Alchemy and Rose: A sweeping new novel from the author of The House Between Tides, the Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year by Maine Sarah

Author:Maine, Sarah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2021-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Will headed back to Hokitika as soon as he was fit. For too many days the fever had kept him low and he had lain in his cot, drifting in and out of a troubled sleep, finding peace in neither dreams nor waking. McGrath had vacated the cabin with ill grace and it was Callum who looked after him, Callum who found someone to examine and treat the infected leg.

And it was Callum who told him that Urquhart had survived.

Will expression must have darkened. ‘He’s gone, though, taken himself off to Dunedin, I heard,’ Callum had said, and he told Will about the other stolen photographs and then went off to the workings with the others, leaving him to digest it all.

As Will lay there he remembered how Urquhart had tried to warn him that day, too cowardly to explain. Don’t think the worst of me, he had said, and he cursed the man again. What world did Urquhart inhabit where Will would not have thought ill of him? Was he telling him that Rose had not been unfaithful? Given what he knew of Urquhart he did not question it, nor care a toss; it was enough that he had used her in that way, exploiting her, indulging whatever whims and fantasies he might have, never considering what might follow. The scale of the damage it might do …

It was only gradually that the thought crept into his mind that the worst of the damage he had done himself and, once born, the thought would not leave him. If he had confronted Urquhart instead of attacking him, demanded that he explain, then things would be different now.

Or better still, if he had spoken to Rose.

He pushed the blanket aside and got to his feet, weak still, but no longer dizzy. He had to find her. He had to get to Hokitika while the trail was still warm, find her and talk to her. Robbie he could deal with. His old partner’s brazen move, taking Rose and the gold, was exactly what he would have expected of him, and yet Robbie was no fool. He would never dare try to sell the nugget in Hokitika, too many questions would be asked and McGrath would have come to hear of it. No, Robbie was too cunning for that and he had wider ambitions. Hokitika would not hold him for long, and Will needed to move fast. All that mattered now was that he found them, and that he talked to Rose.

His arrival in Hokitika was greeted with astonishment. The story of the photograph and the fight between Will and Urquhart had provided gossip for several days until it grew stale, but the news of Robbie Malloy’s sudden disappearance with Rose had revived it and now here was Will, larger than life, hot on their trail, and the story came alive again. He gave only the vaguest account of his survival to those who asked, inventing rescue by an old hatter, a recluse living of the banks of the Taramakau, and no one had reason to doubt him.

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