Marriage at Murraree

by Margaret Way

  His skin was velvet to her satin. She clenched her fingers on the bronze pelt on his broad chest, thrilled by his wonderful physique. She saw something else. He was dark gold all over and powerfully aroused.

  And so they were naked, the two of them wrapped in radiant heat, each making soft incoherent sounds at the bliss of body to body, female to male, skin on skin.

  “Casey!” Her name was a husky exclamation.

  He could feel the violent beat of his own blood that had gathered in his groin. He reached back blindly to strip off the quilt then in a swift motion he lifted her in his arms. Her weight seemed to him insubstantial. She was all silky flesh and long delicate bones. He debated removing those sexy stilettos but after a moment did.

  “I like every single thing about you,” he said, a golden blaze in his eyes.

  “Tell me how much you want me?”

  “I’m going to show you,” he said. “That’s even better.”

  With a feeling of incredible elation like something out of a dream, he watched as she lifted her beautiful body to him, arching her back, straining, demanding, asserting her overwhelming desire for him.

  It was all that Troy needed.

  He covered her like an enveloping rug, bracing his strong arms on either side of her, taking his weight. She was shuddering sweetly beneath him, her body moving in anticipation of his entry. She was ready, aligning herself, but he held back with exquisite deliberation. What was passing between them was pure ecstasy.

  At just the right moment, as she opened herself beneath him, he was inside her, plunging slowly, deeply, lifting her firm buttocks higher, feeling those magnificent long legs grip his sides.

  The act of taking her had a purity and a rightness about it. He felt a great rush of gratitude, too, as though he had been granted a precious gift. This was the one woman he wanted to make his own. He knew it in his heart, in his mind, in his body.

  He could feel the first rippling contractions in her body start up and intensify so her whole body was left quivering. He registered her soft moans, her tossing head, silky hair flying everywhere, covering her face. Then he abandoned himself to the ecstasy that was of a magnitude he had never known. Shafts of white lightning were burying themselves deep within his body. His muscles were knotted with acute tension like some sleek powerful big cat. He wanted her to feel what he was feeling only his need was so great he didn’t think he could control it much longer. If only she loved him as he knew he loved her! If only they could spend their lives together! She wanted children. What a great blessing it would be if they were his children. He had to do whatever he could to make her see she needed him as much as a career. Not that he could deny her wonderful talent.

  “My beautiful Casey,” he whispered. “I’m not hurting you am I?” Tall as she was, compared to him her woman’s body was almost fragile.

  She clung to him, pressing her mouth to his shoulder. “No, I love it.” It was so true! Love flooding her. She understood it, though she couldn’t yet speak it. The doors of heaven had never been opened to her.

  He rocked into her. Infinitely tender. Deep, deeper, sensuous rhythms she was matching. Finally when he thought he could hold out no longer she called out his name.

  It sounded so strange. The sort of cry that would haunt his heart. It was the tremulous heartfelt outpouring of a young girl. As though her innocence had come back to her.

  It sent him tumbling right over the edge into roaring, rapturous oblivion.

  Afterwards still wrapped together, still overwhelmed by the magic they had made together they began to share their most private thoughts. Memories of the past both of them had made sure they kept to themselves.

  Now the flood gates were open.

  Casey spoke about her early life with her mother. Her mother’s vulnerabilities she thought she couldn’t rise above without the help of first alcohol, then drugs. Casey spoke about that terrible day, the waking nightmare, of her mother’s death, aware Troy was trying to soothe her with his hands and the kisses he dropped on her temple, her cheek and her bare shoulder. She hadn’t really intended to tell him much about The Home. But it came tumbling out as though she had waited for this one person to confide in.

  “Casey.” He wrapped her closer, appalled at the terrible experiences she had lived through and survived. Not only survived she had emerged as someone quite special. Casey McGuire-McIvor had courage, integrity, a great fighting spirit, qualities that sat very well with him. Another child burdened by such a disastrous start might well have taken the downward road to self-destruction. Casey had definitely moved up.

  If she had been willing to share her innermost thoughts and feelings with him Troy proved his trust in her by speaking of his own life.

  He tucked one long arm behind his head. “So much of what we are comes from family. Family relationships. I guess most families carry the same baggage. Often through generations. In the case of migrants they probably carry them from country to country. My dad and I weren’t always so polarized. We were friends. He took me everywhere with him. He loved me. He was proud of me.”

  “So how did it change?” Casey snuggled in to his warm body, marvelling at how right it seemed.

  “My mother’s death,” he said. “Just like you and millions of others, it was a great turning point in my life. Mothers are very special people. Losing her affected not only my life, but Dad’s life, too. Leah was broken-hearted, but that was when Dad let her in and shut me out. You saw tonight how closely Leah resembles Dad. I’m my mother’s side of the family. I have a cousin, Elliot, who could be my double. Both of us have our unusual coloured eyes. My mother’s eyes. Perhaps my father finds it difficult to look into them since he believed my mother was unfaithful to him.”

  A mystery solved. Casey remained silent, waiting for him to go on.

  “Sometimes I think she must have been,” he said with a sadness that gripped Casey as well. “Other times I give her the benefit of the doubt. I adored her. We were very close in the best and brightest way. My parents had a friend called Robert Sinclair, a writer and journalist. He was a widely travelled man. When he was home he often visited us. Leah and I called him Uncle Robert which pretty well reflects what we all thought about him. He was a man’s man, at home with my father out on the station, but he was a woman’s man as well. A sensitive man. A lover of beauty in all its forms. I know he delighted in my mother’s company.

  “One afternoon when I was fourteen they went off riding together. It was a season when the tropical North had had torrential rain. Those floodwaters run into our Three Rivers System and from there into the maze of interlocking water channels that cover our part of the world. Tourists have camped in dry creek beds only to be washed away in our flash floods. Uncle Robert and my mother should have known better.”

  “How did it happen?” Casey asked quietly, the tension in his body communicating itself to her.

  “No one could come up with a satisfactory answer. The horses came home. They didn’t. They were found two days later. Locked in each other’s arms. Not even the raging flood could separate them.”

  “But he would have been trying with all his might to protect her?” Casey reasoned, lifting her head to stare into his face.

  “Of course.” He nodded. “It’s what any man would do. Only my father said afterwards Uncle Robert had been in love with her. I don’t think he would have said it only he was under a great deal of emotional pressure. He said, too, he’d spoken to my mother about it, but she denied there was anything between them but friendship. Apparently my father wanted Uncle Robert’s visits to stop. He thought them too painful, too dangerous. Maybe Uncle Robert and my mother were so engrossed in breaking up they didn’t exercise their normal caution. We’ll never know. I know my father was desperately upset. Truly grief stricken. He changed after that. All the lightness of heart went out of him. The humour. The biggest change was towards me. He turned away from me as though I was somehow responsible. Betrayed his trust passing messages b
etween the two of them or something. Having prior knowledge. Of course I didn’t.”

  “But there could have been nothing in it, Troy,” Casey insisted. “Even if this Uncle Robert had worshipped your mother, it doesn’t mean she was unfaithful. She was a married woman with two children. She must have loved your father to marry him? Why would she want to jeopardize her marriage and perhaps lose custody of her kids?”

  “Passion makes fools of us all,” he sighed. For a long time he had persecuted himself with the idea his mother had fallen out of love with his father.

  “Surely we’ve just experienced passion?” she countered sitting up and leaning over him. “Are you saying our coming together like this was a mistake?”

  “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said.

  “Right answer.” She subsided with a great sigh of relief onto his broad chest. “Well then, be kinder to yourself and your mother. All we can do, Troy, is move on.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GLENN GARDINER lost no time promoting his new client. Over two days of intensive work and concentration Casey cut her first album which Gardiner was certain was going to make her reputation. Some of the songs were familiar territory to country fans, but delivered in Casey’s own highly distinctive style. There was no mistaking her for anyone else, Paddy said. Paddy was in on everything as though he had appointed himself her honorary agent. She sang slow songs. She sang fast. She sang rock, backed by a team of wonderful musicians on electric and acoustic guitar, drums and percussion, keyboards, trumpet, alto sax, tenor sax. In her own segment of six, the songs that were closest to her, her own, she utilized a beautiful violin. She couldn’t thank the band enough for the way they lifted her, every one of them putting their heart and soul into the performance.

  Her own ballads, the sad songs, were full of the naked vulnerability and the heart ache that had surrounded her for most of her life. With the violin playing counterpoint she accompanied herself on these, using a guitar Matt, the lead guitar, lent her. It was a vastly superior instrument to her own and she thrilled to it, bringing it to plangent life. Matt assured her she was a good guitarist, but he was willing to coach her if she wanted. She wanted. It was an honour! Matt was the best in the business.

  Next came the video clip where movement had to be fitted to music. She had to learn dance steps. She had to learn to co-ordinate those steps with great trained dancers. She had to learn how to act. Apparently the way she looked was no problem. The camera seemed to love her. But those routines!

  “Come on, Casey! Show us what you can do. Show us your heart. Show us your soul. Make with the feet!”

  “Making with the feet” was the hardest part, but somehow she managed and for that a lot of the credit went to Courtney. Courtney had accompanied her to Sydney for which she was immensely grateful. Courtney, the ex-P.R. whiz kid looked after her, remarkably like a mother, making phone calls, fielding them, getting on with Gardiner famously which when it came down to business was quite a feat, looking after costumes, getting her to appointments on time, helping her with those dance steps. Courtney was a beautiful natural dancer. She gave herself up to it the way Casey gave herself up to her songs. As it turned out, Courtney was also a very good teacher licking her pupil into shape.

  Marian and her husband Peter wouldn’t hear of the girls staying at an hotel. They had a lovely home with plenty of room and it gave Courtney an opportunity to be with her mother.

  Crossing George Street on her way back to her car, Courtney was stunned to see Adam walking the opposite way with the lights. She blinked hard. Maybe it was wishful thinking. It wasn’t. It was Adam, and he looked so handsome, so confident to the core, so professional in his beautifully tailored dark suit, she felt herself choke up. What was he doing here? Business, of course. He was carrying a leather briefcase.

  She put out her hand. He hadn’t seen her, obviously preoccupied. “Adam!” She didn’t know if he heard her, her voice was so soft.

  “Courtney, I didn’t know you were here.” He stopped in his tracks, his brilliant eyes whipped over her with such intensity it threw her even more off-balance. His arm locked tight around her as he led her safely to the pavement. She might have been a piece of porcelain or a precious child. “What are you doing here?”

  She saw delight he couldn’t hide burn in his eyes. “I’m with Casey.” She looked up at him, realizing how terribly she had missed him, despite their inevitable confrontations. “We’re staying at my mother’s. Casey has cut her first album and a video clip. She’s on her way.”

  “That’s marvellous! If anyone needs a lucky break it’s Casey.” He steered them into a quiet corner away from the surging crowd. “Not that luck has all that much to do with it. She has a real gift.”

  “Yes she has. The album goes on sale at the end of the month. We don’t know yet about the video clip. She looks and sounds sensational. I’m so proud of her.”

  “I can see that.” When she spoke of her half sister, her expression was illuminated with the love and pride that flowed through her. It was not at all the troubled look he had encountered. Of course they hadn’t parted on the best of terms, something for which he cursed himself. If anyone was to blame it was he. This young woman couldn’t do anything that smacked of duplicity and greed. He was crazy to have doubted her for a moment. She was as lovely as she looked.

  “What are you doing in Sydney?” she asked, pulses hammering just to be with him. “Business?”

  He nodded. “The usual. I’m here until tomorrow.” He shot up a spotless white cuff, checking his watch. “Please don’t tell me you’re doing anything tonight?”

  She found herself caught in his dark probing gaze. “There’s some party on.”

  “There’s always a party on. Are you sure you want to go to it?” he asked sardonically.

  She was silent for a little minute. “I have to make an appearance. The party’s for Casey. Glenn wants to show her off. What did you have in mind?”

  “Just being together,” he murmured. “Living dangerously.” His lips curved in a smile.

  “You could come to the party for a while. We could leave early? It would be fine with Casey. She’s the one in the spotlight. Everyone wants to meet her. The word has gone out.”

  “So a late supper?” he suggested. “Unfortunately I have to rush now,” he said apologetically. “I’m never late for an appointment if I can help it.”

  “Don’t let me keep you.” She touched his arm. “Where do we meet?”

  “I’ll pick you up at your mother’s,” he said, turning his head, checking on the lights. “I know her address. We keep in touch.”

  “You do?” Her eyebrows shot up in astonishment. She doubted if he even heard her. He was already stepping off smartly at the crossing, leaving Courtney coming up for air.

  Her mother had never breathed a word.

  The party was already underway by the time they arrived. Casey, looking drop dead glamorous in a vivid amethyst silk halter necked dress she and Courtney had picked out, broke free of an admiring group to greet them.

  She kissed Courtney, studied Adam with approval. “It’s good to see you, Adam!” Her sister had very good taste. “Now come along you two.” She took them arm in arm. “I want you to meet our hostess. She’s quite a character. Isn’t this the most wonderful house!”

  It certainly was. Not everyone got to live right on Sydney Harbour. Their hostess turned out to be Mrs. Pandora Featherstone, who was quite familiar to Courtney and Adam through her long, well documented social life. Pandora enjoyed great social clout in both Sydney and Melbourne, a platinum haired septuagenarian who, thanks to a Los Angeles cosmetic surgeon, looked twenty years younger, in flamingo-pink and a queen’s ransom in South Sea pearls and diamonds. She made a beeline for them while all around her people fell back like the parting of the Red Sea. It was the high class Pandora Glenn Gardiner had persuaded to throw Casey’s launch party. No one better!

  The guests were a very hea
dy mix of show business people, the cream of the socialites, people from the art world, business tycoons and a sprinkling of politicians. The women had really let their hair down with their dressing. So much to admire! The men as usual were far more conservative; black tie, a sprinkling of gorgeous bow ties, silk ties, expensive lounge suits. Notable exceptions stood out. The arty types, mostly the musicians—one in tight bell bottomed cyclamen satin trousers and sequinned shirt—who later on in the evening kept the music pumping.

  All of a sudden Casey was someone. Courtney found herself left wondering rather sadly if Troy Connellan had got his fingers badly burned.

  They stayed longer than they intended, waiting until after Casey had sung a bracket of songs backed by the well known musician Matt Langford who seemed to have taken her under his wing. It was quite something to see a houseful of carousing guests—the champagne flowed like water—fall silent after the first few notes that issued from Casey’s mouth, rich, melodious, powerfully stirring. The only upset of the evening as far as Adam was concerned was Paddy Nicholls’s infuriating attempts to start a fling with Courtney who looked exquisite in one of her luminous chiffon dresses that made her look like a ray of light. And Paddy wasn’t the only guy who couldn’t tear his eyes off her. It got to the stage Adam started to think he couldn’t take much more of it. He wanted Courtney to himself. He was madly in love with her. So much so he’d completely missed all the lustful glances aimed in his direction.

  They took a cab back into the city, stopping off at a little Italian bistro famous for its barista who prided himself on the perfection of his coffee.

  “Will you have something with that?” Adam asked, after she ordered a long black.