Convict Heart Read online

  ‘I’ll show it to my lawyer for his opinion,’ Nellie said, keeping her arms folded.

  ‘You have a lawyer?’

  ‘I do, as it happens.’

  There were only a handful of lawyers in the entire colony, and a convict would hardly have retained counsel, but he played along. ‘And when your legal representative confirms the veracity of the documents, what then?’

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

  ‘Then I shall return with the papers.’

  ‘That would be best.’

  Nellie unfolded her arms, placing them on her hips, accentuating her seductive curves.

  Harry smiled in appreciation.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Do you think I’m being funny?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ Then, when her expression failed to soften, he added, ‘Actually, your prudence is to be commended.’

  Nellie’s features relaxed but only for the briefest of seconds. ‘And when exactly can I be expectin’ you to turn up with this deed then?’

  ‘I will return tomorrow morning, first thing,’ he said, trying to decide exactly how disappointed he was to have a reason to return. On the one hand he had hoped to have all the new tenancy arrangements concluded that day, while on the other the woman was as intriguing as she was feisty.

  ‘First thing is our busiest time, when I’m seein’ off guests and makin’ up rooms.’

  ‘I shall come later—say between ten and eleven.’

  ‘Ten o’clock’s when I’m gettin’ on with supervisin’ the wash.’

  ‘What about the afternoon?’

  ‘Then I’ll be off me feet takin’ in new guests and getting everythin’ ready for their supper.’

  ‘Then when would be suitable?’ he said, struggling to keep irritation from sharpening an edge on his reply.

  ‘After midday, but before two o’clock. That’s our quietest time.’

  Harry stepped back to retrieve his hat.

  ‘Twelve it is, then. If you could have your solicitor present, then that should expedite matters,’ he said, calling her bluff.

  Nellie didn’t falter, fixing him with the defiant stare of her remarkable treacle- coloured eyes.

  ‘That can be arranged.’

  Chapter 3

  The air was redolent with spice. Described as an emporium on the signage outside, Harry had expected curios and fancies, but the place was more a warehouse trading direct to the public. The first row was taken up with household goods: saucepans and kettles, tinware, hooks, nails and utensils, along with casks of, wine, spirits and pickles. The next contained a series of crates; some still closed and stacked on top of one another, while many others were open but not yet properly unpacked, spilling straw and paper stuffing out onto the floor. Beyond that were bolts of cloth and some ready-made clothes hanging from hooks on a rack, while down the far end of the warehouse were perishables: tea, sugar and currants; and presumably it was the spices that were being split up and packed into smaller paper packets by a couple of convicts, under the supervision of a gentleman counting the bags and marking them down in a ledger.

  There was little suitable for a child, but in the end he found something wedged between some canvas balls and wooden dolls, peeking out of one of the partly opened boxes. There was no price so the woman on the counter called to the man with the ledger, who appeared to pluck one from the air. Nevertheless, he would not have to turn up at Tilly’s party empty-handed, as he had feared he might. He had disappointed enough people today, without throwing an innocent child into the bargain.

  Outside, he tucked the thin package inside his jacket and walked several feet before the scent of cloves finally trailed away.

  He had thought himself lucky to hail one of the few hire carriages that from a distance appeared comfortable. On closer inspection, the interior provided threadbare seats and a hole in the floor through which the road was visible, only adding to the sensation of being shaken to bits.

  He tolerated it for as long as it took to put himself within walking distance of Tristan’s house on the eastern outskirts of the town. Then, having paid the driver, he struck out the rest of the way on foot.

  The countryside would take some getting used to. If he had realised how starkly different New South Wales would be to Ireland, he might have given more pause to his decision to emigrate. He hoped what jarred him now would eventually become an unnoticed backdrop. Affection, however, for the sparse, burnished landscape, thinly forested with eucalypts, would probably be too much to hope for.

  Picking his way over the bullock track that served as a road, he mentally worked back through the dozen or so properties he and Tristan had visited that day.

  He had been fair.

  He had not sought any back-payment for the several months that had passed since he had assumed ownership, proposing to enforce his rights only from the date of notification.

  Although the news had come as a shock, the majority of his new tenants had accepted it graciously.

  In the absence of the proper papers, Nellie, unlike the saddler, had justification for her response. What was the woman’s story?

  How did a convict, and former prostitute at that, come to be the landlady of premises like the guesthouse?

  Had she been O’Shane’s common-law wife? Or perhaps an influential customer had intervened with the Governor on her behalf?

  But then Tristan had told him she had given up the trade, and he had seen no evidence to the contrary. If Nellie Malone was running a bawdy house, it was not only the most discreet, but with the fresh whitewash, floral curtains and starched tablecloths, it would be the quaintest and most wholesome one he had ever seen.

  Though why she had ever allowed herself to fall into that profession at all was a puzzle. She was hardly a soft touch, and there was such a paucity of women in the colony so as surprising as it seemed, the marriage of female convicts was not only tolerated, it was actively encouraged.

  And nor had Tristan exaggerated about the view. A woman with her charms would not have been without suitors.

  All at once he lurched forwards. At risk of embedding his face in the dirt, he wrenched the toe of his boot out from a rut.

  He swore, dismissing his speculations. For a tenant, he had accorded her far too much thought. And Nellie Malone was barely even a tenant, and unlikely to be that for much longer.

  As Tristan and Emily’s solid yellow block home appeared over the rise, his stomach began to rumble, incentivising an increase in his pace. He’d had nothing since breakfast, but he anticipated Emily would have laid on a decent spread for the adults for whom Tilly’s birthday had provided the excuse for a gathering.

  A group of older children played a tagging game on the area of track in front of the house. Skirting the group, he let himself in through the gate to the small front garden. He might have lingered, but the windows into the drawing room were open. Through the open windows, chatter flowed, punctuated with laughter and the inviting clink of glasses.

  Inside he found Tristan’s and Emily’s guests clustered down one side of the room, all in small groups that appeared deep in conversation, leaving the central carpet clear for the small children, Tilly and her friends. On the opposite side of the room was a long trestle, most of the plates strewn with nothing more than a few crumbs and the odd sprig of parsley. He had missed the refreshments. The only plate left with any food on it held a scattering of devilled eggs. He hated devilled eggs and apparently most of the other guests did too.

  Across the room he observed Richard Henley, speaking with a group of well-heeled gentlemen. He averted his gaze. A birthday was far too pleasant an affair to be buttonholed by one’s bank manager.

  Too late, Henley had seen him and was coming over.

  ‘Mr Chester. You’ve done the rounds of your tenants by now, I trust.’

  ‘Just completed this afternoon,’ Harry said through a forced smile, irritated at being called to account.

  ‘A task you’ll be pleased t
o be done with, no doubt.’

  ‘At least they all know where they stand.’

  ‘Yes, there is no place for sentimentality in matters of business,’ the other man said affably enough, but the undertone was pointed. ‘Good man.’ Henley raised his glass in simultaneous salute and dismissal.

  Harry was being accorded a word. A cursory one at that.

  Had he been like that with the men who worked on his family’s estate? He sincerely hoped not.

  Harry turned to survey the crowd for a familiar face—difficult when he had been in the colony only a couple of short weeks. He was about to give up and take the opportunity to skulk off the kitchen in the hopes of scrounging some sort of meal when a tug at his trousers brought his gaze down to knee level.

  Tilly’s cherubic face smiled up at him.

  He felt inside his jacket.

  ‘Harry, do you have a present for me?’

  Tristan’s wife Emily looked over from her conversation with two other young women. ‘Tilly,’ she admonished.

  Harry laughed.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said to the little girl.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And you’d be right,’ Harry said, extracting the package he had bought at the emporium.

  ‘What do you say, Tilly?’ Emily said, coming to join them.

  ‘Thank you, Harry.’

  ‘That was kind of you,’ Emily said, as Tilly tore off the string from the packet, then ran to show the children’s book to her friends playing on the rug.

  ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, it has pleased Tilly and it is very much appreciated. Everything is difficult to come by out here.’

  ‘It’s hardly the rocking horse I gave her brother got at the same age.’

  ‘With Joseph grown out of it and away at school, Tilly has it anyway. And things are different now.’

  ‘Indeed.’ So much had changed since they had all been in Dublin together.

  Just as he was about to recount a nostalgic incident involving them all, Tristan appeared at his right hand with a drink. When he looked up, Emily had gone to adjudicate a squabble between two of Tilly’s little friends.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Tristan asked.

  ‘I might have done better if I’d had the title deed. I’ve arranged to take it around tomorrow.’

  Tristan knocked at his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience—I forgot about that.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. It didn’t occur to me to get it from you either.’

  ‘What did you think of the place?’

  ‘From what I saw of it, it looked tidy enough, but I never got a look around upstairs or at the service areas.’

  ‘How’s that? The place wasn’t locked up, was it? Last I heard Nellie was doing alright.’

  ‘No, Nellie was there, she just hadn’t received the letter either.’

  ‘She didn’t take the news too well then?’

  ‘I won’t know precisely how well until I return with the deed and the Governor’s letter. Things were left at rather at a stalemate.’

  A tall gentleman dressed in a style that would have been de rigueur only a year or two ago at home, rendering his attire the peak of fashion for the colony, stepped up to Tristan and proffered his empty glass to his host for a top up.

  ‘James,’ Tristan said, taking the man’s glass. ‘Allow me to present my good friend and house guest, Harry Chester. Harry is new to the colony. Harry, meet James Hunter. James’s wife, Lady Thea Hunter, and Emily are good friends and I’m sure James won’t mind my saying that he is now one of my best clients.’

  ‘And how are you finding our fledgling town?’ James asked.

  ‘There appears to be great opportunity for those with a mind to take advantage of its potential,’ Harry said.

  ‘You are being diplomatic. The lack of development and the harshness of the environs can be a shock to the system, but you will get used to it.’

  ‘James farms at Parramatta,’ Tristan offered.

  Emily circled past with a tray of cake just out of reach. Harry wanted to call her over, but politeness dictated he maintain his part in the conversation.

  ‘We’re buying in sheep at the moment, for wool. If you want a tip, that’s where the future is.’

  ‘Harry is more involved in the commercial side of things. He has acquired a number of properties in town,’ Tristan said.

  ‘Apart from the farming, I dabble in a little importing; higher-end items mainly,’ he said, as if assessing Harry for potential custom and finding him coming up wanting. ‘And property brokerage,’ James added.

  ‘Then you may be just the man I need to speak to. I’m looking to purchase a home, and I also have a property for which I’m in need of a tenant,’ Harry said.

  ‘When it comes to houses you haven’t timed it too well, I’m afraid. There’s virtually nothing going at the moment.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There are a few grand homes,’ James said, giving him that same doubtful look again. ‘And of course all manner of sheds, shacks and lean-to arrangements down in The Rocks, but nothing in the middling range.’

  Middling. The description jolted him.

  It might have been the impression he had set out to achieve, but it was going to take time before his ‘average man’ status became second nature.

  ‘That is disappointing,’ Harry said.

  ‘There is another option if you have the fortitude for it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There are some very decent carpenters amongst the convicts, and I have several blocks of land on my books that I could show you.’

  ‘Build something?’ It was not something he had thought of. Although given half the town appeared to be in some stage of construction, it probably should have. ‘How long would it take?’

  ‘Anywhere from a couple of months or longer, depending on the degree of finishing you want for the interior and how large you make it, and of course how much the weather intercedes during the building.’

  Harry whistled.

  ‘You know you’re most welcome to stay as long as you need,’ Tristan said. ‘Building will be better in the long run.’

  After two weeks, Tristan and Emily’s spare bed was taking its toll. He hadn’t envisaged being there much longer, but this was a complication he hadn’t foreseen.

  ‘It’s a fortunate position to be in, to have friends putting you up. When I built the first place I put on the property, I lived under a tree,’ James said.

  ‘A tree?’

  ‘I exaggerate slightly, there was a tent pitched under it, but that was the extent of it. Even the convicts working on the place went back to better accommodations at night, but it was worth it.’

  James reached inside his coat and pulled out a card, which he handed to Harry.

  ‘You mentioned a property to lease?’

  ‘Currently trading as the Tullamore Guesthouse.’

  James tilted his head, as if the mention of the property had elicited some special interest. ‘What do you propose to do with the place?’

  The building was worth half of all his properties put together and was central to his plans. ‘I’m not entirely sure yet. It’s complicated by the fact there is someone in possession.’

  ‘Nellie Malone?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Our paths have crossed,’ James said, with a strange expression Harry couldn’t decode.

  ‘Will you lease to her?’

  ‘You even consider it an option, sir?’

  James nodded thoughtfully. ‘Actually, Nellie has managed better than anyone expected. Most believed that she would fail within a few weeks. There was even a wager running on it at the Wallaby Club that folded in the end. She outlasted everyone’s predictions.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be concerned by her background?’ Harry asked.

  Tristan frowned at him, making a swiping motion at neck height that James caught with his peripheral vis
ion. But rather than taking umbrage, James cast his head back and laughed uproariously. ‘If I were, I’d have to be horribly concerned at my own.’

  ‘Surely a man such as yourself didn’t arrive in New South Wales at His Majesty’s pleasure?’ Harry said, amazed.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, but in fact, I did. And, in my bachelor days, I was well acquainted with O’Shane’s establishment. So it would be rather hypocritical of me to cast any aspersions on your sitting tenant,’ he chuckled.

  ‘I’d hardly describe her as that.’

  ‘You could do a lot worse.’

  ‘What are your thoughts, Tristan?’ Harry asked, more than a little alarmed at the man’s suggestion.

  Tristan cleared his throat. ‘Well …’ he hesitated, looking around to see who was in earshot. ‘She wouldn’t be the first lady innkeeper in the colony. She is completely candid about her background, which speaks to her honesty. I’ll say that for her.’ Tristan glanced at over the top of his glass at Harry. ‘There is no pretence with Nellie.’

  Harry stared back at his friend for a second, and then let it go. Perhaps Tristan hadn’t meant that as it sounded. Tristan, he had noticed, could be rather sparing with the truth with Emily when it suited him.

  ‘With Nellie, what you see is what you get,’ James said. ‘But the only measure that counts comes down to whether she can pay the rent. Have you scrutinised the woman’s books?’

  ‘And which woman would this be?’ Emily asked, joining them, manoeuvring the tray of sweet treats into the centre of their standing circle.

  ‘One of Harry’s new tenants,’ Tristan said quickly.

  ‘Oh? Which one? There aren’t many women in this town I don’t know.’

  ‘Nellie,’ Tristan said, with a faux flippancy that raised Harry’s suspicions, but not nearly as much as Emily’s ire. ‘Goodness gracious. Surely it isn’t Nellie Malone you’re referring to?’

  No one answered, but Emily, taking their combined silence in the affirmative continued, ‘That woman! She won’t be there for much longer, I should hope.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must disagree with you,’ James said. ‘The colony is far too short on industrious workers to be too fussy about a person’s background, or to some extent even whether we’re speaking of a man or a woman. If Miss Malone runs a profitable business, I see no reason she shouldn’t be offered a lease. The only matter of import is the state of her accounts,’ James said.