The English Bride Read online

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  He took her chin and tilted her mouth. “Poor, poor, Francesca,” he said very softly. “It was no different for me.”

  She stood very still while he kissed her, feeling the force of his desire held on a tight leash. “What is it you want?” she whispered into his mouth, half-closing her eyes.

  He wanted to slide his hand down over her swan’s neck, cup her smooth, creamy breast, feel it swell to the tenderness of his fingers. He wanted to let his hand descend…

  “Just one word, Francesca,” he said huskily. “You. There’s so much I want to tell you.”

  “So much I want to hear.”

  Anything might have happened next, so closely were they drawn together in heart and mind, only Fee chose that very moment to come hurrying out onto the verandah, walking to the balustrade. “Darling, Ngaire wants to show us today’s rushes. Sure you can’t stay and see them, Grant?”

  Grant’s smile was openly mocking. “I really have to get away, Fee.” Of course she knew he did, if he wanted to be on Opal by nightfall. “You’d better go, Francesca,” he told her dryly. “Fee’s full of surprises. Now she’s applying a bit of maternal pressure.”

  Goddammit, yes, Francesca thought in amazement. The phantom mother of her childhood, the brilliant shooting star, was now siding of all things with the ex-husband she had so capriciously cut out of her life. Nevertheless Francesca sprang to Fee’s defence so deeply was the habit ingrained. “Mamma only intends to be…”

  “Please don’t say kind,” Grant warned, his strong, handsome face showing its high mettle. “I think Fee could be a ruthless opponent. What she doesn’t intend is for you to be buried away in the wilds. Not that I blame her. God knows I can see both sides.”

  Gently, conciliatory, Francesca touched his hand. “I’ll bring my sketchbook over tomorrow. I so much want to show it to you. Another part of my dream—” the same part…she didn’t tell him in her dream the homestead and the garden merged “—we were planning an oasis in the vast landscape. It would be impossible to conquer such immensity but one could devise a sort of sweeping Australian garden landscape. Something on the grand scale to live in harmony with the unique environment and survive drought. I suppose it’s far too ambitious, but one could landscape some of the watercourses. Indigenous trees of course but massed plantings. And there could be a polo field with lots of shade for the ponies, the spectators and their cars. It would be an enormous challenge, probably daunting, but so exciting. We could create our own vision rather than going along with existing…”

  He interrupted her almost fiercely. “We? You did say we, didn’t you?”

  Francesca didn’t falter, even with her mother waiting anxiously for her up on the verandah. “Yes,” she answered, her heart in her eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NEXT day he couldn’t get away from Laura Station until after the midafternoon break. He had a new recruit on roster, a man the same age as himself, Rick Wallace—an excellent helicopter pilot with more than enough qualifications and flying hours to warrant his inclusion in the team, but a mite short on actual experience in aerial mustering. It was his first priority as boss of the team to make sure Wallace was handling the job properly. He always conducted a premuster briefing, always took aerial shots, pointing out possible dangers on the site, sometimes acting as copilot to continue with the first-hand instruction. By smoko he was sure he was leaving the rest of the day’s work in Rick’s gifted hands. Rick was well on the way to having the same sort of skills as himself and he, too, was mad on flying. They would be friends.

  When he arrived back on Opal it was to find the leading man had arrived to film his scenes; Ngaire introduced them, pleasure in her eyes. Her hero was an up-and-coming young English actor unconventionally handsome, dark-haired, light-eyed, with reputed considerable sex appeal for women and the ability to get male audiences onside. Grant knew the role called for a genuine English accent rather than an assumed one, which could slip from time to time, as well as a male lead with an international “name.” The name was Marc Fordham. He had a friendly manner and a firm hand shake. Grant liked him.

  Marc was dressed in part in a stained and dusty rather billowy white shirt and tight dark brown trousers and a wide silver buckled belt. His dark curly hair was shoulder-length and tousled, a few days growth of beard on his face. He looked great, every inch the dynamic hero of the novel. The women wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off him, Grant thought, amused the dark tan—dark as Brod’s that went so extraordinarily well with light eyes—was courtesy of the make-up department. Someone would have to warn him of the dangers of the outback sun. Though he tried not to make it too obvious his own eyes were going in search of Francesca. Finally when she didn’t appear and he couldn’t sight her, he was forced to ask Ngaire where she was.

  “Out riding,” Ngaire volunteered, as though it was her own greatest pleasure to be in the saddle. “With Marc here we thought we’d go ahead with his scenes with Fee.” Fee played the hero’s distant relative, the wife of a powerful Sydney landowner keen to recruit the hero to his interests. “Francesca wasn’t needed so she and Glenn decided to go for a ride. Glenn is a weekend rider,” Ngaire laughed indulgently. “Francesca, I believe is a brilliant horsewoman. One of the many reasons she got the part of Lucinda. She has that mad, suicidal ride in her final scene. We’ll leave that to the last days of shooting. We were even going to ask you if you could line someone up for the long shoots. Someone who could pass for Marc. Marc has had to learn to ride a horse of course, but he’s no expert. If you could come up with a stand-in?” Ngaire looked winsome, clearly hoping or counting on, either he or Brod would do it. But he couldn’t answer for either of them.

  Instead he nodded noncommittally. “Any idea where they’re headed?”

  “Oh, not too far I would imagine.” Ngaire started to lose interest, keen to get on with filming. “Francesca said you liked her to stay close to the home. I think she left a note for you.” She cast her eyes around, saw nothing, fluttered a hand. “She was sitting out on the side verandah, sketching as I recall. Maybe it’s out there.”

  No note. A number of sketchbooks tidily stacked on the circular table, a leather case full of pencils, charcoal sticks close beside. He was finding out something new about her all the time. It was absurd to be jealous of Richards. Beautiful as she was, Francesca as a femme fatale he couldn’t buy. Francesca was honest and true. She had gone for a ride and she would be back soon. Grant sat down taking the sketchbook from the top of the pile, conscious of a swift emotional response as his eye fell on a drawing of…

  Himself. Or himself as Francesca saw him. He stared at it for a long time thinking she had made him look a whole lot better looking than he was, maybe a touch arrogant with the lift of his chin and the angle of his head. But it was undeniably him and it was very good. He turned more pages marvelling at the drawings. Himself again and again. Members of the family. There was Brod, a genuinely handsome devil. Beautifully lily cool Rebecca in any number of poses. Fee in an armchair, Fee reading a script, Fee and David, numerous sketches of Ally, a few of Rafe looking like a medieval knight. Perhaps that was the way she saw him.

  Other books were devoted to animals, beautiful drawings of horses, cattle, kangaroos, emus, brolgas, swans, pages of the giant wedge-tailed eagle with detailed inserts of wings. She was wonderful at capturing animals in action. She must have sketched at the instant it happened. Other sketchbooks contained Kimbara landscapes, with stockmen at rest, or driving herds of cattle. There were innumerable little sketches of wildflowers, lilies, ground orchids, boronia, flowering vines.

  Another couple of sketchbooks were devoted to studies in anatomy the structure of the human body. They appeared to be absolutely accurate. Other exercises fleshed out the skeleton. Obviously Francesca had received a good deal of training. He’d no idea she was so talented in this way. He wondered if she painted in other media—watercolours, pastels, oils? He
would love to see what she could do. Talent like this deserved the greatest encouragement.

  The very last book in the pile, almost hidden, contained what he was so desperate to see. Francesca’s visions of his dream homestead. The first sketch was front on. So real he felt he could reach out and open the front door.

  Francesca! He loved what he saw. She drew effortlessly as if she loved it. The facade was completely modern, huge areas of glass that could be opened to the desert air. The central core of the homestead enclosed front and sides by sweeping verandahs, no flamboyant classical columns but representations of narrow steel supports running the entire length of the facade. A concession to tradition a double height entrance but what totally blew him away rising behind it a three-story open bell-tower, modelled on a Spanish mission tower from where bells would call and one would have a fantastic view of the desert landscape.

  Other drawings followed, different aspects, different angled facets, various sketches of the tower, all a little different, open views down into the interior with the layout of open-plan rooms and an enclosed central courtyard with a tall fluid water sculpture instead of the traditional fountain. But what was so fascinating was Francesca had put splashes of colours—yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw sienna, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow and red, lamp black, he read them off—down the side of the pages along with specified materials, stone, glass, steel, richly grained timbers, different shades and textures of granite.

  Obviously their minds worked in the same way. Working quite independent of him, with her own background of a jewel-like English country home, she had come up with a design structure little different from his own except for the novel addition of a tower.

  It was downright uncanny. Her vision reflected his own. A graceful house for all its modernist approach. She had even sketched entrance gates to the main compound. Not high to restrict the uninterrupted views but substantial, making a statement, two low pillars of desert rocks anchoring bronze gates depicting two magnificent rearing horses, the whole shaded by an A-framed roof from which hung the legend, Myora-Opal Station.

  There weren’t words for what he felt. He only knew he wanted to live there. With the girl of his dreams, Francesca.

  This was the kind of thing he had wanted from the architect but he realised in that he was being too simplistic. Madison had picked up on all his basic cues, his vision a striking contemporary version of the traditional homestead but Francesca with her knowledge of the site had worked from the imagination. Clever, clever, girl.

  From his vantage point on the verandah he was the first to see the grey gelding come in, disconsolate, head down, reins trailing.

  God!

  Grant vaulted up from his chair, taking the steps at a single leap, running across the garden to the open grasslands. The horse heard his repeated whistles, carried on the wind. It pricked its ears in the direction from whence they had come, then adjusted its direction. Minutes later Grant had it by the reins. The grey’s coat was covered in sweat. It was obvious it had bolted, only slowing its flight when it was in sight and sound of the homestead. It gave Grant considerable comfort to know Francesca was a fine horsewoman with hands like silk. But Richards, according to Ngaire, was an inexperienced rider. He only hoped if it was Richards who had become unseated he’d been wearing one of the light weight helmets the station insisted their guests wear. Galloping across the plains with only an akubra to protect a fragile skull was only a romantic notion for anyone but a skilled rider.

  A young aboriginal boy came running as he approached the stables complex, taking the grey’s reins. “What’sa matter, boss?” Bunny so called because of his prominent but dazzlingly white, front teeth stared up at him with black, liquid eyes. “Where this one come from?”

  “You tell me, Bunny,” Grant responded grimly. “Were you on hand when Miss Francesca and her friend went out?”

  “Sure was, boss.” Bunny was happy to confirm it. “Saddled up for them. Miss Francesca picked out Gypsy. A bit frisky but I reckon she can handle ’im. The guy settled for Spook. Nice and quiet.” Bunny ran an ebony hand over Spook’s side. “Though with a horse you never to know. Reckon he’s come a way. Sweatin’.”

  Grant looked as if he was about to curse but didn’t. “So someone has taken a tumble I just hope to God, Bunny, you gave him a hard hat?”

  Bunny looked him straight in the eye. “I was goin’ to, boss, but Miss Francesca insisted on it right away. Wore an akubra herself like the rest of us. Talk about bushie!”

  “You know she’s half Australian. Get the saddle off him, Bunny,” Grant said. “Any idea where they headed?”

  Bunny waved a hand. “Miss Francesca didn’t say and I didn’t think it my place to ask.”

  “That’s okay,” Grant said. “See ya, kid. From now on you have my permission to ask everybody where they’re headed. So don’t have any qualms. I’ll go back to the house and check. Miss Francesca was supposed to have left a note.”

  Fee as it turned out had it, which struck Grant as odd, given Fee appeared to be against his and Francesca’s deepening involvement. She apologised profusely when Grant told her crisply she should have handed it over once he returned.

  “One of the horses has returned without a rider,” he told her, grey-green eyes glinting. He took the note from its unsealed envelope and opened it. “Don’t panic, it’s not Francesca’s horse,” he had the grace to reassure Fee. “She was riding Gypsy. Richards was riding the grey gelding, Spook. It’s a quiet work horse, but like all horses it’s unpredictable.” As he was speaking he was reading swiftly. “They’ve headed out to Blue Lady Lagoon. An easy trail. I’ll get going.”

  “I do hope it’s nothing serious.” Fee was looking unaccustomedly chastened. “I understand Glenn was little more than a beginner. He couldn’t handle anything at all lively. And Francesca! I know she’s got a lot of common sense but I hope she gave that serious consideration.”

  “I only hope we’re not looking at broken bones. Just in case I’ll have to put out a call to the Royal Flying Doctor.”

  “Glenn wouldn’t have a clue about roughing it,” Fee said.

  “Would Francesca?” Grant countered briskly. “Anyway I must go. There’s only so much daylight left.”

  He took the four-wheel drive, heading out across the plains country to a favourite haven for all the station, black and white. Blue Lady Lagoon. All the stations in the Channel Country had similar flowering waterholes, filled with beautiful waterlilies, the sacred blue lotus, the pink, the cream, the rarer red lotus and the giant blue waterlily of Blue Lady Lagoon with its spectacular flowers growing up to a foot across. No matter how hot it was Blue Lady Lagoon with its tall trees, numerous golden grevilleas and native hibiscus, its understorey of mosses, vines and ground orchids offered an almost junglelike cool. He could understand why Francesca had headed there. He didn’t realise it but he had tightened his jaw until it ached. He wouldn’t accept Francesca was perfectly all right until he laid eyes on her. At least they couldn’t get lost. They had only to follow the chain of billabongs home.

  Ten minutes out he was confronted by an extraordinary sight. In the shimmering, dancing light of the atmosphere a small figure appeared out of the near distant mulga. The figure was on foot leading a black horse that could only be Gypsy. Hunkered down over the horse’s back was a far more substantial figure. Richards.

  Without further ado Grant tore off across country, angered beyond words—Francesca was walking in the heat. No way to travel! God she could have been walking for miles! If so she would be parched. A wave of hostility towards Richards swept through him, rivalled by his great sense of relief. Richards had to be in a bad way if he had consented to do the riding while Francesca walked.

  Closer he saw Francesca had come to a standstill, holding firmly to Gypsy’s reins, looking up at Richards probably asking him how he was. Moments more and he brought the Jeep to a halt, jumped out and moved towards them with all the speed and purpose of a big cat
.

  “What’s happened here?” His intense scrutiny devoured Francesca as he checked to see if she was all right. Only then did it move on to Richards as he tried to neutralise his anger. “Are you okay there, Glenn?” he asked, moving alongside Gypsy soothing him.

  Richards managed a smile, trying to straighten. “Afraid I took a tumble.” That was clear from all the grazing down one side of his face and the condition of his clothes.

  “No bones broken.” Francesca came to stand at Grant’s shoulder. “He’s concussed, I imagine. Very groggy.”

  “So you let him up on your horse?” He all but accused her in a display of perverse male emotion.

  “Come off it, Grant. I had to,” she answered in a mild voice. “He’s in no condition to walk.”

  “And you are?” He stared down into her lovely, sensitive face. She was wearing her wide-brimmed akubra with a light blue bandanna protecting her nape, but her face was very flushed and beads of sweat had gathered across her forehead at her temples and beneath her eyes. Sensibly she had let down her long hair as a curtain and had rolled down the long sleeves of her yellow cotton shirt but he could plainly see a runnel of sweat moving down between her breasts with damp patches all over the blouse and waistline. “The first thing we’ve got to do is get you a drink of water,” he said harshly, starting back to the four-wheel drive.

  “It’s all right.” She came after him to lay a reassuring hand on his arm. “I made sure we didn’t set off without water. I stopped to give us a drink just before we moved out of the scrub.”

  “So you can drink some more now,” he said, making short work of pouring out some water from the supply in the vehicle.

  “You’re not going to stand over me while I drink it?” Francesca asked wryly.

  “Yes, I am,” he answered firmly. “Something else I want you to do while I get Richards is put this towel over your face and neck.” He started to saturate a small hand towel with water, not content with handing it to her but taking charge himself. He swept her akubra off then began sponging her hot face with the cool, clean water easing part of it around her throat. “What boots have you got on?” he demanded next, his brow knotted.