Free Alley Urchin by Josephine Cox Page B

benefits to be got from coastal trade. You can do it, Emma . . . with me alongside you, and our name over that doorway . . . we can branch out in whatever direction you like!’
    As he talked, his dark eyes alive with enthusiasm, Emma was caught up in his mood of excitement. He was right. All he was saying made a good deal of sense, her every instinct told her so. With overland transport difficulties and more settlers arriving all the time, there was a fortune to be made from taking the goods by sea, investing in good, sturdy seagoing vessels and building up a thriving trade along the coast. The openings were there, and the benefits would be most handsome, she knew. What a challenge that would be! What an exciting and demanding challenge! But on her own it would prove to be a very difficult, if not impossible, task, because of the stigma of being a convict and because she was a woman, women being denied a place in the man’s world of business. Yet Emma knew that she could do it, given the opportunity. Mr Thomas was right. She’d work her fingers to the bone and raise the Thomas Trading Business to such a height that its reputation and importance would be carried from one end of Australia to the other and, in time, across the oceans to England and the rest of the world! There was no doubt in Emma’s mind that one day this vast land of Australia would be a great and important country, when it would play an even more important part in international trading. Indeed, it was already beginning to happen, and all the signs were there that Australia was coming into its own. The convict ships had stopped coming some two years ago; there was now partial self-government, and only recently a privately-owned telegraph link with Perth had been installed. Already plans were underway to construct a network of overland telegraph lines which would link not only major cities and ports, but countries far and wide. Railways were also being constructed. It was an exciting time, Emma realised, a time of innovation, growth and expansion of a kind unparalleled before. Oh! What she would give to be a real part of it!
    But could she betray herself by agreeing to marry a man old enough to be her father? Could she live such a lie, when there would never be any other man in her heart but Marlow Tanner? No, she thought not.
    Once more, Emma prepared to give Roland Thomas his answer. And once again, sensing that she was about to turn him down, he bade her wait a moment longer. ‘Hear me out, Emma,’ he pleaded. And she did, waiting most attentively, while he outlined how, on the very day of their marriage, he would sign an official contract stating that, from that day forwards, Emma was his full partner, and that, on the day of his demise everything he owned, lock, stock and barrel, would become her property, and hers alone, to do with as she wished, because he knew in his heart that he could not leave his affairs in better hands than hers.
    Emma could have pointed out that he had a son, and that son must surely be included in any such agreement. But she said nothing, for she knew that, as far as Roland Thomas was concerned, he had no son, and that even to mention his name would infuriate and antagonise her employer. Besides which, the very name of that creature on her lips would taste so foul that she would feel tainted ever after! Only now, after weeks of agonising, had she made herself put that terrible night behind her, when he had invaded her body while she lay ill and helpless.
    For a long time afterwards, she was unsure as to where the boundaries of her nightmares ended, and where they had become stark, horrifying reality. When Nelly revealed the awful truth, in as gentle a manner as possible, Emma had felt physically sick, but more than that, she had felt dirty and degraded. There had been murder in her heart, such bitterness that coloured her every sleeping and waking thought, until she could see no pleasure in anything. All those things she