Thomas regarded her solemnly. “I believe in dreams.” He released her wrist. “There’s tea in the billy for ye. We’ve a long day ahead, and there’ll be no more till supper.”
Aisleen watched him stride toward his horse, her eyes narrowing on the leg he still favored. What was the cause? She heard him groan softly as he mounted and promised herself that she would inquire about the source of his discomfort. The worst thing that would happen was that he would be angered and rebuff her. If he did she would comfort herself with the knowledge that she had inquired about her husband’s health as any wife would and that he should not find fault with her for that.
With a resigned sigh, she straightened her shoulders and prepared to face the cook. Learning to cook in the bush was just another challenge, she told herself, and before the journey was ended, she would have the mastery of it.
*
Aisleen awoke for the second morning in a row with the woolly-headed feeling that came from interrupted sleep.
“Missus!”
Of course. Aisleen moaned in protest and pulled her blanket up to cover her head.
“Missus!”
There was no denying that strident tone. In another moment, she expected to be caught by the ankles and pulled unceremoniously from the wagon. In reality, the cook had not dared that, but although he had never laid a hand on her, Aisleen felt she had been roundly abused by him. There was no appealing to Thomas either. He had been strangely absent from camp ever since the first day, riding out before the others and returning after she had retired for the night.
She stripped the wool blanket from her body and immediately remembered why she had wrapped up in it. Chill morning air invaded her body’s cocoon of heat, raising flocks of goosebumps as she slipped into her gown. After days of wear, the gown was stained with food, and the underarms and neckline smelled sour. Aisleen wrinkled her nose in dislike as she struggled with the buttons. She needed a bath and her gown needed washing, but that was not to be accomplished in the company of men.
A few minutes later, she slid from the wagon. She saw at once that the drovers had already eaten and that the cleaning up had been left for her, a drudgery the cook particularly enjoyed passing on to her.
She bent and picked up a plate crawling with insects and knocked it against the wagon to
dislodge them. The odor of rancid meat invaded her nostrils, and she jerked her head back. Spoiled.
When she had washed and packed the wagon she realized that the cook was nowhere to be found. Too relieved to think much of it, she sat down to enjoy the only part of breakfast she could stomach, a cup of tea.
A moment later the cook turned the corner of the wagon, his face so bright a shade of red that it looked burnt.
Flushing a softer shade of pink, Aisleen rose to her feet. “I’ve finished the packing.”
“Aye, ye do well to be afraid of me.” He took a step toward her, but the toe of his boot caught on a stone and he tripped and nearly fell. Swearing freely, he righted himself and pointed an accusing finger in her direction. “Ye keep outta me business or ye’ll be sorry ye crossed me. Do ye bloody hear me!”
He was drunk! She was certain even before she spotted the bottle in his hand. Now she had drunkenness to add to the daily trial of journeying with the cook. “If you do not hurry, the others will leave without us,” she reminded him.
“Swive the others.” He wheeled away from her and
staggered to the campfire, where he kicked dirt in to smother the flame.
With a resigned sigh, Aisleen drained her cup and put it away. She would not turn to Thomas for help this time. How quickly she had forgotten that she had learned to take care of herself a long time ago. She would manage.
Absently she brushed a lock of hair from her brow. She had forgotten to put on her bonnet, but retrieving it meant unpacking the wagon, and the cook was striding unevenly toward her. The bonnet would have to wait until the next stop. As usual, sheep, men, and dogs had gone on ahead. They would be out of sight for most of the day’s journey.
*
The undulating ridges of the Blue Mountains had been visible from the outskirts of Sydney but had disappeared as they neared them under the covering of tall rose-and-white-trunked eucalyptus trees. Now, as they cleared a rise between the trees, Aisleen saw the dramatic drop-off into the valley below and the mountain ranges beyond.
The grand heights of the mountains rose abruptly as ragged peaks. Unlike the rocky granite mountains of western Cork, here were sudden high plateaus jutting straight up from sheer embankments.
The cook roared epithets and sawed the traces to bring the wagon to a halt. The drumming of hoofbeats came as a relief to Aisleen, for once the cook secured the brake he reached for his whiskey. It took longer for the sound of an approaching rider to penetrate his hazy thoughts, but he quickly tucked the bottle out of sight as Thomas appeared on the road ahead.
An involuntary smile came to Aisleen’s lips as she recognized him. He wore a clean blue shirt with sleeves rolled back to reveal tan forearms and opened at the throat on the
smooth, sun-browned planes of his upper chest. Though she could not see his eyes because of the shadow cast by the wide brim of his hat, his mouth was widened in a grin that quickened her pulse.
“Thomas!” she cried, standing on the floorboard and waving her arm.
Thomas’s grin deepened at this unexpected welcome from his bride. He had kept out of her sight for the last three days to give her a chance to forgive him for his anger and impatience—and because he hoped that she would miss him a little. And so, it seemed, she had.
“Mrs. Gibson!” he greeted with a lift of his hat as he halted on her side of the wagon. “Top of the day to ye!”
“And the rest to you, sir,” she answered, acutely aware that her pleasure at seeing him must be plainly visible on her face. She reached up to catch back her wind-tossed hair.
Cook grunted next to her, but she did not glance down.
“Have ye had yer fill of wagons?” Thomas inquired.
“Oh, yes!” she replied quickly.
Thomas reached out a hand to her. “Then come for a gallop, Mrs. Gibson.”
Aisleen hesitated. She had never been taught to ride. Cook mumbled again and the chance to escape him, even for a short while, was worth a small risk. “I know nothing of horses,” she admitted as she reached for Thomas’s hand.
“Then ye must learn, lass. No lass can rightly call herself a squatter’s wife until she can ride.”
He took her hand and urged his horse closer to the wagon. “Throw a leg over and slide on,” he instructed.
“Astride?” she squeaked.
“Coward,” he chided as he smiled amusedly at her.
Very uncertainly Aisleen raised her skirts but again hesitated. The horse’s rump seemed a very unladylike width to span.
Impatient with her tentative maneuvers, Thomas pulled
sharply on her hand. “Toss a leg over, lass, and be damned to propriety.”
She took a deep breath and did as he directed.
“There, ye’ve done it!” he congratulated as she slid neatly astride and flung her arms about him.
Aisleen squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her grip as the horse danced away from the wagon.
“Pull yer skirts up,” Thomas ordered. “He’s a bit shy of them.”
But Aisleen did not wish to unlock the arms she had wound tightly about his middle. She pressed her perspiring forehead into the valley between his shoulder blades and whispered in a tiny voice, “I can’t! Oh! Oh! I don’t like this!”
Thomas chuckled. “Very well, I’ll be doing the tucking this time, but if ye’re to ride with me again, ye must learn to look to yer own.”
He gathered up the skirts on first one side and then the other, tucking them back under the anchor of her knees. As he completed the task, he decided that perhaps he had spoken too hastily. She had quite nice legs, and any excuse to touch them should not be cast aside.
As the horse walked forward a few steps, Aisleen drew deep breaths to steady her heartbeat. She had not known that she was afraid of riding until this very moment. “It’s not so awful,” she said, mostly to herself.
“It’s the best way a man can travel!”
Without warning, he urged his horse forward with a kick. The horse balked, displeased with Aisleen’s extra weight; but Thomas dug his heels in a second time, and the horse moved forward into a gallop that sent them racing down the lane.
Aisleen kneaded handfuls of Thomas’s shirtfront, gasping for air as the speed snatched the breath from her. Her heart thundered in her ears to match the horse’s hooves as she felt
the brawny haunches stretch and bunch under her with the animal’s pace. The wind dragged at her skirts, and the action of the horse made her chin collide repeatedly with Thomas’s back until she turned her face to one side and pressed a cheek against him.
His skin was warm and damp with perspiration and surprisingly less offensive than her own malodor. The suspicion that he had recently bathed crossed her mind, and she envied him the luxury. Beneath her left palm, his heart beat in regular, slow strokes very unlike her rapid pulse. He moved with the horse, his body tensing and untensing in a rhythm that matched the animal’s stride, while she bounced about like a poorly tied sack of meal.
Thomas checked his mount suddenly, and the horse danced back on its hind legs, unaccustomed to its master’s hard pace.
With a cry of fright, she tightened her hold.
“’Tis a grand thing, yer embrace,” Thomas said huskily, “but, lass, ye’re choking the life’s breath out of me.” He wedged a hand under hers, which were clasped, viselike, about his middle, and pried them apart. “There’s naught to fear. Look about.”
Aisleen reluctantly opened her eyes, and then they widened and widened. Before her was a breathtaking view of the mountains. Lit by shimmering sunlight, the sandstone summits rose from the pale blue ether which hovered above the deeper cobalt blue of the valley.
“We’ve begun our crossing.”
“But how?” Aisleen voiced in doubt.
“Looks a bit rough,” Thomas agreed, “but there’s been a road through those mountains for more than thirty years. Thirty men worked six months to carve out a twenty-foot-wide road through seventy miles of those cliffs and chasms. A fair day’s work, that.”
Aisleen stared at the expanse and shook her head in wonder. “How did they do it?”
“Like many that came before and after, they had no choice.” His voice lowered and hardened. “They were guests of His Majesty the English King, in a manner of speaking.”
“Convicts,” Aisleen said softly, recalling Major Scott’s suspicions about Thomas after they had met in the alley on the Sydney wharf. What would he think if she told him of the major’s suspicions?
Thomas turned within her embrace, his blue eyes gleaming more brightly than usual. “And were ye nae warned by a mealymouth Sydney lady to keep shy of the lot of them and their offspring?”
“Actually, it was an English major,” Aisleen replied and was dismayed to see his lids shutter down over his bright eyes.
Tension stiffened his body, suppressed anger making rigid the wall of muscle she embraced. “Ah, well, I’ve no liking for the English. And when one wears a bloody red coat, well…”
She knew she should not ask, but she could not contain her curiosity. “Why?”
Thomas half-turned in his saddle. “Are ye not Irish, lass? When was that nae enough reason for ye?”
Aisleen pinkened. “Once I was like you, afraid and perhaps harboring hatred for people whom I did not know. But I long ago traded away many childish fancies. The English are among us. We must live with that.”
Thomas stared at her a moment longer. He had not listened to her reply but used it as an excuse to hold her attention a little longer. The wind had blown her hair free from its bun, and it trailed down her shoulders in a fiery tangle of sun-spun flame.
Had any other head ever been so bright? he wondered
absently. He reached out to capture in his work-toughened fingers a few strands that clung to her damp cheek. Years of shearing had placed hard calluses over the sensitive nerve endings of his fingertips, but he could feel the resilient strands. They shimmered against his fingertips, softer than the combings of a ewe’s underbelly, as fine as a spider’s web.
His expression warmed as he looked back up into her eyes. Framed in marigold lashes were flashes of gold in the dark honey of her eyes. His fingers moved gently to her cheek that was liberally sprinkled with golden freckles. The Australian sun had added to them. But the rosy tint outracing his fingertip as it moved up the summit of her cheek was of his making, and it stirred him.
Aisleen held still under his touch. With her hands pressed against his abdomen, she detected the sudden intake of his breath as his fingers lingered on her face. She knew she crimsoned, but she could not turn away. The breathless sense of being completely alone crowded out the reality of the day, the air about them, everything but his touch and the wide expanse of Blue Mountain blue that was his eyes.
Wild, exhilarating emotion tugged at her. Restlessness that had lain dormant since the days she ran free and happy on Slieve Host heaved to the fore. She had come to New South Wales a bitter, mistrustful spinster in search of security and self-respect. Now she was the wife of a handsome Irishman with a quick smile, ready wit, and heart-melting charm. Was it possible to trust her good luck?