The Gallant (54 page)

this year, when they seized possession of the government steamer

Hastings

and murdered her master and two prison guards.

A substantial reward is offered for Wexford’s apprehension or for information leading to his capture.

There could remain no doubt, Johnny told himself. Michael Cadogan-the Honorable Michael Cadogan, heir to one of Ireland’s oldest peerages, and deported for life for high treason-had thrown in his lot with a vicious gang of bushrangers and bank robbers, and now, with a price on his head, every man’s hand would be against him. It was unlikely that he would elude capture for very much longer … but how to make Kitty believe it?

It was in a grimly sober mood that he returned to the hotel to waken Kitty in time for them to dine before the departure of the Bendigo coach.

The room was in semidarkness when he entered, and his bride, he saw with a quickening of the pulses, was sleeping soundly and had not heard his approach. She looked so lovely lying there, her long, dark hair loose and spread out across the pillow, one perfectly formed breast uncovered and her lips curved into a smile, as if her dream-whatever it was-were a happy one. Of home, perhaps, or even of him.

Johnny drew in his breath, feeling

desire well up inside him. She was his wife and he loved her… .

Without conscious thought, he divested himself of coat and shirt, the impulse to take her so strong and all-demanding that he was unable to resist it. His arms were about her, one hand cupping the small, exposed breast, his mouth hungrily seeking hers, and his strong body pressed against her when, to his dismay, Kitty wakened with a cry of alarm and fought to free herself.

“No, no!” Her fingers tore at his face, the nails biting deep, her body stiff and unyielding. “I’ll scream for help, I-was As if suddenly realizing that it was he, she bade him, with icy bitterness in eyes and voice, to leave her.

“Ours isn’t a marriage, Johnny-I told you it was not! I told you I was not in love with you, and you agreed. You knew, when you married me, that there could be nothing between us until Michael is found-you knew!”

“Yes, I knew.” Johnny was on his feet, angry and humiliated, grabbing for shirt and jacket, his hands shaking as he struggled to tie his cravat, the shirt still unbuttoned. Dressed, after a fashion, he strode to the door and said, without turning round, but flinging the words at her over his shoulder, “I’ll be in the dining room. You can join me when you’re ready, if you wish to. Otherwise we’ll meet on the coach.”

Kitty did not answer him, and he ate his meal alone.

When the big Cobb’s coach drew up outside the hotel, they boarded it together and seated themselves side by side in its padded interior. Jt was as if they were strangers, Johnny thought resentfully, or at best casual acquaintances.

He took off his hat and, leaning his head against the cushions, closed his eyes and feigned sleep.

Kitty, after a covert glance at him, opened a desultory conversation with her other neighbor as the driver whipped up his horses and the coach gathered speed.

Michael lay back on the sweet-smelling hay, hands clasped behind his head, enjoying the pleasant feeling of lassitude that came after lovemaking. It had been a long time-longer, almost, than he could remember-since he had lain with a woman and given himself to physical pleasure, if not fulfillment.

The girl, now drowsily relaxing by his side in the hayloft, had been Billy Lawless’s girl, and Michael had, so to speak, inherited her, together with leadership of the Lawless Gang, when Billy had died of the wounds inflicted on him after they had staged their successful bank holdup in Snowdon.

Michael sighed, with genuine regret. He had liked Billy Lawless a great deal, and, God knew, he and the others had done all in their power to save his life.

The shots that had brought him crashing from his horse had come, without warning, from an infernal barber’s shop across the road from the bank. They had been fired by a stout, gray-haired man who had come running out, the barber’s towel still wrapped round his neck, to let off two rounds of buckshot from close range.

Poor Billy had been hit in the back, and the backshot had torn his lungs apart. He had known he was done for, Michael recalled, and had gasped at the others to leave him and save themselves. They had not done so, of course. While Boomer O’Malley had fired back at the apparition in the door of the barber’s shop, Michael had lifted Billy onto his horse’s withers

and jumped up behind him, and then, with two of the others giving them cover, they had galloped out of Snowdon Town as if the devil himself were hard on their heels.

And they had got clean away-although, sadly for Billy, it had meant three hours’ hard riding before they could do more for him than stanch the blood from his wounds-the external blood. It was the internal bleeding that had killed him, and without skilled medical help it had been impossible to control that-although the old veterinary at Broken River Crossing, where they had halted, had done his best.

Finally, on an improvised stretcher hitched behind their horses, and with Billy well primed with the veterinary’s liquor to dull his pain, they had brought him here, to the Magpie Inn. The others had said the Magpie was a safe haven, an isolated tavern Billy had bought a few months ago, ready for his retirement. It was high in the hill country, where few travelers ever ventured until the new goldfields had started to attract them. For the time being it was safe enough, Michael thought, and Billy had breathed his last free from any fear of pursuit, the old couple he had put in to run the tavern the only mourners, besides the gang and their women, when they had buried him.

He had put his affairs in order with meticulous care and in spite of the pain he was enduring.

Michael glanced down at the girl beside him, now fast asleep, and reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch, also inherited from Billy Lawless. The girl’s name was Lily-he had never heard her surname and had not asked what it was. She was a gentle, pretty little creature, affectionate as a puppy, and in some ways she reminded him of Prudence Meldrum. To his own

surprise-despite her previous history and the fact that she had been Billy’s

mistress-Michael found that this resemblance had done much to endear her to him. Indeed, he reflected, tamping tobacco into the bowl of the pipe, he was already halfway to falling in love with her … and in admitting this to himself, he was conscious of no regrets.

“I found the poor kid in a fancy cathouse in Bendigo six months ago,” Billy had said.

“She was treated worse than any kid has a right to be by the foul old harridan who employed her, and she came with me willingly. Told me once she was an orphan, an’ that the woman in charge of the orphanage made a

William Stuart Long

tidy bit on the side by sending the girls out as domestic slaves to whoever would take them, when the supply of convicts ran out. Lily ran away and ended up in the cathouse. But she’s a good lass, Michael, an’ I’d appreciate it if you’d take her over an’ look after her. See she gets my share of our funds, will you, after you’ve put me under? The boys can do as they like, but I reckon you could keep “em together, if you’re so inclined. They respect you an” they’re all on the run, like you are yourself. So there’s no place to go “cept the bush, is there? Not for any of you, so you might as well stick together. And there’s always this place to hide out in, if things get too hot. Talk to the boys, will you, Michael? I’d do it meself, only it hurts too much, talking does.”

He had done as Billy had asked, Michael thought. Poor devil, it

had

hurt him a great deal to say as much as he had about Lily and how the gold and money they had amassed should be split; all the while he had coughed up blood, breaking off, at increasingly frequent intervals, so as to get his breath. But at least he had died peacefully in his sleep-there was that to be thankful for, and a lot else besides. He had been a good man, Billy Lawless, according to his lights-another of the “true patriots,” of course, whom the English convict system had spewed out when he was barely twelve years old, for the trifling crime of robbing a Newgate pieman during a hanging.

His pipe was going and Michael inhaled smoke contentedly, leaning back again and staring up at the slatted roof of the hayloft, against which the rain descended in a steady, relentless stream. But the weather was improving; there had been no snow for several weeks, and spring could not be far away. He was happy enough staying at the Magpie, and none of the others was in any more of a hurry to move on than he was.

He had divided what Billy had called their funds in strictly equal shares, proportional to the length of time each man had been a member of the gang. Lily had been over the moon at the size of the payment he had made to her. … He smiled, remembering her excited cries and her stammered thanks as she had counted her unexpected reward.

Low and McFee had gone off to spend their shares in Urquhart Falls, where, both men had insisted, they were not known and could safely mingle with the diggers, seeking drink and distraction and paying for both commodities in dust. They had promised to return within the month, and, staring up at the blue cloud of smoke from his pipe, Michael wondered if they would, or whether some fellow from the gold escort would recognize them and give the game away. It was always in the cards, and, he thought grimly, in his own case it was an ever-present danger, in view of the size of the reward the authorities had placed on his head and the descriptions of him they had issued.

As Billy had reminded him, there was no place for him to go now, except the bush and-for a while, at least-the Magpie Inn. He did not entirely trust the old couple Billy had installed at the Magpie; they ran the inn well enough, but there was little profit for them in it, and if they should get wind of the reward offered for his apprehension, it was by no means certain that they would not be tempted to betray him. Their loyalty had been to Billy Lawless, and Billy, alas, was no longer there to ensure that they kept still tongues in their heads. The old woman, Nelly, was avaricious and mean besides; she paid him lip service and addressed him as “mister,” but …

Michael knocked out his pipe, careful to avoid catching the hay alight from the still-warm shreds of tobacco, and turned again to the sleeping girl beside him, drawing her closer.

Lily wakened at once, lovingly compliant, as she had been since he had first taken her to his bed, her china-blue eyes bright and welcoming as she looked up at him.

“I love you, Big Michael,” she whispered softly. Her small, experienced hands caressed him, rousing hirn-a child with a woman’s knowledge, eager and willing to give him the pleasure he sought and to share it with him as their two naked bodies met and moved in now-familiar unison, each a part of the other.

“All, God, how I love you!”

There had been so many years, Michael remembered, his mouth on hers-lost years, when there had been no woman in his life, no tenderness, only endless toil and the lash to fill his days, and bitter emptiness in the long night hours. His feelings for this waif were, he knew, induced by those years, yet they were as true as any he had ever experienced. Truer, perhaps, since he had been little more than a boy when the redcoats had

William Stuart Long

seized him and dragged him off to jail, fettered and helpless, with only a boy’s memories of womankind to look back on … and even those had been hazy and incomplete. His sister Kitty had held more of his heart than any of the Kilclare girls he had known-certainly more than any young ladies of the hunting set with whom he had mixed socially or squired to long-forgotten dinners and balls, in the days when he had been a gentleman and Kilclare’s heir.

That life was over-just as his life as a convict was over, praise be to God! He heard Lily cry out in ecstasy and, joining his own, deeper cry to hers, gave her the answer to the question she had never put into words:

“And I love you, Lily my sweet. I’ll love you till the day I die!”

“Oh, Michael!” She clung to him, and he felt the dampness of her tears on his cheek. “Oh, Michael, I’ve longed for you to tell me that!

Only I never dared to ask you, and I-I was afraid, you see. Because of Billy, and of what I was, and because you-oh, because you are what you are.”

Michael kissed the tear-wet eyes, holding her to him. “I’d marry you, sweet, if I were anything but what I am,” he assured her gently.

“But I’m an escaped felon, a damned

bushranger with a price on my head. Not the kind to make a good husband, Lily my little love.”

“I don’t mind that,” Lily answered. “It’s enough that you love me, Michael. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Then I’ll say it again-I’ll love you till the day I die.” Michael jumped up, smiling at her. “That’s a promise, as good as any wedding vows. Remember it, in case someone takes a potshot at me, like they did at poor old Billy. Now dress yourself, child, and let’s go and see what old Nelly’s cooking for supper. I don’t know about you, but I’m powerfully hungry.”

“It’s love,” Lily told him, giggling, her tears gone. “Love gives you an appetite, Michael. You-was

The clatter of hooves in the yard below cut her short. Michael, half dressed, was at the unglazed window, his rifle muzzle poking through the aperture. The loft was their watchtower; as Billy had stipulated, one of them always stood guard in it, which was why Michael was there this afternoon-but because he had been giving Lily all his attention, he had missed seeing the horsemen’s approach five minutes earlier. Now they were in the yard, two of them, and … Michael exclaimed in relief, “It’s Slugger and Marty, praise be! They’re back. Come on.”

The two men, cold and saddlesore, thankfully handed over their horses to Tich Knight to be bedded down, then followed Michael into the taproom of the inn.

“We’ve got news, Big Michael,” McFee announced. “Soon as we’ve got a drink inside us an” Tich gets through with them nags, we’ll tell you about it. I reckon you’ll be interested-it’s a job after Billy’s heart, that’s for sure.” He grinned, stretching his cramped limbs, as Nelly’s husband, known to them as Dingo-the nickname Billy had bestowed on him-came shuffling in, yawning and clearly just waking from an afternoon spent in his bed.