TWENTY-ONE
Twenty-one
Damian finished stacking the kindling he’d just chopped for the fireplace and looked around the cosy room. This was so much better than a bland motel room.
In all honesty, he hadn’t been expecting to still be here once the festival was finished. His original plan had been to head back to the city and continue writing and teaching, or possibly take a sabbatical from teaching in order to focus exclusively on his writing. But that was before he’d met Lottie. Now, it seemed impossible to leave. It wasn’t as though he had to, which was the beauty of writing—he could do it anywhere. And the last few days had been amazing.
Through the day, he wrote, did a few zoom sessions with some of his post-grad students, then cooked dinner and tried to earn his keep by helping out with chores around the house while Lottie worked at the shop. They spent the afternoons and evenings learning every single little thing about each other. He loved her playful sex kitten persona in bed, which was such a contrast to the quiet, reliable, community-minded Lottie most people knew. Waking up through the night and finding her tucked up against his side filled him with an unexpected protectiveness and contentment. They just fit.
He’d fallen hard for this woman he’d only just met. Damian gave a small grunt of affection when he remembered how upset she’d become over what may have happened to Catherine. Her compassion tugged at his heartstrings. He understood her sadness—he felt it too, although he tended not to allow his emotions to run away from him the way Lottie sometimes did. She was unapologetically emotional and made no excuses if she let whatever she was feeling show. He’d witnessed the glisten of tears as she’d thought about Catherine, the beam of happiness when he’d taken her on the bike, the unbridled passion crossing her face when they made love. She hid nothing, and the experience floored him every time. The only thing he hadn’t seen from her yet was anger, and he was fairly sure she wouldn’t hold back with that either.
He still couldn’t explain what she’d done to make him fall so hard and fast. She was on his mind all the time and whenever she wasn’t with him, he could smell her. He wasn’t sure if she was somehow imprinted in his senses or if he was imagining it, but he could be alone in a room and suddenly catch the faintest hint of the perfume she wore just wafting past, almost as though on a breeze. He’d never considered himself a hopeless romantic—he was far too practical for that—yet here he was, listening to the words of sappy love songs and impatiently waiting for the next time he could talk to her or see her, like some love-sick idiot.
He found it difficult to concentrate whenever he was away from her. Which was crazy. He’d never been easily distracted from his research before. It had actually been one of the biggest complaints from women he’d dated previously, that he was too absorbed in his work and would forget about everything else. Not anymore. Now, he found himself having to force his attention away from thinking about Lottie.
With the fire started, he forced himself to sit down with his laptop and open the document Lottie had sent him earlier: her manuscript. He knew how hard it was to allow someone to read through a work in progress—he rarely allowed it. There was always something incredibly vulnerable about baring your writing to another person, especially when it was still in its early stages, and he felt privileged that Lottie trusted him enough to let him read it.
Initially, he was hoping there might be something in the earlier part of her book that was set locally and in the same era as his own research. Unlikely, but he was experienced enough to know that sometimes it was the smallest detail that could suddenly unlock a mystery and send things on a whole new trajectory.
He was impressed with the amount of research she’d done so far. The file she sent contained all her online resources, including old newspaper articles from different eras and anything that potentially might relate to the years around the subject she was writing about. He opened the information she had filed under Emeline and found himself engrossed in the unfolding saga of the young woman who was abducted by the murderous bushranger Jack McNally.
There was a wealth of articles and poems, as well as stories published in subsequent years, on Jack and his bushranging career. These had been meticulously gathered and placed in the file, and he read through them with interest. Nothing really jumped out at him for his own research; still, it was interesting reading.
He opened another file and discovered the photos that Lottie mentioned she was including in her book and began scrolling through them. The women in her family almost all bore a startling resemblance to Lottie herself, particularly in the earlier photos, varying from the 1920s to the early sixties and a scattering from the 1940s and 1970s. They all appeared to have the same heart-shaped face and pouty lips … the kind that he often found himself thinking about far too often. The coppery hair also seemed to be a family trait.
He paused at the next image and studied it curiously. It was a close-up of the hand from one of the black-and-white portraits he’d just looked at, and a large oval-shaped ring caught his attention. He moved on to the next photo, another cropped image of a woman’s hand and a ring. This photo was in colour, and he realised now that the ring was a large opal, no doubt more stunning in real life, but even in an old photograph he could tell the stone was something special.
Something started to gnaw in the back of his mind …
After a moment, he got up from his seat and walked across the room to remove a manila folder from his box of research. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he couldn’t shake a feeling of familiarity. As he shuffled through the pages, he pulled out a photocopied article from an online history page he’d come across one day. He rocked back on his heels—he’d found what he was looking for.
Lottie hung her handbag on the hook inside the front door after work and smiled as she saw Damian pacing the room. ‘Hey.’ She’d texted him to say she was on her way home a few minutes earlier, but her smile slipped a notch as she noticed his strangely intense expression.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, I was reading your manuscript,’ he said, kissing her briefly and taking her hand to almost drag her from the door to the kitchen. Oh God , she thought, feeling her stomach drop. He hated it. The negative thoughts started raining down on her in quick succession.
‘Tell me about this ring,’ he said, pulling out his phone and showing her a photo from her book.
Lottie blinked uncertainly. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. ‘It’s my mother’s and before that my gran’s. It’s been passed down from mother to daughter for generations.’
He eyed her for a few moments before taking the phone from her and flicking through screens quickly to show her an internet page. British Royal Designs Throughout History , the article headline read.
‘What’s this?’
‘Scroll down a bit,’ he said.
Lottie gently ran her finger up the screen, wondering what she was supposed to be looking for, when an illustration came up, a design sketch for a ring … a ring that looked almost identical to the one her mother refused to wear. The text beneath said:
The giant opal was sent to Philip Borndoff, who was master jeweller and designer to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, to be designed as an engagement ring for a wealthy family. The opal’s size and magnificent colour was unusual at the time and long stood out in Borndoff’s memory. It has since disappeared, feared lost by the family who no longer have ownership of the valuable piece. If it were valued in today’s market, it would be worth a fortune. The curator of the Borndoff jewellery collection at the London Museum said, ‘Anything designed by Philip Borndoff is as priceless and sought after as a Da Vinci or a Van Gogh in the art world.’
Lottie snapped her head up and stared at Damian. ‘You’re not thinking that our ring is … this ring?’ she asked, doubtfully.
‘I don’t know what to think, only that it has an uncanny resemblance.’
‘It was probably a copy. Maybe after this ring, it became the fashion or something? Besides, what would my family be doing with a ring designed by a royal jeweller?’
‘I did a search and found out who the family that commissioned it was. Lottie, it was the Comptons. As in Alexander Compton.’
Lottie felt her eyes widen.
‘It’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘But how … why would it be here?’
‘Alexander had the ring made. He went back to England for his wedding to Catherine, where presumably he gave it to her.’
‘Then why would it not still be in her family?’
‘Who knows? Maybe she sold it to buy passage home some other way and that’s why we can’t trace her through passenger records.’
‘She came from a wealthy family, why would she need to sell off her engagement ring to buy a ticket home?’ Lottie argued.
‘Maybe she didn’t sell it. Maybe it was removed from her,’ Damian emphasised pointedly.
‘As in … stolen?’
‘Who do we know out here who made a living from stealing from the rich?’
Jack. She nodded thoughtfully. ‘That means she at least arrived here. But how would Jack have had the opportunity to steal it?’
‘The only way we can legitimately place Jack and that ring together would be through the coach robbery somehow,’ Damian said, shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t prove Catherine was here.’
‘Maybe Compton had it with him?’
‘Maybe,’ Damian said. ‘Tell me about your family connection to the ring.’
‘We’re fairly sure it traces back to Emeline,’ Lottie said. Suddenly, it made sense. She’d never actually considered the ring had been a gift from Jack—he wasn’t a rich man and he never had the chance to spend what he stole in the coach robbery. Then there was the letter to Adelaide and the mention of passing on the one special thing given to her by Hattie’s father …
‘Her daughter, Hattie, was left the ring.’ Lottie paused, then explained about the letter to Emeline’s cousin and the possibility she may have been referring to Jack being the father of her child. ‘I just didn’t connect the ring to him because Henry Oldsfield, the man she went on to marry, had come from a wealthy family. It just made sense he’d have bought her beautiful jewellery.’
‘A husband would probably be suspicious of his wife having such an expensive piece of jewellery if he hadn’t been the one to give it to her.’
‘Henry passed away while Hattie was still in her early teens. It’s entirely possible he never knew about it … or anyone else for that matter. She would have been able to wear it later, and no one would have questioned where it had come from.’
‘Are we sure the ring hadn’t been passed down to Emeline from her mother?’
‘I could only find reference to it from as far back as Emeline. Before then, there’s no mention of any other female in the family having passed it down.’
Damian raised an eyebrow thoughtfully. ‘The evidence seems to be leaning more and more in favour of Jack as the link.’
‘What if Catherine was in the coach?’ Lottie asked. ‘You couldn’t find her listed on any return ships to England, so could it be that Alexander went to Sydney to bring her home?’
Damian shook his head. ‘There’s no mention of her having been there, not in any of the newspaper or police reports. They would have made mention that the wife of a murdered man was present.’
Lottie mentally flicked through her research of the stagecoach robbery. ‘But there were no witnesses.’
‘No. The gang had killed the coach driver and the two guards, as well as three policemen.’
‘What if Catherine had been there but there was no one left alive to confirm it?’
‘There was no body recovered,’ Damian said. ‘I mean, Jack was a murderer, no doubt about it, he’d shot and killed before, but he’d never harmed any women or children in any of the robberies he and his men had done. Even during the homestead robberies across the country, he never harmed any women. They all mention how much of a gentleman he was, even while robbing them.’
‘Maybe Jack let her go. After taking the ring,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘The bush would have been easy to get lost in. Maybe she was out there and no one even knew she was missing?’
‘I’m not dismissing the idea, but surely at some point someone would have stumbled across a body out there?’ Damian replied.
Lottie shrugged. ‘I just can’t help but think that if Catherine had gone missing before the robbery, wouldn’t her husband have taken out ads in the paper and hired detectives? Wouldn’t there have been some kind of search for her? Surely he wouldn’t have given up so easily and returned home without her that fast? The fact that there isn’t any evidence of that happening kind of makes me think that maybe she wasn’t missing before the stagecoach was robbed.’ She saw him nod a little at her words, so pressed on. ‘There was no listing for her on any ships that left after. It’s unlikely she simply turned around and got back on another ship to head back to England after enduring almost four months at sea, possibly heavily pregnant.’
‘That scenario has never really felt likely to me either,’ Damian said with a shake of his head. ‘But linking this ring to Catherine … that definitely sheds new light on a few things.’
‘ If it’s the same ring,’ Lottie stressed.
‘There’s only one way to find out. We need to get it appraised.’
Lottie snorted. ‘Mum’s never going to agree to that.’
Damian shot her a puzzled look. ‘Why not?’
‘She genuinely fears it.’ Damian still looked confused, so she added, ‘I’m telling you, she won’t even look at it.’
‘Why not?’ he asked again.
‘Because …’ Lottie began, faltering as she realised she was talking to a man who dealt in facts and accurate information. Not someone likely to believe in cursed rings. ‘She’s just got this thing about it,’ she finished lamely.
‘Would it help if I spoke to her? Asked her for permission?’ Damian asked. ‘I can take all our evidence along.’
‘I guess you could try,’ Lottie said slowly. There was no way her mother was going to have anything to do with it.