Suddenly Kitty didn’t feel quite so pleased with herself. ‘I’m sorry, but he wouldn’t accept anything else.’
‘
Nothing
else?’ Sharkey said sceptically.
‘No, not even that,’ Kitty snapped. ‘He said…oh, never mind.’
Hawk reached across the table and touched the back of her hand, the first physical gesture he’d made towards her since he’d had to cut off her hair. ‘You did what you were asked to do, and you did it very well. We are all very grateful. Rian will be, too. Thank you, Kitty.’
Mollified, Kitty nodded. She caught Haunui’s eye and he winked. She was pleased; if he thought she’d done well, she must have.
She asked, ‘When will I have to go back to the Barracks?’
‘As soon as we can get Bannerman what he wants,’ Mick said. ‘Why, was there some sort of problem?’
‘No, actually, not at all,’ Kitty said. ‘It was surprisingly easy. There was a young man there, a Sergeant Royce, who was very helpful. I
think, well, I think he’d go out of his way to help me,’ she finished,
embarrassed.
‘Is that right?’ Mick said, ‘That’s good to know then, isn’t it?’ Hawk glanced at Sharkey again, then leant over and whispered in his
ear, ‘Rian will not think so.’
Sharkey whispered back, ‘Too bad, if it comes to a choice between
that or the rope.’
G
etting hold of what Avery Bannerman wanted was easier than anyone expected, but took longer than anyone had accounted for. Rian was due to go before the magistrate in a week’s time, and they had to have the documents ready by the day before at the latest. They already had a genuine, earlier, customs receipt signed by Walter Kinghazel among the
Katipo’s
papers, and Kitty and Wai went out and bought the pens, ink and blotting paper, but they had to wait several days for Pierre’s friend to deliver the special paper and the official stamp.
In the interim, Bodie’s kittens arrived. She had them messily on Haunui’s bed, after turning around and around on it for nearly twenty minutes and scratching at her belly with a very cross look on her face. There were five of them: two tiny black versions of Bodie and three grey tabbies. They were entrancing with their little screwed-up faces, pink tongues and miniature toes that opened and shut when they were feeding. Bodie, however, didn’t appear to have grasped the concept of motherhood particularly firmly, and would get up and wander off when they were suckling, leaving them squeaking and searching blindly for her teats. Wai was delighted with them and so was Kitty, because it gave Wai something to take her mind off her own impending motherhood. Haunui was less enamoured, as Bodie seemed to have formed the impression that his bed was now her nest. Consequently, he spent his nights sleeping in the shape of a tortured ‘S’ to accommodate them all, too frightened to roll over in case he squashed them, and too soft-hearted to kick them out.
The kittens were a welcome diversion, but Avery Bannerman’s special paper and stamp finally arrived and Kitty prepared herself for another visit to Hyde Park Barracks, guiltily asking Mrs Maguire for the evening off on the pretext of wanting to be with Wai during the midwife’s visit. She didn’t bother with the low-cut, rose-coloured dress this time, realising that she could conceal more if her neckline was more modest, which was the case with her cream and red-sprigged dress.
The pens were easy—she slid those between her breasts, telling herself she must remember not to bend over too energetically for fear of stabbing herself with the sharp nibs. The ink bottles and the stamp fitted into her reticule, just, and the blotting paper and the customs receipt were tucked into her bodice, but the special watermarked paper posed a problem because it could not be folded before Bannerman had performed his magic. Mick said why not just shove the lot in a bigger bag, but Hawk said no, anything larger than what Kitty had carried last time might arouse suspicion and be searched. Finally, Enya came up with a solution. She took a piece of fine muslin about two feet square, folded and hemmed it to make a sort of envelope, and stitched it inside the front panel of Kitty’s dress, just below the waistline. Kitty would just have to be careful, whenever she bent over or sat down, not to crease the sheets of paper inside it.
Then, almost before she knew it, Kitty was walking through the barracks gates again, more confident this time but still more than a little nervous because of the contraband she was carrying. If she were to be caught, she could well end up behind bars herself.
There was no one in the small waiting room when she entered the building, but one of the guards she’d seen last time had tipped his cap at her when she’d come through the gates. Sergeant Royce, however, was nowhere to be seen. She stood for several minutes, wondering what to do, then decided to go upstairs by herself in the hope of finding someone else to fetch Avery Bannerman for her; time was running out. He was possibly still having his supper, but if she could find one of the guards he could surely tell her that.
She had barely set a foot on the bottom step when a voice barked, ‘Stop!’
She froze, feeling the blood in her veins turn to ice, suddenly too frightened to turn around.
‘Wait,’ came the voice again. ‘Miss Carlisle, wait!’
She did turn then, and felt her legs go weak with relief when she saw that it was Sergeant Royce.
‘My friend out at the gate said it was you,’ he said, hurrying towards her looking both delighted and alarmed. ‘You can’t go upstairs by yourself, it isn’t safe.’
‘Oh dear,’ Kitty said. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking.’
And she wasn’t either—the sergeant’s shout had very nearly scared the wits out of her.
‘How are you?’ he asked shyly.
‘Very well, thank you, Sergeant.’
‘Have you come to visit your uncle again?’
Kitty nodded, hoping he couldn’t hear her pounding heart.
‘I expect he’s probably still in the mess-hall,’ the sergeant said. ‘But I can’t leave you upstairs, so would you like to sit in the waiting room while I go and find him?’
‘Yes, I will, thank you.’ Kitty brushed gently past him, but just as she did, and for no reason whatsoever, her reticule slipped from her grasp and hit the wooden floor with a very audible clunk.
This time she wasn’t the only one who froze. Very slowly, her gaze travelled up the front of Sergeant Royce’s jacket to his face, knowing that his attention would be on the ink that must surely be spreading across the floorboards by now.
But no, he was looking directly at her, silent but questioning.
She glanced down at her reticule, which, thank God, wasn’t sitting in a puddle of ink.
‘I’ve been caught, haven’t I?’ she said quietly.
He nodded. ‘What is it?’
Kitty blinked, and this time her tears were real. She was so frightened she wondered if her legs would continue to hold her up.
‘Treats. A jar of oysters and one of pickles. Uncle Avery said the food here is awful.’
The sergeant looked at her for a moment longer, then bent down to pick up her reticule. Kitty also reached for it, wincing as the pen nibs dug into her flesh, but he got there first. He straightened up, his fingers fumbling clumsily with the clasp.
‘No!’
He stopped.
‘Please,’ Kitty pleaded, ‘there are things in there. It’s…my time of the month.’
Sergeant Royce’s face immediately flushed a dull red and he thrust her reticule at her. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.
‘No,
I
should apologise. I know nothing should be brought into the barracks. I’m very sorry. I won’t do it again.’
He nodded, but Kitty saw a shadow of doubt cross his face. And something else, too. Relief?
‘I’ll overlook it just this once,’ he said, and gestured towards the waiting room.
Kitty went in and sat down, feeling sick. Not because she’d nearly been caught, but because of the lies she’d told the sergeant. He was a kind young man, who’d clearly taken a fancy to her, and she was using him.
Sergeant Royce left them alone in the room upstairs, saying he had something he had to do and would be back shortly. Kitty handed the goods over to Avery Bannerman, not even flinching while he watched interestedly as she dug the receipt and pens out of her bodice. She did, however, turn her back when she retrieved the paper hidden under her skirts.
‘How will you manage with the guards and the other inmates around?’ she said. ‘You can’t have much privacy.’
‘There’s more privacy in here than you might imagine,’ Bannerman said. ‘It comes in handy for all sorts of things.’
Kitty ignored his last comment, and the unpleasant feeling it gave her. ‘When do you think it might be ready? We have to have it by Monday afternoon at the latest. Rian goes in front of the magistrate on Tuesday morning.’
‘Monday morning, then. Don’t worry, I always deliver on time.’
‘What time shall I come to collect it?’
‘You won’t.’
Kitty looked at him. ‘Sorry?’
‘I’ll have it delivered. Less risk. Give me the address of your lodgings.’
It was then that Kitty realised what an extremely powerful man Avery Bannerman really was, and how amateur and incompetent her cloak and dagger attempts must seem to him.
‘It’s 4 Caraher’s Lane.’
Sergeant Royce returned then, and if he noticed that there was neither a jar of oysters nor one of pickles sitting on the table, he didn’t comment.
Avery Bannerman was as good as his word. The forged customs receipt arrived at half past nine on Monday morning, delivered by a snot-nosed boy about ten years old, who loitered on Kitty’s doorstep until she realised he wanted paying. She gave him sixpence.
The receipt was a work of art. She didn’t know how Bannerman had done it, but he’d not only copied the style of the original they’d given him exactly, but had also managed to somehow weather the paper so that it looked like it had been issued months ago and had been lying around in someone’s bookwork ever since.
Sharkey was ecstatic.
‘See, what did I tell you? The man’s a bloody genius! Right on the nail!’
Kitty found herself unable to share the others’ delight because the most challenging part of the whole undertaking was still to come.
The plan had been to deliver the document to Rian’s barrister, a Mr Clement Prentice, to produce in court so that he would be acquitted, and, they hoped, give Walter Kinghazel a conniption at the same time, which would be an added bonus. But enquiries had revealed that Prentice had gone off to Campbelltown for several days on business, which everyone thought was rather cavalier given the seriousness of Rian’s
predicament, and was not expected back at his residence until after his Tuesday court commitments. Rather than accosting him in full view on the steps of the courthouse, they decided that it would be safer to give the receipt to Rian himself, inside Sydney Gaol. That way he would be certain of being able to produce it in front of the magistrate.
The problem was that whoever gave Rian the receipt would have to get physically close enough to pass it to him, as the prison guards were notoriously difficult to smuggle anything past. That excluded the crew of the
Katipo,
none of whom, although loyal to Rian to a man, were willing to embrace him in public with the required level of intimacy. Enya couldn’t do it as she’d already announced herself as his sister during a visit, and no one thought Wai should be placed in such danger, given her condition. The only person left was Kitty, who, against her better judgement yet again, had agreed to pose as Rian’s wife.
It wasn’t the danger that worried her—she was becoming quite accustomed to putting herself at risk of late—it was the wife bit. She had deliberately kept Rian at arm’s length since the day she’d discovered Enya was his sister and not his lover, and she was afraid that if she found herself physically close to him once more her determination would be compromised. It was her heart that threatened to let her down—her heart and perhaps even her soul. She yearned for him in ways she couldn’t describe even to herself, and it frightened her badly.
She sat at the bare table in the mean, windowless little room, deliberately refusing to meet the eye of the man standing just inside the door. Guards seemed cut from a different quality of cloth here. At least those at the barracks had been polite to her; this one just leered.
She tied and retied the ribbons on her bonnet, desperate to give her shaking hands something to do until Rian appeared.
Mercifully, he wasn’t long in coming. Escorted into the room by another guard, he sat down opposite her and smiled.
Kitty smiled back. He didn’t look much different. She had thought he might look defeated and somehow reduced, but he was the same Rian
he’d always been. His grey eyes remained bright, the laughter lines still bracketed his mouth, and his hair was, as always, somewhat untidy. He was still wearing the clothes he’d been arrested in and, she couldn’t help noticing, could have done with a good wash.
‘Hello, husband,’ she said, horrified for a second that she might have said ‘uncle’. She was relieved to see that he appeared to be all right, but still felt sick with nerves at the thought of what she had to do next.
His right eyebrow went up a fraction, the only indication of his surprise. ‘Hello, mo mhuirnín.’
She frowned.
‘My sweetheart,’ Rian mouthed.
Kitty flushed, remembering the last time he had said that to her. Rather too loudly, she asked, ‘Are you well?’
Rian shrugged. ‘As well as can be expected, given the rubbish they serve in here for food.’ He glared at the guard, who looked away. ‘How are the lads?’
‘They’re well, although they’re worried,’ Kitty replied.
‘What about the
Katipo
? How’s the refit going?’
Kitty could hardly say that almost nothing had been done in the last week as they’d all been too busy scheming to get Rian out of prison. ‘Coming along.’
There was a short silence, during which Rian stared at her intently, presumably trying to fathom whatever it was she had come to tell him. She felt something touching her foot and started as she realised he was stroking the inside of her ankle with the toe of his boot.
She cleared her throat. ‘I am in receipt of something that I think—’
The guard stepped forward and kicked the leg of the table, shunting it several inches across the floor. ‘No passing of information,’ he growled.
There was another silence, longer this time. The guard’s stomach rumbled.
‘Will you come to court tomorrow?’ Rian asked.
‘I…I don’t know,’ Kitty said, and began to cry.
Rian ferreted in his pocket and passed her a handkerchief. It was very
grubby but she took it anyway and blew her nose loud enough to make the guard jump.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m so worried for you. I should leave, I’ll only upset you.’
Rian nodded gravely, but didn’t try to dissuade her.
‘I want to go,’ Kitty announced to the guard, who nodded.
She stuffed the handkerchief down the front of her dress, hastily making sure that the receipt hadn’t slipped down too far. She stood up, her eyes never leaving Rian’s, warning him to be ready. He rose to his feet as well, his chair scraping across the floor.
At the door Kitty gave a loud sob. She turned and launched herself at Rian, kissing him passionately and feeling genuinely comforted as his arms closed around her and pressed her tightly against his solid chest. It occurred to her, very disconcertingly, that she could quite happily stay like this forever.