Free Destiny's Path by Anna Jacobs Page A

child.’
    ‘I never did any tree climbing. I was too busy looking after my little sisters and brothers.’
    With a scornful sniff, Kathleen moved forward to let the sailors help her over the side. ‘If you don’t follow me, Orla, you can stay here and rot,’ she said by way of encouragement.
    Bram took the maid’s arm. ‘Come on, lass. Let’s get it over with.’
    She muttered a quick prayer, crossing herself.
    Ronan stepped forward. ‘I’ll go down first and help you into the boat, Orla.’
    ‘Thank you, sir.’ With an audible gulp, she let the men guide her down the rope netting hanging over the side of the ship, desperately trying to keep her skirts from flying up in the light breeze.
    Ronan steadied her and with a groan of relief she sank down next to her mistress on one of the planks that served as seating in the boat.
    Kathleen didn’t even look at her, but sat stiffly upright studying Fremantle, which looked more like a village than a town, with buildings scattered here and there up a slope, not always set out in streets, but looking as if they’d been dropped higgledy-piggledy.
    After being rowed to shore, they waited on the dock for their luggage, then Dougal came over to join them.
    Knowing what he wanted, Ronan turned to his companions. ‘Will you check that all your pieces of luggage are there?’
    When they’d counted and nodded, he paid the final amount agreed on for safe delivery of themselves and their possessions to Fremantle, shook the captain’s hand and turned to seek conveyance to a hotel, since it was now late afternoon.
    Kathleen watched him discussing their needs with a lad who’d approached with a handcart. He nodded and smiled at the lad, who left the two men loading luggage on to the handcart and ran off to find more help. Ronan Maguire would smile at anyone, she thought sourly.
    She was trying not to let her shock show, because she’d found out when she was smaller that it was dangerous to let your feelings show to people of your own class. Servants didn’t matter and convicts certainly didn’t matter. But sometimes her feelings escaped her, try as she would to hold them back, especially when she was angry.
    If she’d known what it was like here, how small and uncivilised a place it was, she’d not have come, whatever she had to put up with back in Ireland as the wife of a convict. But she was here now, and without Mrs Maguire, so had to rely on Ronan, of all people, to help her. She hated him because he’d helped her husband when he’d been transported. If he hadn’t, maybe Conn would have died and good riddance to him.
    Well, just let her husband try to lay one finger on her! She’d keep her distance from him. Surely Mrs Largan must be tired now of living in such an uncivilised place? Surely she was missing Ireland? And surely if Kathleen was living with her, people would speak to her and invite her to their houses again, as they had when she was living with Mr Largan?
    As she followed the procession of four handcarts up a sandy street, Kathleen passed buildings of all types, from cottages of unpainted wooden boards, to small brick houses. None of them was suitable for a lady to live in. And none of them could hold a candle to Shilmara.
    Tears came into her eyes at the thought of her old home. She was no longer welcome there since James Largan’s death, but she still dreamed about it. She’d loved the house on first sight, had been so happy to be away from her mother. She hadn’t thought she’d have to leave it – or James, who had been so kind to her, so loving. No one had ever loved her as he did. She’d not been frightened of him, as she had of Conn.
    She’d had to leave her horses too, though Kieran had promised to look after them and see they were properly exercised. She couldn’t wait to get back and go riding again.
    All it needed now, she thought angrily, was to find that Mrs Largan was also dead and this long, horrible journey in vain. If that was so,