Her Rags-To-Riches Christmas. Laura Martin
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months,’ she said. ‘I spent a year of my sentence in gaol in England, then nearly a year on board the transport ship. I have just over two years left to serve.’
He nodded and Alice waited for the inevitable query as to her crime. The seconds ticked past and it didn’t come. Mr Fitzgerald was just sitting there, surveying the road ahead, and by the expression on his face he couldn’t care less what she’d been convicted of.
‘Don’t you want to know what I did, sir?’ she asked, her tone challenging.
He shrugged. ‘If you want to tell me.’
She frowned. Everyone wanted to know what crimes had brought people to this country: the woman she’d worked for in the laundry, the stern couple who’d provided her lodgings. It was expected that she divulge her crime over and over again and now this man didn’t seem overly bothered by what she’d done. It was unsettling.
‘You’re taking me to your home, but you don’t want to know what crime I committed?’ she asked eventually. It felt wrong, suspicious.
He looked at her, a smile fighting to gain control of his lips. ‘Five years,’ he said with a shrug. ‘If they only sentenced you to five years, it couldn’t have been anything too terrible.’
It was true the murderers and the violent criminals weren’t often the ones who found themselves aboard the transport ships to the other side of the world, and especially not for a mere five-year sentence. Most of Alice’s fellow convicts were thieves, pickpockets or men who’d stolen from their masters or forged documents. They still could be violent and cruel, but the crimes were not often the most heinous.
‘I like Yorkshire,’ Mr Fitzgerald said after a few minutes’ silence. ‘Very dramatic scenery. The moors, the cliffs.’
‘You’ve been?’ Alice cursed herself for the instinctive question. The last thing she wanted to do was encourage conversation. She wasn’t even sure why she was surprised. Most people in Australia hadn’t been born there. The man next to her could have started life anywhere in England.
‘Recently. I’ve just got back from my very first visit to England. I travelled a lot—given the distance, it might have been my only opportunity.’
It felt strange to be sitting next to this man making small talk. Although she wasn’t a slave and had some rights, she had been given to him as a convict worker, required to follow his rules and do what he said or risk the harsh punishments dealt out to those convicts not seen to be toeing the line. Still, she could use the opportunity to get some information on the man who’d rescued her. It always paid to know those you were forced to be close to.
‘You sailed to England?’ she asked, feeling her heart hammering in her chest. It seemed impossible—although ships did leave for England, no one she knew had ever been aboard one. Probably some of the guards went home after their stint in Australia was up, but even most of those chose to stay and make a life for themselves in the colony. And the convicts... Well, everyone dreamed of going home, but a passage was far too expensive. That was the harshest part of the sentence they’d received for their crimes. Five years in prison for theft was one thing if your family and friends were waiting for you when you were released, but once you’d been transported to the other side of the world it was likely you’d never make it home again.
‘I did. I’d only just disembarked the ship this morning when I heard you screaming.’
Alice shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The wounds on her back were throbbing and as the temperature rose little beads of sweat were forming and trickling down into them, making the pain worse.
‘But you said it was your first visit to England?’
‘It was. I was born here. My parents made the journey while my mother was pregnant.’
‘But they weren’t...’ Alice hesitated—most people settled in Australia were ex-convicts or guards, but a few families had decided to make the colony their home out of choice ‘...convicts?’
Mr Fitzgerald laughed and Alice saw the way his eyes crinkled, the flash of white teeth and something tightened inside her. Pushing away the feeling, she looked down at her hands, focusing on the chapped skin, cracked from all the time spent working in the laundry.
‘No, not convicts, just dreamers,’ he said fondly. ‘My father believed Australia to be the land of opportunity and for him it was true.’ He paused, looking at her with a broad smile. ‘You’re very adept at that,’ he said.
‘At what?’
‘Deflection. I still know next to nothing about you.’
Alice hadn’t even realised she’d done it. Keeping as much of herself private as possible had become second nature to her over the past few years. The less people knew about you, the less ammunition they had to hurt you with.
She opened her mouth to answer, but was cut off by Mr Fitzgerald pulling on the reins and abruptly jumping down off the cart. She peered after him, trying to work out what had made him stop so suddenly. Inside her chest she could feel her heart hammering and a coil of icy dread snaking through her stomach.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her voice shrill.
‘Come here,’ Mr Fitzgerald said quietly.
She glanced at the reins, wondering how far she would get if she grabbed them and rode off. There was no reason for Mr Fitzgerald to stop the cart out here in the middle of nowhere. No good reason.
Alice shuddered as she remembered the men on the transport ship, the arms holding her down, the warm breath on her neck. She would never let another man have the opportunity to attack her again, even if it meant committing another crime to get out of the situation.
Mr Fitzgerald glanced back at her, frowning slightly, but then turned away again, his attention focused on something at the side of the road. Alice hesitated. It could be a ploy, a way to distract her, but as he moved to one side she saw him crouch down next to something brown and furry.
Carefully, trying not to open the wounds on her back any more, Alice stood and climbed down from the cart, too, crossing to where Mr Fitzgerald had knelt down by the side of the road. They’d left Sydney behind them and were now on a dusty road winding through farmland on the Sydney plain. It was the furthest Alice had been from the city since her arrival in Australia and as she walked across the road she was struck with the beauty of the land sprawling out in front of her.
‘She’s injured,’ Mr Fitzgerald said as Alice crouched down beside him. ‘Looks like the work of a dingo.’
‘A dingo?’
‘Large native dog. They’re a pest to livestock, vicious, too, and they love kangaroo meat.’
Peering over his shoulder, Alice saw the kangaroo. It was large and would have been almost comical looking if it wasn’t for the blood matted in its fur. She could see it wasn’t breathing, there had been no movement since they’d hopped down from the cart, and she wondered what exactly Mr Fitzgerald was hoping to achieve by stopping.
‘Come here, little one,’ he murmured, leaning forward and lifting a brown little bundle out from the kangaroo’s pouch.
‘A baby?’ Alice asked in surprise.
Mr Fitzgerald nodded, handling the small animal with care as he stroked its furry little head.
‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve got you. We’ll keep you safe.’
Alice watched as he stood and shrugged off his jacket, wrapping the baby kangaroo in it before holding the bundle out to her.
‘I c-can’t...’ she stammered.
‘Of course you can. I’ve got to drive the cart.’
‘What if I hurt it?’
‘Did you have any animals growing up?’ he asked.
Nodding,