A World Apart

By Peter McAra

A sweeping Australian historical saga that crosses oceans to prove love conquers all…

April, 1820. As children, they shared a schoolroom, but no education can remove the stain of being peasant–born. So when Eliza Downing begins to blossom into womanhood and the future Viscount de Havilland notices, his family steps in to intervene.

Once full of possibilities, Eliza's life spirals into shame and degradation, culminating finally in a false conviction and transport to Botany Bay. Through shipwreck, exile, secrets, and scandals, Eliza holds fast to the belief that Harry will come for her – but he doesn't come soon enough, and Eliza must learn to recognise her own value and become the heroine of her own story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780857990860

Peter McAra

Born a miner's son in Western Australia, Peter learned about love and life in a string of rural towns across Australia and New Zealand, where he grew up with his mum, dad and three sisters. Over the years, his day jobs ranged from miner and truck-driver to academic positions in Australian and US universities. Along the way, he wrote several academic textbooks. Why the switch to writing romance? The moment eight-year-old Peter read Anne of Green Gables, he was hooked. (He's still in love with Anne, actually, but his understanding wife, a relationship psychologist, handles any conflicts professionally). Now, after a tree-change to green acres in coastal NSW, he farms by day and writes by night - the best time for romance.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Village of Marley, Dorset, June, 1814.

‘I’m away to village, woman.’ Charlotte Downing looked up at her husband as she sat at the cottage table in the twilight, shelling peas into an earthenware bowl. Silas Downing leaned against the doorpost, hands brown with soil from the field he had spent the day ploughing. His sagging body, the way he braced hip against doorpost, spoke of his mood. Charlotte’s gaze shifted to his eyes. She read the anger of defeat, frustration, and braced herself.

‘Where in the village, Silas?’

‘To village. Must I tell a wench my doings?’

‘T’is just that I — we need flour. I must make bread. You could — ’ If Silas went too far in drink, he might not return for a day or two. She knew she must plan ahead to keep food in the house. He would be hungry when he returned. God grant that he would not have spent all their precious pennies at the inn before she saw him again.

‘Silas. Please save a few pennies for flour. I’ll — we’ll be hungry.’ He stiffened. His eyes burned.

‘So your man’s a wastrel as can’t provide for his wife. Is that what you say?’ His face reddened. A movement in his hands caught her eye. His fists clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. She must hold her tongue or she would have a black eye to compound her hunger and her shame. She turned away.

‘Don’t turn your back on a man when he talks to you.’ His voice swelled to a roar. ‘Listen, woman! Listen! Learn something for the good of your soul.’ His eyes had smouldered. Now they flamed. ‘You truly knows how to make a man feel bad, you does. You and your holy looks. It’s got so’s the only place a man can get any peace is the inn.’ He pushed himself away from the doorpost with one hand. Charlotte knew too well that he always stood in that spot, took that pose, when he reached the limit of his self-control.

‘Enough, woman!’ His eyes rolled upwards. ‘I should have knowed when I courted you. Always fancying yourself above the village folk. All that reading and writing and books. Speaking with a sugarplum in your mouth. Like the cursed gentry. Everyone says you’re touched.’ He made as if to leave, then turned on her again. ‘Damn you for your looks!’ He bit his lip, turned his eyes upwards again. ‘When you was a maid, you looked like a holy painting. One of them golden-haired angels, with light shining behind its head, flying into a cloud. And lips red like a cherub’s, shaped like a bow, so they made a man near die for wanting to feast on them. You walked like you was floating on a cloud. A foot above the ground.’

He drew breath, straightened his body against the doorpost. ‘It’s been pain. All pain. Nothing but pain. Worse and worse with each year that passes. Aaaagh!’ His voice exploded into an anguished bellow. She braced herself. In a second, he might stride across the earthen floor and swing his fist into her face. He drew breath again, composed himself. She would be safe, at least for the moment. Too late to hide his tears from his wife, he dragged the back of his hand across his face.

‘Three years we been wed. And all the village laughing at me that you’re not with child. The men be saying you’re too holy to let me near you. And they be right.’ His eyes burned into hers. ‘I loved you too much for mortal man to bear. I was a fool for you. A mongrel dog licking its master’s boot. Now when I comes home, you locks the door against me.’ He sniffed again, wiped his sleeve across his nose, leaving a smear of dirt on his face. ‘You wonders why I has to take a drink now and again. I tell you, woman, you’re the Devil’s angel. You gives a man the torture of the damned. Curse you!’ He swung the door open, turned and shouted. ‘You’ll get what money I give you, when I choose to give it! If you’re hungry, eat some humble pie.’

Through the open door, Charlotte glimpsed the first stars of evening, felt its chill. Silas stepped into the lane and slammed the door. Quietness wafted over the cottage like a down blanket. She looked round the room. Stains ran down the lime-washed walls from the leaking thatch. The pockmarks in the crumbling mortar, the loose stone above the lintel, the broken lath hanging from the corner above the window, were in their accustomed places. The darkened beams of axed oak, the dull paleness of the whitewashed ceiling, arched above her head. By the light of the lamp, she saw that all was in place, all as it had been the day Silas had carried her over the threshold after their wedding feast. She had made her bed. She must lie in it.

‘Charlotte! Charlotte!’

The pounding on the cottage door startled her as she sat, eyes heavy, lamp beside her, reading a book Silas had forbidden her to touch. The voice betrayed a sobbing effort to control panic. Charlotte stood, smoothed her hair, tucked the loose wisps inside her cap. She flicked the crumbs off the table with her skirts and opened the door.

‘Martha. What is it?’ Charlotte looked into the village woman’s white face. Saw it was drawn with horror, eyes wide.

‘Oh, Charlotte. It’s…your Silas.’

‘What — ?’ Charlotte’s heart skipped. She peered into the woman’s eyes again. They were wide with panic, staring at nothing. Martha was her neighbour — slow, reliable, living in a world which extended only to the edge of the village, circumscribed by home, husband and children. ‘What is it, Martha?’ Charlotte whispered.

‘Oh, Charlotte! Poor Charlotte! Poor, poor Charlotte!’ Martha clutched at her neighbour, crushed her in her arms, rained tears onto her amazed hands. Charlotte shook her by the shoulders, stared into her shocked eyes again. Her neighbour struggled to take hold of herself. After a steadying breath, she spoke.

‘The wagon. It — rolled right over him. He…he’s gone, Charlotte.’ Martha hid her face, sniffing like a hurt child.

Charlotte looked down the lane into the night. Her still-sobbing neighbour urged her out of the cottage and down the cobbled road. In the light from a lantern she saw a cluster of villagers gathered round a wagon piled with hay. Two men knelt beside the wheel. The horse between the wagon’s shafts stood quiet, head half turned, studying the commotion behind it. As Charlotte drew closer, she saw a shape on the ground — a man’s head. She stared at the broken eggshell spilling its crimson yoke onto the cobblestones.

The certainty it was her husband grew as she recognised the homespun trousers stretched over stiffly protruding legs, the worn boots, the work-stained shirt with the frayed cuffs. A gnarled red hand, shocking in its familiarity, was flung to one side, its fingers spread across the road’s rounded stones. Time stopped. Charlotte stood still, stark, like a leafless tree in winter. Silas Jeremiah Downing was dead.

There is a God, she thought. The prayer she had hardly dared to breathe had been answered. Feeling the blood drain from her limbs, she stepped forward. The knot of people parted. Faces looked away without acknowledging her. The dark pulp that had been her husband’s face was splayed into the cobbled road by the iron wheel. As she looked down, blood flowed between the stones, spreading into darkening red rivers. She knelt beside his body and laid her head on his shoulder. Her eyes caught the back of his grizzled neck as she hid her face in his coat, smelt the familiar stale tang of his clothes. She rubbed her cheek on the coarse cloth, sensing the lingering warmth beneath it, half expecting him to move, breathe. The body lay utterly still. An unbidden spasm stung her eyes and gripped her chest. She began to weep. She abandoned herself, let her body sag onto the stiff mound of Silas’s corpse. As she nuzzled into the roughness of his coat, her silent weeping began to soak it with tears. She heard again the last words he had flung at her, two hours before, his voice gagging on a snarl. ‘If you be hungry, eat some humble pie!’

It was dark when Charlotte, still lying face buried in her dead husband’s coat, responded to the plucking at her sleeve, turned her face upwards. Her neighbour Martha bent over her. Charlotte took in the stars, the silhouettes of the trees beside the road, the dark bulks of the nearby cottages, the points of candlelight winking from their windows, the ribbon of cobblestones stretching into the blackness; Martha alone had stayed, standing vigil beside her as she clung to the stiffening corpse.

‘He’s gone, Charlotte. All the tears in the world won’t bring him back.’ God forbid, Charlotte thought. God had heard her cries for mercy, and acted. She released her arms from the body and stood. Her back was stiff. The cold of the night had soaked through her as she lay on the ground. She looked towards her cottage, saw its dark outline contrasted with the lighted windows of its neighbours, and took a breath. The widow’s lot would be hard, but it would be a sight better than her life of the past three years. She was a sought-after seamstress and she owned a cow. Bessie was old, but she might be coaxed into giving milk for a few more years. If Bessie had a healthy calf, Charlotte could rear it. And now that she was a widow, perhaps, perhaps... She hardly dared let the ecstasy take form in her mind.

She smoothed her skirt and saw by the starlight that it was stained dark. Her hem had soaked in the pond of thickening blood while she knelt. She would attack that stain with wood ash, pound the skirt with stones, then in the stream scrub, rinse, wring, until the last trace of Silas Downing was washed away forever.

‘Thank you, Martha.’ She slid an arm round her neighbour’s waist. ‘It must have been cold for you. Lonely. All the others have gone.’ Charlotte was glad her voice did not quaver. Her sobbing was done.

‘I wanted for to be with you till they comes for him, Charlotte,’ Martha whispered. ‘The fellows at the inn. They’ll…take him away.’ The rumble of a cart could be heard in the dark. ‘Here they comes.’ A lantern light traced the cart’s bumpy progress. ‘They’ll have toasted his memory already, I’ll warrant,’ Martha said. ‘Molly will wash him, and…and…tie something over his head. Lay him out. He’ll have a Christian burial and it won’t cost you a penny.’

‘Thank you. I’d have — ’

‘Say naught, Charlotte. The villagers knows how it was for you.’ Martha smiled. ‘You’ll find some new-baked bread in your cupboard when you gets home.’ Her voice lifted. ‘And Mary milked your cow. It was bellowing fit to burst.’ A cart loomed out of the dark, stopped. Silent men lifted their drinking companion’s body and laid it on the cart.

‘I be terrible sorry, Mrs Downing.’ Old Tom spoke reluctantly. ‘It were I as were driving the wagon. Then Silas jumped up beside me — he were…’ He paused.

‘Drunk.’ Charlotte supplied the word.

‘Well, not so as... I mean, he were jolly-like.’ Old Tom’s voice took on a ragged edge. ‘He tried to snatch the reins off me. Then he fell. Right under the wagon. I’m as sorry as a man can be, Missus. I’ll — ’

‘Thank you, Tom. It was no fault of yours, I know.’

‘Thank you, Missus. God bless you.’ Old Tom touched his forelock and climbed onto the tray. He flicked the reins and the cart clattered away into the dark. The grey mound bouncing on the floor of the jolting cart was the last she would ever see of Silas. As she walked back to her empty cottage alone, the evening chill speared into her aching back.

CHAPTER 2

Over the week that followed, Charlotte spent a string of sleepless nights. Why did not Martin come? He was the village’s vicar. The villagers would see no wrong in their parson visiting a bereaved wife. What they would never know was that Charlotte loved him — sensed in her heart that he loved her. For the thousandth time she revisited the evening she had first heard the knock on her cottage door. All afternoon she had lain on her bed, hurting from the blows Silas had rained on her cringing body as he bellowed his rage. She had hidden the pennies she needed to buy flour and sugar, and Silas had demanded she give them to him. When she refused he had beaten her until she screamed that they were hidden under a loose stone in the lintel. Then he had pocketed the coins and made for the inn, snarling his goodbyes as he slammed the door.

A few hours later Reverend Martin Townsend had knocked on that door. A gentle knock that told of a caring soul outside, wishing to comfort her. The man who stepped inside had barely reached his mid twenties. His curly golden hair had been ineptly flattened and combed so that a few wayward strands sprang out from the back of his neck. He held his pale hands stretched in front of him, wrists bent, fingertips touching, as if in supplication. Though tall, he stood stooped. His starkly wrought features were pale in the afternoon light — a prominent, thin nose, wisped blond brows and lashes, hollow cheeks, lips that looked as if he were wont to bite them often. An earnestness cloaked his body like a dark shawl. His tight black jacket was buttoned high, stained with grey streaks which spoke of ineffectual attempts at sponging them away. Fraying strands of black thread showed at his jacket’s lapels and cuffs. The whole effect was knit together by the parson’s white collar round his neck. He slipped inside and eased the door closed soundlessly.

‘I…lately saw your Silas in the village, Mistress Downing.’ Charlotte stood dumb as she framed the doorway, looking up into the tall scholarly man’s face, peering into the blue eyes that blinked behind thick spectacles, wondering if the wounds on her face and arms would tell her story. ‘He was…somewhat the worse for liquor.’ Reverend Martin Townsend cleared his throat. ‘Bragging about…how he had taken the pennies from his…sanctimonious wife. Then The Lord spoke to me. I knew I must — ’

Charlotte abandoned her struggle to stand as she clutched the doorpost. She felt herself slide to the floor, unable to speak. Then the loving arms hoisting her, cradling her, taking her to her bed, kneeling beside her to pray. That visit had been the first of several. In time, the love welling in Charlotte’s battered body had overflowed. One afternoon, while she sat beside Martin as he prayed, she kissed him. She had known it was sinful. That a peasant woman should even think of familiarity with a man of the cloth — educated, learned, dedicating his life to minister to his flock — was shocking. Yet her animal need had swept aside those barriers. And to her unspeakable joy, he had returned that kiss.

The saintly man of the cloth, having spent all his life in self-denial, piety, devotion to a higher being, yielded to the primal lust that binds male animals in thrall to desperate in-season females. They took to spending loving hours in bed, followed by Martin’s passionate prayers for forgiveness, for the strength to resist the charms of the woman he must never love.

Charlotte heard the soft tap on the door round midnight. She flew out of bed in an instant, smoothed her nightdress, swathed her let-down hair into a long golden rope and flicked it over her shoulder. As she turned towards the door, she pinched her cheeks to give them colour, then licked her fingers and smoothed her eyebrows. Heart beating hard, she took the lighted candle she’d left by the window for the last three nights, set it on the table, tiptoed to the door, and opened it.

‘Oh, Martin. It’s been so long. I thought you’d never come,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘I’ve missed you — desperately. Hold me, my love. Close. Like we were — before.’ As he stooped awkwardly to embrace her, she crushed him against her body. They kissed. Like a thirsty animal given water, she drank in the warmth of his lips. The moment she had hungered after for too many long nights had come. They stood thus for a long time, lips blending.

‘I was torn,’ Martin said eventually. ‘I wanted so to comfort you. But if I’d come directly after the funeral, there’d have been gossip.’

‘Thank God you’re here now.’ She eased her lips away from his. ‘You could not dream how I’ve pined for you, Martin. Longed for you to hold me, kiss me.’ She looked up at him from within the circle of his arms. ‘I remembered your breath in my hair. My neck tingles where your lips touched it — before.’ She pulled him close. ‘Hold me, Martin. Hold me forever. I need you so. Comfort me, my love.’

She led him into the small room which held the marriage bed and closed the door. As she sat in the dark, she sensed that he stood hesitant, frozen, a yard from her. He might have been an able scholar at Oxford — indeed, he’d once told her that he’d graduated in theology with the highest honours in his year. But at wooing an eager woman, he was a dunce. It was as if she must teach him all over again. She pulled her nightdress over her head and flung it into a corner. Then she sat naked, waiting in the cool dark, quivering with desire. She felt him sit beside her.

‘I’m not sure what you — ’ he said.

‘Give me your hand, my Martin. For a scholar, you’re very slow to learn.’ She pulled him down beside her, rested his hand on her belly. The spell which had frozen him was broken. He cupped her breast and leaned over to kiss her forehead, so softly it felt like a breath.

‘I love your hair, my angel,’ he said as he breathed a kiss into her tresses. ‘I want it to cascade over me. Like a waterfall.’

‘Patience, wild youth,’ She smiled as she felt his shyness thawing. ‘You must earn such beneficence.’

‘How?’

‘By giving me pleasure, of course. And don’t ask me how you must do that. Last time, you nearly drove me to — ’

He embraced her shoulders, led his lips on a winding track down her neck, her back, her shoulders, until finally his mouth stole a brushing kiss from her nipple. Soon, Charlotte was transported to another world — a world where soft rain ended drought, warmth succeeded cold, closeness drove away loneliness, fleshly delight ousted aching need. With every movement of her lover’s body, she found herself lifted to a higher state of being. She began to feel she could not enjoy more pleasure without fainting. Still he drove her to new heights. She abandoned herself, floating like a bird wafted upwards by a wild wind — higher, faster — swooping, swirling, swept through space by sensations she could not control. These mountain peaks of pleasure reached their climax in a string of explosions so sublime, so transcending all other experiences in her life, that she knew, as she subsided into a cloud of bliss, that she would be changed forever.

They lay in each other’s arms, spent, still. Charlotte felt she was but one half of a single being. She must share every thought, every feeling with her lover.

‘I have something beautiful to tell you, Martin.’ She had held her secret close, like a child hides a loved toy from jealous playmates, fondling it in private moments, but resolving never to be seen with it by anyone. ‘I have your child in my belly, my love.’

He fell silent for a long time.

‘How do you know it’s mine?’ he said eventually.

‘What! Do you think I lie with every man in the village?’ She suppressed her anger. Martin liked to play with words, she knew. Words were his tools of trade. He had once told her he liked her for her wit as much as her body.

‘Silas?’ he said.

‘Silas? It’s been a year; more.’

‘When he came home drunk?’

‘I always bolted this door. He’d fall asleep outside it.’

‘Well… I…’ It was not like Martin to stumble for words.

‘I’ve been so happy since I’ve known,’ Charlotte said. ‘I thought you’d weep for joy.’ She slid a hand up his belly, felt his muscles tense. ‘It’s a blessing on our love. When you…when we were…together, I felt…sanctified. It was as if God had reached down and touched us. Imagine, a child the two of us made in love. Surely our love is — ’

‘I…have some thinking to do,’ Martin said.

‘What about?’ Why did he choose to tease her so? She wished that there was enough light to see his face.

‘How I can…care for my flock.’

‘You have your parson’s stipend.’

‘But…what will people say? I am but servant of The Lord. I must kneel before him. Beg his permission.’

‘What’s so shocking about a man and a woman marrying and having children?’

‘Marrying?’

‘You love me, do you not? That’s what people do when they’re in love. You should know. You must have married dozens of them. Said God’s holy words over them. The very words of the marriage service. Do they not say that it’s God’s intent that men and women should come together and have children?’

‘People might think the child is Silas’s.’

‘So we’ll tell them it’s not.’

‘Er…when did you…first know?’

‘Oh, perhaps a fortnight.’

‘So it could be Silas’s.’

‘Really, Martin. Why do you keep saying that? I’ve told you, it isn’t.’

‘But people will think it is.’

‘Perhaps they will. Do you care? We’ll know it’s ours. A blessing from God.’ Still he lay silent beside her in the dark. ‘He’ll rejoice that two of his creatures have found the love He created for them,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘Love is God’s most precious gift. I’ve heard you say so in your sermons.’ He held his silence. ‘I hope it’s a girl.’ Charlotte smiled to herself. ‘And I hope she has your curls.’

Martin slid out of Charlotte’s bed. As she lay awake, silent, he dressed. He let himself out of the bedroom without saying goodnight. In the dark, he opened the door, slipped through it, then closed it with the same care he had shown as he entered.

Charlotte lay quiet. When he had left, she looked out through the tiny window, noting that there was no moon. She watched him in the vestige of light shed by the stars until his shape could no longer be seen. Then she slid back into her warm bed, smiling at the thought of his lying with her during the week and preaching chastity on Sundays. He was but a man. A man driven by an intensity of passion spawned by years of self-denial and the frugal existence of a dedicated man of God. She stretched her legs between the blankets made warm by their exertions, and fell asleep smiling.

CHAPTER 3

Martin Townsend had taken up his post in Marley two years before his first tryst with Charlotte. As soon as the young man, newly graduated from Oxford, had moved his meagre cartload of possessions into the vicarage, Viscount De Havilland, lord of the manor in the Dorset village of Marley, requested a meeting.

‘I will provide your stipend, Martin,’ he said. ‘But I do not wish the village folk to know this.’

‘Thank you, sir. In the seminary, we were daily taught the precept that The Lord will provide. But your…bounty is truly generous.’ He must overcome his awe of the man, and the estate of Morton-Somersby, occupied by the De Havillands since the days of William the Conqueror. He fought the intimidation projected down on him by the room’s grandeur. Whenever the viscount’s gaze was diverted for a moment, Martin seized the opportunity to look up at the ornamented ceiling, the heavy chandelier, the burgundy drapes that kept the room in perpetual gloom. When he saw the older man’s eyes studying his face, he gripped the carved arms of his chair, let his fingers explore the complexities of the craftsman’s work. This might distract him from the fear he felt for the man who now addressed him.

‘Of course, sir, you may depend on me to preserve your confidence.’ The young parson forced himself to look into the eyes of his benefactor for a moment before returning his gaze to the ceiling. ‘Let God be my witness.’

‘Good. And I should like you to consider yourself almost a member of the family.’ The viscount leaned back in his chair