The English Bride Read online

  “If you’re into Bollinger.” She smiled into his eyes. “Some little instinct told me to put it in.”

  Afterwards Francesca and Grant chose to walk off the effects of the celebration, leaving Fee to talk further about her plans. The air was filled with all the clean, dry aromatic scents of the bush, the purplish black sky palpitating with the glittering white fire of countless stars. It should have been exciting but there was a kind of estrangement between them.

  “So is marriage going to interfere with this movie part Fee’s been offered?” Grant asked, more to break the awkward silence than anything else.

  “I’m sure Mamma and David have talked it through,” Francesca said. “It’s not a big role. A cameo they call it. Mamma’s thinking of it as a last hurrah.”

  “Her swan song?” Grant’s deep voice sounded sceptical.

  “God knows she has enormous energy and a great deal to offer. Anyway David’s used to Mamma,” Francesca said. “She’s right about one thing. They’re two of a kind. David has always led a full life, a pivotal member of a very glamorous group, the theatre, the art aficionados. He’s very different from Daddy. My father likes the companionship of a few lifelong friends and his own peaceful world of Ormond. He hates leaving it even for a day.”

  “I expect it’s very beautiful.”

  “One of the most beautiful places on earth.” Francesca felt her heart swelling with pride.

  “But you won’t inherit it?” Grant countered with a kind of disbelief.

  Francesca plucked a waxy flower then twirled it under her nose. “No.”

  “Good Lord!” Grant stared up at the pulsing stars. “Don’t you mind, this male of the line stuff?”

  “Perhaps.” She nodded, in reality deeply attached to her ancestral home. “But I grew up knowing I wouldn’t inherit Ormond, just as Ally knew Kimbara would be Brod’s.”

  “A bit of a difference there, I’d say.” Grant sounded as if he didn’t appreciate the parallel. “The business of running a cattle chain is all hard slog. Backbreaking work, stoic resilience, lots of responsibility. I wouldn’t wish the load on any woman’s shoulders. The outback is a man’s world, Francesca, for all we need our women’s love and devotion. You would be in perfect harmony with your ancestral home.”

  She’d been counting on him to say that. “Only it’s not mine,” she repeated wryly. Hadn’t she already moved out, not at all close to her father’s second wife, not able to help making comparisons with a beautiful, brilliant Fee.

  “That’s too damned bad,” Grant was saying. “If I were your father I’d have changed things.”

  “I’m very glad you’re not my father,” she offered dryly, deeply conscious of his tall, powerful figure beside her, whipcord lean.

  He laughed, then suddenly began to croon, taking her by surprise. “You must have been a beautiful baby. You must have been a beautiful child. When you were only startin’ to go to kindergarten, I bet you drove the little boys wild….”

  Perfect tune. Smooth as honey baritone. It sounded great with a considerable degree of seductiveness.

  “I didn’t know you could sing,” she said delightedly.

  “Of course I can sing.” The ice broken he pulled her against him, wrapping an arm around her waist. “You should hear me when I’m out riding. When I was a kid I used to sing to the cattle. It used to calm them every time.”

  “Are you serious?” she laughed.

  “Ask Rafe.” He launched smoothly into another song. “Home, home on the range…”

  His voice came back to them on the wind and Francesca clapped in appreciation. “From now on you’re going to have to serenade me.”

  “Am I?” He turned her, his hands spanning her narrow waist. “So what about this Jimmy?”

  She dipped her head. “Daddy’s choice, Grant. Not mine.”

  “You’re not running away from them, are you?” he asked as if he were resolved to find out. Holding her, touching her, desire rippling deep inside him.

  “In what way?”

  “Unwillingness to commit maybe. Your father is concerned with marrying you off properly. He doesn’t trust your mother in that regard.”

  “He doesn’t trust Fee at all,” Francesca confessed wryly. “He may have loved her madly once but all I can remember is his finding fault. It’s not very nice being the child in the middle of a fault-finding divorce and the long aftermath. The physical separation from Mamma. It was like being deprived of the sun. The actor Fee was having an affair with and later married was remarkably handsome and when he wasn’t drunk he could be very nice but Daddy hated him. He refused to allow me to visit if Fee’s ‘new man’ was anywhere around.”

  “Well he wasn’t around long, thank the Lord.” Grant gave a deep sigh. Fee’s exploits over the years were well known to all of them. He had a vivid picture, too, of how it must have been for one sad and solitary little girl.

  “I can give you some lyrics à la Cole Porter,” Francesca offered half in fun, half serious. “‘It was just one of those things. One of those crazy things.’ Fee can’t be without a man.”

  “Now she’s got David, so cheer up.” Grant turned her gently so they could walk on.

  “And my dear cousin, David, will keep Mamma in line,” Francesca said with a note of satisfaction. “He may look and act the perfect gentleman with the Eton accent but he’s steel at the core. If he’d been married to Fee in the first place she’d never have shared anyone else’s bed.”

  “Her time with your father could scarcely have been wasted,” Grant reminded her. “She had you. That alone was a great gift. Anyway she adores you.”

  “I know.” Forgiving by nature Francesca’s anger and bewilderment at her mother’s abandonment had long since dried up.

  “And you’re going back to Sydney for her book launch.” It was obviously a statement, not a question.

  “Of course I have to and I want to. Rebecca as the biographer is going as a matter of course. It’s just a pity Ally won’t be home. I want to be here when she gets back.”

  “And I need to be out!” Grant startled her by saying.

  Anxiety sounded in her voice. “What does that mean?”

  He gave a little amused growl low in his throat. “Why, Francesca, do I really have to spell it out? Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Especially when you’re newly married.”

  She stood stock-still to stare up at him. “But the homestead is so big!”

  “What’s wrong, love?” Very lightly he pinched that delicately determined little chin. “Don’t you like it? Rafe and Ally will want to be on their own.”

  Privately she thought Rafe and Ally would be very upset if he left. “But where will you go?” she questioned. “I never thought for a minute you’d leave Opal. Apart from the fact it’s your home, it’s the base for Cameron Airways.”

  “That can be changed.” He sounded as if he’d thought it all out.

  “You’re serious then?” She was totally distracted.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Do Rafe and Ally know of your plans?” she persisted, so nearly giving herself away.

  “Not as yet. Needless to say they assure me Opal is my home as well.”

  “I should think so.” Francesca felt like she was in some trance of non-acceptance. She couldn’t lose contact with this man she’d fallen helplessly, probably hopelessly in love with. “Where would you go?”

  Grant took her hand and walked on. “Somewhere more central. Even Darwin.”

  “In the Territory?” She was shaken by the thought. He was talking a thousand miles away and more.

  “Gateway to Australia.” Grant nodded. “I know of a fine property that could come on the market.”

  Francesca gave him a dismayed look, unaware her expression was easily readable by the moon. “You’ve taken my breath away,” she told him unnecessarily. “Everyone will miss you terribly.” Me most of all.

  For a long moment he was mad with wanting her. Wanting to crush her to
him, feel the softness and smallness of her body against his. Inhale her scents. Instead with force of will he pressed his thumb into her palm, feeling her heat, caressing it with a deep circular motion. What stopped him from making love to this young woman as he was wild to? Other times, other places, other girls, he had felt none of this anguish over lovemaking. The answer was he cared too damned much about her. He couldn’t force a potentially disastrous situation. She was Lady Francesca de Lyle, daughter of an English earl and the internationally famous stage actress, Fiona Kinross. If she were any other girl, a young woman of his own circle, he’d have raced her to the altar. Francesca’s background reeked of centuries old tradition, a high place in one of the most privileged societies on earth. Even Fee had pushed the fact Francesca was meant for better things.

  Finally he managed to say, “I’m not going that far away. Not as a plane flies. I don’t aim to stick to helicopters. Dad left me a fair share of Opal even if I’m not Numero Uno.”

  You are to me, Francesca thought, blindly turning her face away. “Why don’t you build a homestead of your own on Opal?” she frowned. “There’s plenty of room in a couple of thousand square miles.”

  His spirits lifted unaccountably. Why hadn’t he come around to that? “Opal has only ever had one homestead,” he pointed out as if it was written in stone.

  She shot him a quick look, aware of his change of mood. “Two Cameron sons who love each other and don’t want to be parted? Even if they don’t want to share the same house, I would have thought building another homestead would be the obvious solution. And I’ll tell you exactly where you should do it.”

  He was halfway to laughing now, loving the sweet sound of her voice and the surprising authority in it. “Go on. Tell me,” he invited, taking the path that led to the walled garden with its pond and winged nymph, glorious scents of roses, jasmine and boronia, herbs crushed underfoot, soft little night wind like music and two carved garden seats.

  Peace and harmony by day. Powerfully seductive by moonlight. Maybe he’d been worrying so much he’d suddenly got to the point where he couldn’t care anymore. Whatever the reason he led her to one of the benches, sending a few fallen leaves and spent blossoms flying with a lick of the handkerchief from his trouser pocket. Protecting her pretty deep blue dress was a priority. The short skirt showed her lovely legs. The deep oval neck descended onto her breasts, delicate, tantalising, the skin of the upper slopes smooth as silk, white as milk. The rosy nipples he just knew would be like luscious little berries in his mouth, the taste more exquisite than any known fruit.

  God the only thing that saved him from ravishing her was he knew right from wrong. Even so his breath seemed to be rasping in his chest. Desire was the very devil. It made an utter fool of a man.

  “I would have thought you’d guess,” Francesca was saying, making room for him on the bench, mercifully unaware of his unsettled state. “It’s extraordinary country and it’s only about a mile or more from Opal homestead. Grassy flats, bordered by spinifex and mulga country, then in the distance the rippling slopes of the desert dunes. But what makes it all fascinating is that very strange hill with the perfectly flat top, except for three little peaks around the border for all the world like some ancient crown. It’s full of magic. Every time I’ve seen it, from the distance or the air, it seems to be floating in an amethyst mirage.”

  Of course he identified the site right away. Francesca was right. There was something about it. “Francesca, you’re talking about Myora,” he said, referring to the landmark. “There are all kinds of legends attached to it.”

  “Which makes it all that more delightful,” she said happily. “As hills go it isn’t high. What would it be…a couple of hundred feet? But it has such an aura!” Then she suddenly asked, “It’s not a sacred site?” She knew that could change things with aboriginal tribes currently focusing on regaining their sacred sites.

  “No—” Grant shook his head, instantly following her line of thought “—but it has associations from the Dreamtime.”

  “Does that mean you can’t build there?” She felt unaccountably disappointed.

  “I can build anywhere I want,” he told her firmly. “This is Cameron land. We feel we have as much kinship with the land as our aboriginal brothers. The Camerons have always treated tribal people well. We came as protectors as well as pastoralists. As a courtesy I would discuss my plans with the tribal elders. But, Francesca, Myora is even more isolated than Opal homestead.”

  “You mean the difficulty of getting building materials, etc., to the site?” Immediately Francesca was overwhelmed by the challenges of the job.

  “No, I don’t,” Grant said surprisingly. “Our forebears performed fantastic feats. I mean—” he broke off, rubbing his neck. “Hell I don’t know what I mean.” When every other thought was given over to placing Francesca, like a jewel, in her proper setting. The middle of the Never Never, for all its fascination, didn’t seem the right spot.

  “You could think about it,” Francesca suggested, looking up at his strong profile.

  “Wouldn’t you be terrified on your own out there?” he countered.

  Another rejection. “What should I be terrified of?” She kept her voice composed. “There aren’t any bush-rangers anymore. No stockman would dream of causing me harm.”

  “You know nothing about utter isolation,” he said, leaning a little away from her. “When you come out here you stay at one of the grandest homesteads in the country. Kimbara. You’re safe and cushioned at all times. I love the bush, Francesca, I have great respect for it but I can tell you even hardened stockmen can get spooked on their own. There are some areas, some places, that have an atmosphere, that can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. We’ve all experienced it. This is an incredibly ancient land. We’re by way of being very recent newcomers.”

  Francesca gave a delicious little shiver. “Are we talking ghosts?”

  “I’m not talking ballyhoo, my lady,” he retorted, giving a lock of her long hair a slight tug. “What I say isn’t to be taken lightly. There are certain places even the aborigines won’t go.”

  “On Opal?” She felt as if she was drowning in mysteries.

  “Of course on Opal.” Grant’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Kimbara, too. It’s strange country in many ways. Our country and not our country. Not the white man’s country if you know what I mean. Our ancestors came from elsewhere. The Camerons and the Kinrosses hailed from Scotland. In certain places the Interior seems to be not exactly hostile but not welcoming, either.”

  “You can’t mean Myora?” She’d always thought the land welcomed her on all her visits.

  Grant’s voice was level. “I’ve never felt it there. But you’ve never actually been there, have you?”

  “I’d like to go.” She lifted a delicate brow.

  “Then this is your chance,” he surprised her by answering. “I have a few days all to myself. I can take you tomorrow, though the odds are against my ever building there.”

  “You might change your mind.” She attempted lightness when she was feeling utterly emotional.

  “Wishful thinking, Francesca.” He turned his hazel eyes on her.

  “What am I thinking?” Suddenly she could barely breathe. There was humour in his voice but something else that sent a deep pulsing, quiver right through her body.

  “An impossible dream.”

  “What dream,” she challenged, softly. “What am I dreaming?”

  For answer he bent his head and pressed his mouth to the creamy flesh of her throat.

  “Grant!” Even to her own ears she sounded startled.

  “You don’t really know what you’re trying to get yourself into,” he said, a shade harshly.

  “Can’t you see you surprised me?” In fact she was more frightened of her own reactions than anything he might do to her. He was the most beautiful man. Full of a man’s powers. Just the touch of his lips against her throat made her head swim.

 
“You’re safe with me, Francesca,” he said in a dry voice and stood up, his height exaggerated in the silver moonlight. “As safe as if you were sitting in church.”

  She, too, came to her feet, humming with tension. “Now I’ve made you angry, why?”

  “I’m not angry with you at all,” he said, not really meaning it and not knowing why. “I just don’t want you to forget who you are and who I am.”

  “Now that’s a message,” Francesca said.

  “Yes, it is.” Even he grimaced, thinking himself as much a victim of circumstances as Francesca.

  “Why can’t you get through your head I’m a woman not a figurine,” Francesca suddenly exploded.

  That somehow inflamed him to the point he felt he was burning up. He didn’t appreciate she was a woman? How could she say such a ridiculous thing, this miracle of femininity.

  Before she could take a breath he held her lovely face and kissed her hard and fast. Just seconds to be ravenous. He wanted to plunge his hand into the low, tempting oval of her dress and take hold of her small creamy breasts. Just the thought of it made him wild, but he couldn’t do this to her. It was all so damned confusing. One might have thought she was some kind of family, or a little Titian-haired, blue-eyed saint on a pedestal. He should have avoided her right from the start. She was so hopelessly out of reach.

  Francesca’s own confusion was immense. Grant was breathing heavily. So was she. Both of them filled with a terrible unrequited desire. More than that. Love. She was certain he loved her but instead of helping her it was somehow making him feel guilty. She could have wept.

  “Grant, I really care about you,” she said, moving close, gripping onto his shirtsleeve with her hand. “Why are you pushing me away?”

  “You know very well.” That high mettled note came into his voice. “I care about you, too, Francesca. Too much to want to cause you real unhappiness. I can see to the end of this if you can’t?”