Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) (18 page)

His anger burned white hot as well, and that commanded a far more exacting price.
Greed. Exploitation. When wolves circle each other you stand back and let them work it out. But when wolves prey on sheep, you intervene. When a wolf like Sloan extorted free service from the likes of these people—or the Sloan harem, for that matter—
Luke paused, reining in his thoughts. He must control his anger.

One natural damper on the fires of his rage was plain fear. When he so glibly surrendered all he had to God, preparatory to coming north here, he didn’t have much. Now he had Meg—or used to. Could he surrender her as well, if called to do so?

Maybe not. And that frightened him most of all.

Chapter Fourteen

Kanaka

“What a mess. What a royal mess.” Samantha studied the remains of her poor beleaguered body in the mirror. Scuffs and scratches from that braking bush marred her face, but the very worst part didn’t even show—the aches and stiffness from all the tortuous activity she had forced herself to undergo of late. Bicycles are every bit as abusive as horseback.

She had washed her hair and bathed, so she was as presentable as possible under the circumstances. Someone knocked at the door of this little garret room. Only one person knew she was here. “Come in, Mr. Sloan.”

He pushed the door open and actually smiled. “You look a little better.” He wandered over to the single wicker chair by the window and plopped down. “Ready?”

“Aye, sir. The bicycle business?”

“The lad won’t press charges and I’ve given him the readies to fix it. The fact that you insisted on returning it to him personally—handing it to him face-to-face with your abject apologies—really impressed him. Impressed me, too.”

“The least I could do. I took advantage of him.”

“Sam, the reason he was so eager to give you a ride was that he was trying to take advantage of
you
. Don’t you realize that?”

“Aye. I understand his motives clearly. That hardly excuses me own behavior.”

He wagged his head. “The Connolly honor.”

“Be that so bad?”

Mr. Sloan laughed aloud. “No, Sam, that’s not so bad. Keeps you loyal to me.” As he stood up he dug into his coat pocket and handed her a small paper. “Ticket home. There’s a tramp steamer docked down at the wharf, going to Port Douglas this afternoon. You can sail that far and take the sugar tram on home. I’ll take the horses.”

Samantha gripped the bit of paper, that beautiful bit of paper, in both hands. No fifty miles on horseback! No pillow! No days of pain and discomfort! “Mr. Sloan, ’tis pure wonderful ye be!” Without thinking she leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.

Then she gasped and recoiled. She clapped a hand over her mouth and wheeled away from him, lest he see her cheeks turn red. “Me deepest apologies, sir. I forgot … for the moment …”

He gripped her arm with a grasp surprisingly strong and firm and pulled her around to face him. Nor did he let go while he studied her a long, long time. She tried to read something, anything, in his face. She could not.

Then he pulled her against himself, pressed her close, wrapped his arms around her. And he kissed her—not a mere peck on the mouth or a noisy little
smack
on the cheek, but a soft, warm, luxuriant kiss such as she’d never before known, though she’d been kissed many a time.

When at last he lifted away and relaxed his embrace, his eyes were twinkling. “If you’re going to do something, Sam, do it right.”

She stood transfixed, her heart and mind muddled together into one confused glob. He turned and headed out. She hurried after him, closing the door behind her.

The streets of Cairns seemed as busy as ever—which was not particularly busy. The cobbled lanes and thoroughfares of Cork were much more crowded. Irish feet moved more quickly, too, it seemed. These people of the far north in Queensland pursued life with such a casual air. Nothing was so important today that it couldn’t wait until the morrow. They hailed each other on street corners and stood about talking. They lingered over tea in the tearooms and over beer in the taverns. When neither beer nor tea appeared before them, they simply lingered.

Samantha smiled to herself. She had assumed she would be following her master about on business. Instead, they were entering that little cafe on Grimshaw Street. Good. She was ravenous. She’d been missing too many meals lately for one reason or another. They sat near the window. White muslin curtains filtered the tropical sun but barely muted its brightness. After all these months Samantha still was not accustomed to the sheer brightness of this land.

“Bit early for lunch, but we both missed breakfast.” Mr. Sloan signaled for tea.

“I slept through me own, but I cannae imagine yerself sleeping in.”

He chuckled. “You looked like death in a chamber pot when you pounded on my door this morning—obviously weren’t going to walk another step. I couldn’t expect you to take me back there.”

“Sure’n I doubt I could’ve found it again.”

“Bet you could if you weren’t so tired. However, it was past two and our lovebirds had surely flown the cage by then anyway, but I didn’t want to go back to bed, making what might be a false assumption. So I saddled Sheba, took a stable lantern and rode north and west into the hills, out the tracks you described.”

“Ye found the shanty?”

He nodded. “They were long gone, of course. I spent most of an hour searching about the place, trying to find some clue as to where they might be going. Nothing.” He spread his hands and let them fall. “Got away clean.”

“And ye missed breakfast.”

“Then there was the bicycle to take care of. Asked at the hardware store that sells them; he knew the whereabouts of your Bob Wilkins. You know, I must have beaten on your door five minutes to get you up so you could talk to the lad. I should have let you sleep.”

“Nae, I’m glad ye honored me request to get me up. Helps me sense of guilt if naething else. I had nae trouble falling back asleep again when I returned to the room.”

“Don’t doubt that.”

Tea came, and shortly thereafter soup and sandwiches. Samantha should have been eating her lunch with single-minded purpose, but other thoughts kept intruding. That kiss. His embrace. He was being jocular, that was all—making fun of her unthinking, forward gesture when he gave her the ticket. And yet …

“Why did ye bring me?” she asked suddenly. “Instead of Fat Dog, perhaps, who no doubt can ride well and follow footprints; or Mr. Gantry, who was Vickers’ foreman? I’m next to useless.”

“Hardly. It’s O’Casey I want back, not Vickers himself. I don’t think you realize how many places a woman can hide that a man can’t reach—and not just ladies’ powder rooms, though that’s one of them. Also, a woman thinks like a woman and I cannot. And, I need a faultlessly loyal aide-de-camp here, who’s committed enough to stay to the trail relentlessly and not be soft-soaped by sweet words into letting her go. A woman like O’Casey can beguile a man; she can’t beguile another woman.”

Samantha’s ears burned. When Byron Vickers came out of that shack she had already determined to let them go—no beguiling necessary. Soft-soaped by sweet words? Hah. Soft-soaped by her own foolish dreams and yearnings. So much for loyalty.

He wiped his mouth and laid his napkin aside. “In a way, I took a chance on you, I agree. But you came through for me; a splendid job. Stayed with him after I lost him, used your head, wouldn’t give up. You’re good, Sam. The best.”

Her ears burned all the hotter for knowing she deserved none of that praise. “Mr. Sloan, why be ye so anxious to retrieve Amena? Ye could hire any of the cane-cutters ye let go; ye could’ve hired on Byron Vickers and mayhap avoided all this. And there be girls here in Cairns, in Mossman and Port Douglas—”

“Hiring someone else means paying a salary. I can’t afford it. Amena’s already bought and paid for.”

“Then if ye be counting bob and quid so close, meself erred badly. I lost ye money with that bicycle.”

He grinned. “When they told me they had Vickers here, I saw a chance to get back what’s mine. I knew there would be costs involved—bed and board if nothing else—but the risk was worth it if I succeeded. I can repair a good many bicycles and pay a lot of hotel bills for the price of two years’ salary paid to O’Casey’s replacement.” He waved a hand. “It was a gamble. I lost. I accept that; I’m a gambling man, as is every planter.”

She had not as yet mentioned Abner Gardell or his part in her return. The omission had not been deliberate. When she arrived at Mr. Sloan’s room at two in the morning, she was too tired, too befuddled to give any more than the essentials. And there had been no opportunity since. Was this the time?

She drained her teacup. “Who is McGonigan’s partner?”

He turned rock-hard instantly and glared at her. “Where did you hear that?”

She sat back, involuntarily wary of the anger in him. “Abner Gardell introduced himself to me; asked if Cole Sloan be still with Sugarlea, and when meself averred ye were, he asked me to extend his regards.” She frowned. “Nae, that’s not precisely it. Actually, he offered nae greeting atall, as I recall.”

“He’s a fool and quite possibly a murderer. You stay away from him.”

“As ye wish, sir.” This was definitely not the time to learn more about Abner Gardell.

They spent the next hour checking and re-checking places the Vickers newlyweds might be, were they still anywhere around. The Cobb and Company stagecoach had left for Brisbane and points south at eight, bearing three passengers—none of them of the right description. Samantha asked in the hotels on the south side of town. She checked from desk to desk, not just looking for names on the register but describing the couple. Nothing.

The hotel chore didn’t take long. Half a generation ago, Cairns had been a booming transportation head, the staging area for the gold rush to the west. The gold was spent now, the rush slowed to a trickle, and Cairns sat under the tropical sun with little to show for the boom save memories of glorious yesterdays and a lot of boarded-up buildings. Most of the hotels stood vacant. Some had burned. The few still open were showing their years.

Nothing to do now but go home. Mr. Sloan had lost his gamble. Back to cooking and constantly beating the forest away from the door and trying to extract an honest day’s work from Linnet. Much as Samantha’s put-upon body ached, she rather hated to see this adventure trickle to such an inglorious end.

Mr. Sloan headed north on Gypsy with Sheba in tow, and Samantha took her time wandering down to the wharf. Weary and past its prime though Cairns might be, it was still civilization. And much as Mr. Sloan tried, Sugarlea was not. Samantha found herself dreading to leave. Perhaps, after she had put in her requisite three years, she would come down here to seek employment. That is, of course, if she had not yet found a man.

His kiss
…

The docks smelled of fish and left that unique taste of the sea that lingers on your nose and tongue. A swarm of black flies covered a pile of fish entrails; someone had caught something. A few old men and a boy were fishing off the pier. A small cormorant with white front and black back was fishing, too. It bobbed in the water beyond the pier, looking every which way but down. Suddenly it would dive, then pop to the surface moments later. Sometimes its beak held a little silver fish to bolt down, sometimes not. At least it was enjoying better luck than the human fishermen.

When Mr. Sloan said “tramp steamer” Samantha foolishly envisioned a boat similar to the one that had brought her from Ireland—big enough to take a walk on deck. This one was hardly long enough to stretch one’s legs out. It was more a launch than a boat, dingy yellow-gray and in need of attention from stem to stern. The Irish, whose seafaring ways extended beyond the mists of farthest time, took great pride in their craft. Apparently Aussies, johnny-come-latelies in the stream of national identity, did not. Samantha surrendered her ticket and boarded, her feather pillow tucked under her arm.

Mr. Sloan had left Cairns about two hours ago. He’d be six or seven miles up the coast road by now. She spent the first hour of her voyage scanning the coast, trying to pick out where the coast road hugged the shore, watching for a rider with two horses. Silly. This boat was too far off shore for her to hope to see him, and trees obscured the road most of the time anyway.

She suddenly felt embarrassed to be wasting her time thus, but she was not so embarrassed as to stop. Eventually they were too far north of where he might be and she stretched out with her pillow on a canvas-wrapped bale by the forecastle. They docked at Port Douglas at suppertime. Far from easing her weariness, those two hours’ rest left her stiffer than ever.

Samantha delighted, if that be the word, in the sugar tram between Port Douglas and the Mossman mill, from the moment she first saw it. It was a charming miniature of the trains that wound their way among Ireland’s velveteen hills, and tugged just a bit at her memories of home. The Irish and English railroads were already hoary with age, most of them over sixty years old. This tram, though, was a youngster, in operation for only five years. Between May and December, and sometimes January, the little steam engine chugged patiently between the mill and the port, hauling cane, hauling raw sugar, hauling various workers and semi-important officials and inspectors in both directions.

Except now. The blowdown had damaged so much cane that the mill stood idle and the train ran sporadically, if at all. Today was not one of the days when it ran. Perhaps a brisk walk would loosen Samantha’s aching muscles. It had better; with the boilers on the sugar tram sitting there cold, she saw no other immediate way home.

She was a quarter mile along the road from Port Douglas to Mossman when a rickety wagon approached from behind her.

The driver, a pleasant-looking young man the color of coffee with cream, tipped his floppy hat. “Bound for Mossman, mum?”

“Aye. And yerself?”

“The same. Hop aboard if y’d wish a ride.”

She didn’t have to ponder the opportunity long. “I’d be most pleased, lad. Thank ye.” She scooped her skirts aside and clambered up over the wheel into the seat beside him.