FLORA

Flora rode in a carriage borrowed from the Drinkwaters, with a cart to carry the most necessary belongings and Clancy on horseback. Flora was alone in the carriage, except for Clementine in her basket on the floor, for Sarah had given her notice just before they left. She had found a new position — Flora suspected there were many eager for the prestige of employing the Honourable Flora’s lady’s maid, as well as her expertise with hair and Paris fashions.

Flora would need to ride in the cart the last two days of the journey, for the track to Overflow was rough and narrow and, even then, passable only in dry weather.

The rest of their possessions — the many trunks that held Flora’s clothes and the furniture kept back from the Rosemere sale — had been in storage and would follow soon.

They set out before dawn, for their first stopping place was in the mountains, a fashionable resort where many Sydney dwellers took respite from the summer heat, though Rosemere had captured the cool harbour breezes, so the Clancys had never sought refuge there.

By the time it grew truly light, Clementine had been fed and Flora had dozed, the cushions comfortable despite the jolting. She pulled up the window shade and looked out.

It had never occurred to Flora to wonder about the land beyond Sydney or, rather, she had assumed it consisted of small, neat farms and vast estates, like those she’d known in England, for a sufficiency of towns were marked upon the map in Clancy’s study. Towns surely meant civilisation.

And this was almost as she’d expected, even if they seemed to have left cobbled streets behind them: neat farms and (mostly) orderly farm houses, orchards, fields of wheat and vegetables, sheep and dairy cows.

The carriage climbed at last into the mountains. They spent the night there, at a hotel with chandeliers and blessed cold air, and a fire blazing in the fireplace in the bedroom, and a colonnaded dining room where civilised food was served by liveried waiters and the claret was excellent.

Dressing was difficult without Sarah. Flora wore only the lightest of side-lacing sports corsets now, out of the city, but they must be laced. Clancy knew enough to help her, but he would not pull tight enough. She would have to face the other guests at breakfast with a waist of a full twenty inches. But at least he could do up the buttons on the back of her gown. She managed to dress her own hair in the simplest of styles, drawn back into a simple bun, and hoped there would be no acquaintance who might see them.

The descent that day was harder. Clancy and a groom borrowed from the hotel tied a log to the back of the coach, for its brakes weren’t equal to the muddy slope. Mist descended, which made her homesick for Northumberland even as she huddled Clementine to her in her shawl.