Chapters (53)
- Cover
- About Alison Stuart
- Also by Alison Stuart
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgements
- Preview of The Goldminer's Sister
Adelaide turned to her guest. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’
He held up his left hand. ‘I’m a bad patient, Mrs Greaves, but with respect, it was getting mighty warm out there.’
‘I didn’t think …’ Adelaide began. With the temperature outside climbing steadily to the century, she should have realised that the shed would become too hot for comfort.
She lifted the counter again and he followed her into the parlour, wincing at every step. Adelaide indicated the day bed she had purchased from the proprietor of The Empress hotel only a few months earlier. ‘You may find it a bit hard,’ she said, ‘but it will be cooler in here than the shed.’
Mr Hunt settled on the overstuffed piece of furniture, grimacing as he positioned his leg.
The parlour served as both drawing and dining room, with a round table covered in a velvet cloth and four matching chairs. Two well-used armchairs faced the empty fireplace. Adelaide and Netty sat there in the evening, talking about the day’s events, reading or doing the mending.
Caleb Hunt gestured at the bookshelf beside the mantelpiece. ‘Could I trouble you to lend me one of your books?’
Adelaide considered the titles. ‘I don’t know if my reading is to your taste,’ she said. ‘Dickens?’
‘It’s been a long while since I read anything other than a news sheet,’ he said. ‘Dickens is fine.’
She handed him Great Expectations and settled the cushions behind his back. As she turned to return to the shop, he caught her wrist.
‘I heard what those two delightful ladies had to say,’ he said. ‘I commend you for standing up to them.’
‘Thank you. As you may have gathered, not everyone in this town shares that sentiment. They are good girls really and they could do a lot worse than Lil White’s establishment.’
She glanced down at her wrist, still circled by his long, fine-boned fingers. It was not the hand of a miner or a soldier, come to that.
Mumbling an excuse about returning to her duties, Adelaide extricated her hand and hurried back into the post office, rubbing her wrist. He hadn’t hurt her but the place where he had touched her burned like fire.
Seven
Seven
19 December 1871
‘Penrose!’ Caleb looked up from The Goldfields and Mineral Districts of Victoria with a wave of genuine pleasure at seeing the Cornish engineer.
‘Doing some study?’
‘Young Dan picked this up from the library at the Mechanics’ Institute,’ Caleb shut the book and studied the cover. ‘I’m afraid it mostly has the effect of putting me to sleep.’
‘If you’ve only ever done alluvial prospecting,’ Penrose said, ‘you are going to find hard-rock mining difficult work. You need to understand the lie of the reef, and that’s only after you’ve found it.’