When The Bough Breaks

By Dorothy Dart

Set in Hobart in the mid 1870s 21 year old Meg Hamilton arrives from England to discover why she has not heard from her grandmother for two years.
After learning from cousins, Rissa and Angus MacGregor that her beloved Grandma Kate is serving a prison sentence for a murder committed twenty-eight years ago, Meg sets out to prove her innocent, and her quest leads her to her grandmother’s old servant, Alice.
From here on this is in a sense a story told within a story in flashbacks as Alice finally reveals to Meg the truth about the night of the murder, and how Kate Cameron, a woman before her time, had become involved in the political struggle to improve conditions for women convicts.
There are still many unanswered questions however, and as Meg puts together the shocking pieces of the puzzle she becomes more vulnerable to evil forces that prevail.
Threaded throughout the narrative is the infatuation of Rissa for a tall dark stranger, the faithfulness of Jeremy a young Scot who falls in love with Meg, and Aunt Katio who remains something of an enigma from start to finish, but around who much of the story hangs.
Finally this story could be summed up as a conflict between the forces of light and darkness, played out in the lives of two young women of the Victorian era, one with a heart for truth and justice and the other with a destructive passion for prestige, property and position.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorothy Dart
• Release date: Nov 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466073340

Dorothy Dart

Dorothy Dart is married,and lives with her husband at Belivah Q'ld. Her career as an author has spanned thirty years during which time she has continued to write intermittently whilst successfully raising a family of four, and now she is grandmother to eleven. After having had five novels for pre and early teens published during the 80s and early 90s she tried her hand at writing plays for use within her local church until in 2007 she made her first venture into the genre of the historical novel with a book based on the life of her husband's great-great-grandmother. This was followed in 2009 by the fictional novel 'The Katy Tree' which tells the story of a Scottish family who emigrate to Tasmania in 1824. Many times since that book was published Dorothy's fans have asked for a sequel. So here it is, though if you have not read the first book, don't worry this second in the series has been written to stand alone. 'When the Bough Breaks' tells of the dark hidden years in the life of the MacGregor family between 1832 and 1875. A real Whodunnit that keeps you guessing until the last!!! If you're interested in tales of Australia's rip roaring Colonial past this story is a must. Forget your mobile phones,facebook, twitter,and reality TV for a while and be transported back to another time and place where family secrets and intrigue prevail. Act now!! Buy it - read it - and please don't forget to review it, but most of all ENJOY!!!

Book preview

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

by

Dorothy Dart

***

PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS

This book available in print from

www.chargan.com

When The Bough Breaks

Copyright © 2011 Dorothy Dart

ISBN: 978-1-4660-7334-0

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Dorothy Dart has asserted her right under the Copyright Act 1976 to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Series Note

By the same Author

About the Author

***

Prologue

The woman huddled on her narrow pallet and wound her shawl closer around her frail body in an effort to keep warm. It was the dead of night and something had woken her. She didn’t know what. A wail of despair from down the corridor, or the jangling keys of the wardress as she did her rounds perhaps.

She’d been dreaming and experienced a sense of betrayal that with wakefulness the dream had fled. It was always the same. When she dreamed it was not of the present, but the past. Sometimes her dreams took her back to Scotland when her parents had been alive and she’d been sheltered and loved by all who knew her, and particularly by her older brother Angus. He was nine years older than she, but as a child she had been his constant shadow. Not like her other brother, Alexander, well, step-brother to be exact, who had left home after a blazing row with Papa, to serve in the military when she was three years old and she had never really known as a child, but who she’d fantasized about, building stories in her mind as to what a brave and gallant a soldier he was. He who nine years later gave his life serving under Wellington at Waterloo. Well, that was what she’d been told, although in truth he’d been a deserter who had taken ship to India and simply disappeared for thirteen years before turning up in Van Diemen’s Land. That was when things had started to go from bad to worse.

Oh if only those childhood fantasies could have been true it would have changed all their lives! Papa and Mama would have died of old age rather than been burned alive in the fire that had destroyed the ancestral home of Carrick Hall. And Angus and she would never have used their inheritance to leave Scotland’s shores to come to Van Diemen’s Land in search of that elusive dream – a new and trouble free life.

But if so, she would never have unwittingly fulfilled her destiny to carry the bloodline of the MacGregors down through the years by giving birth to darling Fern. And Young Bernie, as she still thought of her nephew and foster son, the only offspring of Alexander and her step-daughter, Clarissa Baltrose, would never have been born. Perhaps it would have been better if he had not. But no, he had brought her such joy. Aye, and sorrow too, it must be said.

The woman sighed. So many of those who had comprised the fabric of her life over the past seventy-two years were gone now. Her youthful lover, James, whose face was fast fading from her memory, her cherished Fern who tragically had died in childbirth, as had her faithful convict servant, Bridie (the mother of her adopted daughter, Katio), Angus whose passion for preserving the integrity of the House of MacGregor had been the undoing of him, her first husband, Bernard Senior whose integrity had always been without question.

Then of course there was Alexander that wolf in sheep’s clothing who had wed Clarissa for the sake of her inheritance. They were both long gone now, as was the deceiver whose name the woman could not even now repeat but for whom she was paying this price. And … the woman’s tears streamed more freely now. Of course dearest Duncan to whom she had been so happily wed for such a short time, and who she missed now with an intensity that was almost a physical ache deep down inside of her. And as if that wasn’t enough to bear, now it seemed that young Bernie was not long for this world.

Silently the woman’s tears flowed unchecked. What she wouldn’t give for one more sight of her foster son! One more hour with him. But it could never be, he was too ill to travel now, and she was doomed to live out her days incarcerated in this terrible place. Unless, unless God answered her prayer and sent a miracle.

Chapter 1

Hobart Town, Saturday, 1st May, 1875

The upper deck of the ‘Southern Queen’ was crowded with chattering women resplendent in voluminous skirts and bonnets, their ample cloaks clutched tightly around them as they shivered against the gale force winds that swept up from the Antarctic. Their gentlemen, too, were attired in their Sunday-best clothes, black frock coats and trousers, starched white high collars and cravats. All with eager eyes looked with anticipation and a sense of obvious relief towards what was for many their new homeland, Tasmania, at the southern tip of Australia. All, too, were thankful for the miraculous engineering feat of the Suez Canal which now offered ships equipped with steam an alternative to the old recognized sailing route via the South Atlantic Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope, and cut the time from five months to less than three.

Down below in steerage the passengers were equally jubilant at having arrived at their destination. Excitement had been mounting until it had exploded into every corner of the ship, thrilling all the passengers with a sense of hope. Whatever lay ahead could not be worse than the ever rolling ship beneath their feet, the wretchedness of sea-sickness and the perilous electrical storms they had encountered on the voyage.

A blurred bluish line against the horizon rapidly grew until passengers were able to make out the shapes of numerous ranges and folding hills, with one mountain so high it stood like a sentinel over the lonely outpost of Hobart Town, once a penal settlement, but now a proud free possession of Mother England.

Meg Hamilton, her eyes alight with excitement and a sense of awe, looked upon the place of her childhood and knew she had come home. Even though she had left these shores this ten years past when she was eleven years old, she could still remember the way the clouds came down at times totally obscuring that mountain that from time immemorial had been a landmark to sailors daring to sail into Storm Bay from the capricious Southern Ocean. But it was the bright sunny days Meg remembered best, when Mt Wellington was cloaked in a gown of ice blue so vivid that it almost took one’s breath away, and inspired a sense of well-being with the world.

That mountain there, it be called Wellington after the famous duke, one of the rough, bewhiskered sailors said proudly to Meg as if she had no foreknowledge of it.

Aye, that it is, Meg smiled graciously at him and nodded, not wishing to embarrass him in his eagerness to introduce her to what he presumed to be her new country.

Again she turned her eyes landward. The predominantly light coloured sandstone buildings were much as she remembered them although there were many more of them now, higher up hugging the slopes of the hills.

There were crowds of people waiting on the wharf. Eagerly she looked for her cousins, Angus and Clarissa who were to meet her, and perhaps if she was lucky her much loved Grandma Kate would be with them as well.

Meg hadn’t seen her grandmother since her widowed mother had married a school master named Wilfred Pomroy who soon afterwards, had returned to England on account of his health taking his wife and all six of her children with him. She could well remember their departure, the way her mama and Grandma Kate had clung to each other as if they feared they would never see each other again. And they never did.

Meg’s eyes misted over as she recalled leaving from this very dock they called Constitution, and Grandma Kate her eyes streaming with tears that mingled with her own, kissing her and bidding her to return one day. Meg had promised faithfully that she would.

A year later her mama had died trying to give Mr Pomroy the son he so craved, but before she died she had begged her youngest daughter to promise to go in her place to help Grandma Kate if ever she was in trouble, and then she had pointed to the wardrobe and said ‘In the bottom there is a scrapbook. Take it with you when you go’.

Of course there was no question of her step-father allowing her to travel to the other side of the world until she was of age and so the scrapbook was replaced carefully in the wardrobe and forgotten for seven years until Mr P as Meg called him, never Papa or Father, demanded that the wardrobe be cleaned out because he was to be married again. Since then it had resided in the bottom of Meg’s chest of drawers until having reached her twenty-first birthday earlier this year she had decided the time had come to keep the promises she had made both to Mama and Grandma Kate. So she had taken the scrapbook from its hiding place and undone the pale blue ribbon that was tied around it and opened the book.

Inside there were some old newspapers, yellow with age, copies of The Colonial Observer. One told of her mother’s marriage to her father, Dr Charles Hamilton in 1843. Another, the birth of her eldest sister, Catherine, but it was the headlines of the third that caught her attention. The year was 1847 and it was headlined Women’s Rights Campaigner Accused of Harbouring Assignees. Eagerly Meg read on.

At a public meeting in the Hobart Town guild hall on Monday 21st April Mrs MacGregor Baltrose rallied to Dr Turnbull’s support when she delivered a scathing attack on the Government for refusing to join the push to have transportation of convicts totally abolished, calling the practice barbaric for these times. She spoke at length of the women she personally knew who had been beaten or used in inappropriate ways by their free masters who had never received any redress by the Powers That Be. When asked if she had ever broken the law and taken any of these women in, she refused to answer on the grounds it might incriminate her.

Meg had known at once that the reason her mother had been fearful that one day her grandma may find herself in trouble, had something to do with this.

Although twenty-eight years had passed since the incident reported in the newspaper, Meg knew Grandma Kate was still alive because her step-father had never received any communication to the contrary.

Besides which up until the year before last she had never missed Meg’s birthday, but Grandfather Duncan had just died and Meg had put her grandmother’s forgetfulness down to grief. But when she had missed it again this year Meg began to think maybe there’d been another reason, like she herself was ill. Or maybe she had lost her memory, although Meg thought her Uncle Bernard and Aunt Katio who still lived nearby, poor correspondents though they were, would have at least informed her step-father of such a shocking fact. So whatever the reason for the silence, it was clear that the time had come for her to go to Tasmania without delay to find out for herself what had happened to Grandma Kate.

She had written to her aunt and uncle advising them of her ship and its anticipated arrival, and received a short reply from her cousin, Rissa (as she liked to be called these days), claiming to be wildly excited at the prospect of their reunion. Angus and Rissa were twenty-one months older than Meg, and twins, the only children of her Uncle Bernard and Aunt Katio MacGregor who had inherited the original MacGregor estate of Carrick Park when Great-Uncle Angus had died.

There they are! Oh do look, Mary! Oh, I can’t wait to be away off this ship and join them. Halloo! Meg cried, drying her tears and jumping up and down with excitement whilst vigorously waving her handkerchief, her eyes alight now with pure joy.

And so you shall, Miss Hamilton, if you’d be comin’ along with me, it will be quicker this way, a pleasantly cadenced voice with a lilting Irish accent whispered in her ear, and she turned to find Mr Finnegan standing there. He was the gentleman into whose hands her step-father had placed her for protection on the voyage.

No thank you, sir, I’d rather wait, after all, Meg said coldly as she turned from him to face Mary, her maid. Meg had avoided her so-called protector ever since he had taken advantage of her and kissed her whilst alone on the deck one night, and might have succeeded in totally destroying her reputation had not a young Scotsman named Jeremy Burns from steerage, come to her rescue.

Look miss, Mr Burns is waving to you down there too! Mary pointed to where a young man dressed in shabby brown corduroy trousers, black coat and a plaid cap was waving and gesticulating to Meg from the deck below, indicating that he would wait for her on the wharf.

Oh, he is indeed. We’ll meet you by the shed, she mouthed back, the wind and the sea-gulls totally drowning her words, though by the nod Mr Burns gave in response she thought he had understood, and a little burst of excitement rippled through her. Jeremy, as he had bid her to call him, had been constantly by her side following the assault on her person by Mr Finnegan, and she knew after spending so much time in his company that she was beginning to feel something for him that was different from what she had ever felt for any young man before. So much so that she had given him leave to use her Christian name, although she knew her step-father would never have approved of such forwardness.

Half an hour later as Meg was finally disembarking she was surprised to see her cousin Rissa, last remembered as an awkward gangling girl in her early teens now transformed into a beautiful golden haired woman, talking and laughing with Jeremy as if she had known him all her life. And, what was more, he seemed quite taken with her. Realizing then that his attention to herself must have been purely out of courtesy rather than genuine affection, Meg felt her heart plummet. But fixing a smile on her face, she hurried over to them leaving Mary to stay where she was for the moment to guard their belongings.

Angus, looking ever so handsome and debonair beneath his top hat and sporting a set of luxuriant auburn, curly sideburns saw her approaching first and hurried to greet her. My! Cousin Margaret! But how you’ve changed! I declare I almost didn’t know you. And how did you fare on the voyage, my dear? he exclaimed pleasantly, doffing his hat before relieving her of the bandbox she was carrying and setting it on the ground.

Oh, I fared very well, thanks to the kindness of Mr Burns here, Meg said louder than necessary for the benefit of Rissa.

Only then did Clarissa MacGregor turn away from Jeremy and rush towards her cousin, embracing her in a bear hug that knocked Meg’s hat askew.

Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Meggie. I’ve missed you so, I really have, Rissa cried joyfully while Meg laughingly corrected her hat.

Me too, that is, I’ve also missed you and Angus here. I’ve wanted to come back for a long time, but Mr P would not allow it. But now I’m of age well, I can do as I please, she finished with an airy shrug.

And this is what you please? I couldn’t believe it when you said you were returning to this backwater to live. For years I’ve dreamed of what it must be like to live on a grand estate in Britain and have heaps of servants, and hunt-balls to attend every other week. But I must content myself with remaining here because of course Angus and I are to inherit the MacGregor estate when poor dear Papa dies. Suddenly, at the mention of her father, Rissa’s eyes misted over.

Poor Uncle Bernie! How is he these days? Meg inquired.

Not well at all I’m afraid, Angus put in, shaking his head.

Now his lungs have almost totally given out so that he can scarcely breathe some days. And it is many a month since he has left his room. He rarely even uses his wheelchair anymore, Rissa added sadly.

Oh er, excuse me, I’ll not intrude upon your reunion any longer, Jeremy began awkwardly, but Meg turned to him.

Oh, don’t go. Not like this. Surely you need lodging for the night at least. Rissa, Angus, can we not help? Are we to stay at The Elms? Hopefully, her eyes pleaded with both cousins, but at that point Rissa was smiling in acknowledgement of somebody behind Meg, and she seemed unaware of her. Angus, however, nodded.

Of course, Burns, you may stay at our town house The Elms for as long as you need. Or until we leave for the country. Do, there’s a good fellow, he exclaimed congenially.

Well, if you’re quite sure it would be no trouble I shall accept since I obviously do not have lodgings waiting for me, although I do have a job to come to, Jeremy replied with a nod of his dark unruly curls, having removed his cap in front of the ladies.

Jeremy, that is, Mr Burns is already apprenticed to one of the newspapers here to become a journalist, aren’t you, Jeremy? Meg shot a proud smile in his direction. It was not everyone who had work to come out to, and it showed great foresight and independence of spirit she thought.

Aye, that is correct, so you see I can afford to pay my way, Jeremy shot Meg a grateful glance out of his emerald green eyes, and once again Meg felt herself drowning in them.

Suddenly embarrassed by the knowledge that Jeremy did not feel for her the way she did for him, she turned away in time to see that Rissa had opened her fan and was peeping over the top of it at none other than that odious Mr Finnegan, while he was tipping his top hat and looking at her in the way gentlemen did when they wanted to convey a special message to a lady who they found attractive.

Well, now, I see that most of the first-class luggage appears to have been off-loaded so if you ladies would care to take a seat somewhere here, Burns and I will collect it and load it into our carriage, suggested Angus, pointing to where a number of horses attached to conveyances of various sizes and types were waiting in the care of their erstwhile drivers who passed the time making ribald comments to one another about various new arrivals.

The three young women seated themselves on a bench to wait, for Meg had signalled to Mary that she must join them. But for a few minutes all thought of conversation was impossible because of the commotion going on all around them.

However, despite the chatter of locals greeting new arrivals, bellowing cattle being off-loaded in slings onto the wharf, and chickens a-plenty squawking in their cages Meg felt constrained to speak as soon as possible and warn her cousin about Mr Finnegan. She knew that young women in the colony were often starved of the company of educated young British gentlemen and that it was probably this need that had driven Rissa to set out to captivate Jeremy the moment he had set his feet on dry land. But Mr Finnegan was quite a different matter. Although he was purported to be an eminently respectable businessman with longstanding business connections in the colony, he was nothing of the kind as Meg well knew. Well, the respectable part anyway.

I’m glad your little friend is coming to stay. He is such fun, so witty and so handsome, do you not agree? Rissa asked Meg archly.

Taken off guard, Meg blushed. He is indeed all of those things, but I wish you wouldn’t refer to him as MY LITTLE friend. I think his heart is entirely unattached to any lady, and in all truth I think to call him little is to demean him.

Oh ho, I’m sure I meant him no offence, my dear, nor you for I see how quick you are to defend him. But if as you say he is fancy free, I take it he is not then your property? Again she smiled archly at her cousin, but when Meg didn’t reply she hurried on.

Pity he isn’t the son of a peer or I might be tempted to find him very attractive. On the other hand that gentleman over there, she paused and pointed with her fan to where Finnegan was loading a metal trunk onto the luggage rack of a horse-drawn taxi. Now there is a charming gentleman with an air of mystery about him that I also find very attractive.

Although Meg knew she was almost certainly handing Jeremy to Clarissa on a platter she felt duty-bound to tell her cousin what she knew of Mr Finnegan.

Rissa dear, although he may look the perfect gentleman, let me assure you he is not. He is Mr Finnegan, a passing acquaintance of my step-father who he met at the Colonial Club, and he is the scoundrel into whose hands my step-father mistakenly placed my virtue on the voyage, only to have it risked by him at the first opportunity. It is from his advances that Jeremy, that is Mr Burns, rescued me, thereby in a sense becoming much more truly my protector.

Aha, so Mr Burns is honourable and above reproach, whereas Mr Finnegan is not. How very interesting, Clarissa observed with a shrewd lift of one eyebrow.

I’m afraid so, Rissa, but please, can we not discuss him any longer? I am much more anxious to know what word you bring me of Grandma Kate.

Oh look, here come the men with your trunks now, Rissa cried jumping to her feet and pointing with her fan towards where her brother and the attractive young Scot were wheeling two travel trunks plus other sundry bags on a barrow up a wooden ramp towards the road. See, they are about to load them into the carriage now. Come, let’s join them.

Together the three young women walked over to the carriage, but when Meg and Mary had climbed aboard the high-sprung black buggy along with Angus, Rissa suddenly turned to Jeremy.

It is such a pleasant day for a stroll, do you not think? Would you care to accompany me, Mr. Burns? That is if you are not too tired after your gruelling voyage. It is but a few blocks, she added persuasively, her head coquettishly on one side her blue eyes pleading.

Jeremy, who had been waiting to hand her into the buggy, again doffed the cap he had returned to his head, his face flushing crimson.

Of course, ma’am, M ..Miss MacGregor, I’d be delighted, he stumbled over the words as he offered Rissa his arm which she took with a satisfied little smile and a jaunty wave over her shoulder at everyone else. There was nothing she loved better than a new conquest and she knew now she had one in Jeremy Burns. As for the other mysterious Mr Finnegan, time would tell. Today had been quite a day after all, and to think that she had nearly left Angus to meet the ship alone! But why had her cousin really returned from the bright lights of London? Surely it wasn’t simply on account of Grandma Kate disgracing the family and ending up in prison or she’d have come two years ago! No, she must have been fleeing from someone or something. Some scandal perhaps? Or had she, as a descendant of the House of MacGregor come at this time to contest her right to be a beneficiary of the MacGregor Estate when poor Papa should pass away? One way or another Rissa was determined to find out.

Chapter 2

1875, Hobart Town, the same day.

By the time the buggy wheels had rolled to a halt in the cobbled courtyard alongside The Elms Meg’s emotions were in turmoil. Apart from the shock of seeing Jeremy so openly appropriated by Clarissa and his apparent willingness to oblige her every whim, her mind was flooded with memories so sweet yet so painful she could scarcely endure them. Memories of herself as a little child seated in front of her father on Prince, his big chestnut horse; of Grandma Kate armed with toffee apples and other goodies when she and Grandpa Duncan used to come to visit, for this fine two-storey Georgian sandstone house had once been Meg’s home; of dear Mama, on her way to church dressed in black widow’s weeds whilst still in mourning for poor dear Papa who had been killed whilst serving as a military doctor in the first of the Maori wars in 1860.

Well, here we are then, Angus broke into her reverie as he stood and climbed down before turning and handing Meg to the ground, leaving Mary to struggle down with a small portmanteau in each hand.

Oh, I just can’t believe I’m really here. It is as if I’ve really come home after all this time. So many memories! Meg sighed nostalgically.

Well, come along in and then I’ll have Edith make us some tea. The others will no doubt be here directly, Angus said mindful of his responsibility as the host, as he led the way inside.

Mary followed wide-eyed as she took in the life-sized tapestry of a stag in the Scottish highlands that hung in the entrance hall, and the family coat of arms of a black lion’s head and a crown over the front door. Just then a plump elderly woman dressed in unrelieved black entered from a room off the hall.

Edith, this is my cousin, Miss Margaret Hamilton. She’s just arrived off the ship from England and I am sure is very tired. Will you please show her to her room? Oh, and prepare another room, will you? We’re to have another guest for a few days, Angus said as if used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Meg smiled uncertainly at the woman who raised one corner of her tight lips in a shadow of a smile that had the unfortunate effect of ending up in a smirk, and said, Come this way, please, miss.

Oh, Edith, just tell me which room is to be mine and I shall find it. I used to live here as a child you know, Meg said kindly not wishing to inconvenience the elderly woman who because of her, now had another room to prepare.

"Oh, that’s uncommon kind of you, Miss Hamilton, my old