Ghost Gum Valley (20 page)

He was gone. Despite the frustration of her intitial failure to break their engagement, Isabel was overcome by curiosity. She flung herself on the floor among the boxes, exclaiming with pleasure over exquisite lace-trimmed silk undergarments, silk stockings, a parasol and two dresses with fashionable belled sleeves, striped in Regency wallpaper patterns with peonies and violets. An Indian silk shawl was threaded with silver, a bonnet sprigged with flowers. The shoes slipped on like the fabled glass slipper that was lost then found by Cinderella's Prince.

The clothes fitted to perfection.
Marmaduke Gamble certainly knows his way around a woman's body. I suppose that's not surprising for a libertine.

Admiring her mirror image Isabel felt so excited she almost forgot the legacy of her fight: her egg-sized swollen eye. But Marmaduke had thought of everything. A small package contained a domino-checked silver and gold Venetian eye mask.

What manner of man am I dealing with? He's as far from an English gentleman as the North Pole is from the South. He's blatantly arrogant, ill-mannered, insensitive, devious and insulting. It sounds as if he breaks the Ten Commandments as casually as other men break open a box of cigars. He dislikes me and every English settler he considers has invaded
his
country.
I hated him on sight – and that's the one thing we have in common.

Isabel covered her eyes with the Venetian mask and asked her
reflection. ‘But a man who buys a lady a mask to save her public embarrassment can't be all bad, can he?'

The moment that this thought found a voice Isabel was suspicious. Marmaduke's gifts might look like the act of a generous heart but she had proved the truth to her great cost. A man's charm and kindness simply concealed the weapons of his cruelty and manipulation.

Isabel sighed as she repeated the line from
Romeo and Juliet
: ‘There's no trust, no faith, no honesty in men.'

Chapter 13

The following morning Isabel dressed in one of the becoming new gowns Marmaduke had bought her, carefully placed her Venetian mask to avoid flattening her side curls and waited in the Gamble hotel suite, clutching her furled parasol like a weapon.

She had no idea where the barbarian planned to take her but his reminder that this was winter in the Colony prepared her for the day to be warmer than an English spring.

Marmaduke sauntered into her chambers on the stroke of nine. Isabel took one look at his dress and was appalled. Bareheaded, he wore the slop shirt and trousers she recognised as typical convict garb, plus a red neckerchief tied around his throat and a second spotted handkerchief knotted around his skull like a pirate.

Yet as if he considered himself an arbiter of fashion he cast a critical eye over her.

‘What's wrong?' she asked defensively.

‘You'll pass muster. But you'll need a sun bonnet unless you want to cop a heap of freckles. That parasol's only good for flirting. Bring a shawl and a fan. And change into outdoor shoes. You'll be sitting outside all day by yourself.'

‘Where will
you
be?'

‘Don't worry. You'll have your eye on me all the time. My mates and I have been issued with a challenge. War games against twelve desperadoes.'

Isabel refused to take the bait. ‘Really?' she asked coolly. ‘Are you likely to be mortally wounded?'

Marmaduke raised one eyebrow in amusement. ‘I reckon that'd solve both our problems, right?'

Without waiting for an answer he took her elbow and hurried her downstairs to where Thomas was waiting beside a closed Gamble family carriage.

Driving in silence to their unknown destination Isabel was torn between catching tantalising glimpses of the town's scenery – a
prisoner in the stocks being pelted by boys with rotten fruit and an altercation between a humble ‘shay' cart and a bullock train – and sidelong glances at the man who was a total enigma to her.

Despite her disdain of Marmaduke's boorish Colonial manners she found herself observing him as keenly as a schoolboy studying an alien bug under a microscope. She was disconcerted to discover the reverse was also true. The bug was examining
her
.

He finds me as unpalatable as I find him. But what can I do? If I jilt him George Gamble would be justified in demanding the return of all his money and Uncle Godfrey would be forced to live under The Rules.

Isabel felt like an inexperienced female in a de Rolland–Gamble chess game being played by powerful men.

How can a pawn like me hope to challenge the opposing King and deliver the check mate to win the game?

She concealed her surprise when Thomas halted the carriage in front of iron gates in the high stone wall of the George Street Military Barracks. Marmaduke identified himself to the guard on duty and added laconically, ‘Colonel Despard's expecting us.'

‘Right you are, sir,' the guard replied in a clipped English accent, ‘may the best men win.' And like open sesame the gates swung open for Thomas to drive the carriage through.

Isabel was startled by the bold notice attached to the gate:
Citizens Must Keep Off The Grass – by Order of Colonel Despard
.

The barracks were vast, like a military village behind the massive stone walls. Two long double-storey buildings stretched endlessly on either side of the impressive central headquarters. The total barracks must have covered four town blocks, capable of housing any or all of the four regiments stationed in the Colony, together with their horses, weaponry, ammunition, stores and the small army of convicts assigned to serve the soldiers' needs.

After halting by a green sward in front of the Officers' Mess, Marmaduke hurriedly escorted Isabel to a shady bench under a tree on the edge of what appeared to be a drilling square covered by grass.

‘This should be safe enough. It's out of the line of fire,' he added enigmatically before disappearing inside one of the buildings.

Feeling as if she were the last woman alive in a world of men,
Isabel waited for the war games to begin. But instead of the expected appearance of armed military officers in the traditional uniform of British red coatee and shako helmet, the line of men who marched onto the field were formally dressed gentlemen wearing tall black silk ‘bell-topper' hats and spiked boots. They planted wicket stumps at either end of what she now saw was a worn strip on the grass.

‘My God, it's a cricket match!' she said aloud, suddenly aware that two ladies, likely officers' wives by their accents, had taken their seats behind her and were animatedly discussing the latest French fashion papers to arrive from a ship that had recently dropped anchor in Port Jackson. They broke off to glance at the men on the field.

‘Naturally, m'dear,' said one matron condescendingly, ‘the pity of it is we don't have enough officers available to make up two teams. So we were forced to invite a Currency team – scratched together so you can imagine how rough they'll be. No doubt the visitors will all be bowled out by the tea break, thank Heavens.'

Soldiers of the lower ranks had assembled around the edge of the field and there was a warm round of applause from the team of officers and the soldier spectators when the team of Currency Lads filed out onto the field, led by their captain – Marmaduke.

Isabel gave a sharp intake of breath at the contrast between the top-hatted formality of the Officers and Marmaduke's Currency team – none of whom had changed into the traditional cricket uniform of cream shirt and trousers. All twelve men wore casual slop clothing, their heads covered by a rag-bag assortment of knotted scarves or battered cabbage tree hats. Two were in their stocking feet. The rest of the team, including Marmaduke, were intent on playing barefoot.

Isabel caught the horrified female whispers behind her.

‘The Currency captain is the son of Gamble, that
nouveau riche
Emancipist. What else can you expect from convict stock? They simply don't know how to behave.'

‘Colonial barbarians,
n'est-ce pas
?'

Isabel flushed with anger but decided to ignore them.

The captain of the English military team won the toss and sent his team in to bat.

Marmaduke was the first to bowl. Isabel felt an odd flash of pride at the sight of him hurtling barefoot towards the pitch as he sent
down the opening ball at a speed that flew past the batsman's wildly swinging bat, narrowly missed the wicket and was caught by the wicket-keeper crouched behind it. The fact their captain was almost bowled out for a duck on the first ball of the match drew a murmur of surprised approval from the soldier spectators.

Two runs later when the same bell-topper batsman was again facing him, Marmaduke bowled him out on the last ball of the over. There was a roar of delight from every Currency Lad on the field and a jubilant cry of ‘'Owzat?' Several lads leapt like frogs at Marmaduke and slapped him on the back exuberantly, one tugging his long hair in a gesture of triumph.

Isabel turned to the officers' wives and said politely, ‘That demon bowler is my fiancé. Not bad cricket for a Colonial barbarian,
n'est-ce pas
?'

Their haughty reaction to Isabel's face reminded her she wore a carnival mask – an unthinkable fashion for a lady by day.

I must appear to be a woman of the
demi-monde.

That idea was quite appealing.

The match was clearly not going to be won without a fight. Bold cricket was played by both teams, but Isabel could see that the high-energy tactics of the Currency team, their irrepressible humour, risk-taking, extraordinary feats of barefoot running and athletic leaps in the air to take impossible catches, combined to swung victory within their sights by the time they broke for tea.

Rather than risk being snubbed again by the officers' wives, Isabel declined to take tea and crossed to join Thomas, who was standing beside the carriage.

‘He's not bad, is he!' she admitted.

‘That's nothing. I reckon you're in for a rare treat,' Thomas said proudly.

When the Currency Lads went in to bat Marmaduke proved Thomas's prediction correct. Isabel grew increasingly excited as Marmaduke swung his bat wildly and sent balls regularly flying to the boundary for fours or over the heads of the spectator soldiers for sixes.

Victory was now clearly in the grasp of the Currency team. At stumps the military officers, true gentleman one and all, warmly
shook hands with them. They had never questioned one decision given against them by the umpire – their fellow officer.

‘God, I've got a raging thirst.' Marmaduke turned to his team as they climbed back into the saddle to ride home. ‘Anyone care to join us for a few ales? I'm headed for the Parramatta road turn-off and the Surry Hills.'

Two of the team who had arrived on foot climbed up beside Thomas on the box seat to get a lift to the other end of town. Even before they had passed through the barrack gates they ‘rubbed salt in the wound' by singing the ‘doggerel' lyrics of a song to celebrate their triumph.

Isabel had no trouble picking out the refrain at the end of each verse when Marmaduke lustily joined them to sing, ‘
Keep Off the Grass says Corporal Desperado
!'

When his two teammates climbed down off the carriage at the end of George Street before the Toll Gate and headed off to a shanty, Marmaduke turned to Isabel with that infuriating half-smile she had learnt to distrust.

He thinks he's so clever. As if he's just laid a trap for me.

‘If you're as thirsty as I am, care to try a watering hole that stocks the best grog in Sydney Town? You can bet your sweet life you don't have anything like this where you come from.' He added casually, ‘That's if you're game to try it?'

‘Anything you can do, Marmaduke, I can do,' Isabel said coolly. Her mouth was so dry she was ready to cross the Blue Mountains on foot if there was something to drink on the other side.

After they by-passed the gothic Toll Gate the road veered into a wide track that took on a new name – the Parramatta road. A milestone marked the miles to Parramatta, the village Marmaduke explained had grown the crops that saved the little Colony from starvation in its first years after the arrival of the First Fleet.

‘Parramatta's now a prosperous community. Our second Government House is the governor's summer residence and favoured far more than the original one in Sydney.'

‘Parramatta. What a lovely word. Aboriginal, I presume?'

‘Yeah. The translation I like best is “The Place Where Eels Sit Down” – where eels breed.' He added slyly, ‘Ever eaten eel?'

Isabel stopped herself in time from a derogatory reference to eels being considered a delicacy by the lower orders. She was relieved that they were approaching their destination. A painted sign swung over the doorway of an inn, showing a black dog standing on three legs, his lame leg curled under him.

‘The Sign of the Lame Dog. Step inside those doors tonight, Isabel, and you'll be making history,' Marmaduke said enigmatically.

As Thomas swung the carriage around, a bearded drunk wearing a cabbage-tree hat weaved into the direct path of the horses, hurling abuse at Thomas who desperately swerved the horses to avoid running him down.

Marmaduke helped Isabel alight and told Thomas to wait.

The moment she passed through the doors of the noisy, smoke-filled tavern Isabel felt she had been set down on the far side of the moon. They were surrounded by densely packed bodies fighting their way to the bar, each man cursing and jostling to gain a wide enough berth to avoid spilling his grog.

To Isabel these rough-hewn faces were like caricatures in a lampoon. Their pugnacious features, shaggy hair and matted beards made them look as if they had all sprung from the same tribe. The women ranged from bedraggled drudges to flashily dressed girls in gaudy colours with wild flowing tresses. Not a bonnet or glove in sight; and every man kept his hat or cap fixed on his head.