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Back The Postmistress
Chapters (53)
  1. Cover
  2. About Alison Stuart
  3. Also by Alison Stuart
  4. Title Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Author’s Note
  52. Acknowledgements
  53. Preview of The Goldminer's Sister

He turned his thoughts back to Cowper’s niece, Will Penrose’s sister. Her neat little figure in her green coat and some sort of ridiculous hat with a red feather, standing in the road looking for a brother who would not be there to meet her.

‘What’s the girl’s name?’ he asked.

‘What girl—Oh, Cowper’s niece? Eliza.’

Eliza Penrose. Alec turned her name over in his mind. She would surely be the young engineer’s legal heir. The guilt that coursed through him cut deeper. Will had trusted him with a secret—a secret that lay concealed beneath a floorboard in Alec’s bedroom—but now Will’s closest relative had arrived, Alec was left with a dilemma, a crisis of conscience.

On the morning Will Penrose had been found dead, Alec had discovered an envelope pushed under his door labelled, ‘Keep this safe for me’. Alec had thought it puzzling but simply set the envelope to one side, intending to ask Will what he meant when they next met.

Will’s trust in him had only become significant when he arrived at work to the news that Will lay dead at the foot of the tailings. When Alec opened the envelope later that evening and sorted through the papers, he recognised what his friend had left for him: meticulous diagrams and mathematical calculations that comprised a new design for an industrial boiler that would revolutionise the mining industry—if not all industries.

He waited until Ian went to bed and he heard the gentle snores that indicated his brother was sound asleep. Alec retrieved the oilskin-wrapped package that he had hidden on the day of Will’s death.

In the living room, he set the package on the table and unwrapped it, to reveal a large, stout, buff-coloured envelope from which he pulled the much folded and slightly grimy papers that had been Will’s passion. A new and more efficient heat exchanger that would double the power output of the industrial boilers.

When Will died there had been no one to claim the plans and Alec had lain awake many a night, wrestling with his conscience. The devil on his shoulder had whispered in his ear and told him that, if he still believed in God, this would be the answer to his prayers—he had left Lanarkshire and come to Australia for the promise of a better life and the proceeds from the patent on such a machine would mean he and Ian could live like kings. All he had to do was lodge the patent in his name.