Pre-dinner drinks were served in the parlor as refreshment for the travel-weary guests. Naturally, the men and women divided into separate groups. The men discussed the usual: drought, stock disease, wool prices, and aborigine attacks.
The women discussed recipes, children, the lack of supplies for running the household efficiently.
Amaris was in the enviable position of being capable of joining either group. Usually, because of her interest in running sheep, she joined the men. This evening, she joined neither group. Standing a little apart, she observed.
Her gaze quickly passed over Sin. To think about him only invited dissatisfaction with her life. From among the group of men, she sought out her husband’s face.
Despite the accumulation of the day’s dust on his clothing and in his hair, which was beginning to thin slightly at the crown, he was by far the most handsome man in the room.
Two years before, he wouldn’t have mingled with egalitarian ease among the squatters, who were from all ranks of society. The outback was gradually eroding Francis’s vanity. Grudgingly, she conceded it wasn’t that difficult to love her husband.
He caught her watching him and gave her a roguish grin. She knew that message. The opportunity of sleeping with her in a different setting excited his passions.
She had to admit, also, that over the last two years his values had changed. Still headstrong, he amazed her by occasionally being willing to forsake his own selfish drive for little pleasures that made her happy. Smiling back at him over the rim of her glass, she recalled the afternoon she had been riding the south paddock. Foolishly, she had stepped in a wombat hole and twisted her ankle.
When she had limped into the house later that evening, he had been quite concerned and had knelt to help her remove the boot from her rapidly swelling ankle. He had been wearing his red-and-black hunting attire, once used to ride to the foxes, now used whenever he hunted the ferocious dingoes, another of his grand passions these days. That and drinking. But that afternoon, as he had knelt before her, she thought how princely he looked. She might have been Cinderella.
Well, she was Lady Marlborough, for all she cared.
“Crystal stemware,” Celeste said at her side, disturbing her reverie. Smiling, the younger woman held up her wineglass. “My wish today was granted, temporarily, at least. Shall we change for dinner?”
“I don’t need any further encouraging.”
Excusing themselves, they left the parlor. Before they reached the staircase, just off the entry, they passed the library, and Amaris paused at the open door. Three walls were lined with books. In her mind flashed the scanty collection of her father’s—Burns, Browning, and a complete Shakespeare, and a few other works. How she treasured those few bound volumes she had brought from her father’s house. She had read and reread them many times.
“Are you coming?” Celeste asked, waiting patiently at the bottom of a staircase of carved cedar.
“Yes,” she replied absently. She was feeling the sting of homesickness. She, who had always considered herself independent and rootless. She hoped her parents, she never thought of them as her adoptive parents, would decide to come and live at Dream Time.
Her distraction was immediately arrested when she and Celeste began to change their dusty travel clothes. Clad only in her chemise, Amaris poured a pitcher of fresh water in a daisy-painted basin. She was washing her face, throat, and arms, when Celeste mumbled something about needing help with her petticoat ties.
Turning around, Amaris stopped short. Celeste was silhouetted against the candlelight. Her thin frame was abruptly distorted by her obviously mounded stomach. “You’re with child again!” Amaris exclaimed in a tone more accusatory than questioning.
Celeste looked at Amaris. A flush washed over her pale cheeks. “Yes. I haven’t told anyone because I wanted to be certain I could carry this one past the first six months.”
“How far along are you?”
Her smile was Madonna-soft. “Nearly five months.”
“But you—shouldn’t you have waited a year or so, until you get your full strength back?”
She smiled shyly. “We want children. And . . . well, I guess I am sort of . . . brazen, Amaris. Whenever Sin pulls me close to cuddle me in the night, I, uh, can’t help but want to, hmmm, touch him. His body is so beautiful. I get so . . . excited. I suppose I shouldn’t be talking like this.”
“No, that’s all right, I understand.”
But she didn’t. Why didn’t she feel that way about having sex with Francis? It wasn’t the repugnant act that some women in the home had made it out to be. Yet neither was it . . . exciting, nor did it make her breathless like Celeste when she thought about it.
“Here,” she said to Celeste, “let me help you with the ties. One is knotted.”
Later, when she and Celeste joined the other guests, who had also changed, she couldn’t help but dart speculative glances at Sin. Already she knew she enjoyed being with him more than any other man she had known. He had her father’s erudition and a stockman’s rapport with the land. Men from every walk of life respected him.
And the women?
She glanced along the dinner table at the various women who occasionally chatted with Sin and the other men. She couldn’t believe it. Why had she never noticed? The women—from old Elizabeth to her young daughter, Eileen, now engaged to Thomas—flirted behind their fans with him. With Sin, the ex-convict, not Francis, the nobleman.
She glanced back to Sin. He was taking their flirting in good-natured stride. Still, there was an undeniably heavy-lidded look in his gaze and a sensual curve in his smile that were all the more appealing because he was unconscious of it.
“A toast,” he said, raising his glass. “To Australia. May her star shine as brightly as the Southern Cross.”
“Here, here,” the others chimed in, and lifted their glasses in unison.
After dinner the major and Elizabeth led the guests back to the parlor, which a servant had cleared of furniture and rugs. Two men, who must have been shearers or drovers for the station, if their weather-beaten faces were any indication of their occupation, stood ready to play a fiddle and a Jew’s harp. Elizabeth sat down at the piano and launched into a Beethoven sonata. Candles in their elaborate holders lit the music sheet.
The sonata soon lapsed into a popular quadrille. At once the guests began to clap to the music, and the braver ones sallied out to dance in the room’s center. Francis and Amaris joined them. Recalling all those dance lessons at the Livingston mansion, she performed the steps smoothly and easily.
At one point, she and Sin were momentary partners. Looking up into those keen blue eyes, she knew that he, too, was recalling that afternoon he had been forced to serve as her partner.
Lately she wondered if he felt any of the attraction for her that she felt for him.
If he did, God help their souls. The dancing lasted far into the night, for such get-togethers were rare in the bush. Finally, Francis, who had been enjoying the nicotine-spiked brandy, grew sleepy. She wasn’t. She couldn’t remember smiling so much.
“Shall we go on up to bed, darling?” Francis said with a suggestive smile.
“No, I don’t think I’m quite ready.”
He looked surprised. For a moment, amidst the trappings of polite society, he had once again reverted to the role of lord and master. Forgotten were all those times she had toiled side by side with him in the bush.
“Go on to bed, Francis. I’ll be up shortly.”
His mouth curled in a petulant pout, then he inclined his head in that familiar way, nodded, and weaving only slightly, headed for the doorway.
No sooner had he left, than she was besieged by several men, each claiming her for a dance. "One at a time,” she said, laughing. She knew she could have looked like Jimmy’s prize pig, and she still would have been sought after, since white women were as scarce as black swans in Europe.
She danced with a cook, a bullocky, a forwarding agent, and
a shearer. She was whirled around the room so much that it began to spin even after she stopped. “No more,” she begged off, trying to catch her breath.
She turned toward the French doors and their promise of fresh air. Several men were outside, smoking their pipes and doubtlessly discussing either sheep or Australian politics.
She was no different from those men. Sheep was the foundation of all their plans, their schemes. Like them, she rarely wasted an opportunity to soak up any kind of information.
Politics, however, touched an emotional spot. She realized now that her rage with the injustice of female transportation had been just one portion of her rage with the whole system of British tyranny. Only now was she beginning to experience that entire spectrum of repression of personal freedoms.
Nevertheless the men felt unaccountably reluctant to discuss politics in her presence. She had demonstrated her competence running a sheep station, which was certainly not a woman’s domain. But politics was definitely out of the question in regard to female mentality.
The men all glanced up as she stepped through the double doorway. “Major, Sykes, Jimmy, Thomas . . . Sin,” she said acknowledging them.
“Evening,” the major said. Over the years, his stern military countenance had mellowed to that of a prophet, framed by white hair and beard. His smile welcomed her as if she were one of their gender. None of the men came to their feet in deference to her sex. By now, they were accustomed to her trading off sheep stories with them and probably would not have been astounded if she had produced a pipe to smoke.
“Harry here,” the major said in his clipped voice, “says that a drover who came through last week reported several hundred sheep infected with catarrh up in the Blue Valley.”
“My word for it,” said the old-timer known as Harry. “Had to be killed and burnt. All of them.”
“Could be worse,” she said, settling alongside Sin on the bench. His back was to the veranda’s cedar post and one leg was drawn up on the bench. “Could be scab.”
“Then there’s nothing to do but sell the place and stock for what they will fetch,” Sykes said.
“No, there’s a lot more a man can do,” Sin drawled in that seductive brogue. “He can fight to his last breath.”
“And face certain ruin,” another added in a reproving tone.
She stared through the lantern-lit night at the stocky man called Brantwell. “Nothing is certain.”
“The lass is right,” the major interjected.
She was particularly conscious of Sin’s steady gaze upon her. She grew uncomfortable, and when the conversation turned to tail docking of the lambs, she excused herself and went up to the bedroom she and Francis had been given.
The candle had burned low. Even as she undressed, it sputtered out. In the dark, she groped for the nightgown she had laid out on the back of a rocking chair. How wonderful it would be, she thought, to go to bed with nothing on. No worry about the hot muslin sticking to her thighs or the ties binding her wrists and neck.
But Francis would be shocked. And after that, aroused. Then later, shocked again. Sighing, she pulled the gown over her head and climbed into bed beside him. He turned over, and she lay still, hoping he wouldn’t awaken.
He didn’t, and she relaxed, listening to his light snoring.
Before drifting off to sleep she thought of two things—about how much cooler it would be if she could open the shutters, but the bugs would devour them; and about Sin and Celeste. Even now, were they making love? Did a man, could a man, make love to a woman if she were five months with child? Celeste’s ecstatic face when she talked of lying in Sin’s embrace continued into Amaris’s restive dreams.
The following day was reserved for games and relaxation. One game consisted of throwing an ax at a small mark on a tree while riding past on a galloping horse. All the men participated. There was no doubt in Amaris’s mind that Sin was by far the best horseman and so had the advantage of burying the ax blade closest to the mark.
Wagering was made all around, even among the women—a pair of gloves against a parasol and so on. “A dance tonight with your husband if he shouldn’t win,” a heavy-jowled woman called to Celeste.
Celeste, who sat with Amaris on a blanket spread beneath a gum tree, laughed lightly. “I have no fear of forfeiting even one dance with him. Sin shall win handily.”
Amaris attempted to appear indifferent to the contest. The contestants were eliminated one by one until only Sin and a scraggly bearded squatter from over Yarrow way remained.
“A tight match,” Francis said, dropping down on the blanket between Celeste and his wife. He gave her a sheepish grin. She hadn’t seen him all morning, since he was still sleeping when she arose and went down to breakfast. “It’s said the overseer can cut the eye out of a flying mosquito with his stock lash.”
“I’d wager no one has ever seen him do it,” she said with equally dry humor.
Her humor was short-lived. Sin and Johnson made their last pass at the tree. Her lungs suspended action. Dust flurried. Why was it so important to her that Sin win? The dust cleared and applause rippled through the spectators. Johnson’s ax had found its mark, besting Sin’s aim by the breadth of a centimeter.
Her pent-up breath zephyred from between her lips.
“I get the dance with your husband,” the heavy-jowled woman crowed.
“It will be his good fortune,” Celeste replied pleasantly and politely.
Sin cantered over, an easy smile on his lips. Perspiration dotted his upper lip and dampened his shirt so that it clung to his torso, emphasizing the breadth of his chest and his stomach’s corrugated muscles.
Afraid he would catch her staring, Amaris quickly glanced away. She had thought she was over her gauche days, but now she was finding herself tongue-tied—and over nothing. Nothing had happened between them. She had simply become aware of him in a sexual way.
He leaned from the saddle and presented Celeste with his ax. “In the days of courtly love, the triumphant knight presented his lady with a jeweled crown or something similar. I am the vanquished knight, but would me fair damsel accept me battle weapon along with me humble regrets.”
Celeste smiled up at him. Amaris thought the young woman had never looked so beautiful. “You will always be the champion of my heart, Sir Sin.”
Amaris rose, brushed off her skirts, and excused herself. “I think I’ll take a nap before the festivities tonight, Francis.”
She didn’t even wait for his reply. She knew she was behaving churlishly. Instead of enjoying the three-day outing, she had become self-conscious and unable to relax. That she would revert to such childish behavior aggravated her.
Feeling restive, she forewent the nap and strolled through the grounds. On the veranda, guests played cards or discoursed. Rather than have to invent excuses, she rambled farther from the big house.
For days she had looked forward to visiting the major’s station and mixing with the other squatters and station hands. Now she only yearned for the seclusion and silence of Dream Time.
She wandered down to the bank of Wallabee Creek to inspect the major’s new wash pen. She had to lean over the bridge to view better the suspended stage for the washers. The station hands were then lowered into a pen that was waist deep in the rushing water. The creek’s current washed the sheep’s wool, which, when clean, resulted in cheaper freight than wool made heavy by dirt and grease.
Her lace underskirts, her only petticoat, caught on a nail. Cursing beneath her breath, she bent to unsnag the lace—and lost her balance. She fell against the railing. She felt the rough timber skin her cheekbone, then heard the cracking as the railing gave way.
Her fall was broken by the pen below, which kept her from being swept downstream. Gagging on water she had swallowed, she fought to stand upright. Her heavy skirts, thoroughly wet now, were entangled around her legs and the railings. Her left shoulder felt bruised and both knees stung as if scraped.
“Well, bugger it!” s
he said. “Of all the bloody—”
Laughter interrupted her cursing.
Her gaze darted toward the bank. Sin stood there, arms akimbo, legs spread in that arrogant stance of his. “Are you going to stand there like a bloody fool,” she sputtered, “or are you going to help me?”
“Ahh, so you’re the helpless female now.”
“You damned insolent paddy.”
He turned and began climbing the tree-fringed embankment.
“Wait!”
He peered over his shoulder. Those long-lashed eyes danced. “You wanted me?”
“Damn it, Sin, aye!”
He gave that one-sided grin. Its sheer masculinity sucked the last vestige of breath from her lungs. At that moment, hardly a passionate moment, she realized that it was the force of his masculinity that threatened. Her father had been something of a passive male. She could deal with him. She didn’t know how to deal with Sin, or maybe it was that she didn’t know how to deal with the feelings he aroused within her.
He waded alongside the chute that funneled the washed sheep back up to the bank. Soon, water poured over his knee-high Hessians.
Waiting, she clung to the railing. She never took her eyes off him. He waded into the water and climbed through the chute. At last he reached her and scaled the pen to drop inside with her.
Neither of them moved. She realized the very thing she had been avoiding during the holiday festivities had happened: coming face to face with him when no one else was around. He was within arm’s reach. At that instant, she wanted to be held in his muscular arms. Had he embraced her, she would not have resisted. But he did not.
The realization of how close she was to capitulation panicked her; she wondered what had happened to her self-control.
“Well, are you going to help me?” she demanded. Her breathlessness was the only evidence of how much he unsettled her and hopefully he would attribute that to her present circumstances.
“I am mightily tempted not to.”
Dream Time (historical): Book I Page 20
