To Taste The Wine

by Fern Michaels

  Chelsea lay quietly in his bed. The pillow beside her still held his scent, the coverlet still held his warmth. He had left her while she pretended to doze, and she knew it was only to save her the pain of parting that he had taken himself away. How was she to live from this moment without him? His tortured, whispered “Good-bye, Chelsea, my love” would ring in her ears forever.

  Eventually, she forced herself to stir. After she had dressed, she turned and looked at the tousled bed. Quickly she bent and straightened the covers, her hands burning with remembered feelings. Then she turned and strode from the room without looking back.

  The sun was about to set when Chelsea reined the buggy into the yard at Bellefleur. The first thing she saw was Tingari, standing tall and silent beneath the shimmering leaves of the spinifex trees. Her stillness frightened Chelsea. Climbing from the buggy, she went to the woman. A single tear rolled down the Aboriginal’s cheek.

  It was Tingari who spoke first. Her wondrously large hand reached out and fell onto Chelsea’s middle; her voice was low and solemn. “The seed is within you.” Chelsea believed, and for the first time that day she remembered the reason for going to Clonmerra today. She placed her small white hand atop Tingari’s and believed that within her she carried Quaid’s child—and something that would have once brought her shame gave her great joy instead. She would have Quaid’s child to love.

  Suddenly Tingari loosed a sob, a great frightening sound. “What’s wrong?” Chelsea cried. “Something’s wrong!”

  “Mitjitji was right. Tingari did throw her stones. My child will never be born. Tingari swears to you, I will give my life for this child you carry.”

  Chelsea was stricken with pity. “But you said it was bad magic to throw your own stones. I don’t understand. Why?”

  “A haunting came over Tingari. My child’s mamu became weak, and I knew the life was seeping from my womb.”

  Chelsea followed Tingari’s tortured gaze. A bright rivulet of blood striped Tingari’s leg. Chelsea’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a cry of agony for her friend and protectress. Holding up her arm to stave off any interference from her mitjitji, Tingari turned and went to the garden house.

  Chapter 16

  Two Years Later

  Chelsea made a pretty, if lonely, picture sitting on the veranda with her darling Gabrielle. Time and motherhood had changed her. Her skin was still the perfection of an English rose and her eyes still clear and dark, but time had stolen their sparkle and warmth, except when she looked upon her daughter. Her waist was still slim, her torso long and graceful, but there seemed to be a heaviness upon her shoulders, and her chin never seemed to lift as high and proudly as it once had. While still beautiful, her ripe womanhood seemed to have faded, and her spirit was as lusterless as her eyes. Bellefleur still afforded a kind of security, marriage to Harlow still provided social acceptance and respectability, but the shadows beneath her eyes and the hollows in her cheeks declared the price she paid too high. She was like the grapes dying upon the vine, and like the water they so desperately needed, Chelsea needed the man she loved.

  Gabrielle watched her mother in rapt adoration as Chelsea read simple stories and pointed to the colorful pictures, saying some words very slowly so her tiny, dark-haired angel could repeat them after her. Gabrielle was just a year and a half old, with her father’s dark eyes and determined chin. Her sable curls wound softly around the fingers just like Quaid’s, and she shared the same twinkle that always lit his eyes from within. Gaby’s skin was as fair as Chelsea’s, and her little button nose and curving upper lip promised her mother’s beauty.

  Chelsea offered the baby a sip of cool water, encouraging her to drink with maternal cluckings and soft urgings. Tingari had warned that the little ones especially needed fluids in this heat, and Chelsea couldn’t help wondering what they would all do if and when the precious water supply from the underground spring should run dry. The drought was hell on everyone and everything; people, animals, and especially Harlow’s vines.

  Tingari sat in the shade nearby. She had become Chelsea’s constant companion and Gabrielle’s vigilant protectress, just as she’d promised the day she’d miscarried her own child. As she glanced in Tingari’s direction, Chelsea saw the woman sit bolt upright, her chin lifted as though she were sniffing the air, her back long and straight. One hand shielded her eyes as she looked into the distance, those incredibly long fingers stretched and poised.

  “What is it, Tingari?” Hope sprang to Chelsea’s heart. “Tell me. Is it rain?” She’d long ago learned to trust her Aboriginal friend. Somehow Tingari was always the first to know when rain—scant and rare—was coming.

  “No. Not rain, Mitjitji…. Something.”

  Chelsea settled back with Gaby, shaking her head. She’d known Tingari to be mysteriously aware of an antelope crossing the far edge of Bellefleur, saying she had felt its mamu searching for water.

  Water, thought Chelsea. In this god-forsaken land there either seemed to be too little or too much of it. The winter and spring when she’d been pregnant with Gaby had seen torrential downpours that had obliterated the landscape and churned the very earth into a sea of thick red mud. Even if it hadn’t rained within miles of Bellefleur, the everpresent ridge of the Blue Mountains would cast its spilloffs from every rivulet and stream down to the valley and inundate the plains with water. And now this drought. When would it end? The gardens she had planned and planted were long dead; only the gum trees and other twisted specimens peculiar to this land seemed to survive. It had been a terrible year. She’d lived with Harlow’s silent but terrible rage that Martha had gone to England despite him. She’d lived with her overpowering loneliness for Quaid. Chelsea reached out to touch Gaby’s soft curls, as she so often did whenever she thought of the man she loved, still loved.

  Quaid had been gone almost two years. Soon after the last time Chelsea had seen him, Tingari had told her that he was gone. His mysterious leave-taking was shrouded in rumor. Some had it that he’d gone to the hellhole of Coober Pedy in search of opals to weather the dissipation the floods had caused his vines. Others thought that he’d gone back to England. No one seemed certain. All Chelsea knew was that she missed him terribly and that he’d gone before she could tell him she was carrying his child.

  “Mitjitji! Mitjitji!” Tingari cried suddenly. “There is something in the wind. Something.”

  “What?” Chelsea demanded, the expression in Tingari’s eyes frightening her. “What is it?”

  “There is bad mamu coming. Very bad.”

  Chelsea saw Tingari put her hand to her breast to feel the little pouch of stones she always carried beneath her thin cotton dress. “The wind carries the secret, Mitjitji, but it is too far to hear.”

  Harlow Kane inspected his vineyards and knew the nightmare for what it was. Bellefleur was ruined. The only hope for any of them was rain. In his soul he knew he was fighting a losing battle, but it was a conclusion he refused to accept. Eighty percent of the vines were dead; the rest wouldn’t last the week, even with the protection afforded against the relentless sun by hastily erected canopies. All the years of hard work, all the dreams, were gone.

  Everything seemed to be falling apart around him. His marriage to Chelsea was a sham, an abomination in the eyes of God. Chelsea had never loved him, he’d known that from the beginning; but he’d thought she had respected him and would be a worthy mistress for Bellefleur. Love was only another form of infatuation, entirely unnecessary to a man like himself. Respect, authority, and dedication, those were important to a man, not the vacillating emotions of a woman. Yet when he looked into Chelsea’s eyes he saw none of these things, only a form of contempt. Where had it all gone wrong? Things had soured after the business with Martha. He’d been shamed, defied, challenged, and he’d lost. A man was only as good as his family. If he couldn’t control his own daughter, how could he control anything else in his life?

  Martha was gone. He refused to allow anyone in the house to corresp
ond with her, but he suspected Franklin disobeyed him. Martha had exposed him as weak and ineffectual, and now none of the rest of his family gave him the respect he deserved. Even Emma, who had pined and wept for her lifelong companion, was able to ignore his demands by willfully retreating into her world of melancholy. Even that half-wit had challenged him and won. Franklin, Harlow’s one hope for the continuance of Bellefleur, was lazy and shiftless and cared only for the time he spent in Sydney away from the needs of the estate. What was it all for if a man couldn’t leave a lifetime of work in the hands of his own son? Even the child Chelsea had birthed was a daughter, another mouth to feed with no return on the investment. He was the only one who cared for Bellefleur; it was his life, and now it was dying before his eyes, and his own helplessness was devouring him from within. He was consumed by his love for the vineyards, and nothing else existed for him: only Bellefleur and the drought.

  Harlow had driven himself like a madman, working from sunup to sundown carrying water to the vines. He’d also done something he wasn’t especially proud of, but he’d had no other choice. He’d run a clay pipe from Quaid Tanner’s lake to irrigate the most important vines on Bellefleur. Tanner was gone, mining in the outback some said, solid proof that the man didn’t give a damn about Clonmerra. Tanner wasn’t a vintner; he was only playing at the role when the mood suited him. Why else did he keep sheep at Clonmerra? Why else would he leave to mine useless opals in Coober Pedy? If a man loved the land, he never left it. Never.

  Suddenly Harlow sat down right where he was, weary to the bone. Too little sleep, not enough food, too much work, all had taken their toll. He knew he presented a frightening appearance—gaunt, stooped, a mere shadow of his former self. But a man had to fight for his life, and that was exactly what Bellefleur represented. No one understood—not Chelsea, not Franklin. Neither of them cared that it was Bellefleur that put food into their mouths and clothes on their backs.

  Harlow’s sun-blackened hand wiped his eyes. He was always alone, so alone. He was fighting for something no one but he cared about—and he was tortured by regrets, knowing that when Bellefleur died, everything he had died with it. Other men had their families, their wives, their children. He had nothing.

  As Franklin rode up to the potting shed, the first thing he saw was Harlow. In his entire life he’d never seen his father sleep anywhere but in his own bed and at night. His heart started to pound madly. Was it possible his father was dead? He looked so still. Something pricked at Franklin’s eyes, and he rubbed whatever it was away with the back of his hand. He wasn’t surprised to see the red dust on his hands smear. Tears. He blinked.

  He should get off his horse and check on his father, but he didn’t move. If his father was dead, there was nothing to be done. If he wasn’t, he could sit here and watch him. He’d never had the opportunity to observe his father at such close range. He looked like a tired old warrior. No, he corrected himself—a defeated old warrior.

  Something stirred in him as he watched his father. In sleep he looked kind and gentle. For years he’d worked himself raw for this man with never so much as a thank-you. He knew he would have continued to do so from morning till night just in the hope that one day his father would slap him on the back, call him son, and say, “Well done.” Now he knew that day would never come.

  A fat black fly buzzed around Harlow’s face. Franklin watched with interest as his father’s nose twitched in response. He was alive.

  There must have been a time when he’d loved his father. Perhaps when he was little. He wished he could remember. Everyone needed someone to love. At first he’d been secretly glad when his father had said he was remarrying. How naive he’d been! He’d hoped that marriage would soften his father, make him more aware of his own son. But it hadn’t worked. And then he’d grown angry at the realization that he was half killing himself for some young woman he barely knew. He’d vented his hatred in every direction after the wedding. He’d even been stupid, going into town and gambling. He hated cards, but he liked the companionship of older, fatherly looking men. He even liked Quaid Tanner, but he’d never tell his father. Quaid had never pressed him for the money he owed from several long-standing gambling debts, and Franklin had been too embarrassed to explain why he couldn’t pay up; reluctant to reveal too much about what went on at Bellefleur. But there was talk about him, and he was aware of it. He’d had to give that up, too. It seemed all his life he’d been giving up things.

  The thing that ate at him the most, that positively chewed at his guts, was that he’d not had the nerve to stand up to his father when he’d attacked Martha. Instead it had been Chelsea who’d helped. Tingari had told him that Chelsea was a good woman, and he believed her. Chelsea and Quaid Tanner had helped his sister, who was now a mother herself in England and happy with her life there.

  Happy. If anyone deserved to be happy, it was Martha. At least she had something—and someone—to love. Getting away from Bellefleur had been Martha’s salvation. And now she wanted to help Emma get away. Secret letters, sent and received in Sydney, because Harlow adamantly refused to allow any communication with Martha. Another restriction imposed by Harlow, another sacrifice for Bellefleur. If Harlow thought their life’s blood would nurture the vines, he would take it. Franklin almost wept. It wasn’t his blood he was losing to Bellefleur, it was his life. Shut away here, alone, so terribly alone. He’d never known what it was to be young and carefree. His life had been an endless sacrifice to Harlow and Bellefleur, a hopeless, endless future without reward. So often he wished for the courage to leave. Something within him cried to see the world, to become a part of it, to experience it. He damned himself for being unable to defy his father and shirk his duty. In reality, he was more Harlow’s son than he cared to admit.

  Harlow stirred slightly, and Franklin continued to watch him, all kinds of thoughts running through his head. He wished he could feel something. He wished he could understand his father’s obsession with the vineyards.

  Franklin looked down at his father’s hands, then held out his own to inspect. His were just as callused. He knew his back ached just as much as his father’s. And he was just as tired.

  They’d lost, and yet his father insisted on fighting. “Goddamn the vines to hell,” Franklin muttered. “Goddamn Bellefleur! Goddamn you, Father!”

  Quaid Tanner rode from Sydney to Clonmerra, taking in the devastation the drought had caused. The seasons had not been kind to this southeastern part of Australia known as New South Wales. Rains had been too sparse, and from what he had heard, none had fallen during the past eight months. White clouds, heavy with moisture, would pass over the land, casting their shadows as they passed before the brutal sun, but drifting far out to sea before depositing their burden of precious rain. Jack Mundey had written that he was finding it difficult to save root cuttings to begin the vineyards again once the dry spell ended, if it ever did. That was why he was returning to Clonmerra now, after more than two years away. He had a responsibility to Clonmerra, to the land and the men who worked for him.

  In the fields of Coober Pedy, living underground to escape the savage heat and burrowing even farther into the bowels of the earth to mine the precious opals had toughened him. He was thinner, stronger, and there was a raw intensity in the quickness of his glance.

  John Abernathy had mentioned it to him when he had returned to Sydney to find financial chaos. “You’re lucky, Quaid,” John had told him. “Most of the vignerons in the valley have gone under long before this, as have the farmers. Sheep ranchers are finding it hard to survive. They’re losing their herds by the thousands. Men are ruined, and countless families have returned to England and Europe. Clonmerra will be rebuilt because of the wealth of opals you’ve uncovered. Other men are not as lucky as you.”

  “Lucky,” John had called him. Was he fortune’s child when he’d run from his home to escape the daily reminder that the only woman he could ever love was the wife of another man? And during the months spent in the de
vastating solitude of Coober Pedy, where men lived like lizards beneath the rocks, had he been so lucky to dream of nothing but Chelsea every night? To see her lovely face always before him until, on the brink of madness, even death had seemed preferable to the intolerable loneliness?

  As he kneed his mount up the drive of Clonmerra, he was welcomed by the sound of gunshots and assumed the men were hunting for their supper. A wide smile split the features of young Tooley Joe as he raced from the stable to take the reins from Quaid’s dust-covered gloves. Quaid clapped the boy on the shoulder. “It’s good to be back.”

  “It’s good to see you, Mr. Tanner. Things ain’t been the same since you went. There won’t be no grapes to harvest. Last year the same. Blasted drought.”

  “I know, Tooley, but none of us can control the weather, didn’t your old mum tell you that?”

  “Aye, she did. But it’s still a shame, it is.”

  “There’s no shame in what can’t be helped.” He was sorry to see Clonmerra come to this, but it wasn’t the end of the world. There were other priorities in life, he had learned. And it had been a difficult lesson: he was not the same man who had left Clonmerra two years ago. A little older, a little wiser … but still aching from his last encounter with Chelsea. He would always ache for the love of his heart.

  His house—the house that should have been theirs, his and Chelsea’s—stood empty, a sad, vacant, lifeless shape on this dry, forbidding landscape. All the flowers were gone now, water being too precious for trivialities. Without realizing it, he was climbing the stairs to his bedroom. It was the same, except for a thin layer of dust. On impulse he threw back the coverlet. Would her scent still be there? No. The linens were fresh, wrinkle free. It was as if she’d never been there at all, and suddenly the weight he felt he had been carrying these past two years seemed to shift and make him almost physically ill. A moment later he shook his head grimly, his lips a taut, forbidding line. He had to be strong and put such foolishness behind him. He had to go on.