Convict Heart Read online

  Convict Heart

  Lena Dowling

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  Convict Heart

  Lena Dowling

  An Australian historical romance about a woman with a past who is fighting with everything she has for her future.

  All of Sydney knows she was a convict and a prostitute, but Nellie Malone is now the manager of the ‘Tullamore’ Inn, a respectable businesswoman who makes her living on her brains and hard work – no longer on her back.

  But when gentleman Harry Chester, fresh to the colonies, shows up at the Tullamore with papers of ownership and plans to collect rent, Nellie’s carefully controlled world is sent into a tailspin. She has barely enough money to keep her doors open, let alone pay an owner the rent he is demanding.

  The Tullamore is Nellie’s home, her hope, and her freedom all tied up into one, and she will do anything to save it. Now, she has to decide what she is willing to sacrifice to hold on to the dreams for a future she’s only just beginning to realise.

  About the author

  In her previous lives, Lena Dowling has been a lawyer, policy analyst, and an administration manager. While Lena was born and raised in New Zealand, it was during a stint working ‘across the ditch’ in Australia that she took up writing in earnest. Having found her inspiration in the lucky country, Lena writes Australasian-themed romances about gutsy, intelligent heroines, and the men who dare to love them. Lena currently lives in beautiful sub-tropical Northland, New Zealand, with her own computer-code-writing hero.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, with thanks to Kate Cuthbert and the Escape team.

  For my mother, whose legacy of life lessons have been determination and perseverance.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  Chapter 1

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be alright here on your own?’ Pikelet said, stepping into the guesthouse dining room. ‘Only there’s a new ship coming in.’

  Nellie picked up a tablecloth, flicking out the freshly ironed material so that it billowed then fluttered down to the tabletop. ‘Go on with you. Word’s gotten well around the town now. I’ll be fine,’ she said, as much to reassure herself as him.

  Men occasionally still turned up, although not nearly as many as right after Danny died.

  In the early days, Pikelet had been at her side day and night. He wouldn’t go out without testing all the doors and windows first, making sure she was properly locked in. Then, for as long as he was away, her breath stayed sucked up tight in her chest, and she jumped at every noise, every clatter of a cart going over a rut in the road, or whinny from a horse in the street, until she heard Pikelet call out that he was home.

  ‘I can stay here, if you’re worried.’

  He had changed out of his everyday clothes into his proper suit and put on his best eye patch, things he only wore for going to town or church. He had been at his unruly hair with a wet comb, slicking it flat, and he smelled of soap, the plain stuff, not the fancy kind she made with her cousin’s special oils. He wouldn’t use it because he said made him smell like a flower. It would be silly to have him change back into his working clothes, and she couldn’t keep locking herself inside forever. ‘You should go,’ she said.

  ‘Well, only if you’re sure.’

  ‘I am. Go on now.’

  She had to be practical. They were getting to be known for being comfortable, with fair prices, but they still needed more people through the door.

  Pikelet swept a look around at the whitewashed walls and the new curtains. ‘Who would have thought O’Shane’s could ever come up as pretty as this? I reckon this place will all be yours one day. Like those squatters who get to keep their farms after only a few years of working the land.’

  ‘Maybe.’ It wasn’t like it was a scrubby bit of bush no one had laid claim to. ‘I doubt the Governor would just give this place away for free, but perhaps, if I save me pennies, then one day.’

  ‘Now that would be something.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Take Jammy, won’t you. The guests love her.’

  ‘I suppose the little mutt makes me look less of a monster.’

  Nellie winced. She hadn’t meant it to sound that way. She never thought of Pikelet as ugly. No one did, not once they got to know the man inside, but the little dog was a drawcard, especially if the passengers had children.

  ‘If I thought that, I’d go meself and leave you here to set up for the morning, now wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I suppose you would, except that I’m too grimy and ham-fisted for your clean tablecloths and your flash cutlery,’ he said. ‘I’ll just finish up in the yard and then I’ll be off.’

  The door creaked closed behind him, but she didn’t go back to setting the tables in the dining room right away. She looked out the window, her eye skimming over the roofs of the buildings that lay between the guesthouse and the waters of Sydney Cove.

  To be managing the place herself and running her own life, no one using or forcing her, climbing on top of her, smothering and suffocating her and making her sore. She still had to pinch herself. It hardly seemed real.

  ***

  ‘Well, that went better than expected,’ Tristan said, as Harry hoisted himself up onto the passenger seat of the gig.

  ‘Better? How do you make that out?’

  Tristan slapped down the reins and told the horse pulling the cart to walk on. ‘We escaped without bodily injury.’

  ‘Barely,’ Harry said, staring at the disgusting blob of spittle on his shoe. One he could thank the irate saddler’s wife for after he’d handed over the lease agreement for the saddlery to her husband.

  Damn it. He could hardly swipe it off on the interior of Tristan’s gig and he wasn’t about to soil his handkerchief with it. For the time being, it would just have to sit there.

  ‘How many properties do we have left to see?’ Harry asked. With all the acrimony, he had lost track of exactly how many times they’d had the same conversation with his tenants.

  ‘Only the Tullamore up the road.’

  ‘Good.’

  Most of his new tenants had gotten away without paying for years. Some might even have hoped they would eventually acquire the land through continuous occupation. Finding out they had to start paying proper rent had been a shock. Some had taken it better than others. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with too many more.

  ‘This one you’ll have to speak to on your own.’

  ‘You’re cutting out?’

  ‘If I’m late for Tilly’s birthday party, it will be more than my life is worth with Emily. Since there’s no lease on the place, this should be much more straightforward. And in any case, I think you’ll enjoy this one.’

  ‘You’ve had the pleasure of her company?’ Harry asked, surprised.

  Tristan had brie
fed him on the background of all the proprietors running businesses from his new premises before they set out. Tullamore Guesthouse had been a bawdy house, but more recently had been trading as a lodging house run by one of the convict whores with a ticket of leave.

  ‘Not like that I haven’t, in case that is what you are thinking. O’Shane always had the women bring the drinks to the table. For advertising purposes, I suppose. I enjoyed a few conversations with her, and the view, and then not that long ago, I spoke to her again at a party hosted by a colleague.’

  Harry nodded, relieved that his friend’s opinions on the subject of paying for sex were the same as he remembered. In the past few months, constancy was an attribute he had come to appreciate more than he could ever have imagined.

  ‘The view. She’s considered a beauty?’

  ‘You’ll be able to judge that for yourself soon enough. We’re here.’ Tristan said, abruptly drawing on the reins to slow the horse, bringing it to a stop opposite a building constructed from wooden clapboards with a shingled roof.

  Harry stepped down from the gig, taking the opportunity while the cart was stalled for their exchange of farewells to rub the glob from his shoe onto the wheel of the gig. Then he stood back, shielding his mouth and nose from the dust kicked up with Tristan’s departure.

  Once the air had settled, he contemplated the building. It was by far and away the best of the dozen or so properties he had purchased. Flanked on two sides by a wide veranda, it ran to a full two storeys high. The exterior looked to be in good order with all the necessary shingles, and each window was intact with curtains draped to the sides, free of rips and stains.

  Even so, it wasn’t much.

  Not for the first time, he wondered if he had done the right thing coming to Australia.

  He was still ruminating on the wisdom or otherwise of his decision when the fresh scent of salt on the breeze truncated his thoughts.

  The smell of the sea always took him back to the house at Brighton that his stepmother had rented every summer. That, and the beach where he and his half-brother Jonah had vied to find the biggest shell, to swim the farthest, to run fastest up the beach.

  Everything had been a competition.

  Even then.

  Only time would tell if he had made the right decision leaving everything behind and coming to New South Wales, but there was one thing of which he was certain.

  The alternative. Staying in Ireland.

  Would have been intolerable.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Nellie?’

  The male voice rose from the doorway over the clopping horse feet, the rattling of carts and shouts from outside.

  Nellie tensed and stopped folding the napkin she had in her hands. A ripple of goosebumps fanned out across her shoulders and down her arms. For a moment the cotton napkin wasn’t hers, nor was she standing at a roughhewn table in her own guesthouse. She was back in the dining room at Mellwood House, slipping the best Irish linen onto polished mahogany.

  It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be, because if it was, then she had just heard a ghost.

  It was years since she had heard an accent exactly like it. Pure King’s English with an Irish lilt breaking through it, like a melody through a drumbeat.

  Nellie turned, half hoping, and at the same time half dreading. But it wasn’t a spectre. This man was very much alive. So much so, she took a step back to take him all in.

  Like William, he was good-looking but not from the fine-boned chisel her Billy had had about him. This man’s features were robust and broad and a little ruddy, as if he had spent a good part of the day in the sun, and he had an air of merriment from a mouth that curved naturally upwards plumping out his cheeks.

  ‘A tidy establishment. You’ve done some refurbishment since the time the premises operated as a tavern?’

  ‘You’ve been here before, sir?’

  ‘I’m Harry Chester,’ he said, as if the name should mean something to her.

  ‘Harry?’ She had met hundreds of men, men whose faces had merged into a stock standard customer, but he stirred no recollection. And, she would wager, he was fairly new to the colony. The heat, the harsh sun, roughened cheeks and etched supple skin. Smooth skin like his didn’t last in the colony—except maybe for the toffs.

  But he wasn’t one of Sydney’s few gentry, black sheep mostly, that found their way to the colony. He wasn’t trussed up in pantaloons, nor was his coat tailored or his shoes buckled.

  He was well spoken but ordinary. A small businessman or a farmer perhaps. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been giving him the time of day.

  ‘You would have received a letter from the Governor’s office.’

  ‘I’ve had no such letter, sir,’ Nellie said, worry rising like a heavy mist deep from the pit of her stomach. News from the Governor’s office was much more often bad than good.

  ‘Unfortunately, you’re not the first one today who I’ve had to inform myself. The management of the Governor’s correspondence seems to be somewhat hit and miss.’

  ‘Inform me?’

  ‘That I’m the new owner of these premises.’

  New owner.

  Nellie’s heart gave a start in her chest. She had always known this day could come, but she had managed to push it so far to the back of the mind, she had stopped considering it. After months now running the Tullamore with no hint of a sale, she had begun to kid to herself that it would never happen.

  But surely if the Governor had put the place up for sale she would have heard about it? ‘There would have been a notice nailed to the door or something in the newspaper, and there’s been nothing. Not a whisper.’

  ‘That is because the purchase was concluded in London through the Colonial Office as part of a portfolio of abandoned land. ’

  Nellie gasped with relief. Abandoned land. This was all a mistake after all.

  ‘Then you’ve got it wrong. O’Shane’s as was, Tullamore Guesthouse as it is now, has always had people in it.’ She had opened the doors to paying guests from the day Danny had been buried. The place had never been idle.

  ‘I meant vacant in the legal sense.’

  ‘I don’t see that there’d be any difference.’ He was playing with words now, and she had work to be getting on with. There was a whole dining room to set up before the guests Pikelet drummed up down at the wharf started arriving.

  ‘One example would be when the owner dies intestate. In that case the land is forfeited to the Crown.’

  ‘Intestate. I’m sure you’re not meaning what that sounds like, but I don’t have a dictionary handy.’

  Harry Chester tilted his head back and laughed, a sound syrupy and warm as butterscotch that almost made her forget she was annoyed with him for winding her up with tall tales.

  ‘Intestate means dying without a will,’ he said, casually removing his hat and throwing it down on the nearest table.

  Nellie grasped the back of a chair. ‘Oh.’

  After Danny had died, she and Pikelet had gone hunting through Danny’s things for a will. Not that they had actually expected to find one. Danny hadn’t any family living, and he wasn’t the sort to think any further than his next drink or session on the pipe. But the fact was there wasn’t one.

  Harry dropped his head and hunched his shoulders to meet her eyes. ‘I appreciate this has come as a shock. Perhaps you should take a rest while I take a look around.’

  Nellie’s knees jittered like they might fold up underneath her. It was only holding onto the chair that kept her on her feet, but she wasn’t going to sit down. Not a chance, not with Harry already halfway across the room, making a beeline for the back.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and launched herself towards the bar.

  ***

  ‘You’re trespassing.’

  In the time Harry had taken to approach the old bar, repurposed as a reception desk, Nellie Malone had crossed the room and stepped in front of him. She was too slight to offer any real resistance, and
while placing his hands on her wasn’t without its attractions, he had never manhandled a woman and he wasn’t about to start now.

  He leaned left, but Nellie anticipated his feint, leaping to the right. He tried again, this time to the right, before she lunged that same way. But she predicted that too, dashing in front of him, her exertions releasing a heady floral fragrance that lingered in the air.

  Nellie stared at him with her unusual tawny-coloured, almost amber eyes. Her feathered lashes beat in agitated staccato.

  ‘If you own this place then where is your proof?’

  ‘You have my word as a gentleman.’

  ‘I’ll need more than that,’ she sniffed. ‘You could be anyone.’

  Harry tugged at his loose sleeve. He glanced down at his trousers.

  He could have been anyone.

  Which had been the whole point.

  Even though he had purchased the outfit himself, one of several he bought for the journey from a tailor in an area of Dublin populated with clerks and shopkeepers, the clothes still felt borrowed. And his clothes weren’t the only things to which he was unaccustomed. He had never been ignorant to the advantages of his birth, but it was only that afternoon that he had truly come to appreciate just how much easier it was to transact business after drawing up in a six-horse carriage trailed by footmen than in a one-horse open gig.

  ‘I have the title deed and a letter from the Governor,’ he said.

  ‘Show me then,’ Nellie said, folding her arms.

  ‘Of course.’ Harry slipped his hand inside his jacket, only to feel the coarse cotton lining of his jacket beneath his fingertips. ‘Damn.’

  It was Tristan who had carried the bulk of the paperwork from property to property in his satchel. Harry had taken only what he needed at each place they visited.

  Nellie shook her head, tendrils of corkscrew blonde curls that had escaped their pins with her efforts to obstruct him bouncing off her shoulders. ‘If you haven’t got the papers then you’re going no further.’

  ‘And when I come back with the documentation, will that be enough for you?’