Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter 1
Bombe Imperiale
6½oz rice, 4oz fine white sugar, 2pt fresh cream, 7oz glacé apricots, cherries and pineapple (chopped fine), yolks of 4 eggs
Simmer rice in cream till soft. Beat in the yolks while rice is hot, stir in a low fire for two verses of the anthem. Add the fruit. Place in a copper bowl in a larger bowl of chipped ice mixed with rock salt. Stir till the mixture thickens then place in a bombe mould. Keep on ice before turning out. Decorate with sugared violets before serving with raspberry puree.
SYDNEY, NOVEMBER 1869
CLANCY
The harbour sang with sunlight. The seagulls danced. Even the smoke from the steamship’s funnels seemed to waltz as Horatio Clancy cuffed the urchin trying to pick his pocket on the crowded wharf, then stared at the young woman gazing anxiously at the faces of those who waited on the wharf as she stood among the other First Class passengers on deck.
It was love at first sight.
This was convenient. The marriage had been arranged a year earlier, across six thousand miles. The Honourable Flora McPherson, daughter of Lord Angus McPherson and Lady Angus, of Buccleuch Abbey, Northumberland, to wed Mr Horatio Clancy, only son of Mr Ezekiel Clancy, of Overflow, in the colony of New South Wales, and his wife Mary (deceased).
The notice did not mention that Ezekiel Clancy had been transported more than forty years before for stealing twelve bags of turnip seed, nor that his wife had been an Irish orphan, taught cookery and scrubbing by the nuns, then sent as a child to earn her keep in the colony of Australia, where men outnumbered women perhaps forty to one, and a talent for cookery or even scrubbing was rare.
Flora’s red hair flamed like a sunrise. Her dress and sunshade glowed immaculately white. Even though he had only seen a miniature of her, painted by her aunt, the Honourable Flora McPherson was unmistakable. She still looked so very young.
And she was his.
Clancy knew the moment when Flora saw him too. He lifted his top hat so she could see his face more clearly. She smiled, a look of total joy, and he knew that somehow, miraculously, at the first sight of him — tall, tanned, dressed in his frock coat and waistcoat — she felt the bond between them too. He felt a sudden deep gratitude to Maria, who had assiduously perused English magazines so his tailor could be given the exact patterns for the latest in gentlemen’s apparel.