Curses and Confetti Read online

  Curses and Confetti

  Jenny Schwartz

  Curses & Confetti is the third novella in The Bustlepunk Chronicles, that began with Wanted: One Scoundrel and continued in Courting Trouble. It completes the story of Jed and Esme’s romance—but you can definitely read and enjoy it as a standalone story. This is an adventure in Australia’s wild, wild West when gold was king and anything was possible!

  Esme Smith and Jed Reeve are getting married. The unlikely pairing of an Australian suffragette and an American inventor is set to be the wedding of the year—until the Gypsy Oracle arrives in town, a man is killed, Jed is hopelessly compromised and Esme has to save her man and survive…Grandma!

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter One

  Swan River Colony, Australia

  November 1895

  Crack! The cricket ball hit the coconut sharply and tumbled it off its stand.

  “Good on yer, mister.” A cheer went up from the crowd of little boys clustered around the coconut shy. “You hit it.”

  The skinny stallholder was less enthusiastic, but he stooped, picked up the coconut and handed it to Jed Reeve.

  “Good shot, mate. You won it fair and square.” The narrow face broke into a false smile. “There you are, folks. See how easy it is! One ball, one coconut. Try your luck!”

  Jed grinned.

  The stallholder had casually, determinedly, taken away the two additional balls Jed’s penny had bought him. The other man wasn’t risking more coconuts to the American with a sharp eye and practiced throwing arm.

  “Esme, may I present you with this token of my esteem?”

  His fiancée glanced from the rough, awkward-to-carry coconut to his face. Laughter glimmered in her blue eyes. “Dear sir, your kindness overwhelms me.”

  “As it should. It’s not every man who has the discrimination to select such a perfect gift for his beloved.”

  “He’s right, miss.” One of the little boys piped up. “It’s a whopper of a coconut.”

  She laughed. “Believe me, I’m properly appreciative, but I think…” She glanced at Jed. “There might be a more appropriate recipient?”

  The boy didn’t understand the large words, but he understood Jed’s gift of the coconut.

  “Here you are, son. Courtesy of the lady.” The boy’s eyes widened and he hugged the rough coconut to him. “To share with your friends.”

  “Thanks, mister,” the group chorused, then raced off with their prize. Unlike the adults, they had no misgivings about carrying a coconut through the fairground crowd.

  “My hero.” Esme leaned fleetingly against Jed’s arm.

  “Shucks, ma’am.” He exaggerated his drawl and tipped his coachman hat. Its crown, half the height of a top hat, made a useful storage space for many things—but not coconuts. “’Twas nothing.”

  It was late Saturday afternoon at the beachside fairground—only just re-opened after a winter off-season. To the west, the Indian Ocean stretched out all the way to Africa’s far distant coast. To the east, a cluster of boarding houses edged the park. Near to, the crowd of fairgoers were happily occupied with the varied entertainments. An elephant munched peanuts in between short lumbering rides for excited children. A clockwork monkey turned a music barrel, competing with a carousel that spun with brightly colored gaiety and blared its music in a galloping rhythm. The scent of popcorn and cotton candy floated on the air.

  “Roll up, roll up, prepare to be amazed…”

  They strolled on past barkers and stalls offering everything from palm reading to cures for baldness.

  “Toffee apples,” Esme said in the tones of someone who’d seen heaven.

  He saw the stall. “Would you like one?”

  “Weellllll. On the way home. They’re so difficult to eat with any dignity in public.” She had already shed her gloves to deal with sticky cotton candy an hour ago.

  He liked to see her hands like that, ungloved but wearing his ring. The sapphire and diamonds caught the sunlight and flashed blue fire.

  “Dignity?” he challenged in mock indignation. “And were you thinking of my dignity when you made me whirl around in that monstrosity of a whirligig?”

  “The Octopus?” Laughter threaded her voice. “You enjoyed it.”

  “With my knees tucked under my chin in that tiny compartment?”

  “And your arm around my shoulders.”

  “Purely to save space,” he assured her.

  They smiled at one another, in total harmony, enjoying the banter and the afternoon together.

  A larger than average crowd spilled out of a stall and partly blocked the aisle. Esme stopped and read the sign, “The Gypsy Oracle. Why is it funfairs attract so much occult nonsense?”

  “People enjoy it. The mystery of the unknown.”

  “I don’t believe any of it,” she said. “Not even horoscopes, which many Indians swear by.”

  “I’d noticed a number of astrologers’ signs hung out in Bombaytown.” Bombaytown was the Swan River Colony’s Indian version of San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was colorful and exotic and a world unto itself—although Esme had a number of friends there and was welcome even in the narrowest hidden alley.

  “I’ve had my horoscope done twice. Sometimes you just can’t refuse.”

  “And what did it say? that you’d marry someone tall, dark and handsome from over the sea?”

  “Tall, dark and egotistical. No, you can laugh. It said I’d have four children.”

  His teasing humor fell away as he thought of Esme ripe with his children, of blonde, spirited daughters and daring sons. “I’d like four children, with you.”

  Their eyes met in question, answer and promise.

  Then the crowd shifted. A bulky man in a too-tight, yellow and green checked jacket jostled her, and Jed angled to put himself between her and the clumsy oaf who smelled like a brewery. The movement opened a space and they found themselves close enough to see what had attracted the onlookers.

  “Well, now,” Jed said.

  An attractive woman with dark hair and hazel eyes occupied the tent. She wore a gypsy costume with swirling skirts in purple and crimson and huge gold hoop earrings. A crimson scarf tied back her hair. But it was the machine beside her that caught and held his attention.

  He edged forward, sweeping Esme protectively in front of him as the crowd closed around them.

  The machine had the patina of old bronze. It bulged in odd places, like a squatting toad made of tubes, with its quite complex construction on display. It even had a mouth, wide enough to admit a man’s hand. It sat on a table covered in shiny, purple fabric that matched the gypsy woman’s dress. A brass plaque, brashly new, had been screwed to the base, giving the whimsical monstrosity a name.

  The Gypsy Oracle, it seemed, was a machine and not a woman.

  The woman, though, ran the show. She stood behind the table and touched a button. A bell chimed within the belly of the machine. The clear chime struck the crowd to silence.

  “We begin.” Her voice was low and throbbing, pitched to carry. “You all know the story of the gypsies. We are cursed to wander the world. The restlessness carries us ever onwards. But it was not always so…Once, ah
once, we had our own country and it was rich in gold and frankincense and magic.”

  The bell within the machine resounded.

  The crowd murmured with interest and approval. The bulky man in the green and yellow jacket pushed forward till he stood by the table.

  The gypsy woman stared at him for a long moment, then raised flashing eyes to her audience. “But we were cursed! By our greed and our pride, the land itself cast us out. The earth vomited us from our homes.”

  “Earthquake,” Esme muttered. “Maybe a volcano. Good story.”

  “We had no time to take anything with us and so, everything was lost—until now! Now, as we approach the twentieth century, brave men have ventured where no one dared and they have returned with tales of six-legged beasts that walk like horses and ruined buildings, greater than those of Ancient Greece, that house the remains of faded glories. But in among the ruins there are still treasures to be found, treasures such as this, the Gypsy Oracle.”

  She reached out, in an almost voluptuous gesture, and stroked the dull bronze of the machine. “The Gypsy Oracle has long been a legend of my people. You—who know so little—say ‘cross a gypsy woman’s palm with silver and she will tell you your fortune’. Bah! Small courage and little gain. I tell you, the man who wishes to know his fortune must place his hand in the mouth of the Gypsy Oracle and dare to receive its mark.”

  After such a challenge, there were any number of young men willing to swagger forward and give the gypsy woman tuppence to place their hand in the machine slot and receive her admiring smile. When they withdrew their hands, the woman held each up to the crowd, showing the new marks on their backs.

  “Hieroglyphs,” Jed whispered to Esme.

  She turned her head to whisper back. “From Egypt? How clever. The whole performance is a cut above the average charlatan.”

  “The machine is certainly impressive.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, an expression of affectionate understanding for his inventor’s passion.

  He couldn’t help it. Design of any kind intrigued him. He was darn lucky to have found a woman who could understand and support his interest.

  “A lion!” The gypsy woman reclaimed their attention. A blushing young lad of about fifteen allowed her to show his hand to the crowd. The surprisingly clear mark in the sepia ink the Gypsy Oracle used showed a leonine symbol. “Good fortune, but also a warning. You shall face many challenges, but with the heart of a lion you shall triumph.”

  “At least she always gives good fortunes,” Esme said. “I detest the so-called psychics who prophesy bad things. People have enough to worry them without made up problems.”

  The pushy man in the green and yellow jacket stomped forward and thrust his hand into the machine. He leered at the gypsy woman as he did so, tossing tuppence onto the table.

  This time, she didn’t touch his hand or show it to the crowd.

  The man’s leer became even more unpleasant. He raised his hand himself, showing a vulture. “So, lady, what’s my fortune?”

  “Probably about what you deserve,” Esme muttered.

  He wasn’t a prepossessing fellow, sporting a crooked nose and a cauliflower ear. An ex-fighter, undoubtedly. A bully, too. It was in his swagger.

  “Beware the vulture,” the gypsy woman said. “A sign of death’s victory.”

  The crowd stirred uneasily.

  “Don’t bother me none,” the man boasted. “I deliver death.”

  “That is nothing to be proud of,” Esme snapped.

  The man leered at her.

  Jed remembered the last would-be murderer Esme had taken down with a swift strike from the stiletto blade hidden in her boot. He groaned.

  She patted his arm reassuringly.

  The bully blinked, baffled by their reaction, and turned back to his first target, the gypsy woman. “That ain’t much of a fortune, a li’l birdie stamp. Yer owe me sumfin’ more.”

  Despite the drunken slur of his speech, a thread of gloating anticipation sounded clear.

  “You paid your tuppence—”

  “Nah, nah. I want more’n that. Show us your legs.”

  It wasn’t only Esme who gasped at this flagrant transgression of daylight morality. There were women and children present. What the drunk was asking for happened at night, in the shadows, while the police looked away.

  “I’m a respectable woman.” The gypsy retreated. “Depart.”

  The bully simply grinned, displaying rotten teeth.

  “On your way.” Jed took a step forward. “You’re offending the ladies.”

  “Yeah?” Another leer. “Some ladies ought to be grateful any bloke takes an interest.”

  “Enough.” Jed reached out to seize the man’s arm.

  The bully staggered out of reach, fists clenching, but when he shook his head to clear it, he almost fell over. It was obvious he was in no condition to resist his eviction. He seemed to realize it, too, and turned his defiance on the gypsy woman. “Don’t forget me, missus. I’ll be back.” He stumbled out, assisted by nudges and thumps from the disapproving crowd.

  The air seemed clearer with him gone.

  Jed tipped his hat to the gypsy. “Ma’am, I’d wager the machine can do more than stamp hands. It’s quite extraordinary. The metalwork alone…” He fished in his pocket for a coin. “I’d like to examine it closer.”

  He gave the woman five pence and placed his hand in the machine. While he did so, he concentrated on the elaborate mechanism hidden within the bronze tubes. Some of them seemed mere decoration. Behind others, he glimpsed suggestions of a clockwork mechanism.

  A stamp pressed into the back of his hand. He withdrew it, studied the jackal symbol, then showed the crowd.

  They cheered—more for his removal of the drunk than the act of fortune telling.

  “A dog,” announced the gypsy woman. “Your loyalty shall be questioned, but will be found to be true.” Her dark eyes looked beyond him to Esme. “You are a man a woman can trust.”

  Jed returned to Esme.

  She gripped his arm, looking displeased. “I know I can trust you. I don’t need some rouge-cheeked charlatan to say so.”

  “I’m sorry, but that is all for now. The Gypsy Oracle will open again at five o’clock. Please, tell your friends.”

  Esme led him from the tent, whipped out a handkerchief and began scrubbing the back of his hand. The ink smeared into a dark cloud.

  “A fascinating machine,” he said. “I wonder what else it can do? I don’t believe she’s using a quarter of its capabilities.”

  “It’s an over-grown stamping machine.” Esme scrubbed harder.

  He caught her hand. “Leave me some skin.”

  She stared at the crumpled, stained handkerchief and the reddened back of his hand. A wry smile twitched her lips. “At least I didn’t ask you to spit first.”

  Her reference to the maternal command that started hasty clean-up operations amused him. “I appreciate it.”

  She dropped her handkerchief into an overflowing trashcan and tucked her hand in his elbow. “‘Fortune’s mark’, what a load of rubbish.” She smiled up at him. “I think I will have that toffee apple.”

  Chapter Two

  Happy, tired fairgoers overflowed the tram. Exhausted toddlers slept in their mothers arms, oblivious of the rattle and sway of the carriage. Esme stood beside Jed, balancing easily, aware that he was nonetheless poised to catch her if she stumbled when the tram swung around the approaching corner. She smiled. Jed supported her suffragette ideals, but nothing could eradicate his innate courtesy and protectiveness.

  When they married, they’d have to learn to balance her independence and his sense of honor. By Jed’s code, men looked after their women.

  She frowned. It wouldn’t be easy. A man’s honor was important—but so was a woman’s. She’d worked too hard for equality to surrender her gains, even for love. Women needed her to fight for them. They might be trapped in abusive marriages, in drudgery that amount
ed to slavery, in prostitution or frustrated despair, but she had the intelligence, time, will and money to fight for them. She would not abandon their cause.

  With Jed and her wedding inexorably approaching, she was racing against time to establish her legacy for women’s rights here in the Swan River Colony before her new life drew her elsewhere. This afternoon at the fair had been rare stolen hours of irresponsible happiness.

  Evening shadows were creeping into the port town of Fremantle. The tram left behind the crowded pubs where men gathered at the end of a long, working week. The lumpers or dockworkers were loud and rough. Miners in from the goldfields were even rougher, unshaven and garrulous after the loneliness of their work. Terrace houses with their narrow strips of garden gave way to detached houses with shady yards filled with flowers. Children scrawled hopscotch squares on the footpaths or climbed the trees, building cubby houses in the branches of jacarandas, those heavenly blue flowering trees from Africa, or in local gum trees. A boy whizzed past in a billycart made from milk crates and perambulator wheels.

  “Hooligan,” an elderly man said. “He’ll kill himself riding near the tramline and then who’ll tell him mum?”

  His mum already knew. She stood in her front gate, arms akimbo, and shouted. “Connor Murphy, I told you—”

  The tram rattled on. The next stop was Esme and Jed’s. He rang the bell and helped her off.

  Home was the Smith mansion, built by her father after he struck gold inland, inadvertently starting the gold rush that had so transformed the Swan River Colony and making him the richest man in it, and possibly, in all of Australia. Esme knew that he’d have traded it all for her mother’s life, but it was nearly two years now since the accident and time was moving on for them all.

  But she wished her mother were alive to meet Jed and to bring her sanity and humor to their wedding arrangements. Her father had returned from his gold prospecting and thrown himself whole-heartedly into the task of getting his only child married in fine style. He’d already booked the cathedral and the bishop. Esme would have preferred her local church and Reverend Sherbrooke to officiate, but she suspected the hoopla was her father’s way of coping with the knowledge he was losing her.