The Landowner's Secret Read online

  She couldn’t understand it, but the energy of the crowd changed then, a hush coming over them. Again, her husband’s face appeared through the window opposite, but she was too short to see much.

  ‘Robert!’ she called again, more loudly now, wondering what in the world he was up to.

  He might even have heard her that time, she thought, because he looked up suddenly. But it was at that exact moment that a woman began to scream.

  Chapter 19

  Robert knew what he would find when he opened that door, but that didn’t mean he was prepared for it.

  The sight of Martha Wright collapsed in a heap winded him.

  He became aware of the screaming coming from behind him, and knew that the mother was going to be of no help to them now.

  Leaping up onto the step, he held either side of the doorframe and tried to see where the injury was, what had been done to her. Her pale face was unmarred, and one foot had emerged from her skirts, the light stockings marked with a few red speckles of blood.

  Urgent now, he hauled himself inside the space and ran his hands along her, just as he’d done to another unconscious woman not long ago, just as baffled as to what’d happened to this woman as he’d been with the other.

  Martha was not on the seat, but on the floor, and it was no wonder she’d not been seen.

  Good God, he wished the mother would stop her hysterics. It’d help nothing, and it was fast breaking through his forced calm.

  ‘Bloody hell, Robert.’

  The voice came from the other side of the compartment, and he looked up, startled to see his wife had inexplicably appeared through the other door. She leaned in further and assessed the scene in an instant, drawing in a quick, sharp breath.

  ‘I’m sorry, Robert, I shouldn’t’ve used those words.’ She’d hoisted herself onto the ledge on the other side, and was now taking in the situation with reassuring calm. She lowered her voice. ‘There’s a bullet hole in the door on this side.’

  It was a nightmare of a thing to be told, and confirmation of what he’d already suspected. Robert knelt awkwardly on one knee and braced a shoulder against the doorframe, willing his hands to stay steady as Mrs Wright’s screams dissolved into general hysterics and he searched for the daughter’s wound.

  ‘I can’t see a thing in here,’ he muttered. Alice heard it and made a sound that matched his own frustration. ‘I’ve got to get her out of this coach.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Let me help.’ She was already crawling into the space on hands and knees. ‘Grab her legs an’ I’ll get her arms.’

  He didn’t have time to question her strength, and he didn’t even contemplate leaving Martha in the stagecoach; the place was cramped and dark, and—he was quickly discovering—was smeared with blood.

  They managed, somehow. Robert gathered as much of her as he could, arms around her skirts at the tops of her legs, and braced himself for another awkward descent.

  Hands came from behind him, steadying him as his leading foot struggled to come free of the step and navigate its way to the ground. Opposite him Alice made use of her small form and climbed entirely into the space, shuffling her way through, managing to scoop Martha up beneath the shoulders and move her across in difficult increments.

  When the two women were close to the compartment’s opening, Robert let go and grabbed Martha around the shoulders, and then stepped fully down onto the ground, hopping once as her unconscious form flopped against him, and then finding his footing.

  The crowd parted for him this time, and he marched her directly across the street, not waiting for permission or direction as he made a choice in an instant and barged his way into the Hobsons’ shop. Mrs Hobson was already there, holding the door for them as she ushered them inside.

  He swiped ineffectually at the bench to clear it of its clutter, and then put Martha down on top of it. Out of the coach there was no mystery as to where the blood was coming from. He hissed at the sight of the wound on the right side of her body and tried to think what danger she was in, what parts of her had been damaged inside.

  He looked around for something to treat her with as Alice also entered the shop and came up to stand beside him.

  ‘Robert, I haven’t another shawl. We need something to …’ she grabbed at her skirts, and looked like a woman about to tear her petticoat to pieces when some other lady—Robert was too distracted to see who—offered up an apron. It seemed clean enough, and there wasn’t time to check further as he bundled it up and pushed it against the wound. Unlike the driver, Martha did not even stir.

  Robert gritted his teeth and tried not to think about the implications of that.

  ‘Get Walter Dunn,’ he said to Alice, who right then seemed to be almost the only rational person in the vicinity. The driver, he’d dealt with with distance. He’d not known the man. This … this was something different.

  Alice looked over her shoulder. ‘Robert, he was busy with the other—’

  ‘Get him anyway.’

  She didn’t argue, and again she was off, shoving gawkers aside in her haste.

  He was aware that the people who still surrounded him were offering all kinds of advice. Robert ignored all of it.

  Had Alice been unable to find the physician earlier, he would have taken a risk treating the driver himself. He knew a thing or two about treating injuries, had learnt over the years. It was better than nothing, and sometimes it was all they had in the bush.

  The driver was one thing; Martha Wright was entirely another.

  He tried to not think of the woman in front of him as Martha, as the girl he’d known since she had her hair in plaits down her back, the one who’d loved to come to Endmoor so often because she was able to do all the abominable things—as she’d put it back then—with the Farrer children and John that her parents would never allow at home.

  He tried not to think of her as the young lady she’d grown into, when one day he’d realised she was far more than just his sister’s closest friend, when she’d turned from a pretty child into an extraordinarily beautiful young woman.

  He tried not to think that, despite the assumptions of many, it was far more than her appearance that changed things between them back then. How, when she wasn’t busy trying to please everybody, she was a friend to him, one with far more passions and interests and dreams than she was ever given credit for. How she’d made him laugh …

  And then there was the day she’d broken off what was between them. What had survived her parents’ meddling, their secrecy, and even his years studying in England had all been ended in an instant. Robert wouldn’t think about how he’d cursed her for her weakness back then, for her blind obedience to her family at a time he’d thought she would reject them for him.

  He tried not to look at her face, at the pale, gloveless hand that rested alongside her body. It, like her stockings, was dotted with a few speckles of blood, and he wished he could wipe them off but he didn’t dare release the pressure on her wound.

  ***

  ‘Martha!’ Elizabeth appeared, crossing the floor to step into the space Alice had left. Robert pressed on the wound harder.

  ‘I heard something out there,’ she said, immediately producing a handkerchief from somewhere and wiping at the dots of blood. ‘I heard, but I’d hoped …’

  ‘Is she alive?’ she asked in a small voice after a lengthy pause.

  ‘She is.’ For now.

  ‘Robert,’ his sister said, her voice shaky as she swiped at her cheeks, ‘your coat.’

  Detached from the situation—even from himself—it took him a moment, maybe longer, to realise what Elizabeth meant.

  The coat was as good as ruined, just as Alice’s shawl was. It mattered nothing to him, but as the door was again flung open and this time Walter Dunn came through it, he backed away when ordered and then realised it would serve nobody any good for him to be seen like that.

  He kept his eyes on Martha as he stripped it off and bundled it up.
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  ‘What became of her mother?’

  ‘She was out on the street, refusin’ to budge,’ said Alice who’d just returned. ‘But just now Mrs Hobson has steered her off somewhere.’

  He nodded, reluctant to leave the space when the physician and his assistant ordered it, but there was nothing more he could do.

  ***

  It seemed like an age had passed, but almost nothing on Monaro Street had changed. The crowds were reluctantly dispersing, but many still lingered. The sun was still up, and doors along both sides of the street were still open, filled with curious workers. And, at the other end, the stagecoach still stood in the centre, the horses gone, like some sort of haunted monstrosity.

  ‘They’ve gone after them,’ Alice overheard someone say, ‘chasing the bastards back towards Goulburn, back the way it happened. Reckon they’ll be caught by morning.’

  She thought that was a lofty, optimistic take on the situation, but she’d too many other worries right then to tell them that.

  ‘Robert,’ she said, gripping one of his hands with both of hers to capture his attention, ‘what should we do?’

  He stared down at her like he hadn’t any idea who she was, and she pushed away the annoyance and disappointment.

  ‘Robert,’ she said again. ‘We’ve gotta do somethin’. Is it too dangerous to go home?’

  He visibly shook himself from his stupor and stood straighter.

  ‘I’m armed,’ he told her, which wasn’t a surprise, but she hadn’t known for certain. ‘We’ll go.’

  The moment his mind was decided he began to steer her towards where their carriage waited.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he said when they reached her, and then he took his sister’s arm with his free hand, ‘we’ve got to get back to Endmoor.’

  Elizabeth was taller than Alice, and—right then—stronger. She dug in her heels and gave her brother an incredulous look.

  ‘Home? What about Martha? We can’t go now.’

  ‘We must.’ He had only moderate success in dragging her—and Alice—a few steps, and then she shook herself free and rounded on him.

  ‘Are you mad, Robert? This is Martha, not just anyone.’

  He stared hard at her. ‘Yes, and if you think Tom and his hysterical wife’ll be letting any of us anywhere near her in the coming hours, you’re mad. We have to go home, Elizabeth. We have a household to protect.’

  Tears glittered in Elizabeth’s eyes, but she only raised her chin and stayed silent. There was truth to Robert’s words, Alice knew. She also knew that the more distance they put between themselves and town, the direr the situation would seem.

  But Robert was right.

  ‘We’ve gotta go, Elizabeth,’ she said quietly, praying she’d not be snapped at or told to mind her own business.

  ‘All right,’ her sister-in-law said, turning to Alice when looking at her brother any longer seemed to be distasteful. ‘All right, we’ll go.’

  They continued on for the coach and Mr Adamson, who held the reins in a tight grip.

  ‘This is bloody awful,’ she whispered to the older man before stepping up inside, pausing a moment to look back at the crowd that still milled around the street.

  Alice didn’t think Robert heartless. He was never that. And she got her proof when they all squashed up in the carriage, all three of them on one side together, and she saw her husband’s hand shaking where it rested on his thigh.

  She didn’t know much about how he felt, not when it came to her. She didn’t know if she was a welcome sight right then, when his real love was hurt—maybe even dying.

  But that shake did it.

  She clasped his hand as they rattled along, and he allowed that much.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The unevenness of the road might’ve knocked them all from their seats a time or two if they hadn’t been so squashed in. Instead they fell this way and that, first against one window, and then against the other.

  Robert kept his gaze cast out to the passing bushland, as Elizabeth did on the other side.

  Her husband’s fist clenched and unclenched beneath her fingers, and Alice released it and got an arm around his shoulder instead.

  They turned past the last building of town and set off into the countryside, and she lifted her other arm and put that one around Elizabeth.

  It wasn’t comfortable, but someone not connected to Miss Martha Wright had to be strong that afternoon, and Alice was the only one left.

  ***

  ‘I guess you could stay here overnight.’

  Alice spoke for the first time on the journey home when the spire of St John’s disappeared from sight as they reached the bush. Robert only became aware he’d been looking back when his wife’s voice brought him back to the present.

  Concentrate, he ordered himself. It wouldn’t do to finish the day with yet another disaster.

  ‘What do you mean? Stay in town? It’d achieve nothing, Alice.’

  She was silent long enough that it drew his gaze to her face. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth and then lowered her arms to tug at her gloves, gaze down in her lap.

  Robert’s gloves were gone, ruined. Martha …

  ‘Well, maybe not for Miss Wright, but for you?’

  ‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘No, it won’t achieve anything for me.’

  He fixed his attention on the countryside rolling out around them. By the time they’d got into their own carriage and turned for Endmoor, the Cobb & Co coach’s passengers had started appearing in town, rattled, minus a few of their possessions, but apart from scrapes and bruises unharmed. The men who’d attacked them were long gone.

  It was a relief, but only a small one. If they were sensible, they’d take what little they’d stolen and move on from the area, but he had a suspicion they were more ambitious than that.

  And then there was Martha … It felt traitorous to be travelling away from the Wright house right then, but what else was he supposed to do? Stand about in the street, waiting for news? There was much else that needed doing that night.

  ‘But,’ Alice continued, ‘how will you know if anything … changes …?’

  ‘Someone will inform me eventually. Remember they’ve no reason to come running to me with the news first.’

  She didn’t need to say anything; her disagreement radiated off her and filled the half-inch of space between them.

  ‘She’s not my fiancée anymore, Alice. Nor anything beyond an old friend.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ She pressed closer to him. ‘It’s not important.’

  She was right about that.

  When they reached the homestead he handed her down the step and realised small tremors ran through her. He’d been too preoccupied before that to notice. He didn’t release her when she was steady, instead squeezing her fingers gently until he was certain he had her attention.

  ‘I swear, I’ll find out if your brother had a role in this, and do my best by him.’

  He’d not the faintest idea if he could successfully extricate Ian Ryan from true criminal charges, or even if it was morally right to do. First he’d find out the truth, and hope his brother-in-law was as stupid and lazy when it came to bushrangering as everything else, and that the charges would be minimal.

  For Heaven’s sake, the man was his family now, something he’d barely considered before.

  ‘It’s not that,’ Alice said quietly. His staff were beginning to emerge from the house and the outbuildings, and their time for private conversation was all but over.

  ‘What it is, then?’

  He studied her face beneath her bonnet.

  She sighed. Shrugged. Her voice was quiet in response.

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s go inside and we’ll … What do we do now?’

  He put a hand to the small of her back and guided her up the steps. His housekeeper had emerged from somewhere, and looked utterly startled by his dishevelled and likely bloody appearance.

 
‘We’ll prepare for danger. And pray,’ he added when he couldn’t think of a single useful thing to do. ‘And we’ll hope that the next news from town is that Martha is improved.’

  ***

  It was dusk when Alice managed to escape the Farrers’ notice and pick her way through Endmoor’s grounds, moving slowly despite her desperation to reach her destination. She was not familiar with the path, and it dipped and rose here and there. Everywhere she stepped there seemed to be another rock in her way, or another bush to catch her skirts on.

  The note that’d been waiting for her when she returned home was in her palm, folded into the smallest square she could make it. It was for only her eyes, not even for Robert’s.

  So focused on her destination, she stumbled over her own toes and muttered an admonishment to herself as she found her footing again. Maybe it was the worry settling like a lump low in her belly that was making her clumsy.

  She’d laced her boots tightly, and been sure to wear her stockings this time. She stomped loudly on the ground with each step; it was meant to scare off the snakes, even if she worried it would draw attention from humans.

  She had other options, she thought. Most of the girls her age, those she’d counted as friends back in the past, back when her father had still been alive and occasionally helping her with the things that needed doing, most of them had taken off in the years since. Some were married. Some, she knew, were already mothers. Many worked hard jobs with long hours, in towns and cities.

  She’d never quite been able to make herself leave in the past. She was too close to the land around her, and to the home her mother had created for the lot of them, crumbling about them as it had been in recent years, despite Alice’s efforts. She’d been planning on climbing up and doing something about the roof before winter set fully in, but there seemed little point in the months since. She had no expectations of ever being back.

  Before Robert, she’d thought to put her head down, take care of things, and stash some coin away to improve her life a little more in the coming years.

  And now? Now she’d finally found the courage to do what she ought to have done in the past? Now … well, she’d Robert, hadn’t she? And Elizabeth, when it came to that. And the Adamsons, and Bessie, and Bertie. Even Mr Stanford. She had so many people in her life now, and didn’t know how to break away from them.