Dark Torment by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online Page B

would have to look out for himself in the future. He
could expect no further assistance from her.
    “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