Читать книгу A Convenient Gentleman - Victoria Aldridge - Страница 7

The Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia, 1863

F or the third night in a row, war raged in the Morgan house.

The skirmishes took place at a number of sites in the huge house—the sitting room, the dining table, and in the kitchen—but all encounters were protracted and very, very loud.

Every farmhand in the cottages behind the main house followed the proceedings with great interest, and a number of wagers were laid on who the eventual winner was going to be. Most of the money was on Morgan. Young Caroline had always been a bit of a tearaway, but her father had always prevailed in the past, hadn’t he? And he was not the man to cross, was Ben Morgan. His eldest daughter would come to heel eventually.

Other, perhaps more knowledgeable, money was on Caroline Morgan. For all that she had her father’s lungs, she was her mother’s daughter, wasn’t she? And who was it who really ruled inside the big Morgan house? The older farmhands nodded and winked to each other. Wait and see, they said.

On the third evening, the two protagonists faced each other across the kitchen table, a pot of cold tea marking the battle line between them. The bread-scented air was virtually crackling with animosity. Emma Morgan, sitting quietly in a chair beside the stove, put down the tiny nightgown she was stitching and looked at her husband and daughter in exasperation.

‘I have had just about enough of you two! When, may I ask, are we going to return to civil conversation in this house?’

Ben Morgan shoved himself back on his chair and glowered at his wife. ‘When your daughter learns some manners and some common sense. But I’d advise you not to hold your breath for either!’

‘Really?’ Caroline tossed her head pertly. ‘You will note, Mother, that you have been my sole parent for the past three days? Which means, Father, that if you didn’t sire me, you’ve no right to order me around like one of your chattels!’

‘Caro!’ her parents chorused in shocked tones, just as they had almost daily since the time Caroline could talk. Emma looked at her daughter with the oddly mingled feelings of love and dismay that she always felt for her eldest child. She was so much her father’s child, with the same fair colouring and striking good looks, and the same volatile personality. Only her green eyes were her mother’s, but surely, Emma thought in despair, her own eyes had never glittered with such ferocity? Sometimes she truly feared for Caro. She possessed a hard, determined core just like her father’s and, while that quality might be considered desirable by some in a man, in a woman it was simply not…feminine.

‘All your father is asking you to do, Caro, is consider Mr Benton’s offer of marriage—’

‘And I’ve told him! How many times do I have to tell him? The answer is no!’

Emma transferred her steady gaze to her husband. ‘She doesn’t want to marry him, Ben.’

‘Then she’s a bloody fool! Benton is his father’s sole heir. When he inherits, he’ll own one of the best farms in the Hawkesbury, and when it’s adjoined to this place—’

‘So you’re selling me off, are you?’ demanded Caro.

‘No, I’m not! I’m just pointing out a few salient facts! There’s nothing wrong with young Benton—’

‘He’s an idiot and his ears stick out.’

‘Caro, they don’t,’ her mother remonstrated gently. ‘Well, not all that much. And he just adores you! And you’ve known him all your life.’

‘Exactly, Mother! Father wants me to marry a boy he can order around, and you want me to marry a boy I think of as a brother! Although if I’d had a brother, Father wouldn’t be in such a hurry to marry us all off!’

Her father looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘A son would have taken over the farm when I’m gone, would have looked after you girls so that there would be no need to find you good husbands.’

‘Then leave the farm to me!’ Caro said wearily, for the umpteenth time. ‘I can run it better than any jug-eared boy you can pick out for me! You know that!’

‘Try to show a little common sense, Caroline,’ her father snapped. ‘A woman can’t run a farm, or any other sort of business for that matter. That’s not what they were made for.’

Caro looked in appeal at her mother. Usually Ben’s daughters fell about laughing at their father’s pronouncements on the female ideal, and took not one whit of notice of them. But for once his firmly held beliefs were holding Caro back from what she wanted more than anything in the world. She loved the huge, fertile lands that had been in the family for three generations. There had been a brief period in her grandfather’s day when the farm had been in the mortgagor’s hands, but under Ben’s sober guidance the Morgan family had grown to be one of Australia’s wealthiest, with extensive interests in both farming and shipping. But Ben was now ancient—why, he’d had his fiftieth birthday the previous month! He was in his dotage, whereas Caro was young and clever and full of innovative ideas. She could easily see herself in charge of everything. Very easily.

‘I suppose you want me to be like Olivia,’ she said truculently. ‘All sweetness and light, and marrying who you tell her to.’

Emma picked up the small nightgown she had been sewing for her first grandchild and held it closer to the light, frowning as she noticed the irregular stitches she had made in her agitation. ‘Your sister always wanted to marry William, Caro. He was her choice, and we’re both delighted that she is so happy. Now she’s settled down, with a baby on the way—’

‘How perfect!’ Caro said sarcastically. ‘Not, of course, that either of you have ever made any comment on the fact that Olivia’s baby is due in January, just seven months after her wedding!’

‘Caro, that is enough!’ Emma rose to her feet and Caro realised that for once she had gone too far, even for her eternally patient mother. ‘That was a spiteful and completely unnecessary thing to say. Go to your room!’

‘Mother—’

‘I said, go to your room! And don’t bother coming out until you have decided to conduct yourself with some degree of civility!’

Caro thought about staying to argue, but her mother was perilously close to tears. And if she made her mother cry, her father’s rage would be truly terrifying. He had never once, that she could recall at least, raised a hand to her or any of her sisters, but there was always a first time for everything. With her head held high, she made a dignified exit, although she could not resist banging the kitchen door so hard behind her that the sound reverberated through the house and woke her sleeping younger sisters.

In the kitchen, her parents looked at each other.

‘Mercenary little baggage,’ Ben said savagely. ‘I swear I’ll throttle that girl one day. A husband is what she needs, to keep the reins on her. Although I’m not sure that Frank Benton would be able to do that for more than five minutes.’

Emma folded her sewing slowly as she carefully edited what she was about to say. She had to be tactful—the faults that her husband and her daughter shared were the ones they found hardest to tolerate in each other.

‘I’m not so sure,’ she said slowly, ‘that marriage is the answer for Caro. Not yet. She needs to see the world a little, to realise that she doesn’t know everything and that she can’t always have her way. I think we should let her go. To England, perhaps. Meg Parkins is visiting Home in a month or two, and taking her daughters with her. I could ask her if Caro could accompany them. I’m sure Meg wouldn’t mind in the least…’

Ben groaned. ‘Not England, Emma! It’s so far away! We wouldn’t see her for years, and you don’t know what could happen to her on the other side of the world.’

She smiled up at him. ‘You always were too soft on them, Ben. That’s why Caro is the way she is. Let her go—you’ll have to some time, you know.’

‘I suppose so.’ He bent over and kissed the top of her head. ‘We should have had sons. They wouldn’t have been this much trouble.’

It was just before dawn when Ben heard the faint clink of the dogs’ chains from the yards in the valley below the house. The dogs weren’t barking, so whoever was moving past them was someone they knew. Damn her, he thought. Stupid little bitch. He carefully removed his arm from around the waist of his sleeping wife and left her warmth to pad out into the chilly hallway.

He was standing on the front porch, moodily buttoning his trousers and staring down the valley to the darkness that was the Hawkesbury River when Mr Matthews loomed silently out of the darkness.

‘She’s gone.’

‘Yeah.’ Ben rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the back of his hand.

‘She ain’t coming back.’

Ben tried to make out his expression in the gloomy light. Mr Matthews had been with him since the days when Ben’s father had lost the farm to the mortgagors. A transported convict who had long since earned his ticket, he was an indispensable and much-treasured family member. Mr Matthews’s only fault, to Ben’s mind, was that Caroline had always been his favourite child and he’d never been able to deny her anything. If she had confided in anyone, it would have been him.

‘She told you that?’

‘Nah. But she wants to run this place real bad. You should have let her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ben snapped. ‘Anyway, she’ll be back soon enough, when she realises what a pampered life she’s had here. She won’t last an hour out there.’

‘Unless something happens to her, of course,’ Mr Matthews said after a while. ‘Like she gets abducted, or raped, or robbed, or sold to the bars down by the Sydney docks or—’

Ben slammed his hands down hard on the veranda railing. ‘Dammit! All right, then, go after her and make sure she’s all right. And you’d better take some money with you. She won’t have much on her.’

‘She took Summer.’

Ben swore, remembering just in time to drop his voice. ‘That horse is worth a bloody fortune! She won’t sell him…’

‘She will to spite you. And that’ll give her a heap of money. Enough to leave the country with, I reckon.’

Ben thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. ‘You’re probably right. I… Oh, hell, we can’t bring her back in chains. She’ll just run off again. I wish I could bring myself to take to her with a horsewhip.’ He glared at Mr Matthews’s sudden snort. ‘What’s funny?’

‘Nothing. You want me to follow her, then?’

‘Yeah. Only I don’t want to have to pay an arm and a leg to buy the goddamned horse back.’ He turned to go back into the house, but stopped as a horrible thought struck him. ‘Oh. Just one thing, Mr Matthews.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Whatever you do, don’t let her go to Dunedin.’