The Man From Southern Cross Read online

  “Yes, go!” the others urged.

  “You do ride?” Again the degree of challenge.

  The twins exchanged glances, but Roishin was perfectly poised, looking at him with her iridescent eyes. Blue, green, he wasn’t sure. They seemed to change dramatically with different flashes of color from her dress.

  “I do, but I think as a renowned horseman and polo player you might judge me harshly.”

  “Mont’s always kind to beginners,” Van, his faithful disciple, said.

  “Roishin doesn’t look terribly convinced,” Annabel laughed.

  “I’d love to come with you, David.” She smiled, softening his mood and charming him. “If it makes you feel happier, I belonged to a pony club as a child.”

  Her voice was actually connecting with his nerve ends, vastly unsettling him. “Well, that’s something, I’m sure. Until the morning, then. Just around daybreak is perfect, but I suppose that’s too early for you?” Did he have to make everything sound like a rebuke?

  “Dawn sounds perfect.” She continued to smile gently, humoring his abrasiveness. Her mouth was full, soft, with a pronounced cupid’s bow. Was that supposed to mean sensuality? Vulnerability? All he knew was that he wanted to crush it with his own.

  “We’ll have breakfast waiting when you come home,” Sasha promised, her smile registering a certain roguishness.

  Don’t try your matchmaking on me, Sasha, he thought. Fond as he was of his stepmother, he was the master of his own fate. And he had rejected Roishin Grant on sight.

  HE AWOKE at first light from long habit, finding in himself an excitement he wanted to shut out. Damn and blast, what was the matter with him? He wasn’t a callow adolescent. If he wanted to brag, he could have said he was immensely successful with women. But this Roishin Grant was affecting him sharply, bringing out something almost primitive in his nature. He felt threatened, hostile, enslaved. All at the same time. He couldn’t help feeling a certain contempt for himself, as well. No woman was going to dominate his life ever again. He’d decided that long ago.

  Still, the coming of Sasha, then the twins, had made Southern Cross cheerful. When he married—and he would have to—he’d have the sense to find an honest openhearted woman like Sasha. She’d brought peace, but no drama. His father’s experince, and he remembered his beloved father in all his moods, had warned him off drama for life.

  Yet here he was, showering and dressing at full speed. It was a spell of sorts, and he despised it. He scooped up his akubra and went out the door, hoping she’d have the sense to bring a hat. The sun would be up soon enough, and he found himself hating the thought of any burning to her skin. No wonder they described a woman’s skin as “magnolia.” Hers had the same flawless, creamy, stroke-me quality.

  Miracle of miracles, she was waiting for him in the hallway, as straight as a boy except for the soft, high thrust of her breasts. She actually jumped when he came up behind her saying, “Hello, there,” then swung to face him, her long hair, very thick and straight, brushed back from her face and caught in some kind of knot on her nape. As a hairstyle it couldn’t have been more severe, but she carried it beautifully. In fact, he saw more this way—the lovely line of her jaw, the way it merged with the graceful column of her neck, the almost flower-like set of her ears.

  “David, you startled me!” she gasped. “You have a very quiet tread.”

  “So I’ve been told.” He could see a trace of something—near-fright?—in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I had no intention of alarming you.” But she knew there was a hardness in him; a hardness that might make a sensitive woman shrink. “I’m glad you thought to bring a hat.”

  “One of Van’s.”

  “Then put it on. The sun’s strong even this early, and your skin is very white.” He couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her, although that wasn’t what he wanted at all. Her hair, her face, the feminine slope of her shoulders. She, too, stood staring up at him, like a creature trying to struggle out of a trap.

  “I’m not arguing with you, David,” she said finally, putting the hat on and adjusting the chin strap. “It’s very obvious that you’re right—and it’s equally obvious that you’re accustomed to command.”

  His gaze raked her, trying to decipher her expression. “I do run Southern Cross. And I know that any other way wouldn’t work.” He extended his arm, indicating she should precede him out the door.

  Manny was already up and about, parading his infectious grin. “Mornin’ Boss. Mornin’ Miss.”

  “Miss Grant,” he told the boy briefly.

  “Miss Grant, o’course!” Manny studied Roishin with immense approval.

  “Good morning, Manny,” she smiled. “We’ve met before. Don’t you remember?”

  “Sure do, ma’am. Are you gonna take the same horse?”

  “And which horse was that?” Mountford asked, deceptively quiet.

  “Miss Grant’s a plenty good rider,” Manny told him warmly. “She really knows how to treat horses.”

  “That doesn’t exactly answer my question, Manny.”

  “She took The Brigadier!” Manny whooped. He looked and felt thoroughly jolted. “The Brigadier is much too strong for a woman.”

  Manny sobered abruptly, doing a little mime with his hands.

  “Please don’t blame Manny,” Roishin begged. “I…rather insisted.”

  “Manny should know better. You won’t be riding The Brigadier today.” He couldn’t control the curtness and he saw her flush. Damn! He didn’t really want to upset her.

  He gave an order to Manny and the boy moved away, returning a few moments later leading Star Lady, a small but beautifully proportioned silver gray mare with a sweet temper and a surprisingly long stride.

  “Oh, isn’t she lovely? Is she for me?” Roishin must have forgiven him, because she looked up at him with a smile that would have melted a stonier heart than his.

  “She is. You’ll find her a pleasant ride. I’ll take The Brigadier…if you don’t mind.”

  It didn’t take long to saddle up the horses, and soon they were on their way. He rode the big, dashing jet black stallion that stood a good seventeen hands high. If she could hold The Brigadier as she must have done, she was an excellent horsewoman.

  As he soon found out. The talk of the pony club had been no more than a tease. She was an experienced rider, with considerable style. A feeling of great contentment welled up in him, calming his inner conflicts. It was an incomparable feeling, riding together in the pearly dawn. The air was blissfully pure and cool, laden with the sweet scents of the bush. Bird song poured from the trees that scattered blossom like confetti as they rode beneath them and out onto the open plain. Her face beneath his sister’s white akubra was alive with quick feelings. She looked entranced, as though the magic he always felt was getting to her, too. It pleased him more than he would ever have believed.

  Not everyone understood the outback, its vastness and savage majesty. Some found it eerie, others intimidating, and many professed to a kind of atavistic fear that raised the short hairs on the backs of their necks. It had something to do with the enormous empty distances, the great silence, the play of color, light and shadow on the monumental primeval rocks. The outback had an incredible mystique. It was the wild beating heart of the most ancient continent on earth.

  At one of the crystal-clear gullies overhung by the weeping casuarinas they came upon a small party of aboriginal women and children gathering herbs, and they exchanged greetings before moving on. After a long and agonizing drought, Southern Cross had experienced its first good season in years, and the wildflowers were prodigious, running in a marvelous multicolored embroidered carpet to the curiously domed hillocks that rose like Persian minarets on the station’s western border.

  At this time of day the hills were a soft pink, but like many of the great rocks of the interior they changed color with weather conditions, aspect and time of day. Mountford had seen them run the gamut from salmon pink to rose to glowing furnace red
, then back to deep pure and misty mauve. There were aboriginal legends connected to every natural feature on the station, and as they slowed their exhilarating gallop to a comfortable walk, he began to point out different places of geographical interest, outlining the Dreamtime legends that went along with them.

  The sun was up now in full splendor, dispersing the strange mists that hung like clouds along the ancient watercourses. The aborigines looked on them as guardian spirits, and to an imaginative eye they appeared to be just that, lying in milky circlets and ribbons only a few inches above the green canopy of trees. One could expect mists when a chill hung over the bush, but the mists moved in faithfully even when the weather was brilliantly clear and hot.

  “Magic!” she said, listening to him. “And why not, in such a place?”

  Her answer delighted him, but he tried to hide it. “Time to go back,” he announced matter-of-factly, unwilling to prolong his joy in her company. “As Manny said, you know how to treat horses.”

  “Because they’re such beautiful creatures!” She leaned forward to stroke the mare’s neck. The wind had torn at her hair, releasing a few strands, which she casually brushed away. She turned her head to him, using one hand to shield her eyes from the strong slanting sunlight. “I can ride The Brigadier, you know.”

  “I’m sure you can, but I’d rather you didn’t.” He heard his own voice, deep, smooth, vaguely taunting. “I wouldn’t care to see you break your lovely neck.”

  For all her poise, she flushed, a soft peach bloom on her cheeks. “You don’t like me, do you, David?”

  “What am I supposed to say to that?” He was surprised by her directness.

  “Perhaps what you’ve got against me?”

  “What idiotic nonsense!”

  “Don’t you realize how hostile you are?”

  “Hostile, possibly,” he agreed. “You disturb me, Miss Grant. You’re…extremely direct. Anyway, it’s nothing personal.” Despite himself, he tried to explain. “Something about exotic creatures makes me tense inside.”

  “How? In what way?”

  He glanced at her briefly, a silver sparkle in his eyes. “One can see you’re a lawyer from all the practiced questioning. Surely you’re not attempting to analyze me?”

  “Forgive me. I’m just trying to understand what I’ve done. Annabel and Vanessa are my dear friends. I want you to like me.”

  “Presumably every man you meet likes you?” His tone was cool to the point of cutting—and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Well, I don’t go around blazing out challenge.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I want to be your friend, David. Please believe me.”

  “I’m sorry, Roishin.” He smiled at her. “That may never happen.”

  FOR THE REST of the day he lost himself in backbreaking work, only returning to the house as the sun was setting in a blaze of varied reds and golds. He went straight to his room. Suite of rooms really—a bedroom the size of a football field, as Van described it, bathroom, dressing room, a sitting room large enough to accommodate some excellent pieces he had appropriated from other parts of the house. He was entirely self-contained and private, which was the way he liked it. One of these days he would have his wing of the house refurbished, but it all cost money. Big money. Much as he loved his ancestral home, he had to admit that its maintenance had created a few problems over the years. As well, he had outlaid an astonishing amount of money to have decorators flown in to pretty up the main reception rooms for the wedding. He intended to do Annabel proud. Vanessa, too, when it came her turn to be married. Whatever his fears of the femme fatales of this world, he understood that Sasha and his sisters were the sort of women who would work at making their marriages happy.

  The actual wedding ceremony was to be performed by a longtime family friend, an Anglican bishop. It would take place in the old ballroom, which could easily accommodate the guests. The reception was being held in the Great Hall in the main compound. Ironically the Great Hall had been erected for his late father’s wedding to the beautiful Charlotte Sheffield, the current Lady Vandenberg.

  Sasha had met his mother many times over the years when she was socializing in Sydney or Melbourne and always returned home saying what a “lovely person” Lady Vandenberg was. She had even suggested Lady Vandenberg might be sent an invitation to the wedding; the twins had met her, as well, and found her “fabulous.” But as ever, Sasha’s efforts at reconciling mother and son had met with total failure. As far as he was concerned, marriage meant one mate forever. Even the brolgas that danced on the river flats knew all about that.

  When he went downstairs, showered and changed, he found the women setting out wedding gifts in what the family called the Sistine Chapel. It was really the original drawing room in the east wing, a very large room, cedar-paneled. A bit dark and dingy now, but it had a remarkable plaster ceiling that his father had had restored by a master painter and then insured for many thousands of dollars.

  Mountford surveyed the room carefully. The furniture, also high Victorian, had been rearranged for the occasion, and he’d had the station’s carpenters make long trestle tables to line three sides of the room. Sasha had hunted up the most beautiful of the old lace-appliquéd linen tablecloths to cover them, and they skimmed the parquet floor. The trestles groaned with their magnificent freight of wedding gifts. It all meant a lot of extra work, but Annabel had been determined that her guests be able to see and enjoy all the lovely things she and Michael had been given.

  He called a greeting, acknowledged with sweet smiles, and Annabel ran to him eagerly. “What do you think, Mont?”

  He realized his approval was important to his sister, so he backed off into the double doorway, making a frame with his hands.

  “Splendid!” he announced. “A marvelous display. Not too many people make the gesture these days. TheAustins didn’t, remember?”

  “A pity, but the custom is disappearing. Too much work, I suppose,” Annabel thrust her hand through her short blond curls. “It was Roishin’s idea to create all the different levels, and she wants to use those big white porcelain swans for a table decoration.”

  “Very effective.” He let his eyes rest on Roishin’s face, marveling that it could appear both sensual and wonderfully tender. “What sort of flowers would you use?”

  “Perhaps sprays of white Singapore orchids if I could get them. A little greenery.”

  “Why don’t you get on to the fellow who’s doing all the floral arrangements?” he suggested. “I’m sure he could run to a few more orchids.” All the flower arrangements and bouquets were being flown in from Melbourne, along with the country’s most fashionable floral designer and his assistants. Whatever it took, he would see that Roishin had her porcelain swans carrying masses of white orchids on their backs. “All practice for your own wedding, Roishin,” he added lightly.

  “Roishin hasn’t got any wedding plans,” Vanessa told him, glancing at her friend with a smile. “But she could have her pick of at least a dozen eligible men.”

  Roishin shook her head, obviously wishing Vanessa hadn’t said it, but he finished for his sister, “Drawn like moths to the flame!” Idly he moved down the line, reading the cards attached to the wedding gifts. There was tableware of every make, design and color, quietly elegant, which he preferred, or richly embellished. Limoges, Lenox, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton, Royal Copenhagen, Mikasa. Crystal galore, Waterford patterns, Baccarat champagne flutes, wine, sherry, liqueur glasses, brandy balloons. A magnificent ruby decanter and a dozen matching goblets decorated with gold. Silver of all kinds, wine carafes, tureens, trays, an antique silver tea service, candlesticks and candelabra by the score. There were antique clocks, Lalique vases, ceramic vases and paintings. Furniture in one corner—six antique dining chairs, an embroidered screen, a very beautiful French secretaire that had belonged to his grandmother for as long as he could remember. Linen occupied the entire length of one trestle, from tablecloths to napkins,
through bath towels to satin-bound blankets and the finest American-cotton sheets. All in all, there was just about everything a very fortunate and popular young woman could desire.

  He transferred his attention to the sections of wall above the cedar paneling. “I don’t know why someone didn’t point this out. The room needs freshening up.”

  “We weren’t going to use it, remember?” Sasha said, looking up. “Besides, you’ve spent so much already, Mont.”

  “A coat of paint should do it.” Roishin came to stand near him, her particular fragrance entering his nostrils. “What about a lovely blue, instead of the ivory? The same blue as the plasterwork in the ceiling. And maybe we could take that gorgeous Persian rug out of the library just for the occasion. The guests won’t be going in there, and the rug has such marvelous rich blues, pinks and reds. Annabel, what about a few gilt-framed mirrors, instead of paintings? There’s so much in the attic. Van showed me. Turn on the chandeliers and voilà! It’ll look much lighter in mood and tone.”

  “Why, of course! How delightful!” Annabel exclaimed. “May we have that done, Mont?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said with gentle indulgence. He ran his hand down her cheek. “I’ll have someone mix the paint in the morning. Roishin will have to stand by to ensure it’s just the shade she wants. Raid the attic, too, by all means, Roishin. You have carte blanche.” He moved toward the door. “I’ll be in my study until dinnertime. Call me if there’s any lifting to be done.”

  IN THE MORNING he detailed two of his best maintenance men to take some white interior paint and a couple of tubes of tint from the station store and present themselves to Miss Grant at the homestead for further instructions. He himself had a meeting with one of the big meat buyers flying in from Bahloo Springs, a Mountford property some one thousand kilometers to the northwest. He expected the usual haggling, the disputes about bullock weight, but in the end he almost always got the deal he wanted. Market requirements had changed over the past few years. The smaller three-year-old beasts were in demand, not the larger five- to six-year-old bullocks. He expected he’d sell an entire paddock within the first hour. Southern Cross, crisscrossed by a maze of water channels, was a fattening paradise after the rains. The cattle were in prime condition.