Dream Time (historical): Book I (10 page)

“. . . for my twelfth birthday. Come look!”

Amaris followed Celeste into the stables. Smelling of manure, they had been built by Sin that spring.

Since her clash with the convict last fall, she had not encountered him at the Livingston mansion. This was unusual because he worked more there than at the shipyard, if Celeste’s random referral to the man was anything to judge by.

“He is absolutely the most beautiful animal in all of New South Wales!”

Amaris stared at the bare-chested man. He forked hay into a stall, and with each lift of the fork, his muscles rippled beneath the supple sun-toasted skin. Despite the white, puckered scars crisscrossing his back, he was a superb example of a magnificent animal. A mistreated animal.

She forced her attention back to Celeste, who stood in adoration before her birthday present from her parents, a chestnut mare of excellent confirmation. “Don’t forget, Sin, you said you would teach me how to ride.”

He paused in swinging the fork and looked over his shoulder. “I think your mother is intent on hiring a riding teacher, Celeste.”

Celeste? So, the formal “Miss Celeste” had slipped now to the familiar “little one” and “Celeste.” Amaris was piqued that the girl had not asked her to teach her how to ride. Of course, Amaris had learned on a nag of a horse rescued from the meat factory for use to pull the church collection cart. Nevertheless, must Celeste always defer to Sin?

“Can I take Misty for a walk?”

He speared the fork in the sawdust-layered earth and propped his forearm on the handle. “You’ll have to ask your mother.”

Overflowing with excitement, the girl sprinted out of the stables, forgetting both Amaris and Sin.

Without shifting his stance, he fixed Amaris with his hard blue eyes. They skimmed over her thin muslin bodice, and she was at once conscious of and mortified by her small breasts.

“I suppose your skill with horses comes from your days of horse thieving,” she snapped.

His grin was slow in coming and as hard as his gaze. “I wasn’t transported for horse thieving, but I will concede to a certain skill in horsemanship inbred in all true Irishmen. We are bo
rn in the saddle, you know.” His voice possessed a deep quality and lyrical rhythm peculiar to street corner orators.

“What were you transported for?”

“Would it matter if I told you I was convicted of impersonating the king? Mad as a hatter, I am. No telling what I might do right now. It isn’t safe being alone with me, you know.”

She grew bolder,
her words clipped by her sleeping anger. “I’m curious about something else, too. Last fall, you accused me of being a coward. I want to know what makes you think that?”

“You haven’t forgotten that, eh?”

She stepped closer. Her hands clenched at her sides. The anger in her was fomenting. “What made you say that?”

“Well now, me curious student, either you’re a female or a male. What’s it going to be?”

She thumped her chest. “I am me.”

“Which is?” he persisted.

“Me . . . me inside this body.” With that realization, her confidence gained ground. “The outside trappings aren’t important . . . not to me, anyway.”

“Well spoken. But when you’re as comfortable with the outside as you are the inside
. . .” He paused, his eyes scanning her again. “When that happens, then you’ll be a woman. A formidable woman.”

She duplicated his dry smile. “I might place value on your comment, except I am told that, as a convict, you forget what sex you are and turn into mollies.”

His hand tightened on the pitchfork. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “You’d best return to the house before I try to recreate the feeling of taking a woman beneath me.”

His countenance was enough to make her chilled even on that hot
and sultry December day. She managed an indifferent shrug and sauntered off. Her back could feel the sting of that fiery blue gaze.

Sinclair Tremayne had the Irish gift for nursing old wrongs. He had been a young Belfast law student whose ability as a speaker and a leader had led him to become involved with the United Irishmen. They fought for the same principles as the French revolutionaries had earlier.

Sin believed that no Irish Catholic could expect justice from English laws. Under the Popery Laws, no Catholic could sit in Parliament, vote, teach, or hold an army commission. The Catholics were disabled in property law, which was rewritten to break up Catholic estates and consolidate Protestant ones. Protestant estates could be left intact to eldest sons, but Catholic ones had to be split among all children. Thus Catholic landowning families degenerated into sharecropping ones within a generation or two.

Sin knew all about sharecropping. He was thirteen when his father had been forced to close their linen business because of the English overlords’ trade embargoes on Irish linen export to America.

Sin’s family had turned to planting. He and his four younger sisters and brothers knew nothing about growing potatoes. They learned. They learned about the dirt encrusted beneath their fingernails and the permanent stains on their hands, the needlelike pain along their spines from bending over twelve hours a day.

Potato rot Sin recognized instantly. The stench was something that to this day made his stomach muscles knot.

By being more frugal than any Scotsman could ever dream of being, Sin’s parents managed to send him to college. By his second year, his family were no longer landowners. The bailiffs with their writs of eviction had installed new landlords in the ancestral home. Recalled to help the family sharecrop, Sin grew to hate the English landlords’ bullying ways with their dogs and shillelaghs.

Those oaken cudgels struck him once too often. He rounded on the man, who was much larger and heavier. But Sin’s anger generated inhuman power, and he pummeled the man with his own cudgel. If Sin’s sister Lena hadn’t stopped him, he would have killed the man.

As it was, Sin had to leave home and family. With another college student, he founded the Society of Irish Defenders. The Irish rebels made iron pikes on secret forges to attack English Tory soldiers and struck out at English informers by burning their homes.

In the end, musket was bound to prevail against pike. Sin was arrested and charged with treason. He was to be transported without trial. From the dock, Sin’s mother and sister had wept as he was led aboard the transportation bark in chains. His public humiliation, his shame at leaving them defenseless, had burned his stomach raw.

The situation got no better. His ship had not carried the prisoners’ records with it. So no one knew how long they had to serve in New South Wales or when they would be eligible for tickets-of-leave that were usually given after four years’ good conduct.

He found his kind was unwelcome in the penal colony. The “specials,” or educated Irish convicts “might contaminate the yeomanry with their seditious ideas,” complained New South Wales’s governor. The governor was most pleased to separate the specials, dispersing them to various outlying farms and stations.

Nearly flogged to death upon arrival in the penal colony for talking to Celeste and Amaris, Sin was sent to the mouth of the Hunter River, north of Sydney. There he’d hewn coal in a recently discovered seam. Guarded by st
arved, chained mastiffs, he subsisted on a diet scarcely above starvation itself.

He was already a skeleton, with flesh stretched across his bones so tightly it resembled parchment, when Tom Livingston located him. The amiable man had spent weeks searching for him, solely at the behest of his daughter.

If Sin could find it in his heart to love any English person, it would have to be that child. For him, Celeste Livingston was all that was good and kind in this world. She was radiant sunlight, an angel taking refuge in the spirit of a little girl.

His days working in the shipyard had been numbered, as more and more of his time had been diverted to service at the Livingston mansion. So much so that he had made himself indispensable. By the end of his fourth year in the Livingstons’ service,
he had actually been given a private cell of a room. It was wedged in the servants section of the house, that part that abutted the carriage house, Nan Livingston’s newest vanity.

For this, he again had Celeste to thank. “It only makes sense,” she had told her parents in that logical way of hers. “Anyone can drive a nail, but Sin can do so much more. He can be our handyman.”

In the recessed shadows of the carriage house, he smiled wryly. A handyman! He didn’t know a tinker’s damn about the carriage trade, and here he was on his back under a landau, trying to figure out the best way to replace its broken axle.

“Mrs. Livingston wants you.”

He slid out from beneath the carriage and sat up, his forearms propped on his knees, his grease-coated hands dangling between them. The Wilmot girl stood before him in the double doorway, as imperious as the Grand Dame Livingston herself. He hadn’t seen Amaris in months. If it was possible, she had grown still taller. And had grown cabbages, as his mother had obliquely referred to his sister’s breasts.

“How old are you?” he asked.

His question caught her off guard. She flushed, her betraying skin a dusky rose in the morning’s early sunlight. She was almost pretty.

“Mrs. Livingston is waiting for you in her office.” Eighteen, he mentally tallied. And inexperienced. Her kind wouldn’t know how to love a man. With her sharp tongue and rebellious nature, she should have been bo
rn Irish. She would be one of those women determined to have her own way, whatever price she and those with her had to pay.

He sighed, wiped his hands on the rag at his feet,
and rose to follow her. She walked with that free- swinging stride peculiar only to her. Her waist-length braids no longer bounced against her back but had been unplaited for her coal black hair to be gathered in a careless coil at her nape. Wayward strands coiled like moonvine tendrils along the long column of her neck.

Admittedly, her slender hips had a certain rhythmic sway that a man would find enticing. Except she was English. The colleens he occasionally bedded were usually Irish like Molly, who desperately wanted someone to take care of her. Amaris of the stormy gray eyes was one o
f those currency girls, second-generation Australian.

To put her in her place, he strode on past her and entered Nan Livingston’s office without waiting to be announced. With Nan was a big lunker of a man with a ruddy complexion lined by the weather. He sat with one thigh perched on the edge of her desk. His face was vaguely familiar. He had the scent of salt and sea about him.

“I beg your pardon!” Nan snapped at Sin.

“You sent for me?”

She rose from behind her desk. Her sparse brows gathered like disturbed nesting wrens. “When I send for you, Sinclair, you will—”

“Josiah Wellesley,” the big man said, sticking out his hand.

Sin stared at the large hand uncomprehendingly. Then, realizing the gesture for what it was, he made a short bow. “Sinclair Tremayne, sir, at your service.”

“The Livingston family, as well as Jimmy Underwood, has been singing your praises.”

Now Sin remembered him. The man had stopped by occasionally to chat with Jimmy. The lad might be English, but he hated the English government almost as much as Sin did. Sin missed the camaraderie he had known in the shipyard. ‘Do they now? All of the Livingstons?”

Josiah grinned. “Well, most of them. Now, Nan, why don’t you tell Sinclair why you sent for him so you and I can get back to business.”

The middle-aged woman flashed the man a reproving glare. “Celeste has her heart set on riding over to Parramatta for the horse sale. She wants a horse for hunting. As some business has come up, I want you to accompany her and Amaris there and back. Macarthur will accept my word of payment as good as a draft, if Celeste settles on something suitable.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment, paused, then said what was on his mind. “I would like to request a firearm, mistress. There has been talk of bushrangers plying their trade along uninhabited stretches of the road.”

Her hazel eyes drilled through him. “Convicts aren’t allowed firearms.”

“For Celeste’s security,
I would suggest you arm me.”

She was silent, considering the consequences, and he said, “If I wanted to strike out for the Never-Never, the firearm would not be one of the more important factors.”

She raised a sparse brow. “Really, now. What would?”

“The season for one. Road traffic. Whether the governor is in residence at his summer retreat. My own physical condition.”

Then he leaned forward, his hand splayed on her desktop, an impertinent act. “I swear that regardless of how favorable the conditions may be for escape, I would never put your daughter’s life at risk by deserting her.”

“Perhaps you should assign him to Celeste on a permanent basis, Nan,” Josiah said with a broad smile. “You would ensure the continued faithfulness of your servant.”

Without taking her gaze off Sin, she said, “A servant’s papers are easy enough to buy, Josiah . . . and sell, if one becomes impudent. You may saddle Mr. Livingston’s bay for your use, Sinclair.”

She paused deliberately, then added, “His pistol is in the holster on his bedroom armchair. Take it with you when you accompany Celeste and Amaris. And then return it.”

He inclined his head. “Good day, Miss Livingston . . . Mr. Wellesley.”

“Josiah, lad,” the man corrected as Sin closed the door behind him.

Celeste was waiting outside for him. She grabbed his hand. “Did Mama say you could take us, Sin?” Her enthusiasm drew a smile from him. “Go get ready. I’ll meet you at the stables in half an hour.”

By the time he had made full preparation for the day’s outing, both girls were waiting, their horses saddled. Celeste’s expression was full of exuberance. Amaris’s was sullen, stating clearly that his presence spoiled the day for her.

His father had teasingly called him mule-headed, and he felt mule-headed enough at that moment to justify the girl’s feelings. He clasped his hands for Celeste’s booted foot and hoisted her into the saddle.

“Thank you, Sin.” A cheerful smile accompanied her words.

He turned to saddle the bay, leaving Amaris to mount her horse, which to her was inconsequential. With her height and skill, she would give an Irish jockey a run for his money. Still, Sin’s action was distinctly discourteous. He smiled to himself, thinking how much amusement thwarting the missionary’s daughter afforded him.

The morning promised to turn into a beautiful day. Sunlight gild
ed the land. Some twenty kilometers from Sydney Harbor, Parramatta was almost a suburb. Only a few farms remained to remind newcomers that the stretch between Sydney and Parramatta had once been an agricultural area.

The feel of the sturdy animal beneath him, obeying his body’s signals, the fresh air and open countryside tempted him sorely. He knew he could survive in that isolated region that was known as Never-Never. No one could ever find him out there beyond the Blue Mountains.

But first, he had to cross that formidable mountain barrier crouched ahead of them. The mountains got their name because of their blue haze, a result of the fine mist of oil given off by the eucalyptus trees.

In earlier days, the few escaped convicts and adventurers who had attempted to transverse those rugged mountains had ended up practicing cannibalism to survive. Sin shut a mental gate on that ever present desire for freedom and chatted with Celeste. She rode alongside him, with Amaris bringing up the rear.

“Is Ireland really as green as an emerald?”

“As green as moon cheese.”

She laughed. “As green as Mama’s pea soup?”

“As green as Amaris’s eyes.”

Really gray, her eyes only looked green in certain slants of sunlight. He was interested in what kind of response the Wilmot girl would make, and he wasn't disappointed.

From behind him came her cool voice. “Is it true the Irish are full of—of—”

“Blarney?” Celeste supplied.

“Earbashing.” Amaris finished.

The bush was always interesting, never boring or monotonous. Here he was forced to look beyond the first impression to observe detail, to train his eye to pick out the subtlety. The rich beauty of Ireland was too brazen compared to this much older landscape.

The marvelous saltbush plains were dotted with gray and magnificent red kangaroo, some grazing by the side of the dusty road. They scratched themselves, watching, ears twitching.

Later, mobs of emus ran swiftly and stupidly with no sense of direction. Wedge-tailed eagles, two pairs, soared in the sky high above. Glorious flight so free.

So free.

Eventually the wastelands gave way to richer countryside and small farms owned by Emancipists. John Macarthur owned Elizabeth Farm, named after his wife. Their house was something of a Georgian/colonial mishmash but large enough to be impressive to the commoner.

Today, everyone had come to attend the horse sale, some from as far away as Cow Pastures and Camden. All the visitors had gathered around the main corral. Sin shouldered a path for Celeste and Amaris, so they could better watch the event, already in progress.