Dark Torment (6 page)

“Let me help.” Trying to recoup the ground he must
have known he had lost, Percival stooped to scoop up the supplies nearest him
and hand them to Sarah. He looked at the injured convict only once, but Sarah
intercepted that look. The malevolence in the overseer’s eyes as they
rested on the convict reinforced her opinion: she would not like to be in his
power. She sighed inwardly. As her father’s daughter and a free woman,
she was not and was never likely to be subject to Percival’s retaliation.
But the convict was.

“I’ll escort you back to the inn.”

Sarah had no fault to find with this; it had been a long and
difficult day. The best place for her at the moment was in bed, where she could
put from her mind the events of the day and the two very different men who had
made it so trying. Clasping the medical kit under her arm, she preceded
Percival from the stall, and even waited while he retrieved the lantern from
the hook. Neither spoke as he accompanied her back to the inn. He made no
effort to touch her, and left her with a muttered good-night when they were
safely inside. For this Sarah was thankful. Despite her growing aversion to the
man, she did not want to make an enemy of him. Lowella needed Percival. Edward
could never run the station single-handed. And Europeans of untainted blood
were few. Sarah handled the administrative duties, but she could not oversee
the men in the fields. The convicts and the itinerant workers who composed most
of Lowella’s labor force had one thing in common: they were men, and men
did not take orders from a woman. Not without a peck of trouble. And Lowella
didn’t need that.

* * *

For the first ten days after the disastrous visit to Melbourne,
Sarah was so busy that she scarcely had time to eat. Her father, as always,
spent most of his days at the breeding pens, where he was trying to improve his
strain of prize merino sheep. This left Sarah to struggle on her own to balance
the cash on hand with the far greater amount needed for bills and supplies. In
addition, she had the house to run, the new convicts’ papers to sort and
file, and nursing duties as well. Lydia, being Lydia, had managed to contract
catarrh during her husband’s and daughters’ absence. Liza no sooner
came into contact with her mother than she had it too. As the house staff
consisted only of Mrs. Abbott, a former convict who had been trained as
cook-housekeeper by Sarah’s mother, and two aborigine maids, Sarah had
also to do considerable fetching and carrying for the pseudo-invalids. Lydia
often bewailed the small number of servants, never more so than when she
fancied herself ill, but Edward, with his fondness for a dollar, had instructed
Sarah that no more were to be engaged. So Sarah turned a deaf ear to
Lydia’s complaints, but still it grated on her nerves. When, finally,
Lydia seemed ready to get better, Sarah decided to leave Liza in the care of
the maids for a while and get out of the house. The strain of the past days was
beginning to wear her down.

She left the house by the rear door, walking through the kitchen
garden where the family’s vegetables grew, toward the stable, which was
some two hundred yards distant. To her left were the orchards, which provided
Lowella with bananas, oranges, lemons, figs, and guavas in season. Dark-skinned
aborigines worked among the groves, picking from the leaves the insects that
were a constant threat to the crop and crushing them between their fingers
before throwing the carcasses to the ground. The trees and the vegetable garden
were green, thanks to a newly constructed windmill just beyond the orchards,
silhouetted against the blue haze of mountains to the east. Its rhythmic
groaning as the broad paddles turned with the wind had become as much a part of
the summer as the heat; Sarah was scarcely aware of either anymore. To her
right as she walked was ordinarily a flower garden. Now it was a collection of
dried stalks protruding forlornly from the earth. In this time of drought,
water was too precious to spare for flowers. The normally green lawn had
suffered a similar fate. It rustled dryly against Sarah’s skirt as she
moved.

Sarah shook her head sadly as she glanced back at the house. With
its sheltering grove of eucalyptus nearly leafless, the sprawling structure
looked almost ugly. Edward and a small band of aborigine workers had built it
years ago from sun-dried planks that they had hewed and shaped themselves.
Sarah had often wondered if her father had had any kind of a plan when he
began, and, if so, what had happened to it. Certainly now, with the additions
that had been made through the years, the house looked to have been put
together at random, with wings jutting out in odd directions from the original
two-story structure. Wide porches had been added to the front and rear when
Sarah was a child, and the whole structure had been painted white. Now, exposed
to the glare of the sun without the protective canopy of leaves that usually
sheltered it, the whitewash was blistering in places. The feather flowers of
the wattles on either side of the porch steps drooped sadly; their color and
perfume had been baked away by the heat. Without the softening influence of the
trees and flowers, the house’s imperfections became glaringly obvious. It
looked like what it was: a house built by a man in a hurry.

The few horses in the corral by the stable huddled together in the
building’s shadow, nose to tail as they obligingly twitched at one
another’s flies. They were feeling the heat too, poor things, Sarah
thought as she entered the relative coolness of the stable. Still dazzled by
the glare of the sun, Sarah, bestowing an absent pat on Clare’s thrusting
nose as she passed, could see nothing but shadows as she made her way to the
stall where Malahky, her favorite riding horse, nickered a welcome. Despite the
heat, she felt like riding. She would go down to the river, where the trees
still retained most of their leaves. It would be blessedly cool.

“Saddle Malahky for me, please,” Sarah instructed the
shadowy figure that she took to be Jagger, the aborigine groom.

“Yes, ma’am,” came the reply, almost mocking in
its subservience. That was not Jagger! That gravelly voice with the illusive,
lilting accent . . .

Her eyes were gradually growing accustomed to the dimness; she
squinted at the man who had answered, realizing that he was too tall, too
broad, too big altogether to be Jagger. Then his features swam into focus. In
the midst of that lean, dark face, she had no trouble at all recognizing the
dazzling blue eyes.

“Gallagher.” Sarah identified the convict she had
hoped never to lay eyes on again after that disastrous night at Yancy’s
place. What was he doing in the stable? With his injured back, she and her
father had agreed that he needed several weeks of Madeline’s nursing and
rest before being put to work.

“You know my name.” Now that she was used to the
relative darkness, she could see one jet-black eyebrow winging upward. He
looked much better, she thought, eying him with a trepidation that owed as much
to his sheer size as to the memory of her previous exchange with him. She had
known he would be tall, but she had not expected to be dwarfed by him. Still
lean, he was no longer emaciated. His shoulders admirably filled the clean
white shirt he wore, and his legs in their sober black breeches looked well
muscled. Her gaze had run over his body involuntarily; the overwhelming
maleness of him aroused in her a curious unease.

Remembering his obscene suggestions and realizing how he might
interpret her interest, she jerked her eyes back up to his face. And there they
halted, widening. The brief glimpses she had had of him before, when he was
dirty and unshaved and in pain, had not prepared her for this. When she had
first seen his features on the
Septimus,
she had thought that under
better circumstances he might be reasonably attractive. Now he looked the
embodiment of a schoolgirl’s dream. His hair had been washed and trimmed;
brushed ruthlessly back from his face, it nevertheless tried to curl. It was as
black as her father’s Sunday boots, and as glossy. The planes and angles
of his face were beautifully sculpted. She had never before seen such
perfection. His forehead was broad, his cheekbones elegantly carved, his jaw
lean and square. Above a determined chin, his mouth twisted up at one corner in
a mocking half-smile; the lower lip was fuller than the upper. His nose was
straight, high-bridged, and without flaw. The sickly paleness had left his
skin, and its natural swarthiness had been darkened even more by exposure to
the hot Australian sun. And of course there were his eyes. Set amid thick black
lashes that any girl would envy, they were as devastatingly blue as jewels. As
she met them, Sarah saw that they were bright with mockery. To her horror, she
realized what construction he must be putting on her dumbstruck silence.
Suddenly she thought of his insulting remarks the night she had tried to help
him; a vision of him as he had looked without a shirt, all corded muscles and
black-pelted chest, rose unbidden in her mind’s eye. She could even
remember the
smell
of him.

Sarah felt herself blushing, which was something she did more than
she wished, as she tried frantically to remember what it was that he had said
before she had been struck dumb by his looks. Ah, yes, his name.

“I keep the station’s records,” she said evenly,
determined not to let him see how he had affected her. “Your papers are
among them. You’re Dominic Gallagher, age thirty-two, Irish, no
dependents, sentenced to fifteen years for robbery. And I believe I asked you
to saddle my horse for me.”

His eyes narrowed at her. Sarah was suddenly, overwhelmingly
conscious of how alone they were. The stable was deserted; there were only the
horses stamping and chomping contentedly in their stalls. Unlike the other time
she had been alone with him, his hands and feet were unfettered; once they
reached Lowella, convicts were never chained. It made for better morale;
besides, there was little chance of their running away. Where would they go?
The bush was unforgiving, especially of those unfamiliar with the country, and
if they did happen to survive the relentless sun and scarcity of water, they
would be hunted down like mad dogs. In the stillness Sarah could hear the drone
of a buzzing fly. Through the open stable door, she could see the blinding
sunshine. She longed to be out in it, away from the menacing hostility that
emanated from this convict like the tangy smell of his sweat. Then, remembering
who he was and who she was, she stiffened her spine. She would not be afraid of
him; and if she was, a little, she would certainly do her best to make sure
that he did not know it.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said as he had before. There
was no mistaking the mockery this time. Sarah’s lips tightened. If they
were ever to have the proper servant-mistress relationship, she could not allow
the brute’s insolence to go unremarked.

“You may address me as Miss Sarah,” she instructed as
he turned away to open the door to Malahky’s stall and lead the gelding
out. He was good with the animal, she noted, watching the confident way he
handled the big bay.

“Yas’m, Miss Sarah,” he said. His words were
such an obvious parody of the aborigines’ obsequiousness that Sarah felt
her temper begin to heat. What was it about this man that enabled him to anger
her so consistently? Ordinarily, in the face of even the most blatant
provocation, she reverted to icy hauteur. With him, it was all she could do to
keep from exploding like a musket.

“If you’ll point out your saddle to me, Miss Sarah,
I’ll be as quick as I can, Miss Sarah.” He was moving away toward
the tack room as he spoke, leaving Malahky securely fastened to the halter
line. Lips tightened angrily, Sarah followed. In grim silence she pointed out
her own sidesaddle, blanket, and hackamore. He was deliberately needling her,
Sarah thought, eying his broad back as he saddled the bay with controlled
movements that spoke of the pain he must still suffer from the beating.

“Where is Jagger?” she asked when she could bear the
uneasy silence no longer.

Gallagher glanced at her over his shoulder. His hands—funny
how she could still seem to feel the imprint of those long fingers on her
wrist—were deft as he tightened the saddle girth with a horseman’s
competent ease.

“Your fiancé didn’t see much sense in having me
lying around the bunkhouse eating my head off. He told me to
replace—Jagger, is it?—three days ago. Jagger, I assume, is out
digging wells in my place. Miss Sarah.”

Sarah gritted her teeth. The convict had a positive genius for
riling her.

“If you are referring to Mr. Percival, he is not my
fiancé,” she said coldly.

“So you’ve said before. But he seems to think
you’re just shy.” He moved toward her as he spoke. Before Sarah had
even the slightest inkling of his intention, his hands were closing around her
waist and he was lifting her off her feet. She gasped, automatically clasping
his bare, hard-muscled forearms for balance as he swung her around, her feet
already high off the ground.

She felt ridiculously small as be held her before him. The sense
of being helpless in the face of such overpowering male strength was new to
her, and she definitely did not like it! The quickened beating of her heart was
due solely, she told herself, to angry alarm.

“Put me down! How dare you! What do you think you’re
doing?” Her eyes were enormous as she glared at him.

“Why, helping you to mount, Miss Sarah,” he said, the
glint in his eyes taunting her even as she felt her bottom make contact with
the smooth leather of the saddle. “What did you think I was doing, Miss
Sarah?”

Bright color heated her cheeks as he guided her knee around the
pommel so that she was in the correct sidesaddle position. The feel of his hand
on her flesh, even through her gray cotton riding skirt and her single
petticoat, unnerved her. He was so very male.