An Outback Affair/Runaway Wife/Outback Bridegroom/Outback Surrender/Home To Eden (11 page)

“Especially from a woman who had reigned supreme. I don't know how close to the house we can get. I think they're expecting a few hundred people. More, by the look of it.”

“Is it okay if I stick close to you?”

He laughed briefly. “Laura, I have no intention of letting you out of my sight.”

The homestead loomed up on top of a rise in the near flat landscape. It was the bluest day imaginable, and the magnificent pristine white building, two-storeyed, with deep verandahs on both levels, was like a picture cut-out against the sapphire sky. Trees towered high to the sides of the house. In front a great sweep of green lawn, no doubt watered by bores, curved down to a jewelled creek that meandered through the home gardens.

Now that she was here, Laura felt overwhelmed. She had grown up in a very comfortable and gracious environment, she had married into a wealthy established family, but her friend Sarah's future in-laws were among the very seriously rich. She knew there had been a great deal of trauma in Sarah's life, but now it was over.

They parked alongside many other cars, under the trees—Evan, man-like, soon finding a gap. He took her hand as she stepped out of the vehicle. “You can't leave your hat behind, Laura,” he warned. “There's no way you can stand out in the sun. Certainly not with that skin.”

“What I have with me is scarcely appropriate,” she said a little nervously. All she'd been able to do was remove the
bright flowers and ribbons from one of her straw hats and substitute a border of navy camellia-type flowers she had managed to buy in town.

Evan reached in for the offending hat. “You'd look beautiful in anything. Here, put it on.”

“Back to big brother?”

“It's certainly safer,” he told her dryly, thinking the wide-brimmed hat, dipping gently to one side, only set off her natural beauty.

 

In whatever direction Laura looked there were people, but the route to the McQueen family cemetery was orderly and planned, with signs to show the way. Despite that, Laura was glad Evan was with her. The place looked so vast she felt if she stepped off the path she'd be lost for ever.

“We won't rush,” Evan said, slowing her with a hand to her elbow. “Plenty of time. I guess even Ruth McQueen won't be in a hurry to get buried.”

“I only hope I can get through this without tears,” Laura confessed, feeling her own emotions. “The last funeral I attended was my father's.”

The family cemetery that held the graves of generations of McQueens was reached through massive wrought-iron gates, the black relieved by some splendid gilding. A large number of mourners had already gathered, and the churchman in attendance looked very dignified in his vestments.

Low borders of some dark green shrub flanked the pathways, trimmed to perfection. Around the perimeter of the cemetery ran a high black wrought-iron fence.

Laura wondered what Sarah was thinking and feeling.

She could see the golden-haired Sarah standing beside her splendid fiancé Kyall. Kyall was now head of the family. His mother and father stood quietly to one side, a young girl at Max Reardon's shoulder. That would be Kyall's young cousin, brought home from her boarding school in Sydney.

Laura knew the dynastic name McQueen had overridden Kyall's father's surname, Reardon. He had been christened Kyall Readon-McQueen, but Laura had learned that over the
years the Reardon had simply disappeared. Laura wondered what Kyall's father thought about that. No doubt when Mrs McQueen had been alive her will had held sway.

A few feet away from her parents, almost as though she wished to stand alone, was a tall, but immensely graceful, very beautiful young woman who looked so much like Kyall that Laura realized immediately it had to be his sister, Christine. Black suit. Black hat. Black shoes. Perfect in every detail.

Over recent years Laura had seen that beautiful face and lean elegant body in many a glossy magazine, never imagining one day she would be looking directly at the international model.

About twenty feet away from her the Claydon family stood respectfully. The Claydons were another influential pioneering family. She had heard mention of Mitchell Claydon, a childhood friend of Sarah's, but this was the first time she'd laid eyes on him. A Robert Redford look-alike. His blond head, as golden as Sarah's, was uncovered to the sun. He was appropriately dressed in a dark suit, his hands folded quietly in front of him, but he gave off an aura of intensity more than calmness.

She caught the blue blaze of his eyes. It was unmistakable who he was staring at. Christine Reardon. She remembered Sarah telling her Christine and Mitchell Claydon had been as close at one time as she and Kyall.

So what had happened? Mitchell Claydon cut a very dashing figure, even in his formal funeral clothes. Judging from his expression he hadn't forgotten Christine either.

Finally all the mourners grouped themselves around the family plot. The pall bearers appeared. Laura stared off into the middle distance.

“You all right?” Evan bent his dark head over her, grasping her hand.

She didn't know what to say. I am when I'm with you. Fancy burdening him with that! She felt wonderfully secure in his company, but not as a big brother. She couldn't begin to explain herself, or what she was allowing to happen. She
was still imprisoned in her marriage, yet when she was in Evan's arms she threw all reservations to the winds.

No good the subterfuge. But emotion mocked at reason. Laura did all she could do. She nodded.

N
OT
all that long after the death of Ruth McQueen the town was rocked by an even greater shock. To the town's bolt upright astonishment came the dramatic revelation that Sarah Dempsey, resident doctor, had given birth to a child at the tender age of fifteen.

Sarah! The town could scarcely take it in. Everyone offered an opinion. No one condemned. Sarah was their doctor, a good one, born and bred in the town. She was one of them.

The father of Sarah's baby was her present fiancé, Kyall McQueen, universally admired and a very handsome, egalitarian guy for all his family's wealth. The great question was, How had everyone missed it? Ruby Hall, the chief spreader of gossip, had ears like a stethoscope. She could detect the slightest murmur. She had even been known to press her ears to walls. Yet Ruby had noticed nothing. In the midst of their shock, the people of the bush town enjoyed a guffaw at Ruby's expense.

Once the story broke it swept around the town like brush fire, embellished with every telling. Betty Dawson, who was old enough to know better, told her circle of friends she'd heard twins, but no one was left in any doubt that a terrible mishap had occurred in the small private maternity hospital on the east coast where Sarah had been taken—or banished, and a quick guess-around blamed Kyall's grandmother—to have her child. A daughter.

Tragedy had befallen young Sarah. She had been told her baby had died. Wicked negligence on the hospital's part. The hospital had been torn down to make way for a service station; it should have been sued. Apparently Sarah's baby had somehow been swapped with another infant girl, born at the same time. That baby
had
died. Sarah's baby had gone home with the wrong mother. No questions had been asked.

“Bloody odd!” mumbled the town publican to the bar, full of sympathy for the beautiful Sarah, a favourite of his.

The upshot was that the young Sarah had been left to live with the heartbreak. The father, Kyall McQueen, then barely sixteen, heir to Wunnamurra Station and the apple of his powerful grandmother's eye, had never been told of Sarah's pregnancy.

Why not? Of course it had been the grandmother. It had to be, considering she had frowned on the friendship. Everyone agreed Ruth McQueen had been one scary lady. Undoubtedly there was a story. Not that they were likely to hear it. Powerful families like the McQueens kept a tight lid on their affairs.

In the old days, when Sarah and Kyall had been youngsters, everyone had thought their extraordinary relationship right through childhood to adolescence romantic. That had been the general view, their youth and beauty sparking nostalgia. Everyone had known nothing could come of it. Too big a social gap. The McQueens were Outback royalty and Ruth McQueen had lived right up to her reputation as the world's worst snob. Sarah's father, a “good bloke”, had been a shearer in Wunnamurra's sheds. The mother, “poor Muriel”, as everyone called her after she lost her husband, had run the general store.

So, the loss of her baby had plagued Sarah for the rest of her life. As well it might. And now the whole town offered solidarity—not only because Sarah was their resident doctor and the McQueens practically owned the town, but because this was a genuine love story. It was beginning to take on epic proportions. Everyone was expecting a fairy tale wedding, maybe a public holiday. The McQueens had funded many a celebration in the town…

The true sensation was that Sarah and Kyall had discovered proof their child had not died. Incredibly they had found her—healthy, living, beautiful—holidaying with a schoolfriend on a station some hundred miles west of Koomera Crossing. After all the years of agony fate had found its conscience and handed Sarah and Kyall a well-deserved miracle
from heaven. For weeks on end the town was to talk of nothing else.

“I suppose my story will become part of Koomera Crossing folklore,” Sarah said wryly one day, finding it very hard these days to keep back the emotional tears. She looked for support to Laura and Harriet, who were eyeing her with great empathy. All three were sitting around Harriet's kitchen table, drinking coffee and nibbling at the delicious little confections Harriet had whipped up for them.

“After so much pain, so much tragedy, a miracle!” Laura said, blessing Sarah's courageous heart.

“If anyone deserves a little happiness in life it's Sarah,” Harriet asserted, her near sternness covering a flurry of her own emotion.

Harriet, as the long-time head of the school—a period of thirty years—was a real institution in the town. Now in her late sixties, but looking nowhere near it, she was highly regarded, even revered. Sarah loved her old mentor. Laura could see why. Evan too had grown fond of her, calling Harriet “Aunty Mame”, with a gentle, mocking smile. Harriet was a woman of culture, much travelled to exotic places, and a startlingly unconventional dresser, with a style all her own, rather plain of face but with fine all-seeing grey eyes and a rich, resonant voice.

“So, I'm to be a mother, my friends,” Sarah announced with a heartbreaking smile. “A mother and a wife. Kyall wanted us to settle down and have a family. We have a family now, our beautiful Fiona. I can't wait for you to meet her. We're to be married as soon as possible, after a little bow to tradition. I couldn't ever begin to like or respect Ruth McQueen and I wouldn't want to meet a woman like her again in my lifetime, but she will never cease to be Kyall's grandmother. If she cared for no one else, she adored him.”

“They should have saved that for her epitaph,” Harriet remarked crisply. “‘Here lies Ruth McQueen, matriarch of the McQueen clan. She cared for only one human being in her entire life.'” Harriet reached out to pat Sarah's hands.

Ruth McQueen, wicked woman that she was, had finally gone.

Out on the pavement in front of Harriet's rather grand colonial, which was furnished with all sorts of finds from her travels, including two eight-feet-high Maori totem poles flanking her front door, Harriet held Laura to her promise to come to dinner the following Saturday evening.

“Evan's coming.” Harriet beamed in Laura's direction. “I hear you two have struck up a nice friendship.”

Laura, fully aware that Sarah had confided a little of her circumstances to her great friend, answered fervently. “After a husband who couldn't say one civil word to me Evan's gallantry has been like a healing balm.”

“You haven't spoken about Colin yet?” Sarah took a quick glance at her watch. She had to get back to the hospital, but she had appreciated the break and the comfort of her friends.

“I will—I will.”

“You should do, my dear,” Harriet suggested quietly. “What is it you fear most?”

“The loss of Evan's esteem,” Laura said without hesitation. “His respect. I've come to value his friendship so much.”

“Why should he respect you less?” Harriet countered, studying the lovely young woman in front of her. If golden-haired Sarah looked like an angel this one looked like the heroine of a romance. How could any man bear to hurt such a gentle young woman?

“Because it would appear I had no respect for myself, Harriet. I can't blot out the life I led.”

“Oh, Laura, you were a victim.” Sarah had tried hard to impress this on her friend but it took some doing. She gave Laura a quick hug. “You were a young woman overwhelmed by a violent husband. A man you thought you loved.”

Harriet's grey eyes sparkled with outrage. “Good God!”

“It should have been different,” Laura said. “
I
should have been different. Stronger. I can't tell Evan yet. I know you'll keep my confidence.”

“Be sure of it, my dear. But I don't think it's going to take all that much longer for you to develop such trust in Evan you'll be able to confide in him too. You think your husband will be looking for you?”

“He will be looking for me, Harriet. You can count on that. Every day I experience some moments of panic, but I'm gradually getting them under control. Knowing Colin, I won't be surprised to find him at my door one day.”

“You've got friends, Laura,” Sarah said. “You're nowhere near as vulnerable as you suppose. Now, I must fly. Morris has held the fort long enough.” Sarah turned to kiss Harriet and then Laura in turn. “Kyall will be in Adelaide on business for a week, so he won't be at the dinner party, but Morris will.”

“I'm looking forward to meeting him.” Laura smiled, knowing Morris Hughes was Sarah's offsider at the hospital and Harriet's special friend. “Could be a romance on the wind!”

“That's all settled, then,” Harriet said with satisfaction, graciously closing Sarah's door as she slid behind the driver's seat. “I'm sure it's going to be a lovely evening. I've already planned the menu.”

 

When Laura arrived home Evan was on the driveway, unloading his car. She approached slowly. The cottage had no garage the owners apparently had parked on the grassy allotment to the rear of the cottage, but Evan in the space of an afternoon had put up a car port for her on his own large block.

She waved hello, feeling her skin start to tingle. Some people knew real, true love—marital bliss. It hadn't been for her. Now this. She was still tied to Colin and falling in love with Evan, which made the situation all the worse. And she
was
falling in love with this big, powerful, dark-haired man, leaning back against his four-wheel drive watching her drive in. He knew she had secrets. What he didn't know was how monstrous they were.

She parked and he came alongside. “What have you been up to?” He bent to look in at her.

“Coffee break with Sarah and Harriet at Harriet's amazing house. All those artefacts!”

“Harriet is very different.” He smiled, standing back while she got out of her car.

“I can see why you like her. You're very different too.” She smiled up at him as her longings grew.

“It's okay to be different, Laura,” he said. “I'm glad you're here. I have something for you.”

“Really?” Instantly she was intrigued. What would she do when he went out of her life? She was too needy. Wasn't the speed with which she had fallen in love with him proof of that?

“Come along.” He stared down at her for a minute. She was standing very still, with an odd, pensive expression on her face. Her skin, even in the harsh sunlight, was flawless, baby-smooth, poreless. Her hair flowed down her back.

“I've still got some of those home-grown vegetables you brought me,” she told him, thinking it was market day and he'd perhaps stocked up.

“Not vegetables,” he said, moving back to his vehicle.

“They were lovely.”

“Good. You look very lovely today,” he remarked lightly, nearly laughing aloud at the understatement.

“Thank you.” She glanced down at herself. “It's probably this dress.”

It occurred to him not for the first time that she was remarkably free of vanity.

“What is it?” she asked, her eyes very bright.

“You'll see. It's living, breathing…”

Her lips parted and she blushed. “Now you've got me. What is it, Evan?”

“Turn around.”

“Okay.” She obeyed. “Do I have to close my eyes?”

“You can if you want to.”

She did, almost feeling like a child again, with life full of beauty and love.

“You can look now.” She turned while he lifted the lid of a basket. There, lying on a fragment of blanket, was a bundle of black fur with eyes of jade.

“A kitten!” she cried out in delighted astonishment.

“You told me once you loved cats.”

“Doesn't everyone?”

“No.” he said, very dryly.

“Isn't she beautiful?” Laura started to put her hand out.

“He.”

“Oh! Can I hold him?”

Her lovely face had lit up so much it was almost unbearable not to sweep her into his arms. Intuition told him he couldn't go too fast. “Why not? He's yours. That's if you want him.”

“He's really mine?”

Her smile was so sweet, so grateful. “You're great to give a present to.”

She gazed off into the distance, over the incredible sweeping vistas she loved about the town.

Perplexed, he watched her. “What is it? What's the matter?”

“Nothing, just a funny moment.”

Colin, furious, shouting.
“Come here and say thank you. You can't appreciate anything.”

“I wish to God you'd tell me.”

How she understood his frustration. “I'm perfectly all right, Evan.” She looked down at the little kitten. “Oh, you darling little thing!” she crooned. “Aren't you adorable? And so soft!”

“I knew I had to get him for you the minute I saw the iridescent green eyes.”

“You're always thinking of something for me,” she said gratefully, tilting her head to look up at him.

“You need kindness, that's why.”

“Would you buy anyone a kitten?” she asked, a little crestfallen.

“No, I wouldn't. I bought the kitten for you.”

“Well, I love it.” She flashed him a joyful smile. “But
what will I do with it if I have to go back?” She couldn't bear to think about leaving the security of the town, her new friends, Evan.

“Back where?” he asked, the dark brooding returned to his eyes.

“Back to my old life.”

“You want to make a go of it with your doctor?”

“I need to resolve it,” she said, imagining how very, very difficult that was going to be.

“So how long do you think it's going to take?” He'd soon found he wasn't immune to jealousy.

“I ask myself that every day.”

“Brave, beautiful Laura!”

“I wish!” Yet she smiled, a hint of triumph in it. Life was a journey. It was how one handled it in the tough times that counted.

“Ah, well, we'll see.” Evan said, never guessing the full extent of the damage Laura had suffered behind closed doors. “Now, I've got everything else you'll need,” he added, indicating the full basket. “You keep the basket. Puss will probably sleep in it, it's so comfortable.” His hand moved over hers to stroke the kitten, coming into contact with hers. He didn't disguise the pleasure.