He noted the slight elevation of Lydia’s chin, the subtle way she dared him respond with the directness of her gaze. “Your mother has every reason to be wary of someone like me,” he said.
That was not what she expected him to say at all. Lydia’s eyes widened the smallest fraction. “She does?”
“Of course she does. What do you really know about me?” When Lydia didn’t answer he went on. “My point precisely.”
“My father likes you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“But I don’t think he knows any more about you than I do,” she said.
“Probably not. Is there something in particular I should tell you?”
Lydia did not ask her question at that time as the beginning of their meal was served. The waiter brought thick slices of hot bread and large bowls of golden mushroom soup. Lydia dragged a spoon through her soup, letting the steam escape and allowing the buttered broth a moment to cool. Nathan didn’t wait and followed his first taste of the soup with a long swallow of beer. Lydia pretended she didn’t notice and Nathan, who knew that she had, was once again reminded of her breeding, of good manners which seemed as natural to her as breathing. The differences between them were enormous.
“Where are you from?” Lydia asked. She took a slice of bread, buttered it, and gave it to Nathan, then did the same for herself.
“Now that’s something youdoknow,” he said, beginning to wonder what effect the drinking had had on her memory. “I’m from London. I told you that last night.”
“I know that’s what you said. I had hoped you would be more honest this time, perhaps elaborate a little.”
Nathan felt he was being led to a watering hole—and was going to discover the water was poisoned. His guard went up immediately. “I’m not certain what you mean.”
She sighed, pausing in the act of lifting her spoon to her mouth, and glanced sideways at him. “Are you a digger?” she asked bluntly. A digger was an Australian, a term she had sometimes heard Madeline use to denigrate her real father. The brief hesitation as Nathan swallowed a bite of bread was all the confirmation that Lydia needed. “Never mind,” she said. “I can see you know what a digger is, which is almost as good as admitting you are one.”
“Is it important?” he asked, knowing that it was.
“It depends. Were you a free settler?”
“What you’re really asking is if I’m a convict.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
The waiter chose that moment to return with their main course: thin slices of rare roast beef, new potatoes, and golden carrots cut like pieces of eight. Lydia let him take her soup, her appetite waning rapidly as the knot in her stomach grew tighter.
“Is it because of Ginny?” Nathan asked when they had privacy again. “Is that what’s brought on this inquiry?”
Lydia had to steady herself. She did not want to think about Ginny. “You said yourself that I don’t know much about you. You even invited me to ask. If certain subjects were to be avoided, you should have said so at the beginning. I spent a pleasant afternoon with Brigham Moore only to arrive home and have my mother tell me he’s a convict. You never said you were really acquainted with Brigham, but neither did you deny it. In fact, you never addressed my question directly.”
“Your point is...” Nathan prompted calmly.
“A trained ear is not required to know that you and Mr. Moore come from the same place. The flattened vowels, the way you sometimes lift a sentence at the end to make it a question. At first I thought it was a little bit of Cockney, which it may be, but there’s something else there, too. So, I’m asking you again, are you a convict?”
“Yes.”
Madeline Chadwick stoodwith her back to the tall, arched window in Brigham Moore’s hotel room. Lamplight enriched the rich auburn color of her hair and lent her complexion warmth that was noticeably absent in the hard set of her mouth.
“Don’t look at me that way,” she said to Brig. “If anyone has a right to be angry here, I do.”
Her statement did nothing to lessen the tension in Brig’s square jaw or the flared angle of his nostrils. He gripped the tumbler he was holding in one hand so tightly that it could have shattered. He wouldn’t have felt it. His anger was a palpable thing and its target was Madeline. “I could kill you, you know,” he said softly. “I could put my hands around your throat and deny you your very next breath.”
Madeline’s hand went to the hollow of her throat immediately, but she didn’t retreat. “Just the sort of thing I might expect a digger convict to say,” she said, dismissing his threat. “I knew what kind of man you were from the very first.”
Brigham took a step toward her. His hold on the tumbler eased slightly. “And that’s what attracted you to me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Deny it all you want. It changes nothing.” His white-hot anger was fractionally cooled. He dropped the tumbler over the back of the armchair behind him and approached Madeline, backing her against the window so that she could feel the fragility of the support behind her. “You told Lydia what I was because you were jealous.”
