The Landowner's Secret Read online

  Alice’s vision narrowed, her belly roiled, and the impossibility of making a speedy getaway was made clear to her with utter, miserable clarity.

  ‘Bloody rich people and their big houses,’ she muttered, but it did nothing to distract her from the sharp burning in her ankle.

  Once more, she glanced over her shoulder, dismayed to see how little progress she’d made. Her leg nearly gave way on the next step, and she said something vile no lady would ever have heard before, angry and irritable as she was.

  Maybe she ought to have requested two hours to flee.

  ***

  After passing into an exhausted doze somewhere between midnight and first light, Robert found himself up and about far earlier than he needed to be, uncertain if he’d slept more than mere minutes at any point. He washed and dressed quickly, not bothering to stoke up the fire against the slight chill the sun was yet to chase from the air, and then made his way quietly past the other bedrooms.

  His sister Elizabeth’s stood empty and silent. She’d been gone to Sydney several months, enjoying the society Barracks Flat would never provide, and Robert was loath to call her back.

  The gurgle of a magpie outside signalled the day had begun, but the dimness held and the private rooms of the homestead stayed silent.

  Too silent.

  Stopping in his tracks, Robert listened hard—harder. Suspicion growing, he doubled back and stopped outside the third of the rooms, the one he’d left Miss Alice Ryan in two mornings earlier.

  He paused at the closed door, straining to hear, not wanting to make a grave mistake and intrude.

  However …

  He rested his hand on the doorknob and grimaced as he eased it, opening the door the smallest of cracks. Cool air greeted him, as if the fire had been all but extinguished some time ago. He saw the foot of the bed and the blanket folded neatly on the end of it. Odd; he’d have thought Mrs Adamson would have it tucked all around the girl if—

  Suspicion gave way to certainty and he stepped fully into the room.

  There was no body silhouetted under the covers, not even the small figure of Alice Ryan. There was nobody in the room at all.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

  Whirling, Robert strode down the corridor, glancing into darkened rooms as he searched the house in a hurry, knowing full well he’d not find her there.

  He brushed by a sleepy and very surprised Mrs Adamson as he rushed for the front door.

  Pausing again on the carriage drive, he wondered if the girl was mad enough to attempt a walk home along the town road. He couldn’t shake the gnawing fear she’d have come face to face with the very people he’d kept her at his home to protect her from.

  The gravel of the drive crunched under his feet as he strode past rosebushes and sun-bleached lawns in the direction of the gate.

  If he could catch her before she reached the—

  ‘Here. I’m here.’

  The voice stopped him in his speedy tracks, and he looked incredulously at a particularly large wattle bush to the right of the drive.

  Mildly amused, mildly concerned, and just a tad frustrated, he rounded the plant and caught his first glimpse of Alice Ryan’s fair hair, braided down her back and shimmery in the morning light.

  ‘Miss Ryan?’

  One of those boots of hers was tied firmly on her foot. The other sat beside her while her bandaged ankle poked out from the end of her grey skirts.

  ‘My God, what were you thinking to be out here at this hour?’

  He knelt beside her on the grass and ran his eyes over his wayward invalid, wondering if she’d collected any more injuries in the thirty or so yards she’d travelled between his door and his garden. He saw no new wear or tear, but her pale face was twisted just a bit with pain.

  ‘Has anything else happened to you?’ he asked, just to be certain.

  ‘Other than a cold bum?’ she responded tartly, surprising a bark of laughter out of him. ‘It’s damp out here this mornin’ and you took your good time comin’ to find me.’

  ‘Oh, forgive me,’ he rejoined with the best gallant bow he could manage from his position on the ground. Come to think of it, his knees were beginning to soak through. It was their first truly dewy morning of the season.

  ‘I thought you were in the middle of a breakout,’ he continued. ‘Generally escapees don’t wish to be found in the middle of such things.’

  She snorted at that but said nothing more, avoiding his eyes with what he decided was an appropriate amount of guilt.

  A noise reached Robert’s ears then, the distinct sound of a horse’s footfalls breaking the stillness of the morning and coming their way. But where else would a rider be headed so far out? He tensed on instinct, but there was no great speed to the animal’s gait, and it was a single rider by the sounds of it.

  He touched Miss Ryan’s shoulder.

  ‘Stay put a moment. Can you manage that?’

  She met his eyes with that request—that order—and her own flashed back at him. Wisely, however, she merely nodded.

  Slowly, Robert rose and then groaned aloud as he recognised two things at once: the great, black mount, a fortune in horseflesh—only one man in the district purchased anything and everything based on looks and expense.

  He hardly needed to see the slightly stocky, upright posture of the rider—a man past his prime but with more than enough confidence to disguise it—to know that his morning had just become rather a lot more complicated.

  Bloody hell.

  Horse and rider were still only at the gate; perhaps he could get Miss Ryan back inside before they were discovered. Bar the priest himself, there was nobody within a fifty-mile radius who he’d rather have been caught by in that moment.

  He bent to her again, trying to disguise his urgency.

  ‘Can you put your arms around my neck? Yes, like that.’

  She wasn’t much to lift, and he had her up, in his arms and headed towards the house within moments. And all the while he carried her he felt her wary gaze.

  ‘I’ll have you know, I’d already decided to turn back before you got here.’

  ‘Turn back?’ he asked with an arched brow, not quite willing to believe it.

  ‘I was plannin’ on getting back in the house before anybody noticed … this …’ she unwound an arm from his neck to wave a hand at herself.

  Twice more she started to speak, and then stopped. Just when he was about to ask her what the issue was, she said her piece.

  ‘I didn’t nick the silver or anythin’, in case you’re worried.’

  ‘It never even occurred to me you would.’

  She scoffed her disbelief, and Robert belatedly remembered the family she’d sprung from.

  ‘It truly didn’t,’ he insisted.

  The clop, clop, clop of the horse’s hooves seemed to echo around the morning.

  ‘Is your leg all right?’ He kept his voice even, casual. They were at the stairs to the veranda now and Robert started up them.

  ‘It’s been better. But it’s also been worse.’

  ‘And no doubt it would have been better still if you’d not taken yourself out for a stroll before sunrise.’

  She was not feverish and shivering now, not as she’d been two days before. Her heavy sigh though … It spoke of someone carrying a big burden.

  The horse had reached the top of the drive by the sounds of it; Robert could all but feel the breath of the beast on the back of his neck.

  He wouldn’t be fast enough. He was well aware of it.

  Old Adamson, still tucking his clothing more or less into place, emerged from the back of the house in a hurry to meet their premature guest and his ride. He looked Robert’s way sharply as he passed, but Robert hardly needed the warning.

  He stepped over the threshold and into the still-darkened house. It was straight back to the sickroom for Miss Ryan, and Robert made a point of tucking that extra blanket about her as though it would help to keep her in place.

  He
made an attempt at stoking up the fire but in his rush it was a lost cause. He’d have to call a maid to do a better job of it.

  ‘I’m fine,’ the invalid in question said from the bed, sounding better than she had only moments earlier. He turned to a face that was all wide eyes and worry.

  ‘Go an’ greet your guest.’

  He moved closer to the bed.

  ‘You’ll stay put this time? At least until we can discuss our situation?’

  She seemed to give it some thought and, amused despite himself, Robert resisted telling her the choice was already out of her hands.

  ‘All right. I’ll wait a bit. Don’t think I’ve the energy for two escapes in one mornin’, anyway.’

  Robert smiled slightly at the grudging admission, and—barely—resisted the urge to brush a few freed strands of hair back from her forehead. He watched as she carefully grasped her lower leg and moved herself into a more comfortable position, and then he walked to the door, pausing just a moment to deliver his rebuttal.

  ‘Miss Ryan, you didn’t even have the energy to escape once.’

  ***

  Robert left her to the care of Mrs Adamson, who was bustling her way down the hall, looking harried for once as she hastily tied on an apron and ducked into the bedroom to watch over the runaway.

  Bracing himself for the worst, he made his way back through the house to greet his unwelcome and supremely early guest … He all but skidded to a stop when he found Tom Wright—rich, pompous, unwelcome Tom Wright—had already invited himself inside.

  For a long beat the two men simply watched each other, neither one willing to give in first. There was far too much bad blood between them for that.

  ‘I’d heard rumours,’ the older man finally said, in that rough voice of his that would never carry the lofty tones he aimed for, eyes giving nothing and everything away at the same time.

  Robert kept his shoulders squared and waited for the inevitable.

  The older man’s pale eyes fixed squarely on him. ‘It’s disappointing to discover they’re true.’

  Chapter 5

  Robert would not admit guilt when there was none to be had. He would not. However, there was a world of suspicion and—yes—triumph within the glint in the other man’s eyes, evident even in the low light. If Robert knew one thing about Tom Wright it was that he’d never pass up an opportunity to work a situation to his advantage.

  ‘You felt the need to come here at dawn? Is there an emergency I’m unaware of? The roads are dangerous, Tom. I’d not be out alone at the moment, no matter how well-armed you are, nor how fast your mount.’

  Wright’s mouth thinned at the dual insult of his questioned ability to protect himself and the use of his Christian name, but Robert would not apologise to a fellow who’d had no trouble delivering thinly veiled insults in their shared past.

  The man glanced beyond Robert, blue eyes flicking with something calculating. Instinctively Robert moved away from the door, drawing his investor’s attention away from the hall.

  ‘There’s nothing more to worry about.’ Wright dismissed the danger with a wave of his hand. ‘They’ve caught the third chap responsible for that business. He was hiding down by the tributary, looking like he was running south to Heaven only knows where. That’s all there is to it, and we’ve more important business that can’t wait.’

  Well. This was big news.

  ‘When was he found?’ Robert wouldn’t dismiss things so easily.

  ‘Overnight, it seems. One of the landowners to the south of town was concerned about a campfire on the edge of his land—the area is a big bloody tinder box right now, what with the drought.’

  ‘As I well know.’ Robert shuddered to consider what might happen to his own property—and to the town itself, for that matter—if a fire was left untended, or the man who started it failed to fully extinguish the embers. They’d had close calls in the past.

  Again, the older man looked to the hall, another silent message Robert was struggling to understand. Surely Miss Alice Ryan went beneath his notice or care; God knew the man considered even Robert himself to be of little consequence.

  ‘They’re certain there was just one other involved? It seems odd for one to turn on the other. Nobody I know of has reported a theft, so it can’t have been over money.’

  He received a disinterested shrug for that. ‘Young chaps. They don’t change, and now none of them will grow up enough to prove me wrong.’

  ‘You mean he’ll hang? Charged with murder, I suppose?’

  ‘Seems pretty cut and dried to me.’

  The fog of the morning was lifting rapidly, and sunlight streamed in through the window, defiantly hotter than it ought to be by that time of year. Robert couldn’t understand the cause of it, but he had the feeling he was on the edge of something monumental.

  ‘Of course, when the railway reaches us we’ll all but have wiped out bushrangers,’ Wright continued, pulling Robert back from scattered thoughts of a ragamuffin in the bush.

  ‘They’re hoping it’ll be here by Eighty-Seven,’ Wright was saying. ‘I reckon it’s optimistic, but they’re laying those tracks faster than I initially gave them credit for.’

  Things were changing, but the Molonglo and Murrumbidgee River regions were the end of the line at the moment, quite literally. Things in the region would change fast only two years from now.

  ‘It’s a good deal harder to rob a speeding train than a stagecoach. However,’ Robert crossed his arms, ‘this news alone didn’t drag you out this way at this hour.’

  There was a telling pause.

  ‘No. No, it did not. I’m off for Captains Flat after here, but I thought it was my duty to stop and tell you what’s happening in town.’

  ‘There’s more?’ Robert frowned. This was becoming absurd all around. However, the frown was swept right off his face a moment later when Wright grimaced.

  ‘There’ve been …’ the man paused for obvious dramatic effect. ‘People are curious what all this is about with the girl you’ve got stashed in the house.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ As confused as he was annoyed at the turn of the conversation, Robert did his best to explain himself, feeling far more like a chastised child than he ought to a man who certainly had no claims as his father.

  ‘For the love of God, Robert,’ Wright interrupted eventually. ‘What were you thinking with Elizabeth away? You had to know there’d be talk.’

  ‘I was thinking I’d rather not leave a girl to die alone in the bush.’

  This was madness. He was hardly a man known for debauchery, and even if he was, it was nothing of the other man’s business.

  ‘What is this really about, Tom?’

  Eyebrows rose slightly at the repeated casual address, but Robert hadn’t the time or patience for games.

  Wright lowered his voice. ‘People’re bound to talk when there’s an unmarried girl living in your house.’

  ‘For only two nights?’

  ‘It’s more than that, though. Nobody can say how long she’s been living here. Some’re saying it’s much longer than a night or two.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Total nonsense.’ Robert had a fair idea of who was behind these lies. And behind his calm façade, he was fuming.

  ‘The truth doesn’t really matter when people’s imaginations’ve run away with them.’

  ‘These rumours were started by whom?’ Robert ground out, even though he knew—yes, he knew.

  The culprit in question fiddled with a sleeve, checked his pocket watch, and then shrugged with a great deal of nonchalance.

  ‘Small communities. You know how these things happen.’

  Indeed he was aware. Robert knew that Tom Wright was delighting in this, that he had devoted half his life to bullying his way to the top of the pecking order. If he wanted the people of Barracks Flat to believe Robert had taken a mistress in the form of a poor young neighbour, he’d manage to convince enough of the community for serious damage to be done. />
  The question was why.

  Despite his substantial property and family standing, and his admirably close ties to England, Robert wasn’t the one holding all the cards here. He wasn’t the richest man in town—he was probably the second or third. What he was missing was the clout to get his and John’s burgeoning winemaking enterprise off the ground. It was the only reason he didn’t speak his mind freely then, as he was twitching and clamouring to do.

  Instead, he took a few steadying breaths, looked beyond the man to the promisingly bright day outside, and then forced himself to meet Wright’s eyes again.

  ‘What would it take to end these stories being spread, whatever they are?’

  Another nonchalant shrug.

  ‘A man might do the honourable thing and save the girl’s reputation.’

  A charged silence stretched between them. Good God. There was no doubt the man was serious. And flirting with insanity.

  ‘That’s absurd, Tom. She’s a simple invalid, living in a household that—may I remind you—already includes a female housekeeper, and will soon be overseen by my sister.’

  ‘Your sister Elizabeth?’ the other man said with some incredulity. ‘She’s in Sydney with my daughter, as you well know.’

  ‘Not for long. She’s on her way home as we speak.’ A lie but a necessary one.

  Wright grunted and shifted his weight.

  ‘Then I’ll look forward to seeing her again. My Martha will stay on in town, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The man’s only daughter wouldn’t dare defy her father on anything. She’d stay in the city and better herself in better society whether she liked it or not.

  ‘I’ll be off then. It’s going to be a long day out and back.’

  Wright extended his hand, clasping Robert’s tightly enough in warning it was all Robert could do to not roll his eyes, and then brushed by him.

  ‘This whole situation is suspicious. It doesn’t look good for investors,’ he delivered as a parting shot, which seemed more to Robert like a nail in the coffin.