Ella Read online

  He leaned back, half-closing his eyes, squinting through the doorway at the bright early morning sunshine. A dray pulled by sixteen oxen and carrying bales of wool passed. The driver walked along beside. Dust swirled a foot high, and a magpie picked for grubs in the roadside grass.

  The light from the doorway dimmed, heralding Sam’s return. “The lead horse has cast a shoe. Give me your valise. I’ll put it in the coach. We won’t be leaving for another hour.”

  “Cast a shoe? Cast a shoe?” Edward was more irritated with each word he uttered. “Another hour? What am I supposed to do for another hour?”

  “You could drink yourself into a better temper in the taproom,” Sam suggested, smartly removing the valise and himself.

  Clamping his lips, Edward pushed to his feet and strode to the taproom door. He entered a slate-floored room that stank of hops and mold and echoed with emptiness. A middle-aged barmaid wiped down benches.

  The only other patron was a young, painted female dressed in a limp purple gown. She sat on a stool by the taps, her head in her arms. “’Nother port,” she called in a slurred voice.

  The barmaid walked behind the long bar, poured a glass, and slid the liquor down the length. “There you are, Ruby. And that’s your last. What would you like, sir?”

  “A glass of ale.”

  “Ruby,” the barmaid had called the female. Edward had heard the name mentioned by his stockmen after they’d been in town, therefore he knew her to be one of the local whores.

  Ruby lifted her head, opened one eye, and focused on him. “You’re young Mr. Lynton’s pa,” she said in a cockney accent. She had a receding chin and thinly plucked eyebrows.

  “I’m his grandfather.” Edward clamped his lips. Henry, his son, had died in his twenty-sixth year. Being young and rich had killed him. Drunk, he’d died after engaging in fisticuffs over another man’s wife. He’d died in one of the most beautiful parks surrounding the city of Adelaide, leaving his young wife and his five-year-old son.

  Twenty years had passed but Edward still regretted letting Henry leave the land so that he could become a Rundle Street farmer, a gentleman with a city office on that illustrious street of commerce. None knew better than Edward that satisfaction came from work, not chasing paper trails of money.

  “You have the look of him.” Ruby upended her glass, poured the contents down her throat, and turned to face him. “Tall and ’andsome,” she added with a calculating smile.

  Edward straightened. “You know him?” Although surprised, he was careful to sound as if he didn’t care.

  Ruby lifted her greasy locks from the back of her neck, preening. “Oi know all your men. And they know me.”

  The barmaid, a woman with a thin mouth and dun-colored hair scraped back into a small knot, made a sound of disgust. “I don’t think young Mr. Lynton has once given you the time of day.”

  “Time wouldn’t be of no use to me,” Ruby said in a triumphant voice. “A shillin’ is what Oi ask. No more.” She cackled like a woman twice her age and flicked her head, indicating the barmaid. “Her daughter, Betsy, she charged more than half his wage.”

  “Get out of here, Ruby,” the barmaid said in a deadly undertone. “You’re drunk and you stink.”

  “Oim stayin’.”

  “I’ll pick you up and throw you out.”

  “Yew don’t own this place. Oim tellin’ yew…”

  The barmaid moved from behind the bar. Ruby slid off the stool. Part of her hem trailed across the floor as she wobbled out into the street. Any dignity she once might have possessed had been lost long since.

  The barmaid picked up a wet rag and began wiping the bar as if to scarify the wood and remove any trace that the whore had existed. “Betsy wasn’t a prostitute,” she said to Edward through tight lips. “If he gave her money, it was no more than he should. Before she met him, she was a good girl.”

  Edward shrugged. A man with Charlton’s looks and expectations would turn the head of any female. “If he had his way with her, I hope she was cleaner than that one.” He inclined his head toward the doorway.

  “I just told you she was a good girl. He ruined her.”

  “Got her with child, did he?” Edward asked, as if interested. If Charlton had, it was no more than Edward expected. The boy’s father had been a rake, too. Just because Edward hadn’t seen a wild streak in Charlton, didn’t mean Charlton behaved like a gentleman when he went out on the town with the lads. “Can she prove it’s his?”

  “No,” the barmaid said. “She didn’t have a baby. I told you, she’s a good girl.”

  “What is this conversation about, then? I thought you said he gave her money.”

  “And so he did.” The barmaid folded her arms. “I don’t know why, if he didn’t ruin her.”

  Edward spread his hands.

  “She left here two months ago with twenty pounds.”

  “Now I know you’re lying. My grandson didn’t have twenty pounds to scratch himself with.”

  “And you as rich as the queen?” She gave a mirthless grin. “Don’t try gammoning me.”

  Edward scowled. He paid for anything his grandson wanted, which never seemed to amount to much. Charlton saw no more cash than a ditchdigger. His father, Henry, had taken the sum he wanted whenever he wanted money. Edward had kept his purse closed after his son died. If Charlton had given the girl twenty pounds, he had given her his hoard. More fool he. He raised his eyebrows. “Another ale. And put a head on the next.”

  He thought she would have liked to slide the drink at him, hoping he would catch the slops in his lap, such was her expression, but one of the benefits of being a rich man was that most people didn’t dare annoy him.

  “She’s gone.” The barmaid’s mouth turned down. “To Victoria. If she’d stayed, one day she could’ve ’ad my job.”

  “Well, obviously the girl is a fool,” Edward said with sarcasm, glad to have the last word.

  The barmaid stared at him. “And Ruby doesn’t charge a shilling. On bath day, the best she can get is sixpence.”

  “Ready to roll.” Sam poked his head into the room.

  Edward dropped a coin on the bar to pay for his ale and followed Sam out of the Inn. “Tell the driver we’ll stop in Kingston.”

  Whether Betsy was a good woman or a bad woman didn’t matter to him. He’d heard she’d left with twenty pounds. If she’d left with Charlton, the twenty pounds would have been superfluous. This meant that Charlton hadn’t gone to Victoria. Edward hadn’t really supposed he would, but he didn’t appear to be in Adelaide, either, or his mother would have heard.

  “The lad wouldn’t be in Kingston. What would he do there?”

  “Despite what you think, I am not chasing after Charlton. My grandson can go to hell for all I care.”

  “That’s billycock and you know it. I saw you the morning the lad disappeared. A greater fuss you’ve never made than when you thought he might have been thrown from his horse.”

  “A natural enough assumption.”

  “So don’t tell me you don’t care.”

  Edward had cared, even after Charlton’s horse returned, stirrups neatened to the saddle so as not to flap when galloping unridden. However, Edward knew by this that Charlton had left of his own accord. He tightened his fingers into a fist. “Damn him! And damn his pettifogging arguments!” Should Charlton imagine he could force his grandfather to concede by prancing off like a girl, he would soon learn to rethink his actions.

  Never would he subsidize Charlton in the same lifestyle that had killed his father. Never. Edward pressed his lips into a firm line. He chased no man. From Robe, he would travel to his town house in Adelaide.

  Edward bore the bone jarring and the harsh heat. His head, aching since he’d heard that Charlton Alfred Langdon Lynton had little or no money, now throbbed with tension.

  Chapter 6

  The morning sun glowed pale yellow in the clear blue sky as Cal took his
first sheep from the pen.

  Frank sharpened his shears. “See the woodpile?”

  Before Cal had entered the woolshed, he had noted the heaped pile of split wood near the kitchen. “Jed’s been busy.” If Miss Rose had half Ella’s gumption, she could do enough for the day in half an hour or so. The stockman had more important tasks than making small logs into kindling.

  “Not Jed.” Frank’s grin widened, showing his big, square, gapped teeth. “Ned. He thought he’d test to see if Miss Rose would be impressed enough to spare him a kiss or two.”

  “And was she?” Cal lifted his sheep to a sitting position.

  “Not so’s you’d notice.” Frank pushed his whetstone into his pocket and eyed Cal sideways. “I told him he might need to mend a few fences, maybe, afore she got around to kissin’ him.”

  Cal stilled for a few seconds, exploring Frank’s words. When the implication hit him, his jaw tightened. Ned must have seen him kiss Ella. Now he understood why the man had continually smirked at him last night and had even nudged him once. Ned had told Frank, and if his gossip spread farther, Ella’s reputation would become grist for the mill. He straightened pugnaciously. “The next man to make a joke of me will get what he is asking for,” he said loudly to Frank.

  “No one’s makin’ a joke of you.”

  “Well, keep your mouth shut. If a certain lady wanted to rebuff me, that’s her choice.”

  “Rebuff you? I didn’t hear about no rebuffin’.”

  “Told you so,” Alf put in. He threw his first fleece to the sorting table where Benji, standing and listening, spread out the wool. “I’ve known Miss Ella for years. She wouldn’t be encouraging the attention of no shearer, not her.”

  “Ned said he saw the whole thing,” Frank mumbled, hesitating by the pen door. “Looked like a thorough kissing to him.”

  Cal rested his fists on his hips, lifting his eyebrows. “As long as he sticks to that story...”

  “Mind you,” Alf said with complacence. “If Ned wants to think he might earn a kiss for chopping the wood, I don’t think we should set him straight. The little ladies can do with all the help they can get.”

  “Ned don’t usually tell stories.” Frank glanced uncertainly from one to the other. After a sigh, he shrugged and pulled his first sheep out of the pen.

  Satisfied that he had stopped any gossip that might eventuate, Cal worked until smoke-oh, when he joined the others on the log seats outside. Only Alf spoke.

  “She went out early this morning.” He indicated Miss Vianna, who rode past to the stable yard where she dismounted. “Said she needs to practice riding for the local show—uses the paddock behind the billabong. It’s set up with barrels and planks for jumping.”

  Cal shrugged, watching the child tie her pony by the reins. Turning his back on her, he faced the fire, noting the steam drifting from the billy-can.

  “Not like Miss Ella. She’s a worker, that one. Make a good wife for a man on the land. She keeps them stables nice, too.”

  “The stables?” Cal filled his mug with steaming black tea. “I thought the horses were Jed’s responsibility.”

  “He don’t do no more than the sheep. Don’t have time for nothin’ else.”

  “She does the mucking out? The grooming?”

  “The lot. Her and Miss Rose have split the jobs between them. They want Miss Vianna to be good at reading and writing and such.” Alf shrugged. “The gentry aren’t like us working people.”

  “Most of the gentry are working people,” Cal said before he could stop himself. “Or so I’ve observed.”

  “Worked for a lot of them, have you?”

  “Not a lot, no. But for quite a while. Not many people get rich in this country if they don’t work. It wouldn’t do the child any harm to take on a few more tasks.”

  “You oughta tell that to Miss Ella.”

  “Family relationships are not my area of expertise,” Cal said with a twist of his mouth.

  Alf raised his eyebrows. “And if she rebuffed you, she wouldn’t listen to you anyway, would she?”

  Frank, Ned, and Tommy stared at Cal. Fortunately, at the same moment Girl nudged him. “You think we should get back to work?” He squatted beside her and pulled her ears, then quickly downed his hot drink.

  “Girl is really pretty,” said a female voice behind him. Miss Vi, wearing a smart pale blue skirt and jacket, leaned down and held out her hand to Girl. “Prettier than our dogs.” She had left her pony standing saddled in the sun.

  “They look much the same.” He rose to his feet, remaining by the fire while the others returned to the woolshed.

  She wrapped her hand in her skirts when Girl didn’t respond to her. “She is shinier.”

  “I brush her every day.”

  “Ella brushed ours this morning.” She concentrated on her shoes. “They’re with her now while she waters the fruit trees. She’s trying to learn how to handle them.”

  He ran his hand over his chin, as if considering. “I suppose they can round up the dropped fruit.”

  She offered a quick smile. “They’re resting, just like your dog does when you don’t keep her busy.”

  “Girl does plenty without me telling her. She enjoys the rewards of completing a hard day’s work.”

  Without asking what those rewards might be, she scanned his face. Although delicately pretty like Miss Rose, the way she chewed at her lip indicated that she was not as sure of her charms as the oldest Beaufort. “Would you look at my pony’s foot? She has something stuck in her shoe and I can’t get it out.”

  “Did you try?”

  Alf coughed loudly. “I’ll be getting back to the shearing now.” He shuffled off.

  She twisted her fingers together. “I did try, but I’ve never done it before, and I didn’t like to bother Ella. She’s always so busy.”

  “I’ll see what I can do for your horse if you go and see what you can do for your sister.”

  She stared at him.

  He didn’t move. “Do we have a deal?”

  “I’m not strong enough to be of any use. I can’t carry a full bucket of water.” She took a step back, looking defiant but sounding unsure. “And she doesn’t like me spending time under the hot sun.”

  “I suspect the orchard sun is no hotter than the paddock sun in which you ride.”

  She concentrated on her feet. “I don’t like outdoor work.”

  “I suspect Miss Ella doesn’t either,” he said gently. “Do we have a deal?”

  She heaved a breath, then she nodded. “I can’t let Miffy suffer when I only have to do something I don’t want to do. If you can’t help her, though, our deal is canceled.” She raised her chin and took two steps backward. “Do you think your dog would like to come and play with our dogs while you shear?”

  He thought of telling the child that Girl preferred being with him, but Miss Vi’s view of work was that play was better. And Girl might like a slack moment for all he knew. “I don’t see why she shouldn’t be given a social outing once in a while.” He accompanied Miss Vi to the stables. “But she won’t leave me unless I indicate to her where I want her to stay. First I’ll look at the hoof.”

  “I think she might have fun,” the child said seriously. “She played with them after they had their bones this morning.”

  “Ah, that’s life, isn’t it?” He untied the pony and took the reins in his hands. “Like is attracted to like.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had anyone to be attracted to, not my own age. I would like a friend, but we need to live in the city before I have a chance of finding one.”

  He walked the pony a few steps and noted the limp. Stopping, he lifted the left front leg and spotted the trouble. He took out his pocketknife and eased out a jammed twig. It fractured into splinters on the ground. “The hoof might be tender for a while.” He removed the saddle, leaving it on the mounting block while he opened the gate to the stable paddock. He ush
ered Miffy through. “Don’t ride her again until you are sure she’s lost the limp.”

  “Now I’ll do as I promised.” The child watched him hang the bridle over a hook, then she led Cal toward the orchard at the front of the house. Suddenly she picked up speed and ran ahead. “Ella,” she called in a clear voice. “Girl is coming to play with Paws and Patch and Petunia. Cal doesn’t mind. See? He’s not a slave driver.”

  Ella straightened. She wore a hat like an empty cushion tied to her head and gloves that came to her elbows. “Dear life, Vi. Whoever said he was?” Her guilty blush gave her away.

  Cal controlled his urge to smile, remembering that during their last encounter he had rebuffed her. Staring at her, he pushed his hands in his pockets, outwardly watchful but inside so charmed by this woman that he wondered how he could keep her at a distance. With his voice even and his expression bland, he said, “No, I don’t mind if Girl has time off. I’ll tell her to stay with the other dogs. She won’t take any notice of you.”

  As if offended, Ella looked down her nose at him. “I know how to give orders in a definite voice. You taught me well and I’m really quite good with the dogs now.”

  He shook his head, unable to keep his expression stern. “Your voice doesn’t matter to a deaf dog. Girl obeys signals.”

  Ella glanced at Girl. “What’s the command to stay?”

  “A flat palm. Come is to tap the leg. Go is to point. Other than that, she reads body language.”

  “I think it might be rather convenient to be a dog and deaf.”

  He nodded. “Very perceptive.” Girl, although well trained, could be the very devil when she found questionable smells to roll in or wanted to chase small, furry animals. At those times she used her deafness to advantage. “If she doesn’t want to know what I want, she refuses to look at me.”

  Ella caught his gaze and glanced away. She and Girl had much in common. Cal lifted his hand and made a circling movement with his arm, which meant Girl needed to do a round up. She realized he meant the other dogs and before he got her into trouble, he indicated with an upraised palm that he meant her to stay with them.