Whispers of Heaven (41 page)

When she dressed for dinner, Jessie put on a gown of finely woven mohair, along with several extra petticoats and a cashmere shawl. She clutched the shawl tightly about her shoulders as she hurried down the broad main stairs to the drawing room, where it was the family custom to assemble for dinner. It seemed strange to her, to be going through all the normal motions of her daily life, while inside .. . inside, she was screaming with the pain of this coming, unbearable loss. But then, that was the way of her world: one hid away their true feelings, their true thoughts. One hid, and hid, and hid until it was no wonder they were all lost, faint shadows of the people they might have been.

The cold had made her move quickly, so that she was early for dinner. Yet she found her mother and brother already in the drawing room, her mother enthroned on the settee with her embroidery, Warrick lounging beside the drinks table, the inevitable brandy in his hand.

Jessie felt the atmosphere of the room slam into her, mak ing her falter on the threshold with a sense of cold foreboding

"What is it?" she asked, glancing from her brother to her mother, and back again.

Warrick avoided her gaze with studied deliberateness. "I'm not staying for this," he said, and threw down what was left of his brandy with one quick flick of his wrist, the empty glass hitting the silver tray with an expensive click.

Jessie took a slow step into the room as he brushed past her, her gaze focusing on the woman beside the empty fireplace. "Mother?" she asked, and heard Warrick go out, closing the door, significantly, behind him.

Beatrice remained seated, her body held with rigid composure, only her hands moving as her fingers worked the needle in and out, in and out. "I gave birth to three daughters," she said, not looking up, her voice low and even. Cold. "Three. And God leaves me with you."

Jessie drew in a quick, painful gasp of air. Beatrice might have hinted at such sentiments in the past, but only once before had she voiced them aloud so baldly, so hurtfully. "Am 1 supposed to apologize for being alive?"

Beatrice looked up, her needle poised in midair, her face tight with contained rage. "I had you followed, Jesmond. For the last three days, I have had you followed."

"Followed?" Jessie repeated, her voice rising with incredulity as she tried to understand the implications of her mother's words, tried to remember the movements of the last three days ... the visit to the dressmaker at Blackhaven Bay. Those moments of sweet intimacy in the sea cave, thankfully veiled by the falls. Yet the passage of so many hours, hidden from sight, must surely have been damning in itself. And there had been a stolen kiss on the beach, a swift warm circling of arms and brushing of soft lips that anyone could have seen—if they'd been watching.

"All your life," Beatrice said in that same cold, flat voice, "you have been a trial to me. Always. But nothing—
nothing—
even begins to compare with this . .. this humiliation, this disgrace." The planes of her face flattened out, her nose quivering and lips pressing down in repugnance. "A convict, Jes- mond? An
Irish
convict? Have you gone mad? You could not have chosen a more scandalous, ruinous course of action had you set out deliberately to ruin us all. Did you actually imagine yourself in love with the scoundrel?"

"I do love him," Jessie said quietly, although inside she felt sick, sick.

"Good God. And you think that excuses your conduct?"

Jessie tightened her grip on her shawl, her head coming up. "I am ashamed of nothing I have done."

Beatrice stared at her, gray eyes glittering with an old, old resentment. "No. I can see that. You're as shameless as Genevieve."

Jessie walked to stand at the long French windows and look out at the darkening garden, toward the yard. "Where is Lucas?" she asked, her gaze on that huddle of brick and stone buildings. She felt so cold, so very cold inside, her fear laying like a thick layer of ice on her heart. "What have you done with him?"

"If you are referring to that vile Irishman, your brother has had him locked in the wool press. He'll be taken to Blackhaven Gaol at first light."

Jessie spun to face her mother. "To gaol? But... he's done nothing."

"Nothing?" Beatrice set aside her embroidery and rose with awful malice, the black satin of her mourning dress rustling stiffly about her. "Is that what you call this reprehensible misconduct? Nothing?" Her eyes narrowed. "Tell me truthfully: Are you with child?"

"No."

"Are you certain?"

Jessie shook her head, her throat working hard as she sought to swallow the upsurge of emotions that threatened to swamp her. "What are you going to do to him?"

"That depends largely upon you."

"Me?"

"Come December, you will marry Harrison Tate, as planned."

Jessie felt the room begin to spin dizzily around her as she realized where her mother was going with all of this. "No."

"You will marry Harrison Tate," Beatrice said again, "or that piece of Irish scum you took as your lover will hang for murder."

"Murder?"
The wind whistled through the cracks around the French doors, rattled the glass in their frames, flared the candles in the wall sconces. "What murder?"

"One of the men involved in last month's escape attempt is willing to testify that Lucas Gallagher murdered John Pike."

"He's lying. The man responsible for the blacksmith's death is dead himself."

"Of course he's lying. It doesn't matter. The Irishman will still hang."

In the sudden silence that followed those words, Jessie could hear the ticking of the mantel clock and the howling of the wind outside. She felt a rage begin to build inside of her, a rage so deep and hot and shaky it left no room, at the moment, for cold or fear. "And if I agree? If I marry Harrison, what happens to Gallagher?"

"Until the wedding, he stays in gaol in Blackhaven Bay. After that, he will be returned to Hobart for reassignment."

"You would do such a thing? See an innocent man hang?"

"I'd hardly describe him as innocent."

The two women stared at each other across a space filled with anger and dancing candlelight and the freezing air of tradition. "You force me to do this," said Jessie, her voice low and oddly calm, "and once Lucas is safe from you, I will never, ever look upon your face again."

"Yes, you will. Because, in time, you'll come to see that I was right." Beatrice squared her satin-covered shoulders, her head lifting with the fierce determination and pride that had always been hers. "I will do whatever I must to protect this family's reputation, Jesmond. Anything. Don't make the mistake of forgetting that again."

Jessie arose from her bed in the cold, flat light of early morning and went to pull back the curtains and open the shutters at the French doors overlooking the yard. The wind had lessened during the night, although the clouds still hung thick and low over the valley.

She sighed, her breath frosting the glass as she rested her forehead against one of the small panes. The cold glass sent an icy shock through her, but she almost welcomed it. For so many hours she had felt dead inside.

She hadn't told her mother she would marry Harrison, but she was beginning to realize there was no way out. It was wrong, she knew, to marry a man for such a reason. It did no good to argue to her conscience that the fault was Beatrice's for forcing such an impossible choice. It was still Jessie who was making that choice, who was putting Lucas Gallagher's life and freedom above Harrison's future happiness, above her own honesty and honor.

Once, she would have told herself that Harrison loved her, that she would hurt him badly if she called off their marriage as she had originally decided to do. But the new Jessie had learned to be more honest, with both herself and others. And she knew that by marrying Harrison, by making him think she went to the altar with him willingly, she would be living a lie, every day, for the rest of her life. Oh, she would try to be a good wife to him. She really would try. But she knew she would never be able to give him what he really wanted from her, for her heart and soul belonged to another man, and always would.

"Lucas," she whispered her eyes closing against the threatening sting of tears as a terrible sense of loss squeezed her heart. He could never have been hers, she knew that. But it didn't make the ache any easier to bear.

Opening her eyes, she rubbed her fist against the misted glass to clear it. They would be moving him to Blackhaven May, soon. She had thought about trying to see him, before they took him away, but she knew Warrick had given his men orders to keep her away from the woolshed. The constables at the gaol would be easier to corrupt. If Beatrice could bribe men to engineer Gallagher's destruction, then Jesmond could surely buy her way in to see him.

And contrive at his escape.

They put him in solitary confinement, at first, in one of a row of cells only three by six feet. The size of a coffin.

There was no window and no heat, although at least they left him his clothes. Usually they took away a man's clothes, too. Fed once a day on bread and water, and deprived of light, sound, human company, dignity, and warmth, men often went mad in those cells. If he closed his eyes, Lucas could hear their screams, echoing on and on, trapped forever within the cold stone walls. He tried not to close his eyes.

The problem with solitary confinement was it gave a man a lot of time to think. Too much time, when a man's thoughts were all of pain and regret and useless rage. For the first time in all the long years of his imprisonment, Lucas willed his mind to go blank. Only, it seldom worked.

After a few days, they took him, blinking, out into the light, and put him in another cell, a larger cell, some ten to twelve feet square, with a small barred window high up near the ceiling and five other prisoners.

"You just can't get away from some people, now can you?" said a familiar voice.

Turning, Lucas looked into the eerie yellow eyes of the Fox, and felt himself smile.

"It pains me to have to admit it, but you were right, Lucas me lad," said the Fox as they walked around the gaol's small exercise yard, later that day. He was still weak from the bullet he'd caught in his side, and leaned some on Lucas's arm, but other than that, he was little changed. "We shouldn't have gone."

Lucas shrugged. "It might have worked."

The prison was built in a square, its kitchen and cells ranged around three sides of an inner court, with the gaoler's house forming the fourth side and the exercise yard fit into Ihe complex's southeast corner. The walls were built of thick sandstone, but they weren't high, probably no more than ten l eet, Lucas thought, looking at them.

"Why'd he do it?" Lucas asked averting his gaze, as they all did, when he passed the blood-stained triangle, for the exercise yard was also the flogging yard. "Why did Daniel kill Pike?"

The Fox shrugged. "He squealed on us. One of the lads admitted he'd let it slip. It wasn't like Daniel to allow a man to get away with something like that."

"So what happened to him?"

"Daniel? Bullet hit his jaw. He asked me to kill him, so I did. He wouldn't have lived, and he was in terrible pain, but I'd have done it anyway. We'd made up our minds to it, beforehand."

Lucas nodded. It was an old, old story in Tasmania: two mates drawing straws to see who got to be murdered, and who got to hang for it. Dying was the one sure way to escape the British penal system, except that, despite all they'd been through, most of the men here were still afraid of what a vengeful God might do to a suicide.

"And the other men?"

"Two of them died in the fight. Bailey didn't get a scratch, although that new lad, Sheen, he lost an arm. They're in another cell. I don't see them much."

They said nothing for a time, walking together in silence. Then Lucas said, "When do they send you down to Hobart?" All capital cases were tried in Hobart.

The Fox squinted up at the sun. "Next month. They seem to be taking their own sweet time about it."

"In a hurry, are you?"

The Fox laughed. "Not so much, anymore."

On a mild but overcast morning two days later, Warrick was strolling back from checking the breeding stock in the cow barn when he saw Miss Philippa Tate coming across the yard toward him.

She was wearing a cherry red pelisse with a matching broad-brimmed bonnet that formed a beguiling frame for her dusky ringlets and pretty, full-cheeked face. But her color was unusually high, her soft brown eyes narrowed in a rare display of anger. "Why did you do it?" she demanded without preamble, stopping in front of him. "How could you do such a thing?"

He stared at her in surprise. "Do what?"

"Arrest the Irishman—Jessie's groom."

"Gallagher? He was implicated in the murder of my blacksmith." He studied her flushed cheeks, and knew a frisson of suspicion and what felt startlingly like a rush of possessive jealousy. If that bloody Irishman ... Warrick took a quick step toward her. "What is he to you?"

"He's nothing to
me.
But Jessie is my friend, and I know you didn't arrest him because of what happened to your blacksmith."

He went very still. "What did Jess tell you?"

She let out her breath in a small huff. "Do you think she'd say anything to me? Harrison's sister? Of course she didn't. She didn't need to. It was there in her face every time she looked at him."

"I never saw anything," said Warrick, his voice rough with his own anger.

He watched her stare off across the yard, toward the stables, her chin lifting, the breeze fluttering the round brim of her bonnet. She looked surprisingly mature and enviously at peace with herself, despite her anger with him. He knew a ripple of admiration and something else, something he thought might be regret. They'd always been so close, but lately, he'd felt as if she were slipping away from him in some way. Some way he didn't want.

"You wouldn't," she said with a tight smile.

He put his hands on his hips and tipped back his head, his legs spraddled wide in a deliberately arrogant pose. "Oh? Why is that?"