An Unconventional Heiress. Paula Marshall
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dinner on Saturday week, where I shall be only too happy to discourse with you further on Antipodean, as opposed to European, customs.’
His final bow to her—and the two Middleton ladies—was elaborately formal.
Sarah sat in silence, her face scarlet, and so near to breaking down that she could scarcely breathe. It was fortunate that Mrs Middleton was so angry at Dr Kerr’s effrontery that she could not see Sarah’s patent distress. She said, her face working, ‘The impudence of them. They’re sent here as punishment, and when they are here they are bare-faced enough to address His Majesty’s loyal subjects as though they’re no better than themselves, no better than transported felons.’
Lucy laid her hand lightly on Sarah’s to comfort her. ‘You are not to trouble yourself about what such a creature thinks,’ she murmured softly. ‘If he were not such a good doctor, he would still be in chains.’
Sarah was too busy musing unhappily about the recent distressing scene to hear what Lucy said. The impudence of him, she thought, echoing Mrs Middleton. He needed taking down a peg or two, that was for sure. Then her common sense, sadly missing since she had arrived in Sydney, took over, and told her that a criminal who had been brought from England in irons had already been brought down by far more than two pegs.
For all that, she thought, he behaves like a Spanish Grandee, which really is the most provoking thing! The next time that we meet I shall try to keep to my early resolution and not speak like an intemperate shrew. After all, it was Charles Villiers who did me the greater injury and not this nobody of an Emancipist doctor! I must try to forget them both.
She looked around. The bright day had been dimmed for her, but just when she had begun to think that everyone was in a conspiracy to distress her, a most unlikely saviour in the person of Tom Dilhorne arrived to take her mind off herself and her troubles. Afterwards, she was to ask herself whether that had been his real intention, rather than the obvious one of his using an opportunity to persuade her to patronise his Emporium. At the time, though, it was not a question that occurred to her.
He swept off his hat in greeting. This time it was an elegant straw one, not the battered felt he had worn on the ship. His dress was rather better, too. He made nothing of Mrs Middleton’s open annoyance at his daring to approach them at all, merely saying, ‘Your servant, ladies,’ before turning his attention towards Sarah.
‘Miss Langley, the silks from Macao, of which I spoke when you first arrived here, are now unpacked and in the shop. Not only that, when I inspected the goods, which came from England, there were some fine cottons that might be to your liking.’
‘Then you must expect a visit from me—and possibly from Miss Middleton.’ Sarah smiled, determined to show both him and the Middleton ladies that she had not been overset by Dr Kerr. ‘There are some grand occasions to be attended soon, I hear, and I shall need a positive trousseau.’
Excellent. Whatever that ass, his good friend, had said and done to distress her, it had not succeeded in dampening her spirits completely. Tom thought that he knew why Sarah Langley was having such a powerful effect on Alan Kerr, but it would not do to tell either him or the lady why they were at such odds.
Instead he remarked gravely, ‘Happen I can find some new trimmings for you, too.’ In front of Mrs Middleton his Yorkshire accent had deepened and coarsened. Whenever he had been alone with Sarah, it had always been slight.
Sarah would have detained him further, but, with the dry remark that ‘I am sure that you are finding Sydney of great interest, Miss Langley, particularly since some of our natives are not exactly as civilised as those you have encountered at home,’ he took himself off, pausing to inform her that, if she found any problems in hiring servants when she finally set up house, he would be only too willing to help her.
His departure left Sarah appreciative of both his obliquity and his consideration. Oblique, because his comments on her view of Sydney and its inhabitants could only have been taken as an amused reference to her encounters with Alan Kerr. Considerate because he had seen Mrs Middleton turn as red as a turkey cock because he was speaking to Sarah at all, and had left swiftly enough to spare her reproach from the old harridan.
Mrs Middleton did snort at her, ‘I wonder, Miss Langley, at you allowing such a creature to speak to you.’
‘The Governor told me that his Emporium is well worth a visit. He seems to think highly of him,’ was Sarah’s only reply to that. Tom’s visit had cheered her up no end—a saying of her old nurse’s. All the way back to Government House she told herself that now she was in the Antipodes she must try to forget the past for, if she persisted in refusing to tame her own stormy heart, she might as well have stayed in England. She must not repine, but accept the past and try to welcome the future.
Easy to think, but harder to do.
Sarah kept her promise to visit Tom’s Emporium on the very next day. She walked there from Government House. The Emporium was quite unlike any shop that she had ever patronised before. It was crammed with a variety of goods as well as a small gathering of Sydney’s more respectable matrons, side by side with some whom Mrs Middleton would have dismissed as low. There was no sign of Tom himself: a young man was serving behind a long counter on which even more goods were displayed, when a door at the back opened and he came in, dressed rather like a superior clerk.
He walked the length of the shop, gave her a half-bow, and said, ‘Good morning, Miss Langley, have you come to see the silks—or the cottons?’
Sarah was aware that every woman’s eye was on her, and that Tom was equally aware of it. She was not to know that these days Tom rarely served in the shop himself, leaving that to the young man and a middle-aged woman who was busy looking after one of the matrons.
He walked her over to a small trestle table on which bales of fabric lay and began to display them to her. There were not only rolls of silk, but of muslin, calico, cotton and the finest lawn. He spoke briefly, but knowledgeably, of them all, even recommending certain threads and trimmings as suitable. He was the complete man milliner, she thought with amusement, as far removed as possible from the dangerous brute that Pat Ramsey and the other officers had reported him to be.
She noticed that his hands, like Alan Kerr’s, were beautifully cared for, the nails smoothly cut. This was surprising; even more so was his apparent ability to read her mind, for he said to her, apparently idly, ‘Must keep the hands trim, Miss Langley, might damage the goods, else.’
She began to question him further about the silks and he fetched even more bales from the back to show her, together with ribbons, laces and other frippery, which she might wish to choose from. After running out of questions concerning haberdashery, she said, ‘I understand that you have many other interests besides this store, Mr Dilhorne.’
Her comment was really a question and he took it as such.
‘Indeed, Miss Langley. I run a money-lending business, have connections with stone quarrying and the brick-fields, and own several ships. I occasionally do a little auctioneering and am at the present moment engaged in talks with the Yankee sealers about joining in business with them.’
‘You must be a very busy man. I was surprised to see that both you and Dr Kerr had time to visit Hyde Park yesterday.’
‘Oh, there’s more to life, Miss Langley, than work—as Dr Kerr and I both know.’
How odd it was that she should be enjoying her conversation with a man whom most of Sydney’s Exclusives dismissed as a coarse brute. Would Dr Kerr be as interesting to talk to? she wondered. Perhaps even more so, although most people in Sydney would doubtless tell her that she should not be thinking of, or talking to, either of them.
As though he had been reading her mind again, Tom picked up one of the bales of silk and murmured softly, aware that their lengthy tête-à-tête was drawing curious stares, if not to say glares. ‘If I may advise you, Miss Langley, it may not be altogether wise to speak overlong with me, or my friend the Doctor. Every tabby-cat in Sydney will be at your throat if you do.’
‘Why,