‘You look radiant tonight, Alice,’ Georgina said as the three women settled down on to the chairs in the airy room. The doors out to a wide veranda were open, letting in some of the cooler evening air, but still Alice felt her skin was prickling from the heat.
‘You do, my dear,’ Francesca agreed.
‘Thank you.’ Alice looked down at her dress. It was in perfect condition, but it did feel a little strange to be wearing someone else’s clothes. At least someone she hadn’t known. She and her sisters had always shared clothes growing up, passing things backward and forward as their likes and sizes changed, but this felt different. Perhaps it was the beautiful material or the quality needlework, or perhaps it was because it was a dress a woman like her should never even dream of wearing.
‘We found it in the attic, packed away in a trunk,’ she explained.
‘It’s a perfect fit, almost as if it were made for you,’ Francesca said, smiling.
‘There is a modiste in Sydney, a very talented woman who seems to know the perfect material and cut for everyone who walks through her door,’ Georgina said, stroking her bump softly. ‘She even managed to find something that flatters my shape while I’m the size of a whale. Next time you’re in Sydney you should ask Mr Fitzgerald to take you there.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ Alice said quickly. It was one thing borrowing a beautiful dress for an evening, but quite another to have one made for you. ‘It wouldn’t be right,’ she added quietly.
For a few hours she’d allowed herself to forget that she didn’t fit in here. Everyone had been so kind, so welcoming. They’d treated her like a friend, not a convict worker on a neighbouring farm. Both couples had done everything in their power to put her at ease and Alice had felt her spirits soar. Just as George made her feel worthwhile again, so did his friends. They listened to her opinions, included her in their jokes, made her part of their intimate little group. The two women had even insisted she call them by their first names, bringing her into their close and intimate group.
‘I’m just a convict worker,’ she murmured, trying to inject a note of levity in her voice, horrified when it came out sounding as if she were going to cry.
‘No,’ Francesca said quietly, ‘you’re not.’
It took half a minute for Alice to compose herself to look up from her hands. Both Georgina and Francesca were looking at her with a mixture of sadness and encouragement.
‘I shouldn’t have come here. I forgot my place.’
Francesca reached out and placed her hand over Alice’s. ‘You have no predefined place in the world, Alice, look at me and Georgina. If we had followed what people expected of us, if we’d taken up the roles everyone expected of us we wouldn’t be here, blissfully happy with the men we love.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Alice protested quietly. She wanted part of this world, wanted the warmth and the friendship and the civilised conversation as they sat round the dinner table. But no amount of wanting could change her circumstance.
‘Of course it is. It’s about having the belief, the conviction, to follow your heart,’ Georgina said. ‘At the time I met my husband I had received a proposal from a duke. It was everything my family had ever wanted for me, everything I had been taught to strive for.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘And he was a lovely man, very kind. He would make someone a good husband. I almost married him, Alice. It would have been the easy path, the path of conformity, but I knew it was the wrong thing to do.’
Georgina looked at her and Alice thought she would see condescension in the woman’s face, but instead there was just concern.
‘I haven’t spent much time with Mr Fitzgerald,’ she continued, ‘but where Sam talks about him all the time I feel like I know him. I know his kindness and his loyalty. I know his willingness to put everyone else above himself. I know how hard he works and how invested he is in not only the success of his farm, but the success of Australia.’
‘He is a very special man,’ Alice murmured.
‘And he looks at you in a very special way,’ Francesca said bluntly.
‘I suspect you do not feel worthy of him, Alice,’ Georgina continued more gently, waiting for Alice to give a minute nod before saying more. ‘But he obviously thinks you are. He sees something in you and sometimes you have to trust the person you love to see something you are blinded to.’
‘She means your worth,’ Francesca clarified.
‘I’m just a convict worker...’
‘No,’ Georgina said sharply. ‘You’re so much more than that. Convict worker is a label you’ve been given, it is a short period in your life, but it is not who you are.’
‘Why are you being so kind to me?’ Alice asked, feeling the tears building in her eyes.
‘Do you know what I’ve learned from my husband?’ Francesca asked in reply. ‘The value of a good friendship. The three of them know that no matter what they have the others to rely on, to be there whatever the hardship. It is a very powerful thing.’ She smiled at Alice and took her hand. ‘I never had that, not before I came here. My late husband wasn’t a particularly pleasant man and he isolated me from all of the friendships I did have, leaving me lonely and without anyone to help when things were going wrong.’
Georgina smiled at Francesca, a warmth passing between the two women that Alice realised she badly wanted a part of.
‘I know we don’t know you well, Alice, but we’d like to. And what is more important is that Mr Fitzgerald cares for you. Ben tells me Mr Fitzgerald is an excellent judge of people and if he cares for you so deeply after such a short time then you are someone worth investing in.’
The tears slipped out of Alice’s eyes and on to her cheeks. Immediately both women were at her side, Georgina wrapping her arms around Alice and Francesca leaning in and patting her back.
‘He doesn’t know everything about me,’ Alice said quietly once she’d regained her composure. She thought of Bill, of the hurried wedding and the months afterwards living as husband and wife. As always when she thought of her husband she remembered his face as he struck Mr Havers, of the emotionless act of violence that had finally confirmed what manner of man she’d allowed to seduce her.
‘Sometimes the few days or weeks before you admit exactly what you feel for one another can be the hardest,’ Georgina said. ‘You have to iron out all the little complications, clarify what is really important. But if you’re meant to be together then it will all work out in the end.’
Alice bowed her head, wondering if what the other women were saying was true. She desperately hoped it was. For weeks she had been trying to deny that all she dreamed of was a future with George. A future filled with happiness and children and blissful domesticity. Never had she admitted so much out loud, most of the time she wouldn’t even admit it to herself.
George did care for her. It was obvious in the way he treated her, how he looked at her, the passion in his eyes as he kissed her. Every day he showed her he cared for her. Even bringing her to dinner with his friends hinted that their relationship was something he wanted to nurture and grow.
Perhaps Georgina and Francesca were right. Perhaps Alice just needed to tell him the truth and deal with the consequences, and if they were meant to be then it would all work out in the end. For a moment she panicked, her heart squeezing at the idea that her secrets might be enough to keep them apart, but quickly she rallied. It wasn’t as though she could keep Bill secret for ever. She should have told George about him long ago, but the best thing she could do now was reveal the truth as soon as possible and explain her reasons for not telling him sooner.
‘Sam told me once that it took years for him to stop doubting himself,’ Georgina said softly. ‘Even when he had finished serving his sentence and started to run his own farm he still found himself thinking he wasn’t worthy.
‘The guards and the officials spend so long making sure you understand how worthless you are, how low on the ladder of society, that it is hard to think anything else. But it does improve. Now he certainly doesn’t suffer from any lack of confidence.’
Alice wondered if she would ever be the same. She thought it would probably depend on her future. Mr Robertson and Mr Crawford had been lucky, they’d had George’s family to champion them, to give them opportunities to flourish and allow them to see themselves in a different light.
‘I think I need to tell George—Mr Fitzgerald,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘about my past.’
‘And try not to worry too much,’ Francesca said with a note of reassurance in her voice, ‘I’m sure it can’t be that bad. It’s not as though you’ve killed someone, or are married with a brood of five children.’
Alice smiled weakly, her breath catching in her throat, wondering all the time if her revelation might be the end of the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her.
‘When will you ask her?’ Robertson asked, leaning back in his chair and loosening his cravat.
‘Ask her what?’ George asked mildly, even though he knew what his friend was referring to.
‘To marry you. You’re completely besotted so there’s no point holding off.’
‘Soon,’ he said, knowing it was pointless to try to be evasive with his friends. They knew him better than he knew himself sometimes. ‘If she wants to we can wait until she’s finished her sentence to marry, or we can do it in the next few months.’
Slowly he was beginning to let go of the feeling he was doing something wrong. Alice might be a convict worker under his protection, but he hadn’t taken advantage of her. They were just two people who had fallen for each other. She was a strong woman, a woman who had spent the last couple of years striving to remain independent, refusing to take the protection of a man even though it would have made her life a lot easier. It told him that it wasn’t just obligation or gratitude that made her sink into his arms.
George tried to suppress a grin, but wasn’t quite successful.
‘You’re thinking about her,’ Ben murmured. ‘I’ve never seen you look like this before.’
It was true. He was thinking of how Alice looked at him, how her whole body swayed towards him whenever they stood close, how she let out those little sighs of contentment when their lips met. All of those things told him how she really felt about him.
George shrugged. ‘What can I say, I’m besotted.’
‘That’s not a bad thing,’ Sam said. ‘I’m still besotted with my wife three years down the line.’
‘And I’ve been besotted with Frannie since we were ten years old,’ Ben added quietly.
‘I think she’ll say yes...’ George said, allowing the slight doubt to creep into his voice. He knew Alice cared for him, desired him, but he felt as though she were holding something back. Whatever it was he was sure they could work through it, but only if she let him in.
‘Do you doubt it?’ Crawford asked.
Slowly George shook his head. ‘There’s something she’s not telling me, something about her past perhaps, something that plagues her. I don’t want to push too much...’ He was afraid it might be something to do with her time on the transport ship, she’d told him a little about the hardships she’d endured, but he was worried there was something worse, something that still scarred her to this day.
‘Ask her about it,’ Robertson said. ‘It is always best to have complete honesty in a relationship.’ Ruefully he shook his head. ‘I nearly lost Georgina because I wasn’t honest with her. It makes me feel sick to think of it.’
‘I don’t want to make her relive parts of the last couple of years she’d rather forget.’
‘I suppose she doesn’t need to tell you the details,’ Crawford said. ‘Just tell her you feel like there is something that is making a barrier between you, ask her to tell you what it is in general terms. If she doesn’t want to go into the details she doesn’t have to, but it can put your mind at rest that there is no great awful secret between you.’
It was a sensible suggestion. Perhaps even just acknowledging that there was a feeling she was holding something back would be enough to ease his mind.
‘Just think, in a few months you’ll probably be married with a baby on the way.’ Robertson shook his head. ‘How strange it is to think of the lads we once were and how different our lives are now.’
‘To success and domesticity,’ Crawford said, raising his glass in a toast.
They all drank, and George felt a warmth and contentment wash over him. Here he was surrounded by his closest friends, about to embark on a future with the woman he loved.
The thought was sobering. The woman he loved. He hadn’t said the words to Alice yet, but it was what he felt. There was no other way to describe the crashing emotion that almost overwhelmed him every time he looked at her. Feeling buoyed by his friends, he allowed himself a moment to picture the future. A future with Alice by his side. Whatever it was Alice was keeping from him, surely it couldn’t be anything that could shatter the happiness they felt when they were together?