by Barbara Wood
"I truly thought you were an old friend of mine. I assure you I am not in the habit of addressing gentlemen who are unknown to me!"
"Well, you know me now," he said, "and I believe that since you have interrupted this important business transaction of mine you at least owe me the courtesy of telling me your name."
Pauline gazed at his handsome smile and for the moment forgot herself. He was so much like Hugh ... "Pauline MacGregor," she said.
"So I look like a sheep farmer, do I?"
Pauline was appalled to find herself blushing. She said, "You resemble a friend of mine who owns a sheep station in the west."
He gave her a long, appraising look, and then, apparently liking what he saw, said quietly, "Your friend is very lucky. I believe you called me 'darling.'"
"He's an old friend," she said quickly. "Like a brother."
"I see," he said. "Then perhaps you might consider me an old friend as well and do me the honor of joining me for tea?"
Pauline caught her breath. He was standing too close, his smile was too intimate. "I'm afraid I cannot, Mr. Prior."
"Why not?"
"We don't know each other. And besides, I'm a married woman."
"Invite your husband to join us, by all means."
Pauline glanced at the salesclerk, who seemed to find the conversation amusing, and gave him a look that sent him away. Then she said, "My husband did not come with me to Melbourne, Mr. Prior."
"I'm astonished," he said quietly. "If you were my wife, I would not leave you alone in a city like Melbourne." Then he added, "Or anywhere else for that matter."
"You are entirely too forward, Mr. Prior," she said, and turned to go.
"Please, Mrs. MacGregor. I intended no insult, merely to pay you a compliment. And I assure you my intentions are entirely honorable. I am in Melbourne for a few days on business and as I don't know a single person in this rather overwhelming city, I find myself feeling quite alone and lost. If I have to eat one more meal in the sole company of John Prior I shall go mad."
"Are you so boring?" she said, unable to resist the flirtation.
"All by myself, I suppose I am. But with a charming woman like yourself, Mrs. MacGregor, I believe I could be quite brilliant."
Pauline didn't want to accept, but found herself accepting all the same. And she found also that the prospect of meeting Mr. Prior for tea was rather exciting.
She agreed to meet him in front of the emporium in two hours, during which time Pauline was so shocked by her inexplicable behavior, and so excited by the delicious impropriety of it, that she couldn't concentrate upon her shopping. Mr. Prior's hair wasn't the same shade as Hugh's, nor did he have the ruddy, sunburnt complexion of the outback, but there was a remarkable likeness that she couldn't put from her mind. And when she left the store at the appointed time, and saw Mr. Prior riding up in a handsome brougham drawn by two horses, she found herself offering him her hand.
They spent the afternoon in a tearoom, drinking Darjeeling tea and eating cucumber sandwiches and talking about the wonders that were on display at the exhibition. But as one hour rolled into the next, as the gaslights came on and an air of intimacy settled over them, Pauline began to fall beneath the stranger's spell. She was so used to her husband's coldness that she had forgotten what it was like to be in the company of a warm man. And John Prior was warm. He leaned across the table and looked at Pauline as if she were the only woman in the world, as if she were the only thought on his mind. He mesmerized her with his attention; he charmed her with flattery and deference. He listened to what she had to say and seemed to find her words important. He laughed when she said something funny. He told her he felt as if he had known her forever. And Pauline found that, despite herself, she was captivated by this man who was everything that Colin was not.
When they parted finally and John Prior said, "Please let me take you to the theater tonight, and supper afterward," Pauline knew she should have declined, ending right there and then whatever it was that was starting. But his magic had touched her, and she had agreed.
For an evening, Pauline was young again. She was desirable, as she had once been; she laughed more than she had in years; she felt the cold gloom of Kilmarnock recede. And she was feeling things she had not felt in years: the pleasure of flirtation; the electricity of a man's touch; the giddiness that came with sexual desire. John Prior was discreet and proper at all times, touching Pauline only to remove her cape, to help her descend from a carriage, to pin a corsage to her gown. But he stood close to her, and his eyes looked deep into hers, and Pauline read meaning into his every gesture and facial expression. The thing that both frightened and excited her remained silent and unspoken between them, but, she knew, they both felt it.
When they had parted with a lingering handshake and an exchange of calling cards, Pauline had told herself that she would not see him again.
But she couldn't get him out of her mind.
She was brought out of her thoughts by Louisa Hamilton's youngest daughter, Persephone, who was saying, "Mummy, may I have some fairy floss, please?"
"But Persephone, darling," Louisa said, fanning herself, "the fairy-floss seller is on the other side of the fairground. It's much too hot for such a long walk."
"I'll take her," Pauline said, needing to get away. "We'll get some lemonade, too. Would you like that, Persephone?"
They strolled among the booths and looked at the trinkets and knick-knacks for sale. They saw games of ring toss and pitch-a-penny. They stopped to read posters, such as the one that said: "See the Great Carmine Shoot a Gun While It Is Aimed Down His Throat!" And the best poster of all, the one that was as tall as a man and which had been plastered on every wall and fence in the Western District, telling everyone about THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN CIRCUS: "A Catalogue of Comicalities! The Knights of Palestine! Monster tent, capable of accommodating 600 persons! The best brass band that travels! The Australian Minstrels will pour forth their marvelous melodies during the evening, thereby keeping the arena constantly supplied with a succession of interesting novelties. And we have the only troupe of Japanese wonders! We proudly present the first TRAPEZE act in all of Australia, performed by Monsieur Leotard himself, the actual inventor of the trapeze, who will swing from the bars without any mattress below. The show will positively appear at Cameron Town on Friday, April 10, 1880."
"Oh look, Aunt Pauline!" Persephone said, pointing toward a stage where a man in a checkered jacket was calling out for the attention of passersby. Behind him hung a backdrop that had been painted with a blue sky, clouds and flat, grassy plains. On the stage with him was another man, one so strange that children stopped and stared open-mouthed.
Pauline also stopped and looked, but her attention was not upon Chief Buffalo, a "genuine Red Indian from America," who stood in buckskins and feathered warbonnet, but upon the tent next to it where another barker was also trying to attract attention. His show was of a different nature: For just a penny one could go inside the tent and "actually see," cried the barker, "Miss Sylvia Starr, the Australian Venus, who posed for Lindstrom's famous statue. She will appear exactly as she did while posing for the artist. You will see why her beauty has created a sensation." Behind him was an enormous poster of Miss Starr, depicting her in two ways: on the right, wearing a red gown that had an impossibly narrow waist and a large bustle, and on the left, as a statue of Venus, with flowers placed strategically over her nude body. Between the two pictures was a list of Miss Starr's "remarkable measurements," from her nose down to her feet, concluding with: "Height, 5'5"—Weight, 151 lbs."
It was not the beauty of Miss Starr that caught Pauline's attention, but rather the crowd that had gathered to buy tickets to her show. They were all men, and Pauline saw how they looked at the poster of Sylvia Starr. Pauline remembered when most men had looked at her in the same way. But their numbers were growing fewer, and she was reminded once more of the passing of time.
She thought of John Prior again. She knew that he ha
d desired her, that he had wanted to make love to her. But she didn't want him. Love affairs were available to Pauline; she was not without admirers. More than one man had let it be known that he would be only too pleased to share intimacies with her. And she had had moments, during a ball when she had drunk too much champagne and was being twirled around the dance floor in strong arms while something delicious and exciting was being murmured into her ear, when she found herself wondering what it would be like to succumb, to go to a country inn, or for a long carriage ride. But Pauline was not looking for sex—she got that from Colin. She wanted love, and a baby.
It was Hugh Westbrook she wanted, of course. Even after all these years of trying to bury the painful memories, to deny the desire she felt for him, it had all resurfaced again. That was what meeting Prior had done. It had been, for a while, like being with Hugh. Prior had rekindled her old love for Hugh, had made her start wondering what her life would have been like if she had married him. Would I have children now? she thought.
"Mrs. MacGregor, there you are! I've been looking all over for you."
It was Mrs. Purcell, senior matron of the orphanage. She was carrying two cups of tea and looking very flustered in the heat. "We're having wonderful success at our works-of-art sale. We shall be able to buy five new beds for the orphanage. How is the archery going? I do wish you would come by the asylum some time and visit us. The children so need the love and attention."
But Pauline would not set foot in the asylum. She worked to raise money for it, and she wrote checks, but she would become no more personally involved than that.
Once, a year ago, Mrs. Purcell had had the audacity to hint that Pauline might want to adopt one of the babies. But everyone knew what those babies really were—bastards, abandoned on the asylum steps by unwed mothers who didn't want them. And Pauline didn't want another woman's baby, she wanted her own.
When she returned to the archery booth, she handed a glass of cold lemonade to Louisa who took it thankfully and said, "My, it is hot!"
Pauline thought it a wonder that her friend didn't faint from the tight corseting beneath her heavy silk dress. As Louisa moved about the booth, one could hear the creaking of her whalebone stays. The underarms of her sleeves were dark with perspiration.
"I do envy you your slim figure, Pauline," she said, without any envy in her voice. "You always look so cool, so untouched by the heat. Look at me. This is what childbearing does to a woman. I do try to reduce, but it's difficult, what with having to oversee three meals for eight of us every day!"
Pauline collected the bows and arrows and lined them up on the wooden counter.
"You're just so lucky," Louisa continued, "having Judd away at school, and Colin eating at his club so much. You can avoid temptation."
Pauline wasn't listening. She was thinking: I know Colin is capable of love. When I married him, I realized he was unlikely to love again, but I also know that inside him, he has the capacity for loving. She had once witnessed a demonstration of that love, when she had paid a call on Christina, nine years ago, and she had come upon Colin at his young wife's side, tender, solicitous, overflowing with devotion. It must still be there, that deep, hidden wellspring of affection. Perhaps, Pauline thought, she had been wrong to believe that Colin wouldn't love again, perhaps because of that she hadn't found a way to tap into it; perhaps it was still there all the same, waiting for her.
"My," Louisa said, "would you just look at that girl! I swear, she is growing by the hour!"
Pauline turned to see Minerva Hamilton, Louisa's eldest daughter, approach the booth. She was a tall, sloe-eyed girl with a handsome head of hair and a sultry mouth. She was nearly sixteen, and Pauline saw how male heads turned when she walked by.
"The boys have already started coming around," Louisa said, as she sat fanning herself. "I tell myself that she's much too young. But then I have to remind myself that I was eighteen when I married Mr. Hamilton, and Minerva is only two-and-a-half years away from that. And when I think of it!" She laughed. "I thought I had finally done with babies and all that, and now to think that I might soon be a grandmother!"
Pauline fought down the impulse to tell Louisa Hamilton to be quiet. Instead she focused on her plan to find a way to get Colin to love her, and then to conceive a child.
Colin stood at the French doors that opened from his study onto the garden, and inhaled the hot, dry air deeply. It was hard to believe that winter was officially one month away. The night felt more like January than April. Like the rest of the graziers in Victoria, he was praying that the drought wouldn't adversely affect this year's wool clip. Wool prices had fallen in the world market. Twenty years ago the price of wool per pound was twenty-two cents; today it was less than twelve. It was getting harder and harder to increase Kilmarnock's yearly profits. And now there was this drought.
Colin studied his reflection in the windowpane, and saw the face of his father, the twelfth laird of Kilmarnock, a severely handsome man who with but a glance was able to make a man fall silent, a woman tremble. It was the face of the man who was in control, the man with power. Colin's father had had that power, back in his castle on the island of Skye. But Colin knew that his own look was but a facade. His power was spurious; it depended upon rain and droughts, and sheep and grass; his sovereignty over thirty thousand acres was founded not upon bloodline and noble rights, as his father's was, but upon the vagaries of weather and economics. Colin knew that he could lose it all if he weren't constantly vigilant.
He thought of Hugh Westbrook. Despite Merinda's setbacks due to the drought, Westbrook was enjoying success with his new strain of sheep.
When Hugh had introduced a rambouillet ram to his flock seven years ago, Colin had been the first to scoff. "He'll never do it," he had said to John Reed and Angus Hamilton. "Any fool knows you can't run sheep west of Darling Downs." But the new Merinda strain had looked promising. Several graziers had bought Hugh's new rams and tried them on their stations, breeding them to prize ewes, carefully selecting and culling the flock, until the breed began to show itself to be very tough. The third generation was now being run on land that had never supported sheep before, and the Merinda strain was being talked about from Coleraine to the Barcoo.
And Colin despised Hugh for it—and for much else.
When Colin had come into possession of the useless 5,000 acres at the base of the mountains, and knocked the fence down along the Merinda border, he had thought luck was on his side, because much of Westbrook's stock had perished in the river as a result. But then the district began to look askance at Colin, and he had had to put a rein on his thirst for power and revenge. But MacGregor would never forget how Hugh had kept Joanna Drury from coming to his wife's aid when she was dying. He was biding his time. The right moment for repayment would reveal itself, and Colin would be ready. He will be hurt as I was once hurt, Colin thought grimly. And his loss will be as great as mine.
There was a knock at the door. It was Locky McBean, his former overseer, who entered with cap in hand. "Good evening, Mr. MacGregor. I've just got back."
"I can see that. What do you have for me?"
Locky had been promoted a few years back from the job of overseeing Kilmarnock to being in charge of collecting rents from properties MacGregor owned around the district. Some of the families who worked Colin's holdings rented from him and turned over the profits of whatever they farmed, keeping a small percentage of the sales for themselves. Others were buying small farms and stations from him, making regular mortgage payments plus a percentage of whatever profit they made from their wool crops. It was up to Locky to see that everyone was paid up to date, and that there was no cheating. And when times were hard, as they were right now for some of the smaller farmers, Locky saw to it that they paid just the same, whether they could afford to or not.
He produced a battered ledger and set it on the desk before Colin. Then, pointing with a dirty fingernail, he said, "Yer gonna have to raise the interest rate on Drummond's mortg
age, Mr. MacGregor."
"Why? What's the problem?"
"Their wool's bad this year, because of the drought. You're gonna have a loss in profit after shearing."
It was the practice among some of the landlords in the district to have any tenant who couldn't meet the year's wool profit make it up in higher mortgage payments. But the problem was that when squatters like the Drummonds were forced to pay higher interest on their mortgage they had to cut costs in other areas, usually by laying off their hired help, which sent unemployed men into the countryside.
"Give him one month," Colin said. "If he doesn't pay, evict him."
"Drummond's got eight kids."
"They're not my responsibility. What next?"
They spent a few minutes going over the accounts, and Locky suggested several more families for eviction. These were farmers who, far from having problems like the Drummonds, actually expected to make a good profit this year and therefore would have enough to pay off their mortgages, once the wool or wheat was sold. It was Colin's practice in such cases to call the note on the property and demand the whole of it immediately, before shearing or harvesting, forcing the farmer and his family off the land, penniless, with Colin keeping the initial capital that the man had put into the farm. Colin would turn around and sell the farm again, to another hopeful with a bit of money and ideas of owning his own farm, with the expectations of putting him off when he got too close to being able to own it outright. To Colin it was a ridiculously simple way of making money, and he had contempt for landlords who didn't use it because it was, after all, entirely legal.
