At first, the passing scenery which surrounded them on their journey to Government House was a vague blur in front of which she mechanically exercised her forgotten good manners. She recovered sufficiently to ask Lieutenant Wright about something which had puzzled her in Dr Kerr’s rejoinder.
‘Dr Kerr mentioned The Rocks a moment ago. Are they a street or a district?’
‘The Rocks?’ Young Lieutenant Wright’s insouciance temporarily deserted him. ‘It is a district, Miss Langley. It is where the convicts and the rascals of the colony live. No decent person goes there.’
Unspoken was his conviction that Dr Kerr should not have mentioned the place to a lady of quality such as Miss Sarah Langley. For her part, Sarah was now painfully aware that Dr Kerr had been mocking her in recommending to her a physician from such a quarter.
She tried to forget the whole unhappy incident by a closer examination of her surroundings, but her thoughts reverted again and again to the uncivil Dr Kerr. Who would have thought that such a handsome and apparently polished gentleman could have taken against her—and John—on first meeting them? His behaviour had merely served to reinforce her conviction that the whole of the male sex was unworthy of the interest of a woman of sense.
A woman of sense would try to forget Dr Kerr by concentrating instead on her journey through Sydney, which, Sarah found, was composed of a strange mixture of building styles. There were ramshackle huts, cabins and lean-tos with children and chickens running around them, next door to houses that would not have disgraced a wealthy London suburb. There were flowers everywhere.
Sarah might have felt a little happier if she had not been suffering from the inevitable consequences of spending such a long time aboard ship. Her head was swimming and the ground, when she stepped down from the carriage, seemed to be moving beneath her. Her sense of relief when she finally entered Government House was great. Here, in this attractive, if small, building, she found a haven of rest: a room of her own where she was surrounded by modest luxury, pure water and clean linen.
Surely now she could forget both Charles Villiers and Dr Kerr.
‘It’s not like you to be such a boor towards a pretty young lady before she has even set foot in the colony,’ Tom Dilhorne offered mildly to his friend on their walk back to Tom’s gig. ‘Got out of bed the wrong side this morning, did you?’
Alan Kerr could not have said—indeed, he did not understand—why the first sight of Sarah Langley had roused such anger in his breast. After all, it was scarcely her fault that his stores had been left behind, but in some odd way her imperious chestnut-haired beauty had touched a nerve in him that he had long thought deadened by the years which had passed since he had arrived in New South Wales.
Was it that she reminded him not only of the pretty girl he had lost, but also of the life that he might have lived before his own folly had brought him to the other end of the world?
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I can’t imagine why such a fine lady and gentleman should wish to come here at all. They are exactly the useless kind of gentry the colony could do without. They will want servants, accommodation and care that should be reserved for those who are willing to work to make Sydney a better place for all of us. We could, for instance, really do with another qualified doctor. I am almost run off my feet, as you know. What I also know is that, far from the Langleys working, they will expect others to work for them.
‘I do regret, though, that I was so short with Miss Langley. It was not the act of a gentleman, although God knows, I cannot really call myself a gentleman any more.’
‘Short,’ drawled Tom, ‘that’s a mild word for biting the poor young thing’s head off. Still, I take your point about your stores, although you might have waited to make it later—and more tactfully. You’re usually the tactful one, not me.’
Alan Kerr began to laugh.
‘Come, come, Tom, you know that you’re the devious devil, not me—you ooze tact when you think that it will pay off. Now let’s forget the Langleys. With luck, I shan’t have much to do with them in future.’
Nevertheless, when he reached his home again, he couldn’t help thinking of Sarah Langley as he had first seen her in the pride of her beauty and wondered again why he had felt such fierce resentment at a sight that should have compelled his admiration, not his anger.
Chapter Two
Sarah was soon to find that in Sydney she and John were curiosities since so few cared to make the long and difficult journey from England, unless compelled by the law, or their duty. That they should have travelled so far to see and record this new fragment of Empire was strange enough: that they should come from the highest reach of English society was even stranger.
Lachlan Macquarie received them with enthusiasm. He had originally been sent out as the Colonel of the 73rd Highland Regiment, but after the mutiny against the previous Governor, William Bligh, in 1810, he had unexpectedly found himself the new Governor on his arrival. A highly competent man of strong principle, he was determined to make his newly acquired fief a land to be proud of rather than simply exist as a kind of dustbin for the unwanted and the criminal.
He was pleased to welcome John and Sarah precisely because they had come to study the colony’s beauties, and on the third day after their arrival he gave a dinner party in their honour in order to introduce them to the social life of Sydney. He could also painlessly, through his guests, make the Langleys fully aware of the forms and difficulties of life in this outpost of Empire.
Sarah was careful to dress herself as though she were going to be the guest of honour in the presence of the Prince Regent himself since, after all, the Governor was his deputy in New South Wales. She was magnificent in pale yellow silk. Her only jewellery, a beautiful topaz brooch, which matched the colour of her dress, served to add lustre to the striking beauty that had so overset Alan Kerr.
The officers of the 73rd, both married and unmarried, to whom she and John were introduced before dinner, were impressed by the pair of them. Her looks and John’s gentlemanly bonhomie also found favour with their wives and daughters.
‘I hear you had the misfortune to meet the biggest rogue in Sydney even before you had left the Pomona,’ drawled Major Menzies on being introduced to Sarah. ‘I understand that his friend, the doctor, was with him, too. I gather that Dilhorne even had the impudence to speak to you without having been introduced.’
‘Now, Menzies,’ said another gallant gentleman, as blond and handsome as Frank Wright. ‘Parker’s the name, Madam,’ he said to Sarah. ‘Tom’s not that much of a rogue these days. He’s honest with you if you’re honest with him. He only cheats the cheaters.’
‘Oh, come, Parker,’ reproached Menzies. ‘Don’t be greener than you are. Dilhorne arrived in chains after being sentenced to death at eighteen for God knows what. Once he was released and became an Emancipist, he made himself the richest man in the colony before he reached his mid-thirties—and you call him honest!’
Parker was stubborn. ‘Agreed, but you have to admit that the Governor has made a friend of him; say what you like about Macquarie, he wouldn’t take up with a thief. At least, not one who’s practising now,’ he amended.
‘Well, whatever Parker says, Miss Langley, I advise you not to have anything to do with him, or his doctor friend, either. Why—’ He would have said more, but Parker was pulling at his arm to indicate that the Governor was coming towards them with Dr Alan Kerr at his side.
‘Oh, damnation!’ exclaimed Menzies, disgusted. ‘I see that he’s determined to force them all down our throats. Is Dilhorne here, too? No? You do surprise me. Miss Langley, it is the outside of enough for you to have to deal with such people. Tell you later about Dr Kerr,’ he finished, just before the Governor reached