The Widow of Ballarat Read online

  About Darry Fraser

  DARRY FRASER’s first novel, Daughter of the Murray, is set on her beloved River Murray where she spent part of her childhood. Where The Murray River Runs, her second novel, is set in Bendigo in the 1890s. Darry currently lives, works and writes on Kangaroo Island, an awe-inspiring place off the coast of South Australia.

  Also by Darry Fraser

  Daughter of the Murray

  Where the Murray River Runs

  The Widow of Ballarat

  Darry Fraser

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  Susan Parslow, you are a champion of my stories.

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Also by Darry Fraser

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Ballarat, Victoria, December 1854

  The coach juddered and rocked as it thundered over the rough road. Nell Amberton’s hands trembled in her lap, and not only from the dangerous ride away from the explosive violence at the Eureka stockade this morning. That she could still see her hands, or anything at all, out of one eye, was a blessing but little comfort.

  Never had she trembled at anything—in fear or rage—as much until her husband Andrew had barged malevolently into her life. At her father, perhaps, but he was no match for Andrew. He was shouting now ever louder over the grinding whir of the coach wheels as it banged and bounced over the pockmarked road.

  ‘… Until you are delivered of a male child, I will continue to administer punishment as befits the chit you are.’ He glared and pointed at her eye. ‘I see you didn’t attempt to hide the results of your comeuppance this time.’

  The ugly bruise was over her left eye. When she’d last checked early this morning, it had looked darker. Her eye still felt puffy. And, because she hadn’t been able to hide it completely this morning—there’d been no time as they’d fled the township—she’d fully expected a tirade. But expecting it never prepared her for it.

  ‘ … proof to anyone that you are wilful and unruly, and that I am forced to take swift action.’

  Her fingers touched the little sprig of yellow wattle she’d pinned on her hat earlier to remind her of courage. Its leaves had drooped, she was sure, as much from the heat already in the day as from her mood. That would not do. She needed all her strength of mind and body to protect herself from her husband. She straightened as she adjusted her bonnet.

  ‘And so you should cover it up. It is not a badge of honour. I will not tolerate your insolence in my household …’

  Andrew Amberton was a cruel man who’d escaped transportation from England—his family had packed him off to the colony to be with his widowed sister, Enid Wilshire, and her son, before the law could do it for them. His crimes back there could only be imagined.

  Last night, angry, bellowed words between Andrew and his nephew Lewis had echoed back and forth from the parlour to Nell’s room as she’d lain in the marital bed. Wanting sleep desperately, she’d covered her ears with the pillow and finally dropped off. Then in the early hours of this morning, she’d been harshly roused and ordered to dress, to make haste, and then hurriedly propelled into the coach. There’d been no violence visited on her this morning; she’d only had to listen to Andrew rant and rave about having to pay for the coach ride in advance, and in gold. Two heavy bags had been shoved under the seat behind her skirt.

  He was still blustering. ‘But at last we finally have this conception …’

  Oh God, no.

  Andrew’s earlier attempts had all resulted in him spilling on her as he’d held her down, before he was able to complete his assault. She’d paid for his failings on those days. Then she’d paid again when, with the arrival of her monthly course, she’d been pressed to announce that she had not been with child—how could she possibly have been? He must have known that much. Or perhaps in his madness he didn’t want to remember he had failed.

  Nell shut down the memory of the only real coupling—rough, short and painful—weeks ago. It was his one successful attempt in a scant three months of marriage. But any possibility of conception had again been dashed when last week her course had come early. She’d hidden it from him, not wanting to endure—

  ‘I should have left you to fend for yourself in the camps at Ballarat, but you submitted to your duty …’

  Never willingly.

  He’d assumed that she had conceived because he’d managed to penetrate. Believing he would cease the beatings, she hadn’t corrected him. He’d blared to his sister that he would soon have an heir.

  He was still shouting. ‘… otherwise cast you off as useless, sent you back to your lying cur of a father. A good thing my sister is now informed of the forthcoming issue. She will see to you in your confinement.’

  Nell couldn’t remember if she’d heard Enid’s whining voice during the altercation last night, but if Enid was to see to her in her confinement, why were they bolting away from their home now?

  ‘She agrees with me, however,’ he continued, loudly, bouncing about the seat they shared, his hip squashing hers. ‘You’re just like your predecessor, a weak baggage.’

  His first wife, Susan, poor girl, was blessedly free of him, and of this earth. She hadn’t been able to endure his beatings, and both she and the babe had died in premature childbirth. Had Susan’s father betrayed her too, like Nell’s father had betrayed her? He’d taken her by the arm in a punishing grip to Susan’s funeral. There, they’d witnessed the dead woman’s only relative, a brother, just back from some war in Europe, shaking uncontrollably, distraught with grief. And afterwards, finally threatened with abandonment by her father, Nell’s hand had been forced. She’d grudgingly consented, accepted her fate and mere weeks after the funeral, Nell was married to Amberton. Too late she’d learned from Andrew that he’d paid her father to entice him into handing her over like some prize sow. If there was any consolation in this humiliation, it was that Andrew would have despised paying.

  Her lip curled now. All this because her father, Alfred Thomas, had a new wife to support. Dora had firmly urged him to move along his hard-to-handle spinster daughter. Never mind that Nell worked the family laundry business alone.

  But perhaps her doing so reminded her father that he’d failed as a land owner, failed as a provider for his family, and the once-comfortable life that afforded his daughter her education was now gon
e, thanks to his drinking and gambling. That his daughter’s own manual labour had to support him prior to her marriage.

  The money Amberton paid for her must have given her father and his new wife reprieve from having to work the laundry themselves and they’d closed it down. Typical of her father. It would be a short-lived financial reprieve—the recently wed Dora was a spending force to be reckoned with, a rival to his own.

  Andrew hadn’t paid for Susan; he’d somehow, by thuggery or otherwise, acquired a loan from Susan’s father instead. Nell had spied a paper to that effect, witnessed by Andrew’s nephew, Lewis Wilshire.

  The coach jolted, and a grunt escaped her, turning her thoughts. I will not be beaten down. I will not have the same fate as Susan. I will do anything to survive.

  Nell’s ire thrummed. Andrew Amberton’s fists might well be intolerable, but she would not break under his aggression. She’d fought back at first, physically, but it wasn’t worth the punishment, which was part of the game for him. There had to be another way—if she could just stay strong. He might kill her, but until that time, she’d be staunch and endure at all costs. If she stayed alive and bore him a son, she might have a life she could manage—if she could escape his killing her afterwards.

  ‘It would have to be a boy, mind, and not a female child,’ he said, and the smirk appeared. ‘It’s declared in my legal papers.’ Would he ever stop repeating it? ‘Even a stipend for you depends on your delivering a male child and only if I were to meet an early death. Which of course I have no intention of meeting. So much more fun to have.’ His voice jumped and quaked again as the wheels cracked over the corrugations of the road. Then he grabbed her hand and thrust it over his groin. Her gut surged in revulsion. She snatched her hand away, trying to hold back the rising gorge.

  At least if she vomited, he’d continue to believe that she was with child. Then he’d berate her for such a lack of control.

  Too late she saw it coming. His fist cracked into her chin, but its power was lost in the shudders of the carriage. He cursed, and turned his attention to hanging on to his seat.

  What ill spirit pervaded his soul? What kind of man …

  And yet, if Andrew were to die today somehow—if it pleased the god she barely had faith in any longer—would she be safe from the destitution and life on the streets that her father had threatened? The law would protect her, a wife—a widow—wouldn’t it? She didn’t know. She didn’t know!

  Nell’s thoughts were a tangle of trails and tracks and footsteps that took her nowhere but back over the same old ground. Since her wedding, she’d feared for the health of her mind. Her rationality had struggled under his constant beating.

  Think straight. Think straight … but she couldn’t think beyond surviving. I must surely be mad, believing I should stay and not run fast and hard and take whatever fate befalls me. Perhaps my mind is already lost that I stay and stay and stay … Would death be better than this?

  No. She had to stay to survive. Touching fingers to her forehead, as if that would stop the rattle of words in her head, she knew there was a chance—if she stayed alive. That’s all she had to do. He’d beaten her when she’d admitted there was no pregnancy. More horror would later await if again there was bloodied proof that no child was quickening in her womb. There was still time to conceive if he could manage … Oh, dear God, she couldn’t bear to have him touch her again. Despite her roiling gut, a voice whispered, ‘Survive. Survive.’

  A gunshot boomed in her ears, so close she thought a bullet had roared through the window. Perhaps the murderous troopers had caught them.

  Breath was flung out of her. The coach skewed to one side and for one terrifying moment, it swayed precariously on its axle. Fright clutched at her throat. Gripping the windowsill, she gaped as the baked earth seemed to rise. Andrew’s bulk slammed against her, surely forcing the coach to crash onto its side. It swung back dangerously. Her head cracked on the timber doorframe and bounced off.

  Sparks shot before her eyes.

  Perhaps nothing mattered now. It would all be over.

  Two

  Finn Seymour knew it was close. A pale red dusty cloud rose in the air just beyond the jutting rocks of the wide curve in the road. It signalled the coach would round the bend towards him in less than a minute.

  Why did the bastard choose this morning of all mornings to run? Amberton should have been with his miners, looking out for them after the deadly clash.

  In the early hours of this morning at Eureka Lead, one of the digging sites where Amberton had claims, the government troops had attacked a small group of miners and their families—fired on them while they slept in tents behind the stockade they’d built. For fifteen deadly minutes, the shots exchanged between the troopers and the miners—those who’d roused quickly from their sleep—had boomed throughout the camp. Some of the miners who’d been wounded, unable to escape, had been bayoneted. Wives and families behind the barricade had been trampled, some butchered, when the troopers rushed them in their tents.

  The rest of the Ballarat camp—some thirty thousand people—had been woken. By the light of dawn the horror had been plain to see.

  And where had Amberton been? Running for his life like a scurrying rat. He was a coward. A wife beater, a wife murderer, and now he’d abandoned his men.

  After what had happened to Finn’s sister Susie, nothing about Andrew Amberton surprised him. The man was known to bribe the mounted troopers, and the traps—the foot police—to escape paying extra license fees for his three workers. He was known to pay his miners a percentage of the finds, but it was also known that he cheated them, and lied. Was known for his cruelty. The man was repugnant.

  Today, that man would die.

  Finn’s roan gelding danced underfoot, shuddered and snorted. He pressed his knees against the horse’s middle and the animal quietened. Alongside him, the saddled-up but riderless bay gelding shunted against the other horse.

  He brushed aside a fleeting tremor in his arm, a warning. No time for nerves now, Finneas, my man. This is your best chance at him.

  His gut clenched. Sweat popped on his forehead, dripped down over his brows and ran to soak into the kerchief over his nose. Another trickle slid down his back. His hot, gloved hands gripped the two sets of reins. He checked the three single-shot pistols tucked loosely into leather satchels on his saddle. They wouldn’t let him down. He’d make damned sure Amberton was sent to hell. If the bastard somehow got off a lucky shot, so be it. As long as he killed him, Finn didn’t care that he might die too.

  The rumbling of the coach’s wheels grew louder. The lone driver, Ben Steele—well known to Finn—could be heard shouting over the din for more speed. A short whip cracked and cracked again.

  Saddle creaking, Finn adjusted his seat and planted his feet in the stirrups. He checked the plain kerchief over his nose and mouth. Firmly in place, it was a nondescript match for the pale shirt and cotton twill trousers he’d donned for today’s work.

  Ben would drive as normal, hard and confident, and Finn would bail him up. That was the plan. The coach, pulled by two blinkered, charging horses, careened into view.

  Only thirty yards more, closing fast. December sun beat down on his head, his hat the only protection that kept his brains from cooking in the midday heat.

  On the coach, Ben snapped the whip high over his horses’ flanks.

  Finn kicked the roan. They leapt onto the rough road and stopped right in the path of the oncoming coach.

  Pulling a revolver from the satchel on his saddle, he yelled, ‘Bail up,’ and fired a round into the air. His horse wheeled, but Finn had no time to spare on nerves for horse nor man.

  Ben pulled hard on the reins to haul in the coach horses. He looked to be struggling, fighting for control. Horses squealed in protest. The coach rocked dangerously from side to side.

  ‘Go ’round, man. Go ’round,’ a voice shouted from within the coach. ‘Forge on!’

  ‘We’ll go off the edge of th
e track and roll the coach,’ Ben called in return. ‘I’m pulling up.’

  The harnessed horses snorted at the rude tugging on the reins, and at the snarls and grunts of their driver. Within only feet of Finn, the coach came to a standstill. Ben’s hands shot into the air.

  ‘Brake, and get down,’ Finn ordered. ‘Stand where I can see you.’

  Ben bent and wrenched on the brake. Then with his hands back in the air, he clambered from the driver’s seat to the ground.

  Finn squinted at him. Ben had a strange look on his face and was winking at him like a mad person.

  Another roar from within the coach. ‘What do you want, you scum?’

  Ben stood stock still, glaring at Finn. ‘Mr Amberton,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Keep yourself calm and you and the missus won’t get hurt. These bushrangers like good manners, sir.’

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ was the shouted answer from within.

  Finn returned Ben’s glare. Ben had said Amberton would be the only passenger. But now he was saying the man’s wife was on board? Christ, the bastard didn’t waste any damn time finding another victim.

  ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath. He beckoned Ben. ‘Come at me, hard, then get the hell out.’

  Ben hesitated, his hands still in the air. ‘Jesus, Finn. He could kill ye,’ he said, low and desperate. ‘I know ye don’t care but—’

  ‘Then the bastard will die with me.’ Finn gave him a short nod. ‘I want no witnesses. Come on. Tussle.’

  Ben let out an almighty roar and flew up at Finn atop the horse and pulled him to the ground. Finn’s empty revolver skidded across the dirt.

  From inside the coach, another shot rent the air. Ben swooped up his hat, leapt onto the bay and, shouting to the passengers that he’d get help, galloped off back the way he’d come.

  Finn scrambled to safety behind the roan. He pulled a loaded revolver from the saddle, aiming it at the window of the coach. ‘Amberton, step outside.’ His pulse throbbed hard in his throat, his chest tight. His hand shook a moment … Not now. Not now …