Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) Page 18

  “Sam?”

  “Just closing down, sir.”

  “Come.” The door swung to: darkness, but for the line of light.

  She came, entering quietly, shutting the door behind her.

  He sat on the edge of his littered desk. “So you’re Gantry’s boss now.”

  “Ah. Methinks I see the road ahead. Nae, sir, though I did offer an opinion, one servant speaking with another.”

  “A housemaid on a major business decision. Some opinion.”

  “I recall some time back, when first ye made Mr. Butts his offer, ye said to the effect that if a simple housemaid can see to the core of it, a businessman should be able to. That’s all I see, sir, is what a simple housemaid sees.”

  “Gantry came to you for an opinion.”

  No, Mr. Sloan, that’s not what the rascal came for; that’s just what he left with. But Samantha would not mention the mill foreman’s transgression. She’d learned a little something in her years as a servant. “He came looking for yerself, not knowing how long ye’d be gone, sir. I gave him lunch. ’Twas about that time.”

  Mr. Sloan gazed at her with the strangest expression on his face. “That’s not what he says.”

  “I speak the truth, sir, and have nae interest in what he may or may nae say. ’Tis between yerself and himself.”

  His voice rose. “Gantry and Dakin logged themselves in as cutters as well as mill workers. Two men drawing four paychecks on an account with a minus balance to start with! Gantry’s not that smart on his own, Sam. He can see only in one direction—straight ahead, like a horse with blinders. Nothing devious. That’s why my father hired him—for his stupidity. That idea came from your head, not his.”

  “His problem was finding cutters, for they’ve all gone elsewhere. I suggested how he might solve his problem, for he seemed fair perplexed and though I dinnae tell him, I knew ye were headed for Melbourne—days and days gone. He’s the experienced sugar worker, and I’d expect him to weigh me advice against his own experience.”

  “Gantry belongs to me and I expect him to do whatever needs done without getting paid double for the honors. He accepted that until you opened your mouth.”

  Belongs to me. Yes, the man actually said that. Samantha held her peace. She was saying too much already.

  He lifted himself off the edge of the desk and wandered over to the darkened window. He stared out at faceless night, then turned. “You’re spending the night with me. Get along. I’ll be in shortly.”

  So here it was. She somehow knew it would come eventually. She dreaded facing the question and yet, in a curious way, she welcomed it. She yearned for it, for closeness. The yeses and noes tore at each other inside her. She was twenty-eight years old, with never a … and now this man who attracted her so … his kiss … And yet, her honor …

  “Nae, sir.” Samantha kept her voice low and even.

  “You belong to me, too. I own you.”

  “Ye own me labor, which meself is giving without reserve.” On impulse Samantha stepped forward until she was practically nose to nose with this haughty and handsome man. “Sir …” She studied the floor a moment, trying to keep the flowering thought in her mind from losing all its petals in her speech. “Ye’re aware of me somewhat checkered record of employment. Two positions, and in part a third, which I left hastily because of the master’s advances. When first ye commented upon the Connolly honor, as we strolled along the beach—ye remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Ye laughed that it builds a fire under me, or however ye said it. Aye, it does. ’Tis the most important thing I have, and the one thing I can keep, though luck and money slip through me fingers uncontrolled. I dinnae compromise it yesterday, nor shall I today or tomorrow.”

  “What makes you think you’re different from all the other housemaids in the world?”

  “I’m a Connolly, sir.”

  He burst into laughter, a hollow mocking laugh, and wagged his head as he walked away. He wheeled. “You’re a Connolly. No, Sam, that’s not what makes you different. But something does and I wish I could figure out what. Your first day here you were different.” He smirked. “Sloan’s harem. You’ve heard that.”

  “’Tis a term been bandied about, aye.”

  “A jibe with the ring of truth to it. It’s one of the reasons I hire a woman. I have no compunctions about taking up with any woman in my employ. Comes in the package.”

  Kathleen Corcoran! She saw now the deeper reason behind his rage, and it was not just economic, what the croc had stolen. The truth shocked her; she’d not suspected.

  “I dinnae answer ye lightly. Ye’re a splendid man, Mr. Sloan. Were it not for honor …” She licked her lips and turned to leave. She opened the door and paused, leaving it ajar. She turned, that she might meet his eye squarely. “’Twould seem nearly everything ye have is purchased, and usually with money that is nae yers. A sorry way to romp through life, sir—exciting, nae doubt, but hardly honorable. G’night, Mr. Sloan.”

  “I’d be more inclined to believe your lovely little honor speech if you hadn’t offered yourself to Gantry.”

  Her heart went into her throat. Gantry’s word against hers, and Mr. Sloan would believe whatever he felt like believing; men are like that, she’d long ago learned.

  She stared at him until the silence got loud. “Ye once, in so many words, painted John Butts as a fool. If ye actually believe meself would invite Gantry, when I deny Sloan and shall continue to do so, ye be a far bigger fool than he.”

  She swung the door open, stepped out—

  —and very nearly ran over Meg! She gasped and Meg gasped and they stood staring at each other.

  Samantha recovered first. “If ye’ve filled yer ears with enough slander that be none of yer affair, perhaps ye’d best hie yerself to your room now.”

  “Ye dinnae … I mean, ye were nae … uh …” Meg took a deep breath. “I came to speak with Mr. Sloan—”

  Mr. Sloan leaned out the door. “Meg, get in here!” He pointed at Samantha. “And you stay.”

  “Be a private matter, sir.” Meg stepped inside.

  “She stays. What is it?”

  Meg swallowed, turned a bit pink, and then drew herself up as tall as five foot five allows. “I wish to be relieved of me duties here, sir, that I might go a-marrying.”

  Mr. Sloan looked past her to Samantha. “The Connolly honor.”

  “Ye forbade me speak to Luke Vinson. Rescind the rule, eh?”

  “Go.”

  Samantha turned toward the door but Meg grabbed her arm. “’Tis not so simple as it appears, Sam. I’m a Christian now.”

  “And what were ye before, a pagan Hindu?”

  “He said ye wouldnae understand. When ye talked to him about how indenture is pawning yer freedom now with hope for the morrow, I saw for the first time what Luke had been trying to tell me. And what it means to be a bondservant of Christ. ’Tis your own words helped me see the light.”

  “Light! A dark day for the Connolly name and ye call it light.” Samantha yanked free and slammed out the door.

  She didn’t bother with her little beaded hat. The matching beaded reticule stayed behind. All she took was the punched-tin hurricane lamp from the kitchen. She lighted its candle as much to notify the mysterious night creatures that she had mastered fire and was not to be messed with as to see through the black gloom.

  She approached the manse the only way she knew—through the little chapel and the goat pasture. A light in the window under the verandah told her he was still up. She hopped onto the porch and rapped smartly.

  He opened the door smiling, and he was much closer to handsome in this soft yellow lamplight than she had given him credit for. “Miss Connolly. Good evening. Please come in.”

  She stepped inside his little kitchen. It was nearly as spare as the chapel, without so much as curtains at the window. She obviously had interrupted study or sermon preparation or something. On the kitchen table with the oil lamp wer
e an open Bible, an earthenware mug, a teapot and a scattered sheaf of papers.

  Without so much as by-your-leave, he grabbed another mug from an uncurtained shelf and poured. “Sugar?”

  “This be nae a social call.”

  “Perhaps not from your viewpoint, but it is from mine.” He grinned disarmingly and swung a chair around for her.

  “Sugar. Thank ye.” She sighed and blew out the candle in her tin lantern. She regretted that instantly. Either she must beg a match off him or stumble home through the dark, for she had not thought to bring matches. She would stumble before she’d ask a boon. She sat down and stared morosely at her mug, wondering all the while why she was not feeling more uncomfortable. She ought to be.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Me father and his father before him held the family honor sacred, Mr. Vinson, and he taught his children to do the same. Now me sister’s about to sully it and I believe ’tis at yer own behest. Regardless what ye may think of the matter, she made a written promise, which she wants to break. Yerself is the only one who can sway her, for she listens nae to me. I’ve come to beg ye yield to honor and change her mind.”

  “Do you pray, Miss Connolly?”

  She froze, wary. “I’ve heard yerself does nae.”

  He sank back all relaxed in his chair, chuckling. “I’ve said that, yes. But it’s not properly true. I pray many times in a day. It’s just that I hate using that word because people so often misconstrue its meaning. Let me ask this: have you ever simply talked person-to-person with God?”

  “I be a humble servant girl, sir, and dinnae presume to know God that well. He’s up there and I’m—” She stopped, her mind awash in recent memories. She almost giggled. “I was considering this same thing one night quite recently. Amorphous somethings in the forest were throwing fruit pits at me.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Fruit bats.”

  “Nae, sir, bats be wee things, and these were—”

  “About three feet across. Crawl around in the treetops using those wings for hands. They especially like damson plums.”

  “Bats,” she whispered and her spine tingled. “Nae, Mr. Vinson, I dinnae pray. Thought about prayer, but dinnae do it. There be considerable difference, ye know.”

  “Perhaps not. The book of Romans tells us the Holy Spirit intercedes when we don’t pray as we ought. We struggle to speak, particularly when we don’t know the person of God well, and the Spirit reroutes it; makes it right. God listens to your heart, you know, not your words.”

  Until now she had not felt uncomfortable about talking to him. Now her mind began to squirm a bit. “How did we get off on this? The question at issue is me sister, who—”

  “Who has made an important step. The most important step. She’s gone from knowing about God to knowing God himself.”

  “She’s been in the church since birth. Twisting words around makes your mumbo-jumbo nae easier to swallow.”

  “How do you like your new saddle?”

  “Stop it! Ye change the subject at will, for nae reason.”

  “Oh, I do have a reason. How do you like your saddle?”

  “Well enough, thank ye. Much improved over previous.”

  He leaned forward and made an imaginary horse and rider with his hands. “Faith is what carries us along, ultimately to heaven. Faith in Jesus. Faith is the horse. This. You are the rider. This. The saddle—that’s the church. Any church that points a person to salvation in Christ. Yours. Mine. The saddle’s purpose is to make you more comfortable on your horse, and to keep you from falling off. The church helps you stay with the faith. But it is not, itself, the faith. You can throw the saddle across a rail fence and ride it, and feel very safe and secure. Of course, you won’t go anywhere. Not an inch. Meg still has her saddle, the church, but it’s now on the horse. And she knows God person-to-person.”

  Samantha stared at the hands, at the two-finger rider perched on the flat-hand horse. “And what has that to do with keeping the promise she made half a world away?”

  “That is between her and her God and Sloan. Neither you nor I can make her decision for her. She carries the Connolly name as much as you do, Samantha.”

  “Ye can advise her.”

  “And so can you. But the final word must be hers.”

  “So ye will nae intercede. Of course ye wouldn’t. ’Tis to your advantage, if marriage be your notion, for her to break away from her commitment unbetimes. I dinnae see now why I came, except ’tis so important to me. But nae to yourself, nor, apparently, to her.” She stood up. “Me apologies for breaking into yer studies there.”

  He tapped his open Bible. “Second Corinthians two. ‘We are to God a sweet savor.’ In the Old Testament that term was used in reference to sacrifices. In the New Testament we are the living sacrifice. Crops up again in Ephesians five. Fascinating study.”

  “Nae doubt, if ye have interest in such things.”

  “Every person should. Several years ago I realized I was giving God, essentially, my leftover time and efforts. I was pursuing what Luke Vinson enjoyed doing, not what needed to be done. I recommitted myself, gave myself to Him wholly as a living sacrifice. A sweet savor. I want to be always a sweet savor to God—to leave a sweet taste in His mouth.”

  “Then why do ye interfere? Had Byron Vickers not listened to ye, he’d probably have a job as a cutter now. And Meg …” She sighed.

  “In essence, the sweetness comes in sacrificing personal desires in order to please God. Can you see that?”

  Could she see that? She thought of the personal desires she had sacrificed this very evening, and all in the name of honor. Was honor of itself a sweet savor? She was pretty sure chastity was, but …”Sacrificing the self. Aye, I see.”

  Vinson dug into a matchbox by the stove and brought two barn burners to the table. Unbidden he lighted the candle in her lantern. “Cole Sloan seven years ago was convicted and fined for illegally using Kanakas. For slaving, pure and simple. He is still at his old tricks, but calling it by a new name.” His gray eyes met hers and she could see cold steel in them. “Jesus was the ultimate theologian, but He also bore the ultimate social concern. I’ll not bend in the matter any more than you would. May I walk you back?”

  “Nae, thank ye. Methinks I prefer to be alone. I trust ’tis safe.”

  “As safe as anywhere, I suppose. But you don’t have to go through the goat yard, you know.” He led her out to his front gate, gave her hand that squeeze of his, and she was on her way.

  She took her time returning. This meeting had gone nothing at all the way she would have expected, though she had no clear expectations for it when she came. He had taken it exactly where he wanted it to go and said exactly what he wanted to say, and she had achieved nothing.

  When is a Christian not a Christian? His hands burned vivid on her mind. Person to person. Prayer. Talking. Fruit bats. The sweet savor of sacrifice. Her wildly diverse thoughts waltzed in and out in her mind and left her in total confusion. One thing was certain. She had let Mr. Sloan down.

  All was dark as she entered the house; there was not even a bar of light under the office door anymore. She blew out her candle and retired to her own room without lighting a lamp. The saddle picture—so vivid. Sweet savor—nicely put.

  Whatever spiritual dimension the preacher operated in, it was one Samantha had never suspected existed. He intimated that Meg now walked that road. Was this some sect such as the priests were constantly belittling in their homilies back home? Was Meg truly finding solace in a new relationship with God, or was she streaking toward hell on a greased pole, hard behind the seducer of her soul?

  What words were spoken in Mr. Sloan’s office after she left? What was Meg’s fate—to be hounded and followed after like Amena? The thought of pursuing her own sister as if she were a fugitive chilled Samantha’s heart. For long, long hours she lay alone in the humid darkness, wide-eyed, and listened to the house geckos scurry along the walls.

  Chapter Ni
neteen

  Exploration and Discovery

  Luke’s wrong. He’s misleading you.

  Leaves rustled. Tiny feet riffled through the duff of the forest floor. All familiar sounds.

  Here, right here, everywhere around you, is the truth you heard from your fathers. Here is reality.

  Occasional sun-dapples intruded on the brooding gloom. He parted the leaves and branches as he moved forward. Whispering, they closed protectively behind him. Safe. Cradled in the past.

  Listen to your ancestors and the spirits that guide you. The sky is but one of many. He’s an outlander, a babe. He’s proven that. What can he know?

  Burriwi stopped. The forest voices had fallen silent up ahead to the northwest. He moved forward without parting leaves, letting his dark, naked body slip from here to there. He became yet another shadow in a forest of shadows and shapes that may or may not really be. The eye sees not half of reality.

  There was the reason the spirits were silent. Waist deep in ferns, the intruder stood on a rocky little spike jutting from the steep hillside. He peered through a long black tube down toward the coast and Sugarlea. Burriwi moved in close and watched the man a few minutes. This fossicker, this white-feller with the hoary beard, was not one with the forest; only blackfellers achieved that unity; but he came very close. The spirits all around him did not embrace him, but neither did they cry Stranger! They tolerated him and allowed him to be comfortable. That much Burriwi could feel.

  Sloan hated and feared this man. Burriwi had sensed that the first time Sloan questioned him about the man’s whereabouts and activities. Sloan’s own spirit was malign, though Burriwi felt no real discomfort around him. What made this fossicker an enemy of the lord of Sugarlea?

  The man lowered the long tube from his eye and collapsed it somehow to a third of its length. Remarkable. Burriwi would have guessed it to be made of some very hard substance. He watched the man pick his way across the fern-clad ledge, then followed at a discreet distance as the fellow crunched through the forest, quartering up the hillside.