Peter expected the stares as he walked along Monaro Street in town a few days later with Robert Farrer at his side. Several decades of practice meant he did a decent job of pretending ignorance.
The one saving grace of cities was that often enough there were too many people with too many things to do for anybody to stop and give a stranger a moment of their time. They were communities that bred a sense of self-preservation. Peter almost believed he could catch on fire in the middle of a pavement back home and people would politely ignore his predicament and continue on their way.
A small town was a disconcertingly different matter. It wasn’t possible to go unnoticed.
‘It’s a struggle …’ Farrer was saying as they passed a series of shops that ran the length of the road between the park and the river. Up above a few people wandered out onto the balcony of one of the terraces and rested their hands on the laced iron railing to watch the street in what, Peter thought, was a convenient display of timing. He pretended not to notice.
‘Europe wants our wool and our opals, but they’re not sure they want us providing them with wine. Why buy Australian wine when there’s perfectly good booze coming out of France? The Germans are rather attached to their riesling and not all that thrilled to share their success, but we’ll get there.’
He laughed quietly.
‘John’s a lot more charming than me. That’s why he gallivants around Europe convincing everyone that New South Wales is the only place a man would want to buy from, while we stay languishing in the country, doing the dirty work.’
A young woman passing in the opposite direction shifted her attention their way, eyes holding Peter’s for just long enough to convey a message. Unfortunately he didn’t understand, nor did he want to interpret what it was.
He switched his attention to the man beside him. ‘I wouldn’t say bookkeeping is all that dirty.’
‘Perhaps not, but there are a lot of people on Endmoor who would think so. My sister included.’
Peter took a sudden interest in a shopfront across the street. Conversations about Miss Farrer were best kept to an absolute minimum, especially when her brother was the other person involved.
It was easier, Robert had explained the day before, to come in and get all the business done in town rather than wait for mail and news to trickle out to them at Endmoor.
‘And it’s also good for your sanity,’ he’d added with a flash of teeth. ‘Things can get a little too lonely out in the bush.’
Peter wasn’t sure what was good for his sanity right then.
They reached the top of the street and came to a stop. Farrer called a few words in greeting to a Mr Addison who passed on a horse, and then adjusted his hat.
‘All right. I’m headed to the church. Alice likes to maintain reasonable standing with the Salvation Army ladies, and I’ve been tasked with spending a few minutes of my day charming them on her behalf. Marriage,’ he added with a sigh, and then waved to someone else near the churchyard’s little gate.
Peter declined the offer of an ale at The Dog and Stile once the charming was completed and the ladies satisfied, and headed towards the post office on his own, trying out a few politely distant greetings for various locals. He was a stranger, and that was enough to earn anybody’s curiosity so far out in the middle of nowhere. He supposed a newcomer was always worth a second look.
There was correspondence waiting for him, just as he’d hoped, as well as a parcel for Miss Farrer that was reluctantly handed over into his keeping. Peter read and reread the return address on his own correspondence and realised he’d been away from home just long enough to begin missing it. He’d missed Daisy, and the pang at seeing his name written in her familiar, loopy hand was unexpectedly strong.
Not wanting an audience while he read his letters, he left the office and wandered through the gate and onwards, past the churchyard, concealing a grin at the sight of his employer surrounded by a gaggle of enthusiastic women. Popularity wasn’t always a good thing.
The park was expansive and already well established—a surprise, considering the size of the town. Someone had put in a lot of effort and worked a few miracles to keep the place so green. It was, Peter couldn’t help but notice, a very European sort of garden, with imported trees shedding the last of their spring blossoms and drooping lilac perfuming the air, alongside a whole lot of flowers he hadn’t a clue of the name of. That dreaded fluff from the kapok trees still drifted around in the air. He sneezed.
Spring. It was a little different in Barracks Flat.
He wandered over to the artificial pond halfway into the grounds and sneezed again as he took a seat on a bench. Before he’d even unfolded the first letter he found he was smiling.
He read them both, and then read them again in case he’d missed something, and then stood and set off towards the mill-lined river to find The Dog and Stile. He could well do with that ale after all.
***
‘What is he like?’ Elizabeth’s oldest and closest friend asked that afternoon.
It was a question she should have expected. Elizabeth blew a stream of seeds off a plucked dandelion and buried her first instinct, which was to tell the other woman about her distracting attraction to Endmoor’s new accountant. Not only was that truth something she wasn’t ready to admit to herself, but it was something she suspected might end up getting her hurt.
They sat by the river, not far from the Wright house, but hidden in an alcove of wattle bushes and weeping willows. It afforded them enough privacy that they could hear the occasional horse on the road, but the riders would never see them. The old rope bridge was up ahead, and beyond it the barracks, the town’s namesake, stood abandoned and crumbling.
‘He’s tall,’ Elizabeth said instead. ‘And he has dark hair—darker even than yours. Dark eyes. He’s obviously well-educated.’
Martha Wright’s big blue eyes rolled. ‘You sound like you’re describing a horse.’
‘An educated horse?’
Martha’s little dog, the runt from Robert’s own heeler’s litter, moved from one end of the clearing to the next, as happy to be outside as his mistress was. It wasn’t a breed designed to be a lap dog, and heelers were certainly thought to be too uncouth for a household as distinguished as the Wrights’.
Elizabeth threw the dandelion stem aside and wished there was more she could say without giving herself away. She’d done enough hurting over men to last a while yet. Spinsterhood and a career as an artist sounded like an excellent plan for her future, just as long as Robert was happy to put up with the sight of her on Endmoor for a few more years. She’d have herself sorted out soon.
She shifted her thoughts back towards the new, infuriating addition to Endmoor.
‘He likes numbers. It’s both baffling and wonderful. I was ready to burn all of Robert’s ledgers.’
With John abroad she’d taken on a lot of the property’s less than enjoyable tasks. Unfortunately for her, she’d been good at them. Her brother, too amused about her predicament for his own good, had threatened to have her permanently assigned to the work.
Well aware of the expectant expression on her friend’s face, Elizabeth considered what else to share. Even with Martha she wasn’t quite ready to talk about bollocks or sleepwalking or broad, strong shoulders.
‘His heritage isn’t entirely British.’
‘No? He’s not German, I suppose.’ They’d had Germans from the Rhineland out for a while, back when Robert and John were establishing the vineyards.
‘No, his colouring is darker than that.’
The strong sun gleamed on Martha’s pale skin as she absorbed that piece of information. She really ought not to be without her hat, but Elizabeth knew better than to point it out.
‘Dark, you say? Perhaps he’s all the way from Italy, or Greece? Maybe Spain. Or even India?’
‘He’s not Italian. I think he’s Aboriginal, at least partly, but he hasn’t said and nobody has asked. My brother—’
She paused, gauging Martha’s reaction. Nothing had come of her friend and Robert’s affection for each other during their youth, but she usually tried to avoid the topic of her brother altogether.
‘Well, anyway, Mr Rowe seems to be very good at his work, which is all that matters at the moment.’
‘If you say so,’ Martha replied, and bent to pat the dog, who’d just arrived at her feet.
‘It’s really no different with him there than before, the ledgers excluded.’ It was a fib, and the fact her friend didn’t reply was telling.
The water bubbled and gurgled and sparkled, and the dog ambled off to investigate.
‘I think you like him,’ Martha finally said, sounding awfully smug about the situation. ‘And by like, I mean—’
‘I know exactly what you mean, and I won’t admit to that.’
Her friend seemed far too pleased by that particular development. Not that there was a development, Elizabeth amended silently. Spinsters didn’t worry about men. They were too busy doing other, far more interesting things.
One attempt at a grand romance was sufficient, and she’d already done that, with spectacular results—spectacularly bad results, that was. In fact, it had been a cautionary tale that men had wandering eyes, and it was one she was still ashamed to share, even now he was gone.
Victoria Abraham: the name bounced around in her head sometimes, on quiet days when she hadn’t enough to occupy her mind. Victoria was an unfortunately common name—inescapable. Why hadn’t Edward’s other love been called something more obscure and forgettable?
‘Not all men are wicked,’ Martha began, voice careful and even.
Elizabeth made sure to keep her attention on the slow, steady course of the river.
‘Oh, no, I know they’re not. Robert’s always been too good for—well—for his own good. I have my doubts about them as a group, though … Marriage is inevitable for most people. I consider myself fortunate to have avoided it so far.’
Martha didn’t agree, Elizabeth knew. This was not a new debate.
The dog completed his hundredth lap of the clearing and flopped down in the shade, and Martha stretched her hand out to run her fingers through his short fur.
‘What about John Stanford? He’s outrageous, but not wicked, I think. You’ve a lot in common, and you get on.’
‘John!’ Elizabeth tried to imagine it. A romance with the man who as a boy had convinced her to spend an entire afternoon upending buckets of water onto spitfire larvae in the garden? The man who had her believing the little insects would set Endmoor alight if she didn’t? The man who teased her better than her brother ever could?
‘It would be like marrying an especially maddening cousin.’
They both turned sharply as a familiar barouche passed by, the vehicle tall enough they could see the top of it from their hiding place. Martha sighed.
‘My father will expect me back. It’s time to go upstairs and play the invalid again.’
Two years earlier a robbery gone wrong had left Martha wounded, and her recovery had not been fast. It had given the older Wrights the excuse they needed to control their overly beautiful, extremely admired daughter more than ever before.
Removing the hat had been a small rebellion, really, but Elizabeth’s friend truly wasn’t well.
And suddenly Elizabeth was ashamed. Recently she’d devoted so much time to feeling sorry for herself. However she could go out and about as she pleased, and not only because she could manage it physically. Robert would find himself clobbered over the head if he refused her her freedom.
The sounds of the vehicle’s wheels came to a stop and Martha sighed again and made her apologies to the dog. Neither one of them looked happy to be heading home.
‘I’ve a book,’ Elizabeth said as she stood and reached out a hand to yank her friend to her feet.
‘A book?’
‘You could try and sound a little bit excited. It’s not instructional. I’ve been reading it, and it’s definitely the type that would give your mother the vapours. Next time I’m in town I’ll bring it with me for you to borrow.’
Interest flared in Martha’s eyes, but she was already shaking her head. ‘If it’s that sort of book, my mother will really get the vapours, and that’s never much fun. She’ll probably burn it, and then I’ll never be able to return it.’
‘I think it’s worth the risk. Why not hollow out a Bible and store it in there?’
‘Like Valeria Brinton?’ Martha now sounded interested. The Law and the Lady was the first sensational book either of them had ever read back when they were girls—and the first of many to be confiscated by Mrs Wright. They’d idolised the story’s heroine.
‘It could actually work. For all their preaching, nobody in my family actually cares much about church.’
***
With Martha and her dog returned home without too much fanfare, Elizabeth walked back alongside the Murrumbidgee River, turning onto Monaro Street at the same time Robert and Mr Rowe emerged from the pub.
‘How is she?’ her brother asked when the three of them met at the bottom of the street.
‘All right. Better.’ It wasn’t entirely true, but she’d recently developed a habit of fibbing. Not all lies were bad. ‘Shall we head home?’
‘This was waiting for you in the post office,’ Mr Rowe said, clearing his throat and drawing her attention his way.
Elizabeth thanked him and absently reached out for the small parcel he held out to her. She was constantly ordering some supply or another for her work, and received at least as much mail as Robert did.
‘I suppose we should probably—’ She broke off when she got a better look at what she held. It was not a delivery of art supplies.
Later she’d have no recollection of what she thought they should probably do. Later, she’d not even remember how she got from the centre of town to her home in the bush.
The parcel was battered and oddly yellowed, as though it had been sitting in some dusty, sunny corner of an office for longer than it ought to have, forgotten all about. The initial address had been crossed out, and a new direction—to Barracks Flat—written in a messy and unfamiliar hand in its place.
‘For me?’ she asked stupidly, even as she saw her name scrawled across the paper.
Robert peered over her shoulder. ‘Were you expecting anything?’
‘No.’ She turned it over. ‘Maybe a friend in Sydney has—’
Cascade Street.
Edward!
The world whirled. Elizabeth reached out blindly as her head grew light, gripping her brother’s forearm as she fought off a wave of emotion so strong it all but engulfed her. A hand was at her back, the touch feeling a long way away, but it anchored her enough to keep her on her feet.
Someone said her name once, and then again, but there was too much ringing in her ears for her to hear the rest.
Edward. Edward Sumner.
A man who was supposed to be dead.