The Rebels (The Australians Book 6) by Vivian Stuart

Author:Vivian Stuart [Stuart, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skinnbok
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

News of the happenings in Sydney did not reach the Green Hills for close on two weeks, and then it was brought to the farm at Yarramundie by Desmond O’Shea’s orderly, who had been sent there for mail.

A letter from Kate Lamerton, addressed to Abigail, was opened and read aloud by Caleb Boskenna to his wife, before Abigail was permitted to receive it. Having digested its contents, Boskenna sought out Desmond O’Shea.

‘It would seem that your regiment has deposed the governor and is holding him in house arrest, Mr O’Shea,’ he stated baldly, and then, as the young officer stared at him in open-mouthed amazement, he repeated from memory the gist of what Kate Lamerton had written.

‘God in heaven!’ O’Shea exclaimed, scarcely able to believe what his host was saying. But he recovered his composure and added quickly, ‘I support what the commandant has done, of course—Governor Bligh was a damned tyrant. A despot who proved his incapacity to govern a ship’s crew when he drove the Bounty’s people to mutiny. And his treatment of John Macarthur was little short of persecution, from what I’ve heard. To charge him with sedition was—damme, Mr Boskenna, it was quite outrageous! I don’t wonder that my brother officers felt compelled to take drastic action, in order to save him.’

‘Mr Macarthur has been acquitted,’ the Reverend Boskenna informed him dryly, ‘by the same officers of your corps who were originally appointed to try him. And if Kate Lamerton is to be believed, all the civil magistrates have been deprived of their offices and several have been arrested. She says that Captain Macarthur has been appointed secretary to the colony and that Mr Gore and the emancipist lawyer, Crossley, are expected to be deported to Coal River when they come up for trial.’

‘They will deserve what they get,’ O’Shea asserted. ‘But,’ he added grimly, ‘they will find Coal River hard to endure. If I were in their place, I’d prefer the death sentence. It is a cruel place.’

‘But you will return there, will you not?’ Caleb Boskenna’s tone was still dry, ‘when you have succeeded in persuading my ward to accept your proposal of marriage?’

Desmond O’Shea reddened. Since her recovery from the indisposition from which she had been suffering at the time of his arrival at Yarramundie, he had paid assiduous court to Abigail but, he was unhappily aware, without eliciting more than a lukewarm response. The death of Titus Penhaligon had grieved her very deeply, and the lovely, vivacious girl he remembered had become a broken-hearted stranger. She was not, of course, suspicious; she clearly had no idea that he had had a hand in the damned young idiot’s unfortunate accident and ... devil take it, his conscience was clear! Penhaligon’s death had been the purest accident, brought about as much by his cowardly, panic-stricken flight as by anything that he himself had said or done to cause it. But for all that ... O’Shea met Caleb Boskenna’s searching gaze and his colour deepened and spread.

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