Free The Secret Rose by Laura Parker

middle-aged man who wore the red military uniform of a British officer. “Good day, Major Scott. To whom do you refer?”
    “Why, the aborigines, of course!” he boomed. “Dock’s usually crawling with them.” He moved forward against the rail, surveying the deck with a practiced squint, and then shook his head. “Nary a one. Must have scared them away, knowing you had arrived to teach them the curtsy and waltz,” he finished with a chuckle.
    Aisleen smiled slightly at the joke, which had grown very stale. At the beginning of the voyage, the major had misunderstood when she had informed him that she sailed to Sydney to teach English manners to the native Australians. He had taken the statement to mean the aborigines. Since then, whenever they met he had never failed to mention the joke.
    From the first, she had summed him up as a self-important but harmless man. If not for the fact that she had been one of the first to recover from the seasickness, while the major’s wife had scarcely left her cabin during the journey, they would never have struck up an acquaintance. “How is Mrs. Scott this morning?”
    Major Scott pursed his lips, which made his mustache bristle. “Right enough to prepare herself for the occasion of disembarking. She’s no sailor, I give you that.”
    “One must make allowances for her,” Aisleen answered.
    “Right!” he replied. “Still, will never understand why the missus chose to begin an addition to the detail before we reached our destination. Never leave a woman to plan a campaign, I say.”
    Aisleen ignored the comment. Gentlemen did not speak of pregnancy with unmarried ladies. It was indelicate at best, bordering on the objectionable. “Will we be allowed to leave the ship soon?”
    “Certainly. But I’d watch my step if I were you, Miss Fitzgerald. ’Tis the shearing season. The city will be full of jackeroos and drovers, as well as the usual riffraff.”
    Aisleen looked toward the teeming dock, where drays stacked with fine, smooth, honey-colored lumber jostled carts loaded with grain sacks and barrels. Her gaze moved to the steady stream of ox-drawn wagons piled a story high with sorted and baled wool. Like a huge canvas-backed snake, the line of wagons wound a sinuous path along the dock front to the ships waiting to carry the wool back over the thousands of miles of ocean she had just traveled to the northern industrialized milling centers of England’s Midlands.
    She gave a fleeting thought to her mother and her new stepfather. They would soon be selling cloth made from the merino wool loaded here in Sydney. The thought vanished as her attention was caught by another sight on the waterfront.
    Dressed in gray canvas jackets and checked trousers, with caps partially covering their shaved heads, a group of men walked in clumsy unison. As the path cleared before them, she saw sunlight glinting on metal links and collars and realized with a shock that these men were prisoners.
    “A rare sight, that.” Major Scott frowned as the men were herded up the gangplank of a nearby ship. “Must be bound for the salt mines, the poor beggars.”
    “What are they?” Aisleen asked, unable to turn her gaze from the sight of the miserable men.
    “It’s where the law sends the hard cases.”
    A whip cracked, slicing through the sounds of the quay, and Major Scott felt the young woman beside him flinch. “It’s a shame, I agree. ’Twas hoped when the government of New South Wales put an end to transportation that we’d see no more convicts. Here’s me advice to you. Give those men less thought than you would a stray dog, Miss Fitzgerald.”
    “Less—?” Aisleen caught herself and forced her gaze away. It was none of her business. She had chosen to come to New South Wales knowing full well that it had once been a penal colony. The major was right. She would have to become accustomed to strange sights and give them no thought. But she could not still the indignant feeling that had