowed him in the side. ‘They?’

  ‘Yes.’ His tone had changed. ‘The reason you’ll want to be here tomorrow is because I’ve been warned Tom Wright is bringing his daughter.’

  ***

  With Elizabeth there to help the conversation, the visit wasn’t as excruciating as Alice had anticipated. Mr Wright was inclined to ignore Alice, and she was more than inclined to let him. Anyway, it gave her a chance to listen to him talk about himself—nonstop—and it was almost entertaining to hear his pompous chatter. Despite his airs, the man’s way of speaking was hardly fancier than her own.

  ‘Could it’ve been a group of Aborigines passing through?’ Mr Wright said in response to a comment from Robert she’d not heard. ‘If so, I’m sure it’s nothin’ to worry about. They’d move on in time and—’

  ‘It wasn’t Aborigines,’ Robert said with absolute certainty. �
��They couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to leave a fire still smouldering like that.’

  The older man leaned forwards and heaped his plate, sitting back to nibble thoughtfully, his moustache moving in a circle with each chew.

  Alice wished she could find her voice and ask questions, but she’d gone as shy as a church mouse, and it was infuriating her. She wasn’t meek. When’d she become meek?

  She sneaked a sideways look in the other direction, accidentally colliding gazes with Mr Wright’s daughter. The other woman smiled tentatively, and Alice tried for a smile of her own, and then—thank God—Robert said something about the weather, and she had an excuse to look away again.

  It was easier, she decided, as she sipped tea and declined to eat—not wanting crumbs on her mouth or dropped on her frock—to listen to the father than to try and converse with the daughter.

  Because Miss Wright terrified her.

  Oh yes, she’d heard of the lady before. Of course she had. Only, never before had she got so close to her, and never before had she the chance to see that rumours of her beauty weren’t exaggerated. Actually, they hadn’t been complimentary enough.

  Movement to her left, where the lady was perched, caught her attention momentarily. Miss Wright bit into a small cake and then turned to listen to something Elizabeth said. Not a single crumb dared to fall as she ate.

  Alice was in awe of her. She was dark-haired, blue-eyed, and perfectly formed, and Alice didn’t want to say a word to her in case it was the wrong one. Stuck beside her, in a new frock of dark green, for the only time since her betrothal Alice wished she’d chosen a more extravagant wardrobe.

  She felt scrawny, faded. And suddenly such trivial things mattered to her.

  And yet her stomach growled; she’d been too busy that morning—and a little nervous—to eat, and now here she was rumbling loudly in a roomful of people. Did anybody hear it? Were they simply being polite by not reacting?

  Oh well, she decided. Better to have crumbs in her lap than a band playing in her belly.

  She edged forwards in her seat and reached for a cake.

  Outside a dog yelped suddenly, right at the moment she got the piece of her choice between her fingertips. Juggling with the thing before it was startled right out of her grip, Alice gave up on daintiness and devoured it in a couple of quick bites.

  ‘Martha,’ the lady’s father began in a tone that at once was chiding and indulgent, ‘did you really have to bring the dog?’

  It’d been a surprise for Alice that the first visitor to descend from the barouche that afternoon hadn’t been human. A dog that was striking in its similarity to Hutton seemed thrilled to be there, and had turned Robert’s dog ecstatic. And judging by the way the two heelers greeted each other, they were well and truly acquainted already.

  Miss Wright glanced at Robert before responding. ‘Well, they are siblings, father. Lysander wanted to pay his brother a visit.’

  Wright scoffed. ‘Such nonsense.’ He winced when both animals barked again somewhere nearby, but he smiled at his daughter as he said it.

  ‘They’re brothers?’ Alice asked, looking from Robert to Elizabeth, and finally to Miss Wright.

  ‘From the same litter,’ Elizabeth explained, and a short silence followed, until Mrs Adamson came in and asked if they needed anything else.

  ‘Mrs Farrer?’ she asked when nobody else immediately replied, and Alice looked up in surprise.

  Of course, she realised. She was the missus of the house now—more or less. Even though she didn’t know these people she was expected to be their hostess. Even though she was the youngest there by years, she was meant to know everything she was supposed to do.

  Feeling her face heat at her failure to realise it immediately, and knowing without it being said that she’d just failed some sort of test, she ordered her shoulders not to slump.

  With two sets of Farrer gazes on her to go with the two Wrights, she managed to dig up a smile from somewhere.

  ‘No, thank you. We’re fine.’ She looked to her sister-in-law for confirmation.

  ‘We are,’ Elizabeth echoed, and that was that.

  ***

  Robert couldn’t have been more relieved when Tom Wright indicated it was time to go. Allegedly the visit was an apology of sorts for missing the wedding, but it was one every person in the room could have happily done without.

  They all rose as one, but Miss Wright lingered as her father walked on ahead, and then lingered longer when his wife followed with Elizabeth, who glanced back and met his eyes with what Robert could only call warning.

  ‘Robert,’ Martha said to his turned back, and manners won over. Tom’s daughter’s feet were all but dragging in her attempt to stay behind, and—with a sigh—he realised he wasn’t going to escape the conversation.

  ‘I should not have brought the dog,’ she said in a distressed, hushed tone. ‘I am so sorry for that. I’d not thought about how it might seem ... What your wife might think of it.’

  His wife. Robert wasn’t sure what Alice thought of the dogs, if anything at all, but it was odder to hear those words from Martha Wright than it was hearing the housekeeper address Alice as Mrs. He hadn’t any idea how much longer it would be before it began to feel normal to him, how much longer it’d be before it didn’t all seem like some strange dream.

  He almost opened his mouth then, to give her an explanation of his marriage. She would have been as shocked as the rest of Barracks Flat when she heard about it, and he doubted she knew much about what her father was up to. He caught himself, though. He and Alice didn’t owe explanations to anyone.

  The father’s voice echoed down the hall, and Robert knew he’d doubled back, calling for his daughter as he returned to the drawing room.

  ‘It was nothing, Martha,’ he told her quickly. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  Her lovely face lifted up to him, those eyes no man could help but notice so very, very blue in the afternoon light. Whatever it was she was expecting from him, Robert was determined not to give it. He was happily anticipating the removal of anyone named Wright from Endmoor for the remainder of the day, and then he might finally be able to relax.

  She must have read something in his expression, because whatever words she’d been about to say died on her lips before they were spoken.

  Closing her eyes briefly, she looked away when she opened them again, and then led him from the room.

  Robert wondered, as they said their goodbyes, why the daughter had to come on a visit that had seemed to serve little purpose, other than for her father to laud his victory over him.

  And Robert asked himself if he did feel a sense of defeat. It was impossible to not appreciate Martha’s delicate, feminine beauty, and even as that bloody barouche made its way home he was aware of her posture, of the dark curls he caught a glimpse of as the vehicle turned for town.

  Lysander, the runt of the litter at birth, sat with father and daughter as they left. When he’d been given to Martha, Robert had considered him the least feminine, and least suitable of pets, but the puppy had been transformed since then, gentrified. For all his frolicking with Hutton earlier in the day, he now perched half on his mistress’s thighs, practically a lap dog.

  ‘Heaven help me,’ Robert muttered.

  Had it been Hutton heading into Barracks Flat instead of Lysander, he would’ve run alongside. In fact, there his own dog went right then, keeping pace with the vehicle, attempting to herd the thing like it was a sheep. Heelers weren’t lap dogs, and not for the first time he wondered how Martha’s had managed to survive in a proper, decent, town household all this time. Perhaps there was some poor servant tasked with walking the fellow several times a day, through frost, heat, and hail.

  Robert shook his head in amused disbelief at the whole situation.

  He watched longer than he should have as the vehicle disappeared from view, the sound of the barouche and the horses that pulled it echoing through the countryside longer than he could see it. />
  He realised he was frowning, and quickly cleared his expression.

  Only … Despite all of her parents’ ambitions for their overly attractive daughter, here she still was. She’d not disappeared up north, nor south to fashionable Melbourne. She had not married someone grand and important.

  And here he was, newly married to someone who couldn’t have been more different to Miss Wright if she tried. Fate was a strange thing.

  After a while even the sounds of his visitors dissipated and the countryside returned to its usual state. Robert heaved a great sigh and then went to retrieve Hutton from the gate.

  Chapter 15

  It had never occurred to Alice to question Robert’s reasons for marrying her. She knew it wasn’t because Cupid had come to call, and suspected strongly he’d done it for some business reason or another, but if he was willing—and she was willing—she’d called it good enough and left it alone.

  She’d thought they’d go on and make the best of it. The Farrer family seemed like a reasonable bunch, and she knew nobody who’d married for anything as ridiculous as love, except perhaps Mr and Mrs Adamson, who seemed to like each other more than was usual.

  Alice called herself more than content, and threw herself into her gardening and her reading, and into learning how to run a household. Thank the Lord Elizabeth was there to help with that.

  And she threw herself into understanding all the private matters between a husband and a wife, doing her best in that aspect, too. She had to convince Robert they’d be all right in the long run, but she found that even playing Lady of the Manor was exhausting when she was working so hard on it.

  It was one afternoon, when she was inspecting an order from town, that Robert brought her the cat.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  She’d heard him coming. The homestead’s wooden floors tended to announce new arrivals when the house was quiet, and—for once—the house was still. However, she’d been trying to decide how much meat Endmoor would need for a week, and it really was rather important she didn’t ask for too much steak, or not enough.