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I have made a decision about my future.’
    ‘A decision?’ Lachlan felt a stab of alarm. ‘Which is?’
    George stood thoughtful for a moment, and then looked around him.
    ‘Let us walk down to the field,’ he suggested, ‘away from the house, so our conversation is not broken by interruptions.’
    They strolled down to the field in silence, and when they reached it, they rested their forearms on the gate together and Lachlan waited for George to speak.
    ‘My life,’ George said quietly, ‘has got to change. I am no longer the small boy you rescued from the slave trade. I am a man now, and I want to act like a man, and live like a man.’
    Lachlan frowned, perplexed.
    ‘Your generosity, I cannot live on it anymore, take it from you anymore,’ George explained. ‘It’s time for me to make my own way in this world, and earn my own living.’
    Could this day get any worse, Lachlan wondered, and once again a sensation of impending loss swept over him. First his daughter … and now George … no father could love a son the way he loved George.
    ‘Yes … well, your education will open many doors and opportunities for you.’
    George smiled in amusement. ‘My education started long before I entered any classroom in London or Edinburgh. That was just a long study of books. My real education came from the life I lived in India with you and the sahibs in the British army.’
    Lachlan thought back and realised that George was right. From a boy he had lived his young life amongst hardened British soldiers. Always at Lachlan’s side on campaigns, he had marched with them, joked with them, and had even suffered with them all through the long march across the desert from Suez to the Nile. And when the thirst became unbearable in the cruel dry heat of that desert, George had even helped the soldiers by teaching them a trick he had learned from his Arabic mother.
    Those soldiers in the 77 th had loved George Jarvis, loved his laughter and good humour and repaid him by teaching him how to fight, and fight hard, in self-defence. And truth to tell, by the time they had returned from Egypt, George had changed from a boy into a hardened and strong young soldier himself.
    No wonder he had found the physically lazy and soft life of college classrooms so difficult to tolerate.
    ‘But you did well at college,’ Lachlan said. ‘You excelled in all your studies. And now that you are no longer forced to read books, I notice, since leaving college you spend a lot of your time doing just that – reading books.’
    George laughed. ’Now I read books for pleasure not for exams. Books of my own choosing.’
    ‘So what is this decision you have made … about your future?’
    George Jarvis did not answer for a while. Stars were appearing in the sky and the air was getting cooler.
    ‘I want to be a soldier.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘A serving soldier.’ George turned and looked at Lachlan, his dark eyes very serious. ‘In your regiment, the 73 rd .’
    ‘The 73 rd …’ Lachlan made a sound like a groan and bowed his head over his forearms on the gate. ‘No, George, no … one regiment I cannot allow you to serve in, is the 73 rd .’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because, in a few weeks time, the entire 73 rd regiment is being posted down to Botany Bay.”
    ‘Botany Bay?’ George’s interest quickened. ‘Where is that?’
    ‘Some place south of Hell.’

Chapter Five
    In the end, it was not General Balfour or even the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the Duke of York, who persuaded Lachlan Macquarie to go to New South Wales; it was the Prince of Wales.
    In previous times, after his return from India and while he was working at the War Office in London as a staff officer to Lord Harrington, Lachlan had often been required to dine with the Prince of Wales in the company of his boss.
    Upon receipt of his refusal of the posting, Lord Harrington sent him a dispatch a few days later.
    The Prince of Wales remembers you well and fondly, and would