Her Outback Rescuer

by Marion Lennox

  ‘I’m so sorry...’ Henry started, but the conductor behind him was made of sterner stuff. Maybe he wasn’t quite as intimidated by the Thurston billions.

  ‘The girl you’re with,’ he growled, and pointed to Amy. ‘That woman. We have reason to believe she’s carrying a dog.’

  ‘A dog?’ If they’d announced life on Mars, Hugo could hardly have sounded more stunned. ‘Amy has a dog?’

  ‘Miss Cotton,’ the conductor snapped. ‘She’s budget class.’

  Hugo froze.

  Once upon a time Amy had seen a frail, elderly Sir James Thurston escort his wife through a crowd of post-ballet revellers. A photographer had suddenly emerged from the throng and shoved his camera so close to Dame Maud that she’d spilled her drink.

  Frail, elderly Sir James had suddenly been frail and elderly no longer. If there was ever any proof needed about the power needed to make the billions, it was there in that moment, when one blustering photographer was reduced to a whimpering puddle of humiliation.

  And here it was again: the Thurston power. The stance of the man. The single glance, cold as flint.

  ‘Budget class,’ Hugo repeated, and the two words could have cut glass.

  ‘That’s... that’s where she’s from,’ the conductor managed. ‘I’ve searched her compartment and when I couldn’t find the dog...’

  ‘You searched my Amy’s compartment?’

  My Amy. She should be pleased, Amy thought. Here he was, her hero, defending her. Instead... My Amy. She felt like standing up and saying Oi!

  But now was not a time for feminist principles. Somehow she managed to subside. Her job was to sit and look kissed.

  That wasn’t hard. She was kissed.

  ‘She’s brought the dog here,’ the conductor said, but instead of sounding sure, he was now sounding sulky and defensive. Henry the butler was glancing at him as if he suspected he’d lost his mind.

  Woman coming to billionaire’s bedroom at dead of night—understandable. Woman smuggling dog to billionaire’s bed... Not so much.

  But the conductor knew his job and was intent on carrying it out. ‘It’s in there,’ he said, and pointed straight at Amy’s purse. He darted forward—and then he hesitated. ‘Does it bite?’

  ‘Does what bite?’ Hugo demanded, still at his autocratic coldest.

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘You’re saying a dog’s in Miss Cotton’s purse.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hugo closed his eyes. He visibly counted to ten, and then he opened them again.

  He looked at Henry and hauteur gave way to sympathy. ‘Are you okay with this?’

  ‘Please...’ said the miserable Henry. ‘If you could just open the purse we could all just go back to...’ he glanced at Amy ‘...to whatever we were doing.’

  Indulge the lunatic and you’ll be left alone, his tone said, and Hugo sighed and nodded.

  ‘Okay. Let’s do this. No, it won’t bite,’ he assured the conductor, and a commander approaching a shell-shocked soldier couldn’t have achieved a more sympathetic tone. ‘But let’s make absolutely sure. Miss Cotton, would you open your purse for us?’

  But Amy didn’t move, or not instantly. Things were happening too fast—and she wasn’t helped at all when, instead of handing her the purse, Hugo stooped and kissed her again, hard, fast, on the mouth.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ he told her. ‘No. Don’t move. I’ll open it for you.’ He grinned into her stunned eyes, patted her on the cheek—patted her!—and turned and opened the purse.

  One book. Two magazines. Amy saw them through eyes that felt somehow blurry. Her world felt blurry.

  But Hugo seemed unaware of her discombobulation. ‘I believe Miss Cotton promised these to my grandmother,’ he said gravely, pulling them out, laying them on the table and then turning the purse upside down and shaking it so they could all see a mouse-sized dog wasn’t hiding in the lining. ‘Plus a recipe she wanted. Amy hadn’t...’ his glance at Amy was pure wickedness ‘...she hadn’t quite got round to emptying it before you gentlemen arrived. But not even the book is about dogs, so if you’ll excuse us...’

  ‘But it’s here,’ the conductor said, looking around wildly. ‘It must be.’

  Amy understood. This guy had his pride at stake. He’d pushed it this far. To back off now meant humiliation.

  ‘Search, then,’ Hugo said, with admirable patience and another sympathetic glance at Henry.

  ‘She’ll have hidden it in the bedroom,’ the conductor said and darted towards the bedroom door.

  Mistake. To say Hugo moved fast for a large man was an understatement.

  In less than a millisecond Hugo’s back was against Maud’s bedroom door, and the unfortunate conductor was lifted right off the ground by his lapels.

  ‘Enough,’ Hugo growled, setting him down again and thrusting him backward with a force that had him staggering. His voice was low, obviously in deference to the sleeping Maud, but only a fool would ignore the threat his voice contained. ‘I’ll humour you here, in this sitting room, or even in my bedroom, but my grandmother is eighty-three years old, bereaved, exhausted and asleep.’ He looked directly at Henry and his look was an order all by itself. ‘If you wish to disturb my grandmother for this nonsense, it’s on your head, but, I promise you, it will be your head.’

  And Henry pulled himself together.

  No matter how convincing his unfortunate underling—and underling the conductor must surely be, as denoted by the bars on his uniform—had been, Henry was no longer with him. Any belief in a hidden dog had long been dispelled.

  He grabbed his companion’s arm and hauled him away from Hugo.

  ‘Out,’ he ordered, appalled. ‘Mr Thurston, we can’t apologise enough. Miss Cotton...’ he glanced at Amy ‘...Miss Cotton, we apologise to you as well. My colleague tells me you’re leaving the train at Alice Springs and then rejoining on next week’s run? Yes?’ Then, as Amy found the strength for a feeble nod, he nodded back. There was a reason Henry was Platinum butler. He was collecting his authority around him as he spoke.

  ‘Tomorrow, before you leave the train, I’ll have arranged an upgrade to Platinum for your journey from Alice Springs to Darwin,’ he said. ‘I’d upgrade you tonight but your sister is already settled and you’re busy...’ He caught himself. ‘I mean...you have other things to do tonight than change carriages. Please accept the humble apologies of myself and Albert. In mitigation, Albert had a report of a dog in the train. He needed to investigate, but I concede we’ve taken things too far. We won’t be disturbing you further. Unless you’d like complimentary champagne? Strawberries?’

  ‘We won’t require anything else tonight,’ Hugo said, motioning to the door back into the corridor. ‘Just see that we’re not disturbed again.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Henry said and practically shoved the unfortunate Albert out. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Hugo said, and closed the door behind them.

  He turned to Amy. He raised one quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘My Amy?’ she said. ‘Oi!’

  And then she started to laugh.

  * * *

  Hugo watched her laugh. She had her hands to her face. She was choking on laughter, choking on...

  On what? This wasn’t normal laughter.

  He knelt before her and tugged her hands away from her face. He saw laughter, but something more. Something deeper?

  She was on the edge, he thought, where laughter was close to
tears, with hysteria close behind.

  ‘No one’s going to take your dog,’ he said and tugged her into him and held.

  For one long moment she resisted, but her body wasn’t behaving. The laughter was sending spasms running through her and they made her powerless to resist. She crumpled against him and her body heaved as he held her.

  ‘Sorry. It’s not... It’s just... I’ve been so worried about Rachel for so long, and tonight... You’ve been... You’ve been...’

  ‘Heroic?’ he suggested and she hiccuped on a laugh-cum-sob and subsided still more.

  He held her. He just held.

  She felt amazing. She was all silky pyjamas and fine blonde curls. Her hair was damp and smelled faintly citrusy. She’d just showered? She crumpled against his body and he thought he’d never felt anything, anyone like her.

  She had a dancer’s body. Not soft and curvy but tight, neat, every muscle knowing what it had to do. He could feel the latent strength in her, but right now she had no strength at all.

  And something was twisting inside him. Something he didn’t understand. For a woman to make him feel like this...

  He didn’t do emotion. When had he ever?

  His mother’s tears had been legion—hysterics, yelling, abuse, drama. This, though...

  Her sister had smashed her pelvis. She’d lost her baby.

  He thought back to Rachel’s wan face and he wondered how much caring Amy had faced.

  She’d told him that her sister had smiled on this trip for the first time since she’d lost the baby. All that time, Amy had been worrying?

  The shuddering had eased. He figured she was trying to work out how to draw away without him seeing a face where laughter and tears had mixed.

  He grimaced and hauled out a Thurston handkerchief. No commando in his right mind would be seen dead with a crisp linen handkerchief with a T embroidered in the corner but, from the moment he’d walked back into his grandmother’s house, he’d had a Thurston handkerchief in his pocket. Right now he was grateful for it.

  Amy, though, didn’t appear to be grateful. The gesture was enough to pull her out of the emotional abyss she’d tumbled into. She pulled back and gazed down at the handkerchief in astonishment.

  ‘You expect me to blow my nose on this?’

  ‘It does seem a waste,’ he admitted. ‘But the option is?’

  She handed the handkerchief back—and sniffed.

  He grinned. ‘That’s my girl.’

  ‘I am not your girl.’ She glowered. ‘Even if you are a hero. Do heroes carry handkerchiefs?’

  ‘I don’t expect they do.’ He thought of the guys in his unit if they caught him with monogrammed handkerchiefs and the thought was enough to make him smile.

  ‘And I don’t normally cry.’

  ‘You were laughing,’ he agreed gravely. ‘It just sort of got out of control.’

  ‘It did.’ She tugged back and tried to intensify the glower. ‘You kissed me.’

  ‘I did.’ She really was beautiful, he thought. She was ruffled and cute and tear-stained and she was fighting hard to be indignant. ‘And very nice it was, too.’

  ‘They’ll think...’

  ‘They did think, but there didn’t seem a choice.’ He tried to sound apologetic. ‘What choice did we have? That you’d come the length of the train in your pyjamas to give me a recipe? Maybe not.’

  She fought a bit longer to retain her glare but her gaze couldn’t hold. She swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ she said finally, and it was almost a whisper.

  ‘You don’t need to thank me for kissing you. It was very, very nice.’

  Indignation swelled again. ‘Will you cut it out? And what have you done with my dog?’

  His grandmother answered before he could. Maud’s voice came from the doorway. ‘He landed him on his grandma while he kissed you, that’s what he did.’

  They both turned and Maud was there, indignation personified. She was holding Buster in her arms and Buster was looking a bit indignant as well; he was having a very interrupted night’s sleep.

  ‘There I was,’ Maud said, sighing with exasperation, ‘almost asleep. Listening to the train wheels. Thinking, isn’t this peaceful? And suddenly there’s a dog under my bedclothes and Hugo whispering in a voice of doom, “Keep him quiet, Maudie, or we’ll all be tossed into the night”. What sort of threat is that?’ But her eyes were twinkling and Hugo thought, yes, mission accomplished—he had Maudie smiling again, too. Maudie and Amy both?

  But Maudie was now looking at Amy and her gaze was turning thoughtful. Uh oh, he thought. Maudie back to normal was a force to be reckoned with.

  ‘He’s a useful man in a crisis, my Hugo,’ she told Amy, and it was as if she was giving her grandson a reference. For a job she intended offering? ‘You were wise to come to him.’

  ‘Rescuing dogs and offering linen handkerchiefs...’ Amy managed. ‘As he said... very... heroic.’

  ‘Aren’t they lovely handkerchiefs?’

  Maudie was in a neck to toe nightgown. Her white hair was flowing around her shoulders. She looked nothing like the immaculately coiffed Dame Maud the world knew, but she sounded as if she was having fun, and Hugo knew she was.

  ‘I had them made by the hundred because James always lost them,’ she said. ‘But now it’s Hugo’s role to keep up with the supply. I’m so glad he’s sharing. And yes, you can blow your nose on it because he has hundreds more.’

  Hmm, Hugo thought. She’d heard the nose blowing conversation. If so... how much else had she heard?

  At her best, his grandmother missed nothing.

  ‘Now,’ Maud said sternly, advancing into the room and depositing Buster with Amy, ‘much as I think this little dog is adorable, I need my beauty sleep and do you realise he snores? But Hugo’s rescued him, so now he’s Hugo’s responsibility for the night. Meanwhile, I suggest you play Scrabble or anything else you can think of for a couple of hours...’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ Amy said, looking startled.

  ‘No, dear,’ Maudie said severely. ‘Not that it won’t be nice eventually, for I think you’re just the kind of girl Hugo needs, but not tonight. I know times have changed, but...’

  ‘I mean in my bed,’ Amy said, beginning to look appalled. ‘You know very well that I do.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ Maudie said. ‘Though...’

  ‘Though nothing,’ Amy said firmly. ‘My bed it is. But Buster...’ she faltered ‘...I guess...’

  ‘Exactly,’ Maudie said and her smile widened. ‘I heard those two men out in the corridor. Henry’s not looking for dogs any more, but the man from your carriage is far from convinced. If you scuttle back...’

  ‘I do not scuttle,’ Amy said indignantly.

  ‘You could if you needed to,’ Hugo volunteered. ‘I bet you could. If you can dance you can scuttle.’

  ‘Be quiet, Hugo,’ Maudie said. ‘You’ve done very well up till now, but it takes a woman’s brain to see this through. Amy, you’ve come here for a rendezvous with my grandson so a rendezvous you will have. Only, of course, as you said, you’re a good girl so you won’t stay the night. Two hours of Scrabble should do it. Then you’ll settle Buster into Hugo’s bed and you’ll take your empty purse back to your cabin. Hugo, you’ll escort her. I don’t want Amy wandering the train in her pyjamas, whatever she’s done up until now.’

  ‘But...’ said Amy.

  ‘Hush,’ Maudie told her. ‘Just listen. Hugo, you’ll keep Buster
until morning; it’d be asking for trouble for Amy to carry him back to her cabin. Then tomorrow, Amy, you and your sister will come back here—carrying your purse again. Make it bulge with books again. We’ll have breakfast together in this sitting room. We’ll spend the morning together until we get into Alice Springs and then we’ll take it from there. Any objections?’

  ‘But...’ said Amy again. She couldn’t seem to get past that.

  ‘Maudie...’ Hugo started.

  But Maudie was already retreating. ‘That’s settled,’ she said. ‘If there are no more rescues to be effected, I’m off to bed. Goodnight to you both.’

  And she giggled and closed the door behind her.

  Leaving Hugo looking at Amy. And dog.

  What to do with a woman in pink satin pyjamas for two hours?

  If she was another sort of woman...

  She wasn’t.

  There were three types of women in the world of Hugo Thurston.

  There were the women like his mother. His mother had married his father because he was a Thurston, and she’d revelled in the money, fame and glamour. The media/fame thing had become an addiction, as had alcohol, drugs and crazy cosmetic surgery, until they’d taken their final terrible toll.

  With his family background, with the money he knew he’d inherit even before his father had died, there’d always been women like his mother wanting to be seen with him. He avoided them like the plague.

  Then there were the women he worked with—colleagues, friends, women who treated him as a soldier and who didn’t get the Thurston thing. They were a tough breed, and they were the only women he was comfortable with. Occasionally he’d get close to one of them, but his work meant he moved around. Relationships were transient and these women knew his world.

  Somehow his grandmother fitted into this category, too, he thought. She’d fought side by side with his grandfather to build their empire, and she’d learned the rules from the ground up. Outside the army, though, the chances of finding another Maud were zero.

  Those two categories were the women he knew how to deal with: women who understood his army life, and women who courted the media.