“I brought you this,” Nathan said, nudging the bedroom door closed with his boot heel. He carried a tray filled with a helping of everything from their meal. “You left the table without eating much. I thought you might be hungry.”
“I am.” She put down her embroidery and cleared the side table ladened with books so Nathan would have a place to put the tray.
“We’ll have to get another table for you here if you’re going to eat many meals in this room.” He pushed the table and tray close to the bed where Lydia was perched on the edge.
Prickles of warmth touched Lydia’s cheeks and she stared at her hands in her lap momentarily, sighing. “Yes, well, I’m surprised you’ve brought me anything at all, or more than bread and water. I was unconscionably rude to your employer.”
“Don’t let my relationship with Irish stop you from speaking your mind. He and I have muddled through for years. It was quite something to see him set back on his heels.”
“Still, I was rude.”
“You were baited.” Nathan sat down in the rocker and stretched out his legs, using his heels as a brake to keep from moving. He glanced around the large room and realized some other furniture was in order. Odd, he thought, how it had all seemed adequate before Lydia. Now he wanted a place where he could sit beside her while she embroidered, a desk where she could write, and a small table where they could have a meal alone when Irish was in one of his black moods. “You won a measure of Irish’s respect this evening.”
“I don’t know if I want his respect,” she said honestly. “I’m not certain I like him or care to. He’s not a very kind man.”
“Kind? No, that’s not Irish. He’s not cut from the same cloth as Samuel Chadwick and you’d do well not to compare them. There’s no competition here for your affection. At least Irish doesn’t mean for there to be. He only wants to come to know his daughter.”
Lydia dabbed a tiny slice of lamb in mint jelly, pausing as she lifted it to her mouth. “As to that,” she said. “How do I know he’s Marcus O’Malley? How do I know I’m really his daughter?”
Nathan laughed softly, a half smile on his lips. “He asked a similar question. You only have to look at his eyes to know the truth. They’re your own, Lydia, and you know it.”
She didn’t respond to that but ate in thoughtful silence. “What happened to Irish’s legs?” she asked. “Would he mind if you told me?”
“He probably thinks I already have. You barely reacted when you saw him in his chair at dinner.”
“I was shocked. And you noticed.”
“I was touching you,” he said softly. “I notice when you tremble.”
For a moment Lydia forgot how to swallow. She simply stared at Nathan and felt heat blossom in the pit of her stomach. “Don’t,” she said suddenly, angrily. “Don’t say things like that and don’t look at me that way.”
One of Nathan’s brows arched, his features both amused and mocking. “You wanted to know about Mad Irish’s legs,” he said calmly, as if her outburst had never been.
Lydia began to eat again. “Yes. Has he been in the chair very long?”
“A little more than three years. We’d had a run of bad luck with the bushrangers. They were taking sheep, knocking down fences, and breaking dams. One of Ballaburn’s stockmen was killed defending the property. There was a time when the rangers left Ballaburn alone, in deference I suppose to the fact that Mad Irish was a convict himself. But that changed as he got richer and the size of his holdings grew. In general, there’s quite a bit of sympathy for the bushrangers, but not here at Ballaburn, not when we’ve seen firsthand what they’re capable of doing.
“Brig and Irish and I set out with a plan to stop them. We left a few men to defend the house while everyone else mounted to drive the bushrangers out. Irish and I were riding together near Nillaburra ridge, heading south toward the gully. God, I can even remember what we were talking about when it happened.”
San Francisco, Nathan thought. They had been talking about the wager even then. Irish had had something like it in mind for years. Long before Nathan arrived at Ballaburn, Irish had been tutoring Brigham, preparing him to make the voyage to California and bring back his son or daughter from the rarefied air of Frisco’s social elite. But Irish had hedged his bets, bringing in Nathan at Brig’s request and tutoring him in the same vein. While Nathan proved to be a quick study, Brigham still had years of a jump on him and was prepared to leave Ballaburn long before his friend. Irish, however, was only willing to send them in tandem, and that meant Brigham was forced to wait until Irish decided Nathan was ready.
“I was trying to convince Irish to let Brig leave Ballaburn,” Nathan said, his head tilted to the right as he retrieved old memories. “He wouldn’t hear of it. Wouldn’t consider giving Brig the money for his passage and wouldn’t think of letting me go with Brig then. Brig had been bending his ear in a like vein for weeks with a similar lack of success.” He realized that he was coming perilously close to telling Lydia about the wager and shifted his focus. “I’ve always wondered if we’d been paying more attention to what was around us, whether we could have heard the bushrangers taking up positions along the ridge.”
“Oh, God,” Lydia said softly as her thoughts leapt ahead of Nathan’s story, knowing precisely where it would lead.
“We didn’t have any time to get to our guns as the shots were fired. Our horses reared, scrambled, and lost their footing on the steep hill. Mine was shot out from under me and I slid fifty yards to the gully floor. I had a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. Irish wasn’t so lucky. He took a bullet in the back.”
“And hasn’t walked since.”
Nathan sat up straighter. He nodded. “We were left for dead. Would have been, too, if it hadn’t been for Brig. When we didn’t return to the house that night he took a few men with him and tracked us down. They found us in the morning and brought us both back on a sledge.”
Brig again, Lydia thought. Did Nathan hate her for what she had done to his best friend? And Irish? What must he think? “Don’t you wonder what’s happened to Brig?” she asked. “You’ve never expressed the least concern.”
“How would you know my concerns? I couldn’t talk to you about him the entire voyage because you didn’t recall his existence. Isn’t your question a trifle hypocritical anyway? You’re the one who shot him.”
“He was trying to—”
Holding up his hand, Nathan stopped her. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me. I didn’t mean to sound accusing. I know Brig.” He wanted to win at all costs, Nathan added silently. “I’ve often thought that if it hadn’t been for your memory loss, you might have shot me as well.”
“I still may.” She blinked widely, covering her hand with her mouth as she realized she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
Nathan leveled her with a hard, chilling glance. “Don’t try it, Lydia. You wouldn’t like the consequences.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“As for Brig,” he said, ignoring her protest. “If he’s recovered, we’ll know it soon enough because he’ll come to Ballaburn. And if he’s dead, well, there’s nothing much I can do about it, is there?”
“My God, you’re a hard man.”
“Those are the realities, Lydia. They don’t make me hard, only practical. You’ve never had a mate like Brigham Moore so I don’t expect you to understand. Just accept it.”
“I only thought—”
“Don’t.” He stood. “Don’t think. I’ve already told you I don’t blame you for what happened. If anything, I have you to thank for removing Brig from the picture. You helped me win.” He turned on his heel then, not waiting for her to demand that he leave, and strode out of the room.
A few minutes later Lydia watched him from her bedroom window as he took a horse from the stable and charged hell bent for leather into the darkening hills.
It was after midnight when Nathan returned to the room. Lydia had been drifting in and out of sleep for the better part of two hours. As quiet as Nathan was, Lydia bolted upright when she heard the door click into place.
“Who’s there?”
The question stopped Nathan in his tracks. He swayed a little, his imperfect balance the result of lifting too many beers with Irish. “It’s Nathan,” he said. “Who were you expecting?”
Lydia leaned across the bed toward the nightstand, fumbled for the matches, and lit the oil lamp. She replaced the glass globe carefully and adjusted the wick. “I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she said. She drew the covers more securely around her, but it wasn’t only because the room was chilled.
Nathan sat heavily in the rocker and began removing his boots and socks. His grin was a trifle lopsided and a dimple appeared at one corner of his mouth. “But then I’m not just anyone.”
“I wasn’t expecting you, either,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
He held up a shoe with the tip of his forefinger. It slipped off and thundered to the floor. “Should be perfectly obvious. I’m undressing.”
“I can see that. But why here?”
Shrugging out of his jacket, Nathan frowned. “I know I’m a bit tiddley, but not so much that I don’t know it would cause considerable comment if I undressed anywhere else. Where did you have in mind? One of the shearing sheds? The entrance hall? The kitchen?”
“Your bedroom,” she answered.
“This is my bedroom.” He got up and went to the armoire, opening it with an exaggerated flourish. “You see? My clothes are—” He stopped, brows drawn together in perfect puzzlement. “—are not here.” He remembered the trunks and valises and swiveled around, looking for them. They weren’t in the room. “What have you done?”
Lydia drew a deep, calming breath. “What I’ve done is unpack my belongings. I had yours removed to another room, not without some protest from the housekeeper, but I persevered. You’ll find them at the end of the hall, in the room that once was Irish’s before his accident confined him to the first floor. It looked entirely satisfactory.”
“The hell it is.” He sloughed off his alcoholic haze as if he were molting a too tight skin. He suddenly felt very sober.
Lydia watched as he disappeared into the hallway, a little shaken by the cold resolve she had seen in his predator eyes and in the hard set of his features. He was back in less than a minute, carrying two valises stuffed haphazardly with his clothes. He left again, and this time the bumping and scraping of one of the trunks being dragged along the hallway announced his return.
Lydia ran to the door, trying to shut it before he and the trunk came through. Nathan stopped her, bracing his shoulder against it. He held it there, pushing back against her strength, proving that she couldn’t shut him out. “I don’t want you here,” she said, yielding the entrance to him.
“You’ve made that clear.” He dropped the trunk and caught her by the waist as she made to go past him into the hall. “I, on the other hand, want to be here, and I want you with me.”
Lydia’s movement was not so much a struggle as it was a wriggle frought with frustration. “Let me go.”
“Certainly.” He kicked the door shut.
At her sides Lydia’s hands clenched. She was about to say something, thought better of it when Nathan’s glance gave no quarter, and marched back to the bed. She scooted to the side farthest away from him and sat there stiffly, the covers tucked thickly around her. Lydia made every effort to address him calmly. “I suppose there’s no chance of you sleeping anywhere but in this bed?”
“Hardly.”
“Turn back the lamp then when you’ve finished unpacking.” Lydia lay down and curled on her side, giving Nathan her back and forcing an even cadence to her breathing.
He had no intention of emptying either the trunk or the valises tonight. He had wanted to make a point and he’d made it. Nathan finished undressing, put out the light, and crawled into bed naked. Stretching his arm across the wide mattress, he could feel the warmth left by Lydia’s body on the flat of his palm. Reaching further, his fingers could almost touch the curve of her back.
“You don’t have to sleep there, Lydia,” he said, a certain husky weariness in his voice. He withdrew his hand and tucked it under his pillow. “I’m not going to touch you.” She said nothing for so long that Nathan thought she was ignoring him or had fallen asleep.
Lydia had done neither. She was thinking. “Why are you doing this, Nathan?” she asked at last.
“You’re my wife, Liddy.” He stared at the faint outline of her in the darkness. It was the only explanation he was prepared to offer.
San Francisco
Madeline was pouting. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Brigham removed her arms from around his neck. “Lower your voice. Samuel will hear you.”
“I doubt that. He’s got his Chinese whore with him tonight.”
“You really hate Pei Ling, don’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Until Lydia brought her into this house Samuel was faithful to me.”
“Somehow I doubt the reverse was true,” Brigham said. He gave the silk belt around Madeline’s waist a little tug, tightening it, and stepped away from her. “Why he ever put up with your infidelities is beyond me.”
Madeline sucked in her sulky lower lip and abandoned her seductive posture. She moved to her vanity, sat down, and began brushing her hair with hard, quick strokes. “Samuel knows I married him to get a name for my baby. There was never any pretense about it.”
“The way I understood it, you could have had O’Malley’s name.”
“As if I’d have wanted it,” she said coldly. Her hair swirled around her shoulders as Madeline swiveled on her stool. “I don’t want you to go tomorrow.”
“So you’ve said. The passage’s been booked though and I have every intention of leaving in the morning.”
“Why is it so important to you? Does it mean so much that Nathan’s won?”
It means everything, Brigham thought. What he said was, “He hasn’t won yet. Not if I can persuade your daughter to come with me.”
“Her note said she was married to him.”
“We both know he made her write that. There’s no record of their marriage anywhere in San Francisco.” He slanted her a considering look. “What difference would marriage make? You’d come with me if I asked you.”
“Ask me.”
Brigham didn’t hesitate. “Take George’s place on the ship tomorrow.”
Madeline blinked. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Deadly.” He smiled. “Well?”
“You’re mad. Why would I travel to that miserable country when I have everything I want here?”
Brigham walked over to Madeline. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he gave her a light push and turned her on the stool to face the mirror. Standing behind her, his eyes caught hers in reflection. “Do you really have everything?” he asked. “Think you’ll find another lover like I’ve been to you?”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said coolly. Pride dictated her response. “Of course I will. You think too much of yourself. You always have.”
“A moment ago you were begging me to stay.”
“Hardly begging. Begging would be writing it down in an impassioned love letter. I can’t live without you. Or some other sort of drivel like that.”
Brigham went to her escritoire and took out a sheet of notepaper and a pen. He brought it back and laid it on the vanity in front of her. “Write it down. I like impassioned love letters.”
“You have a dozen, I suppose.”
“Not a one.” Madeline picked up the pen and wrote I can’t live with before Brigham stayed her hand. “It’s enough,” he said. He raised her hand and kissed it.
“If I really wanted you to stay,” she said, removing her hand from his, “I’d tell Samuel what was in Nathan’s letter that we destroyed. My husband would see that you’d spend the next ten years in jail.”
“Threatening me, Madeline?” The way his fingers whispered across her collarbone took the hard edge off his voice. Reaching over her, Brig opened the middle drawer of her vanity and pulled out a silk scarf. He pushed aside one shoulder of Madeline’s robe and trailed the scarf lightly over her skin, watching her reaction in the mirror.
Madeline caught the end of the scarf and twisted her hand, wrapping the scarf around her wrist. Brigham still held the other end. She stood, the blue flame leaping in her darkening eyes, and used the scarf as a leading ribbon to make him follow her to the bed. She lay down, pulling him with her, and kissed him hotly on the lips, loosening the belt of her robe with her free hand. The robe opened. Brigham’s hand closed over her breast, kneading it, brushing the nipple so it stood up hard and stiff. She cried out when his mouth replaced his hand.
“Shh,” he said, rising above her. His smile was gentle. “Quietly, darling.” He kissed her until there was only the soft moaning sound of her hunger.
Madeline’s hands slipped under his open shirt, her fingers curling like talons. She scratched his back as her body moved sinuously under his.
Brigham caught her by the silken wrist and brought her hand around. “None of that,” he said softly. Raising her wrist to the spindles in the headboard of her bed, Brig fastened the scarf tightly to one of them.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. Her leg stroked his and her knee nudged his erection. She was more excited than alarmed.
“Something I like to do when a woman wants to put more scratches on my back.” He spread kisses across her face and neck while he worked the silken belt free of her robe. When he had the belt he used it to secure her other wrist. He sat up, straddling her thighs. “You like it, don’t you?”
Madeline didn’t answer. She twisted under him, struggling in the way she imagined he wanted. His eyes were incredibly hot and dark. Her tongue came out to wet her lips as Brigham stroked the underside of her outstretched arms.
“I think you should come with me,” he said softly. “Do you know what it’s like to make love on a ship?” His hands neared her breasts, circling, brushing her with his knuckles. “Come with me, Madeline.”
It was difficult to talk. Her skin leapt in anticipation of his touch. “George is going with you.”
“Do you really think I’m going to let him follow me all the way to Sydney?” he asked pleasantly.
Madeline couldn’t think for a moment through the haze of her excitement. What was Brig saying?
“He’s not welcome where I’m going.” He bent over Madeline and placed his mouth on hers. His tongue traced the line of her lips. “You’re welcome, though. The voyage will be very lonely if you don’t take my offer.”
Madeline averted her face. “What will you do with George?”
Brig’s hands caressed her breasts, her rib cage, and the taut plane of her abdomen. He could feel the excited flutter of her heart and hear the quickness of her breathing. “You don’t really care about George, do you?”
She shook her head, closing her eyes as Brig’s touch forced a wave of pleasure through her.
“I didn’t think so,” he said softly. He kissed her mouth again, deeply this time. His hands left her briefly, long enough to pick up the pillow that was lying near her head.
He raised it and his mouth at the same time. This time when Madeline cried out, the pillow smothered the sound. He held it there long after her body had gone still. “You shouldn’t have threatened me,” he said finally, easing off her. “I was undecided until then.”
Moving quickly, with the rote precision of a task long since refined, Brigham took the ebony-handled letter opener from Madeline’s escritoire and cut her wrists. He removed the bloody scarf and belt from her wrists, stuffed them in his trouser pocket, and arranged her body on the bed to suit his fancy. Practicing Madeline’s handwriting for several minutes at her desk, Brigham finally finished the note she had begun for him. It now read: I can’t live with this ache in my soul. He locked the door to her room and left via the window and the balcony, entering the house again from the side entrance on the ground floor.
He slept deeply that night, fully aware that no one expected Madeline up at dawn to see him off. He would be hours at sea before her body was discovered and even then Brigham doubted he would be a suspect. The suicide note had been a masterstroke.
She really shouldn’t have turned him down, he thought. He might have been able to let her live until they reached Sydney.
Lydia sat in the kitchen with Molly, spooning nut and raisin filling onto pastry squares. Every few minutes she would glance out the kitchen window, see the bright winter sunlight, and sigh. She hadn’t been out of doors for longer than a few minutes since coming to Ballaburn. After the first day a steady rain had misted the valley, swollen the stream, and driven most everything toward shelter except the sheep and Nathan Hunter. He had been gone for four days and three nights, riding out to the far reaches of the station, taking inventory of the work that had gone undone in his absence.
Irish had kept to himself most of that time. Lydia saw him at meals, but their conversation was stilted and superficial, so uncomfortable that they were both relieved to get away from the table. Lydia was many times more at ease with Molly Adams, the housekeeper and cook at Ballaburn for a dozen years, confiding in her almost without being aware that she had. No one at the station knew more about what Lydia thought and felt than Molly, and Molly would have sooner been burnt at the stake than break a confidence.
“You don’t have to stay in here and do this,” Molly said. She wrapped a towel around her hand and opened the hot oven door a crack, checking her pastries. “I’ve been doing it alone these past twelve years and I’m not the worse for it. If I need help I’ll find Tess. She’s not had anything to do this morning besides a little dusting.”
“There’s no coach today?” Lydia asked. It was Tess who served the refreshments to the passengers. The girl lived for the arrival of the coach with its surfeit of male travelers. She flirted and teased, all of it fairly harmless as far as Lydia could tell, and made each weary passenger feel welcome at Ballaburn while the horses were being changed.
“No coach. And it’s a good thing, too. Jack’s not going to put up with much more of her antics. He’s been trying to catch her eye since Brig left and she’s having none of him. She needs to be plonked on the head with a waddy and dragged off to a minister. That shiela’s always wanting what she can’t have or doesn’t need.”
A dollop of filling slipped off the end of Lydia’s spoon and splattered thickly on the tabletop. She scooped it up with her finger and destroyed the evidence of her surprised reaction by eating it. “Tess and Brig?” she asked casually, still sucking on the end of her finger.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Molly said. She dusted her breadboard with more flour, slapped the dough down hard, and began rolling it out with more energy than was strictly necessary. “Forget you ever heard it—or at least that you heard it from me.”
“It’s forgotten.”
“Go on with you,” she said, jerking both her chins in the direction of the door. “The boys will fix you up with something in the stables. It’s about time you’re seeing more of Ballaburn than the inside of this house.”
Lydia laid down the spoon. “I don’t know my way around,” she said, a little uncertain about going off on her own. It was not the same as riding along the Pacific shore or cantering through Golden Gate Park. “Tess says that—”
“Tess is it now?” Molly scoffed. “Probably filled your ears full of tales about the blackfellows and God knows what else. Well, if you’re really worried, then take someone with you.” She paused and caught Lydia’s line of vision squarely. “Take Irish.”
“Irish?”
“Who else?” Molly went back to her rolling. “It’s his station. Knows every inch of it. He can’t go everywhere these days, not that he doesn’t want to, but that contraption he rides in will take him most places.”
“You mean his wheelchair?”
“I mean his buggy.”
Irish was surprised by Lydia’s request to accompany her. He also accepted with such alacrity that Lydia knew Molly had been right to suggest it. Lydia’s mount was a ginger mare, sure-footed, the men in the stable said, and responsive to light handling. Jack and Pooley saddled the mare for her, tripping over each other in their eagerness to help. Harnessing Irish’s gray gelding and hitching the specially made, one-seater buggy was accomplished with much less fanfare. He was lifted easily into his seat and given his buggy whip. There was no fussing, a situation he would have abhorred, as a wool rug was placed over his legs.
“It’s not a bad way to travel,” Irish told Lydia as they rode over the bridge, “but I get a little tired of staring at Horatio’s hindquarters, if you take my meaning.”
Lydia took his meaning very well. His buggy was low to the ground, more like a racing sulky. It was supported by two large narrow wheels at the rear and tilted backward so that Irish sat at a restful angle rather than stiffly upright. In order to see precisely where he was going he had to look to the left or right of his horse; mostly he just gave Horatio a general direction and relied on the horse to get him there.
“Nathan never let on that Ballaburn was so grand,” Lydia said. Although Irish shrugged as if it were a matter of indifference to him, Lydia thought she glimpsed a smile on his craggy, weather-worn face. “He said it was big, but not grand.”
“He probably thought you wouldn’t think so. He told me the kind of place you lived in. Ballaburn can’t be half the size of it.”
“I didn’t live in a palace, Irish. It was huge, yes, but not that enormous.”
“But bigger than Ballaburn,” he said.
“Yes. Why does it matter so much?”
“It doesn’t.”
Lydia knew he was lying, yet she couldn’t fathom the reason. She looked back over her shoulder at the house and saw an inviting warmth there in the gold-and-brown stone that was never any part of her home on Nob Hill. “Your property is much bigger,” she said.
“It has to be. Samuel isn’t a grazier. I am.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Irish was bent on making comparisons and still he undervaluated the breadth and beauty of what he had. Who did he think he had to impress? “I’m not my mother,” Lydia said with sudden insight.
“God forbid,” said Irish, raising his eyes heavenward. “As if I’d want that she-devil here.”
She persisted, slowing her mare to a walk and coming immediately abreast of Irish’s buggy. “You know what I mean. I don’t understand why, but you’re gauging all you’re showing me by her standards. Quite honestly, Irish, she’d hate it—all of it. The isolation alone would drive her to madness. She needs to be in the heart of the city and Sydney wouldn’t do at all for her. The house is too rustic, too small, inadequately staffed, and, worst of all, serves as a way station for the Cobb & Co. line. You may be rich as Croesus, Irish, but my mother would still turn her nose up at what you’ve built here.”
“I didn’t bloody well build anything for your mother.” He gave his horse a flick with his whip. The buggy rattled ahead of Lydia. “I built it for you,” he muttered.
“What?” Lydia kicked her mount to follow. “What did you say?”
“I said I built it for you,” he snapped. “Now, do you want to learn something about your heritage or carry on about your mother?”
Lydia’s mouth closed abruptly and she hung back again, stunned by what he had to say and by the way he said it. When she caught up to him on the rise of a hillock she said, “You’re a thorough boor, Irish, but I want to hear about Ballaburn.” This time she was certain she saw his thick mustache lift to one side as he smiled.
Ballaburn’s landscape was dotted with sheep. Four thousand, she learned, were scattered all over the station, some grazing in loose flocks where the vegetation was rich, others foraging singly where food and water was sparse. Most of them were Merino, a breed with a heavily wooled head and excellent soft fleeces that brought Ballaburn its largest return pound for pound. Hornless Southdown sheep, with their small round bodies and short fleece, were raised mainly for mutton. The medium-sized, white-faced Dorset yielded milk, and the ewes had a tendency toward birthing twins, which kept their number high. All the sheep had especially thick fleeces now. Come September and springtime, when the worst of the cold nights had passed, the Merinos would be mustered in mobs to the shearing sheds and relieved of their coats.
There was cattle also, but only what the station needed to supply the men with an alternative to mutton. Horses were raised strictly for working; no one had any dreams of entering one in the Melbourne Cup. A garden behind the kitchen supplied tomatoes and maize and other vegetables, and wild blackberries grew in abundance on thorny bushes in the hills. What Ballaburn didn’t have naturally was delivered from town on one of the coaches or done without. Molly and an entourage of helpers and hell-raisers only went to Sydney three times a year for supplies.
Lydia and Irish sat in the spotted sunlight under a coolabah tree, she on a blanket, he in his buggy, which she unhitched from Horatio and swung around to face her. They chose food from the basket Molly had packed for them—cold meat, fresh fruit, her sweet and gooey raisin and nut tarts, and drank warm beer from a jug.
Replete, Lydia leaned back against the dense trunk of the coolabah. “I like your land, Irish. I like your smelly sheep and your blue ribbon streams. The sky is almost impossibly wide here and the light…the light touches everything. What did you call those birds? The ones that were laughing when we rode near them.”
“Kookaburras.”
“Yes, kookaburras. Well, I even like them.”
His dark blue eyes narrowed, watching her, and Irish felt the light from her gentle smile touch him as sunlight never could. “You’re more beautiful than your mother ever was,” he said.
Lydia’s response was immediately to begin packing the basket. “We should be getting back,” she said flatly.
Irish swore because he could not get out of his buggy and shake her and make her stop what she was doing. “What did I say?” he demanded.
“Nothing. You didn’t mean anything by it.” She hooked the basket on her arm and folded the blanket.
“Stop right there,” he growled. He tapped her wrist with the end of the buggy whip, in no way that would hurt her but that would get her attention. “Stop. That’s better. Now tell me what I’ve said that has you so riled.”
“You must not remember my mother very well, because you’d never mistake me for being beautiful. I don’t like those sort of comparisons. People, men especially, mean to be kind by it, but it doesn’t endear me to them and never has. They always want something in return for their pretty, empty compliments. Mother was right about that.”
Irish retracted the buggy whip. “I thought you had already concluded for yourself that kindness is not among my short list of virtues. Also, I can’t think of one thing that I want from you that a pretty, empty compliment would get. And finally, I remember your mother quite well and she was younger than you are now when I knew her. If you would but take all those points into consideration, you’d realize I said nothing more than I believed to be the truth.” He let that sink in for several moments, then he said, “Hitch up my buggy, will you, Lydia. It’s time we were heading back.”
That evening after dinner Lydia sat with Irish in his study. He was cataloguing his books, the collection of which was an indication of his wealth as much as the size of his holdings. When Irish asked if she would help, she heard herself accepting in a voice that was almost painfully eager.
“When do you think Nathan will be back?” she asked. Dusty volumes surrounded her on the floor. She picked one up, blew loose dust from the top edge and spine, and began to shine the leather binding with an oiled cloth.
“It’s hard to say. I think he probably means to stay out a week.”
She sighed. Three more days.
“You miss him?” Irish asked shrewdly.
Lydia didn’t look up, but her dusting became a little more hurried. “He left without anything being settled between us.”
“Settled?” Irish frowned. “What isn’t settled?”
“Whether I’m to stay or go, for one thing. The conditions of our marriage for another. An annulment may be possible. At least it’s something we have to consider.”
“Annulment?” Irish set down his pen and peered down at Lydia from over his desk. “There will be no annulment.”
“That’s not your decision, Irish,” she said calmly. “Nathan and I will discuss it.”
Irish wheeled around the desk and rolled himself right up to the circle of books surrounding Lydia. “You should know about the wager, then,” he said evenly. “If it’s an annulment you’re thinking of asking Nathan for, you need to know what it will cost him to give it to you.”
When it was put before her that way Lydia wasn’t certain she wanted to hear. Some part of her knew she would regret it, and still she faced Irish with clear, open eyes and said, “I’m listening.”
“The wager involves three of us: Nathan, Brig, and myself. The prize is Ballaburn itself, divided equally among Nathan and Brig and my child if he was a boy, but going almost totally to the husband of my daughter if my child was a girl. If you had been a boy, Lydia, you would have had to settle here for one year to inherit your third of my holdings. That includes shares in my gold mines northwest of here and the properties I own in Sydney.
“I didn’t have much faith that a daughter, on the other hand, would elect to come here, much less agree to stay—especially not a daughter who had been raised by Madeline. Therefore, in the event my child was a girl—which you certainly are—I told Nathan and Brig the only way they could have the land was to bring you to Ballaburn as a wife. Since Nathan was the one who succeeded, he must now keep you here a year if he’s to take over the land. I would prefer you stayed at Ballaburn, but Nathan pointed out that our agreement only said you should stay in the country a year. That could mean Sydney or Melbourne or some humpy in the outback. A humpy’s a shack, by the way, and I don’t suggest you live in one.”
Irish’s hands folded over the curved arms of his chair. “Have I been clear enough, Lydia? There’s no part of this wager that makes any allowance for an annulment. Nathan can only take the property through marriage. Where you live is negotiable. Marriage is not.”
Lydia set down the book she had been holding like a shield. She regarded Irish steadily. “So you’re saying that Nathan won’t agree to an annulment.”
“He won’t. He wants Ballaburn more than anything. You’d have to have known the deprivation and torture Nathan’s suffered to understand what this place means to him.”
“You used him,” she said quietly. “You knew how hungry he was for something this fine and beautiful and you used him.”
“I make no apologies for it. He knew he was being used. So did Brig. He was a good choice, too, not because he loves Ballaburn particularly, but because he’s greedy.”
“I might have married him.”
“Sure, you might have,” he said, his brogue surfacing. “And if you were more your mother’s daughter and less your father’s, you would have. A pity it would have been, I know that now, but I didn’t know it when I set them up with passage, clothes, and enough money to stake their venture in San Francisco. I even gave Brig the advantage of a month’s head start because he had waited so long for the opportunity to go. Nathan could well have arrived and found the matter settled. Apparently it wasn’t.
“No,” she said. “Nothing was settled. I met them both the same day.”
“And chose between them fairly.”
Lydia’s dark brows arched in question. “Chose? I had no choice. Fair? There was no fairness to me. I don’t know what Nathan told you about what transpired, but our marriage could not have occurred without Brig’s attempt to drug me and Nathan’s lies. That’s the sort of men you sent to find your child, Irish.” Her shoulders slumped tiredly, no anger in her voice, merely a certain sense of hopelessness and rejection. “To treat me with so little regard, you must have regretted my conception more than my mother.”
Irish frowned deeply, marking his high forehead with ridges. “Madeline told you that? That she regretted your conception?”
“Not in so many words,” Lydia answered, looking at her folded hands in her lap. “But it was always clear. I don’t blame her. It stands to reason that she should regret my very existence.”
“Because I raped Madeline.”
Lydia winced but said softly, “Because of that.”
“I see.” Irish looked at his daughter, regarded the bowed head, the slope of her shoulders that spoke of her weariness, the full line of her lower lip that quivered in spite of her best attempts at controlling it. She seemed vulnerable to him in a way that she had not before and he realized he might never have a better chance to be heard. “I loved Madeline Hart,” he told her. “I was thirty-eight when I threw my luck in with some other convicts and went to San Francisco. I had gold fever like the rest of them, dreams of a rich strike that would buy me back the dignity of my birthright. The bloody Brits had taken everything from me and this was my chance to turn the world right again.
“I panned the streams, worked the hills, and never found so much as a fingernail’s worth of gold. I did find Madeline, though. She was a flame-haired witch at eighteen, all flashing green eyes and a smile that turned this old man’s heart over. I should have known better, I suppose. I had a score of years on her, had seen and done things she couldn’t even imagine. Perhaps that was part of the attraction I held for her. I don’t know.”
He eased back slightly in his chair, looking older than his years now as a lightning flash of pain shot down his spine and disappeared in the part of his body that could not feel anymore. “Madeline and I were only together—intimate—three times.” He saw Lydia’s deep flush and went on. “On none of those occasions was it rape. You could have been conceived at any time because I did nothing to protect your mother. I wanted her to have my child and I wanted her to be my wife. Whatever you might choose to disbelieve, Lydia, know that I wanted you.”
Lydia had raised her face. She was looking at him now, listening.
“Your grandfather, Madeline’s father, surprised your mother and me in the hardware store he owned hours after he had closed it for the night. Madeline was naturally embarrassed and frightened and she said the first thing that came to her mind. She accused me of breaking into the store and raping her. I didn’t even try to deny it. Madeline was too hysterical to reason with and her father had a shotgun leveled at my belly.”
“So you ran,” Lydia said.
“Your mother told you that much, I see.”
She nodded.
“Too right I ran, and kept on running. I was a Sydney Duck, despised by every proper Yank, and I could feel the noose tightening around my neck. But I didn’t leave California. I waited Madeline out, giving her time to think about her situation and realize she didn’t have to lie to her father. After six weeks I met her in secret and proposed.” Irish shook his head as though still incredulous about events more than twenty years in the past. “She refused me, Lydia. More to the point, she laughed at me. Her father was already a wealthy man; his store went from bust to boom with the discovery of gold. Pickaxes at forty dollars. Canvas tents at a hundred. What could I possibly offer her? Nothing, she said, so she turned me down.
“I waited another two weeks and went back to her, hoping I could make her reconsider. She knew she was pregnant then—with my child—and she hated me for that. There was no chance of making her listen to anything I had to say. I tried to tell her about the conversation I overheard in one of the pubs, about the land west of the Blue Mountains being a lot like the land where gold had been discovered in California. A drunken Duck named Hargraves made the boast within earshot. He swore he’d find gold back in Australia if Frisco wouldn’t give any of it up.
“I’ll be rich, I told her. Richer than she could imagine. And I’d have a fine home and land enough to support a dozen children.”
“She didn’t believe you,” Lydia said.
“No,” he said, sighing. “Madeline didn’t believe in me. She didn’t love me—probably couldn’t love me, or anyone else for that matter. She clung resolutely to her rape story, no matter that it was bound to force me out of the country. Days before I sailed I heard she had plans to marry Samuel Chadwick. I knew him by reputation, not by acquaintance, and I knew he had come across one of the richest strikes in California. I remember thinking I wanted to kill him for his good fortune.”
“Papa is a fine man, Irish,” Lydia said. “He deserved more happiness than my mother ever gave him.”
“So Nathan tells me. He says my escape was most fortuitous.”
Lydia’s smile was soft with regret. “She’s still my mother. I won’t sit here and say word after word against her. She can’t help being the kind of person she is any more than you can help being who you are.”
“What sort of person am I?” he asked.
“Cross and hard and resentful. Still angry at her, I think. A manipulator. Hurtful and mean-spirited.”
Irish sucked in his breath at her hard appraisal. “Don’t forget boorish.”
“And boorish,” she said. “But there are people here at Ballaburn who think you walk on water. Molly says you’re generous. Tess says you’re kind. Jack says you’re fair, and I’ve never heard Nathan, for all that you’ve used him for your own needs, say a word against you.” Lydia pushed aside the stacks of books in front of her and moved closer to Irish’s chair. She sat up on her knees, placing her hands on his lap, and because he couldn’t feel them there, she took his hands in hers. “Which leads me to believe that you’re either exacting your revenge on Madeline through me, or you’re so frightened I may not like you that you don’t know how to act.” She looked at him earnestly with eyes that were as a deeply blue as his own. “Which is it, Irish?”
He blinked hard, forcing back the veil of tears that blurred his vision. “Scared to death, I’m afraid.”
Lydia raised his hands to her lips and kissed the thick knuckles. “That’s all right, then. There’s no shame in being scared.”
Nathan had a rough scrub of beard on his jaw and above his upper lip when he returned to the house. His hair needed cutting, especially at his nape where the dark strands brushed his collar. A well-worn hat, broken in over years of time, fit the shape of his head exactly and had protected his complexion from the hardening edge of the elements. His clothes smelled of the bush and the meadow, of eucalypt oil and sheep dung, of campfires and cattle. He caught his reflection in the clear smooth water of Balbilla Creek as he crossed the bridge and wondered what Lydia would think when she saw him now.
It was certain his appearance would do nothing to improve her opinion.
Raising the brim of his hat with the back of his hand, Nathan reined in his mount and sat staring at the house, as if something on the face of it might hint at what he could expect. How had she fared these last days? Was she even there? he wondered, or had Irish managed to drive her away? He couldn’t imagine Lydia spending all her time in her room, but what would she have done? She must have sickened of her embroidery by now and Molly and Tess had most things in the house well in hand.
Where was Lydia’s place at Ballaburn as the daughter of the owner and wife of the heir?
Nathan stabled his horse, brushing the animal down himself to delay going to the house that much longer. Eight days in the bush and not a single one of them passing without missing Lydia. He would find himself turning, wanting to point out the koala in the gum tree or the roo springing powerfully on his hind legs through the scrub, and there was no one there to be delighted or confounded. She wasn’t there to share his shelter in the rain or the warmth of his fire in the inky cloudless evenings. He missed her questions, missed her making him think about things he took for granted.
He turned to her during the day and reached for her in the night. His saddle roll was small comfort when he wanted to be pillowed against Lydia’s breasts and feel her fingers sift through his hair. He ached to touch her as well, recall the sweet fragrance that touched the curve of her neck and the soft underside of her elbow. He wanted to caress her with his hands, his lips, his tongue, and make the loving warm and sweet and lingering.
Nathan’s horse whinnied, bringing Nathan back to the present. He finished filling the feedbag, straightened, and jammed his hands in the deep pockets of his wool-and-leather jacket. Striding from the paddock to the house, he felt the taut strain of his body against the button fly of his jeans. What he wanted now was Lydia arching under him, crying out as he took her hot, hard, and fast.
On the threshold of the kitchen he stopped. Lydia was pouring hot water into a large copper tub. Steam rose from the surface of the water and lent her flushed complexion a damp glistening sheen. She dipped her fingers into the water, pulled them back abruptly, swearing under her breath, and added a pan of cool water from the kitchen pump.
Nathan’s eyes wandered over the slender line of her back, the narrow waist belted by a plain white apron, and the hips that curved so gently as she bent over her work. He leaned against the jamb, letting the door swing closed behind him. “Dare I hope that’s for me?”
Lydia jumped and spun around, holding the empty bucket in front of her protectively. Her heart thundered along after her initial fright was over. “You startled me,” she said obviously and inadequately.
“I see that.” He studied her with a lazy, hooded glance. Her heart-shaped face was tilted toward him. She was all dark blue eyes and a wide inviting mouth.
“It is for you,” she said.
For a moment Nathan couldn’t think what she was saying. What was for him? Her eyes? Her mouth? Then he remembered what he looked like. The bath was for him. He rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand and his smile was rueful. He wasn’t even fit to kiss her. Nathan pushed away from the jamb and began shrugging out of his coat.
Lydia unconsciously moved to the far side of the tub as Nathan entered the room. He seemed to fill every available space with his presence, leaving her little room to maneuver or protect herself. Although his appearance now was the polar opposite of how he had looked on their first meeting, Lydia felt as she had then, drawn to the dangerous appeal of his remote eyes and the mouth that merely hinted at a smile. She wanted to respond as she had that first time and run as far and as fast as she could.
She lowered the bucket in front of her. “I saw you from one of the upstairs windows when you were crossing the bridge. I thought you might welcome a bath.”
“I looked bad even at that distance?”
“No,” she said quickly, looking away. “Oh, no…I mean...” He had looked so weary, she thought, pausing on the bridge as he had, reluctant to journey the last hundred yards to the house and equally reluctant to set out in the bush again. “I just thought it might be a small comfort,” she said.
He paused in unbuttoning his shirt. “Thank you.”
Lydia glanced up, smiling. “If you’ll put your things over that chair, I’ll come back for them when you’re in the tub. I have fresh clothes laid out for you upstairs. I’ll get them now.”
Nathan watched her go. He was also reminded of how their first encounter at the Silver Lady ended, and his words, spoken softly to himself were an echo of that occasion. “Oh, Liddy, I think you’ve only postponed the inevitable.”